Echo Burning

any work. They don’t check anything. Like, the year before I got here, some guy was on trial for the rape of a child. He was convicted and went to prison for life. Then some pro-bono operation like you went and proved the guy had actually been in jail at the time the rape happened. In jail, Reacher. Fiftymiles away. Awaiting trial for stealing a car. There was paperwork from here to there, proving it beyond any doubt, all of it in black and white in the public record. His first lawyer never even checked.”
    “Not too good,” Reacher said.
    “So I do two things,” Walker said. “First, I aim to become a judge, so I can help to put things right in the future. Second, right now, right here in the DA’s office, we act out both sides. Every single time, one of us assembles the prosecution case, and another of us does the defense’s work and tries to tear it down. We work real hard at it, because we know nobody else will, and I couldn’t sleep nights if we didn’t.”
    “Carmen Greer’s defense is rock solid,” Reacher said.
    Hack Walker looked down at the desk.
    “No, the Greer situation is a nightmare,” he said. “It’s a total disaster, all ways around. For me personally, as a man, as a DA, and as a candidate for a judgeship.”
    “You have to recuse yourself.”
    Walker looked up. “Of course I’ll recuse myself. No doubt about that. But it’s still personal to me. And I’m still in overall charge. Whatever happens, it’s still my office . And that’ll have repercussions for me.”
    “You want to tell me what your problem is?”
    “Don’t you see? Sloop was my friend. And I’m an honest prosecutor. So in my heart and in my head, I want to see justice done. But I’m looking at sending a Hispanic woman to death row . I do that, I can forget about the election, can’t I? This county is heavily Hispanic. But I want to be a judge. Because I could do some good. And asking for the death penalty against a minority woman now will stop me dead. Not just here. It will be headline news everywhere . Can you imagine? What’s The New York Times going to say? They already think we’re dumb redneck barbarians who marry our own cousins. It’ll follow me the rest of my life.”
    “So don’t prosecute her. It wouldn’t be justice, anyhow. Because it was self-defense, pure and simple.”
    “She got you convinced of that?”
    “It’s obvious.”
    “I wish it was obvious. I’d give my right arm. For the first time in my career, I’d twist and turn to make this go away.”
    Reacher stared at him. “You don’t need to twist and turn. Do you?”
    “Let’s talk it through,” Walker said. “Step by step, right from the beginning. The spousal-abuse defense can work, but it has to be white-heat, spur-of-the-moment stuff. You understand? That’s the law. There can’t be premeditation. And Carmen premeditated like crazy. That’s a fact, and it won’t go away. She bought the gun more or less immediately when she heard he was coming home. The paperwork comes through this office eventually, so I know that’s true. She was ready and waiting to ambush him.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “I know her,” Walker said. “Obviously, I know her. Sloop was my friend, so I’ve known her as long as he did, near enough.”
    “And?”
    Walker shrugged, miserably. “There are problems.”
    “What problems?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know how much I should say, legitimately. So I’m just going to take a few guesses, O.K.? And I don’t want you to respond at all. Not a word. It might put you in a difficult position.”
    “Difficult how?”
    “You’ll see, later. She probably told you she comes from a rich wine-growing family north of San Francisco, right?”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “She told you she met Sloop at UCLA, where they were students together.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “She told you Sloop got her pregnant and they had to get married and as a consequence her parents cut her off.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “She told you Sloop hit her from the time she was pregnant. She said there were serious injuries that Sloop made her pass off as riding accidents.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “She claimed it was her who tipped off the IRS, which made her all the more frantic about Sloop coming home.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “O.K.,” Walker said. “Now strictly speaking, anything she told you is merely hearsay and is inadmissible in court. Even though they were spontaneous statements that