Echo Burning

Reacher’s car and did the same. They waited for the backup to ease ahead and then followed it out to the gate. Reacher turned his head and saw Rusty and Bobby craning to watch them go. The cars paused and turned right together and accelerated north. Reacher turned his head the other way and the last thing he saw was Ellie stumbling out onto the porch. She was in her rabbit pajamas and was carrying a small bear in her left hand and had the knuckles of her right pressed hard into her mouth.

    * * *

    The inside of the cop car cooled right down after about a mile. There was an aperture in the wire grille in front of him and if he sat in the middle of the seat and ducked his head he could line it up with the view through the windshield above the radar unit and below the mirror. It was like watching a movie unfold in front of him. The backup car swayed in the headlight beams, close and vivid and unreal in the intense dusty blackness all around it. He couldn’t see Carmen. Maybe she was slumped down in the seat and her head was hidden behind the police lights stacked along the rear shelf, behind the glass.
    “Where are they taking her?” he called.
    The sergeant shifted in his seat. Answered a hundred yards later.
    “Pecos,” he said. “County jail.”
    “But this is Echo,” Reacher said. “Not Pecos.”
    “There are a hundred and fifty people in Echo County. You think they operate a separate jurisdiction just for them? With jails and all? And courthouses?”
    “So how does it work?”
    “Pecos picks it up, that’s how it works. For all the little counties, around and about. All the administrative functions.”
    Reacher was quiet for a beat.
    “Well, that’s going to be a real big problem,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “Because Hack Walker is the Pecos DA. And he was Sloop Greer’s best buddy. So he’ll be prosecuting the person who shot his friend.”
    “Worried about a conflict of interest?”
    “Aren’t you?”
    “Not really,” the sergeant said. “We know Hack. He’s not a fool. He sees some defense counsel about to nail him for an impropriety, he’ll pass on it. He’ll have to. What’s the word, excuse himself?”
    “Recuse,” Reacher said.
    “Whatever. He’ll give it to an assistant. And I think boththe Pecos ADAs are women, actually. So the self-defense thing will get some sympathy.”
    “It doesn’t need sympathy,” Reacher said. “It’s plain as day.”
    “And Hack’s running for judge in November,” the sergeant said. “Bear that in mind. Lots of Mexican votes in Pecos County. He won’t let anybody do anything that’ll give her lawyer a chance to make him look bad in the newspaper. So she’s lucky, really. A Mexican woman shoots a white man in Echo, gets tried for it by a woman ADA in Pecos, couldn’t be better for her.”
    “She’s from California,” Reacher said. “She’s not Mexican.”
    “But she looks Mexican,” the sergeant said. “That’s what’s important to a guy who needs votes in Pecos County.”

    The two state police cruisers drove on in convoy. They caught and passed the ambulance just short of the school and the gas station and the diner at the crossroads. Left it lumbering north in their wake.
    “The morgue’s in Pecos, too,” the sergeant said. “One of the oldest institutions in town, I guess. They needed it right from the get-go. Pecos was that kind of a place.”
    Reacher nodded, behind him.
    “Carmen told me,” he said. “It was the real Wild West.”
    “You going to stick around?”
    “I guess so. I need to see she’s O.K. She told me there’s a museum in town. Things to see. Somebody’s grave.”
    “Clay Allison’s,” the sergeant said. “Some old gunslinger.”
    “Never killed a man who didn’t need killing.”
    The sergeant nodded in the mirror. “That could be her position, right? She could call it the Clay Allison defense.”
    “Why not?” Reacher said. “It was justifiable homicide, any way you cut it.”
    The sergeant said nothing to that.
    “Should be enough to make bail, at least,” Reacher said. “She’s got a kid back there. She needs bail, like tomorrow.”
    The sergeant glanced in the mirror again.
    “Tomorrow could be tough,” he said. “There’s a dead guy in the picture, after all. Who’s her lawyer?”
    “Hasn’t got one.”
    “She got money for one?”
    “No.”
    “Well, shit,” the sergeant said.
    “What?” Reacher asked.
    “How old is the kid?”
    “Six and a half.”
    The