Lee Child - Echo Burning

Reacher paused a long moment.

"Maybe she is a liar," he said. "But liars can still get abused, same as anybody else. And abuse can be covert. You don't know it wasn't happening."

Walker nodded. "I agree. I don't know. But I would bet my life it wasn't."

"She convinced me."

"She probably convinced herself. She lives in a fantasy world. I know her, Reacher. She's a liar, is all, and she's guilty of first-degree homicide."

"So why are we talking?"

Walker paused.

"Can I trust you?" he asked.

"Does it matter?" Reacher said.

Walker went very quiet. Just stared at his office wall, a whole minute, then another. And another. The boom of the air conditioners crowded into the silence.

"Yes, it matters," he said. "It matters plenty. To Carmen, and to me. Because right now you're reading me completely wrong. I'm not an angry friend trying to protect my old buddy's reputation. Fact is, I want to find a defense for Carmen, don't you see that? Even invent one. You know, maybe just pretend the abuse happened and back-pedal like crazy on the premeditation. I'm seriously tempted. Because then I don't need to charge her at all and I can probably save my shot at the judgeship."

The silence came back. Nothing but the air conditioner motors and telephones ringing faintly outside the office door. The distant chatter of a fax machine.

"I want to go see her," Reacher said.

Walker shook his head. "Can't let you. You're not her lawyer."

"You could bend the rules."

Walker sighed again and dropped his head into his hands. "Please, don't tempt me. Right now I'm thinking about throwing the rules off the top of the building."

Reacher said nothing. Walker stared into space, his eyes jumping with strain.

"I want to figure out her real motive," he said finally. "Because if it was something real cold, like money, I don't have a choice. She has to go down."

Reacher said nothing.

"But if it wasn't, I want you to help me," Walker said. "If her medical records are remotely plausible, I want to try to save her with the abuse thing."

Reacher said nothing.

"O.K., what I really mean is I want to try to save myself," Walker said. "Try to save my chances in the election. Or both things, O.K.? Her and me. Ellie, too. She's a great kid. Sloop loved her."

"So what would you want from me?"

"If we go down that road."

Reacher nodded. "If," he said.

"I'd want you to lie on the stand," Walker said. "I'd want you to repeat what she told you about the beatings, and modify what she told you about everything else, in order to preserve her credibility."

Reacher said nothing.

"That's why I need to trust you," Walker said. "And that's why I needed to lay everything out for you. So you know exactly what you're getting into with her."

"I've never done that sort of a thing before."

"Neither have I," Walker said. "It's killing me just to talk about it."

Reacher was quiet for a long moment.

"Why do you assume I'd want to?" he asked.

"I think you like her," Walker said. "I think you feel sorry for her. I think you want to help her. Therefore indirectly you could help me."

"How would you work it?"

Walker shrugged. "I'll be withdrawn from the case from the start, so one of my assistants will be handling it. I'll find out exactly what she can prove for sure, and I'll coach you on it so you don't get tripped up. That's why I can't let you go see Carmen now. They keep a record downstairs. It would look like prior collusion."

"I don't know," Reacher said.

"I don't, either. But maybe it won't have to go all the way to trial. If the medical evidence is a little flexible, and we take a deposition from Carmen, and one from you, then maybe dropping the charges altogether would be justified."

"Lying in a deposition would be just as bad."

"Think about Ellie."

"And your judgeship."

Walker nodded. "I'm not hiding that from you. I want to get elected, no doubt about it. But it's for an honest reason. I want to make things better, Reacher. It's always been my ambition. Work my way up, improve things from the inside. It's the only way. For a person like me, anyway. I've got no influence as a lobbyist. I'm not a politician, really. I find all that stuff embarrassing. I don't have the skills."

Reacher said nothing.

"Let me think it over," Walker said. "A day or two. I'll take it from there."

"You sure?"

Walker sighed again. "No, of course I'm not sure. I hate this whole thing. But what the hell, Sloop's dead. Nothing's going to change that. Nothing's going to bring him back. It'll trash his memory, of course. But it would save Carmen. And he loved her, Reacher. In a way nobody else could ever understand. The disapproval he brought down on himself was unbelievable. From his family, from polite society. He'd be happy to exchange his reputation for her life, I think. His life for her life, effectively. He'd exchange mine, or Al's, or anybody's, probably. He loved her."

There was silence again.

"She needs bail," Reacher said.

"Please," Walker said. "It's out of the question."

"Ellie needs her."

"That's a bigger issue than bail," Walker said. "Ellie can stand a couple of days with her grandmother. It's the rest of her life we need to worry about. Give me time to work this out."

Reacher shrugged and stood up.

"This is all in strict confidence, right?" Walker said. "I guess I should have made that clear right from the start."

Reacher nodded.

"Get back to me," he said.

Then he stood up and walked out the room.

"One simple question," Alice said. "Is it plausible that domestic abuse could be so covert that close friends are totally unaware of it?"

"I don't know," Reacher said. "I don't have much experience."

"Neither do I."

They were on opposite sides of Alice's desk in the back of the legal mission. It was the middle of the day, and the heat was so brutal it was enforcing a de facto siesta on the whole town. Nobody was out and about who didn't desperately need to be. The mission was largely deserted. Just Alice and Reacher and one other lawyer twenty feet away. The inside temperature was easily over a hundred and ten degrees. The humidity was rising. The ancient air conditioner above the door was making no difference at all. Alice had changed into shorts again. She was leaning back in her chair, arms above her head, her back arched off the sticky vinyl. She was slick with sweat from head to foot. Over the tan it made her skin look oiled. Reacher's shirt was soaked. He was reconsidering its projected three-day life span.

"It's a catch-22," Alice said. "Abuse you know about isn't covert. Really covert abuse, you might assume it isn't happening. Like, I assume my dad isn't beating my mom. But maybe he is. Who would know? What about yours?"

Reacher smiled. "I doubt it. He was a U.S. Marine. Big guy, not especially genteel. But then, you should have seen my mother. Maybe she was beating him."

"So yes or no about Carmen and Sloop?"

"She convinced me," Reacher said. "No doubt about it."

"Despite everything?"

"She convinced me," he said again. "Maybe she's all kinds of a liar about other things, but he was beating her. That's my belief."

Alice looked at him, a lawyer's question in her eyes.

"No doubt at all?" she asked.

"No doubt at all," he said.

"O.K., but a difficult case just got a lot harder. And I hate it when that happens."

"Me too," he said. "But hard is not the same thing as impossible."

"You understand the exact legalities here?"

He nodded. "It's not rocket science. She's in deep shit, whichever way you cut it. If there was abuse, she's blown it anyway by being so premeditated. If there wasn't, then it's murder one, pure and simple. And whatever, she has zero credibility because she lies and exaggerates. Ballgame over, if Walker didn't want to be judge so bad."