Echo Burning

did your people find?” Reacher asked.
    “Exactly what you said, sir. Mile and a half north, on the left, in a deep limestone crevasse. Shot once through the right eye.”
    “Was it a .22?”
    “No way. Not according to what I’m hearing. Nine millimeter, at least. Some big messy cannon. Most of his head is gone.”
    “You got an estimated time of death?”
    “Tough question, in this heat. And they say the coyotes got to him, ate up some of the parts the pathologist likes to work with. But if somebody said Friday, I don’t think we’d argue any.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “I need some names,” Rodríguez said.
    “My guy’s not the doer,” Reacher said. “I’ll talk to him and maybe he’ll call you.”
    Then he hung up before Rodríguez could start arguing. Alice was staring at him again. So were her clients. Clearly they spoke enough English to follow the conversation.
    “Which president was Chester Arthur?” Alice asked.
    “After Garfield, before Grover Cleveland,” Reacher replied. “One of two from Vermont.”
    “Who was the other?”
    “Calvin Coolidge.”
    “So they found Eugene,” she said.
    “Sure did.”
    “So now what?”
    “Now we go warn Hack Walker.”
    “Warn him?”
    Reacher nodded. “Think about it, Alice. Maybe what we’ve got here is two out of two, but I think it’s more likely to be two out of three. They were a threesome, Hack and Al and Sloop. Carmen said they all worked together on the deal. She said Hack brokered it with the feds. So Hack knew what they knew, for sure. So he could be next.”
    Alice turned to her clients.
    “Sorry, got to go,” she said, in English.

    Hack Walker was packing up for the day. He was on his feet with his jacket on and he was latching his briefcase closed. It was after six o’clock and his office windows were growing dim with dusk. They told him that Eugene was dead and watched the color drain out of his face. His skin literally contracted and puckered under a mask of sweat. He clawed his way around his desk and dumped himself down in his chair. He said nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly.
    “I guess I always knew,” he said. “But I was, you know, hoping.”
    He turned to look down at the photograph.
    “I’m very sorry,” Reacher said.
    “Do they know why?” Walker asked. “Or who?”
    “Not yet.”
    Walker paused again. “Why did they tell you about it before me?”
    “Reacher figured out where they should look,” Alice said. “He told them, effectively.”
    Then she went straight into his two-for-three theory. The deal, the dangerous knowledge. The warning. Walker sat stilland listened to it. His color came back, slowly. He stayed quiet, thinking hard. Then he shook his head.
    “Can’t be right,” he said. “Because the deal was really nothing at all. Sloop caved in and undertook to pay the taxes and the penalties. That was all. Nothing more. He got desperate, couldn’t stand the jail time. It happens a lot. Al contacted the IRS, made the offer, they didn’t bat an eye. It’s routine. It was handled at a branch office. By junior-grade personnel. That’s how routine it was. The federal prosecutor needed to sign off on it, which is where I came in. I hustled it through, is all, a little faster than it might have gone without me. You know, the old boys’ club. It was a routine IRS matter. And believe me, nobody gets killed over a routine IRS matter.”
    He shook his head again. Then he opened his eyes wide and went very still.
    “I want you to leave now,” he said.
    Alice nodded. “We’re very sorry for your loss. We know you were friends.”
    But Walker just looked confused, like that wasn’t what he was worrying about.
    “What?” Reacher said.
    “We shouldn’t talk anymore, is what,” Walker said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because we’re going around in a circle, and we’re finishing up in a place where we don’t want to be.”
    “We are?”
    “Think about it, guys. Nobody gets killed over a routine IRS matter. Or do they? Sloop and Al were fixing to take the trust money away from Carmen and give most of it to the government. Now Sloop and Al are dead. Two plus two makes four. Her motive is getting bigger and better all the time. We keep talking like this, I’ve got to think conspiracy. Two deaths, not one. No choice, I’ve got to. And I don’t want to do that.”
    “There was no conspiracy,” Reacher said. “If she’d already hired people, why did she pick me up?”
    Walker