Echo Burning

the sergeant said.
    “Copy, on our way, out,” the trooper said. He replaced the microphone. Turned around. “So she understood your Spanish. I guess your accent wasn’t too far off, after all.”
    Reacher said nothing. The sergeant turned his head.
    “Look on the bright side, pal,” he said. “Now we can do something about it.”
    “I warned you,” Reacher said. “And you should have damn well listened to me. So if she’s hurt bad, it’s on you. Pal.”
    The sergeant said nothing to that. Just jammed on thebrakes and pulled a wide slow turn across the whole of the road, shoulder to shoulder. Got it pointing straight south again and hustled. He got it up to a hundred on the straightaways, kept it at ninety on the curves. He didn’t use the lights or the siren. Didn’t even slow at the crossroads. He didn’t need to. The chances of meeting traffic on that road were worse than winning the lottery.

    They were back again exactly two hours and thirty minutes after they left. Ninety-five minutes north, fifty-five minutes south. First thing they saw was the sheriff’s secondhand cruiser, dumped at an angle in the yard, door open, light bar flashing. The sergeant slewed through the dirt and jammed to a stop right behind it.
    “Hell’s he doing here?” he said. “It’s his day off.”
    There was nobody in sight. The trooper opened his door. The sergeant shut down the motor and did the same.
    “Let me out,” Reacher said.
    “No dice, pal,” the sergeant said back. “You stay right there.”
    They got out and walked together to the porch steps. They went up. Across the boards. They pushed the door. It was open. They went inside. The door swung shut behind them. Reacher waited. Five minutes. Seven. Ten. The car grew warm. Then hot. There was silence. No sound at all beyond random static from the radio and the ticking of the insects.
    The trooper came out alone after about twelve minutes. Walked slowly back to his side of the car and opened his door and leaned in for the microphone.
    “Is she O.K.?” Reacher asked.
    The guy nodded, sourly.
    “She’s fine,” he said. “At least physically. But she’s in a shitload of trouble.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the call wasn’t about him attacking her . It was the other way around. She shot him. He’s dead. So we just arrested her.”

10
    The trooper clicked the microphone and called in for backup and an ambulance. Then he dictated an interim report to the dispatcher. He used the words gunshot wounds twice and homicide three times.
    “Hey,” Reacher called to him. “Stop calling it homicide on the radio.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it was self-defense. He was beating her. We all need to get that straight, from the start.”
    “Not for me to say. You, either.”
    Reacher shook his head. “It is for you to say. Because what you say now counts for something, later. You put it in people’s heads it’s a homicide, it’ll be tough for her. Better that everybody’s real clear from the start about what it is.”
    “I don’t have that kind of influence.”
    “Yes, you do.”
    “How would you know what kind of influence I have?”
    “Because I was you, once upon a time. I was a cop, in the military. I called things in. I know how it works.”
    The trooper said nothing.
    “She’s got a kid,” Reacher said. “You should remember that. So she needs minimum bail, and she needs it tonight. You can influence that for her.”
    “She shot him,” the trooper said. “She should have thought about all that before.”
    “The guy was beating up on her. It was self-defense.”
    The trooper said nothing.
    “Give her a break, O.K.? Don’t make her a victim twice over.”
    “She’s the victim? Her husband is the one lying there dead.”
    “You should have sympathy. You must know how it is for her.”
    “Why? What’s the connection between her and me?”
    Now it was Reacher who said nothing.
    “You think I should cut her a break just because I’m Hispanic and she is too?”
    “You wouldn’t be cutting her a break,” Reacher said. “You’d be being accurate, is all. She needs your help.”
    The trooper hung up the microphone.
    “Now you’re offending me,” he said.
    He backed out of the car and slammed the door. Walked away, up to the house again. Reacher glanced through the window to his right, toward the rocky land west of the compound, full of regret. I knew how it would be, he thought. I should have made her leave the damn gun up there on