Lee Child - Echo Burning

Reacher turned left at the crossroads in the center of Pecos and followed a street that ran parallel with the railroad tracks. He passed the bus depot and hit a strip that might have started out as anything but now was made up entirely of low-rent operations serving the courthouse population, bail bondsmen and storefront legal missions, like the night shift woman had said. The legal missions all had rows of desks facing the store windows with customer chairs in front of them and waiting areas inside the doors. All of them were grimy and undecorated and messy, with piles of files everywhere, and notes and memos taped and tacked to the walls next to the desks. Twenty past eight in the morning, they were all busy. They all had patient knots of people waiting inside and anxious clients perched on the customer chairs. Some of the clients were on their own, but most of them were in family groups, some of them with a bunch of children. All of them were Hispanic. So were some of the lawyers, but overall they were a mixed bunch. Men, women, young, old, bright, defeated. The only thing they had in common was they all looked harassed to the breaking point.

He chose the only establishment that had an empty chair in front of a lawyer. It was halfway down the street and the chair was way in back of the store and the lawyer was a young white woman of maybe twenty-five with thick dark hair cut short. She had a good tan and was wearing a white sports bra instead of a shirt and there was a leather jacket slung over the back of her chair. She was nearly hidden behind two tall stacks of files. She was on the phone, and she was at the point of tears.

He approached her desk and waited for a sit down gesture. He didn't get one, but he sat down anyway. She glanced at him and glanced away. Kept on talking into the phone. She had dark eyes and white teeth. She was talking slow Spanish with an East Coast accent, haltingly enough that he could follow most of it. She was saying yes, we won. Then but he won't pay. He simply won't. He just refuses. Time to time she would stop and listen to whoever was on the other end. Then she would repeat herself. We won, but he still won't pay. Then she listened again. The question must have been so what do we do now, because she said we go back to court, to enforce the judgment. Then the question was obviously how long does that take because she went very quiet and said a year. Maybe two. Reacher heard clear silence at the other end and watched the woman's face. She was upset and embarrassed and humiliated. Blinking back tears of bitter frustration. She said, "Llamarede nuevo mds tarde" and hung up. "I'll call again soon."

Then she faced front and closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose, in and out, in and out. She rested her hands palms-down on the desk. Breathed some more. Maybe it was a relaxation technique they taught you in law school. But it didn't seem to be working. She opened her eyes and dropped a file into a drawer and focused between the piles of paper across the desk at Reacher.

"Problem?" he asked her.

She shrugged and nodded all at the same time. An all-purpose expression of misery.

"Winning the case is only half the battle," she said. "Sometimes, a lot less than half, believe me."

"So what happened?"

She shook her head. "We don't need to go into it."

"Some guy won't pay up?" Reacher said.

She shrugged and nodded again.

"A rancher," she said. "Crashed his car into my client's truck. Injured my client and his wife and two of his children. It was early in the morning. He was on his way back from a party, drunk. They were on their way to market. It was harvest time and they couldn't work the fields and they lost their whole crop."

"Cantaloupe?"

"Bell peppers, actually. Rotted on the vine. We sued and won twenty thousand dollars. But the guy won't pay. He just refuses. He's waiting them out. He plans to starve them back to Mexico, and he will, because if we have to go back to court it'll take at least another year and they can't live another whole year on fresh air, can they?"

"They didn't have insurance?"

"Premiums are way too expensive. These people are barely scratching a living. All we could do was proceed directly against the rancher. Solid case, well presented, and we won. But the old guy is sitting tight, with a big smirk on his damn face."

"Tough break," Reacher said.

"Unbelievable," she said. "The things these people go through, you just wouldn't believe it. This family I'm telling you about, the border patrol killed their eldest son."

"They did?"

She nodded. "Twelve years ago. They were illegals. Paid their life savings to some guide to get them here, and he just abandoned them in the desert. No food, no water, they're holing up in the daytime and walking north at night, and a patrol chases them in the dark with rifles and kills their eldest boy. They bury him and walk on."

"Anything get done about it?"

"Are you kidding? They were illegals. They couldn't do anything. It happened all the time. Everybody's got a story like that. And now they're settled and been through the immigration amnesty, we try to get them to trust the law, and then something like this happens. I feel like such a fool."

"Not your fault."

"It is my fault. I should know better. Trust us, I tell them."

She went quiet and Reacher watched her try to recover.

"Anyway," she said, and then nothing more. She looked away. She was a good-looking woman. It was very hot. There was a single air conditioner stuck in the fanlight over the door, a big old thing, a long way away. It was doing its best.

"Anyway," she said again. Looked at him. "How can I help you?"

"Not me," Reacher said. "A woman I know."

"She needs a lawyer?"

"She shot her husband. He was abusing her."

"When?"

"Last night. She's across the street, in jail."

"Is he dead?"

Reacher nodded. "As a doornail."

Her shoulders sagged. She opened a drawer and took out a yellow pad.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"My name?"

"You're the one talking to me."

"Reacher," he said. "What's your name?"

She wrote "Reacher" on the pad, first line.

"Alice," she said. "Alice Amanda Aaron."

"You should go into private practice. You'd be first in the Yellow Pages."

She smiled, just a little.

"One day, I will," she said. "This is a five-year bargain with my conscience."

"Paying your dues?"

"Atoning," she said. "For my good fortune. For going to Harvard Law. For coming from a family where twenty thousand dollars is a month's common charge on the Park Avenue co-op instead of life or death during the winter in Texas."

"Good for you, Alice," he said.

"So tell me about your woman friend."

"She's of Mexican heritage and her husband was white. Her name is Carmen Greer and her husband was Sloop Greer."

"Sloop?"

"Like a boat."

"O.K.," Alice said, and wrote it all down.

"The abuse stopped for the last year and a half because he was in prison for tax evasion. He got out yesterday and started it up again and she shot him."

"O.K."

"Evidence and witnesses are going to be hard to find. The abuse was covert."

"Injuries?"

"Fairly severe. But she always passed them off as accidental, to do with horses."

"Horses?"

"Like she fell off of them."

"Why?"

Reacher shrugged. "I don't know. Family dynamic, coercion, shame, fear, embarrassment, maybe."

"But there's no doubt the abuse happened?"

"Not in my mind."

Alice stopped writing. Stared down at the yellow paper.

"Well, it's not going to be easy," she said. "Texas law isn't too far behind the times on spousal abuse, but I'd prefer lots of clear evidence. But his spell in prison helps us. Not a model citizen, is he? We could plead it down to involuntary manslaughter. Maybe settle for time served, with probation. If we work hard, we stand a chance."