Lee Child - Echo Burning

He led her up the porch steps and pushed open the door. The hallway had candles burning in holders placed here and there on all the available horizontal surfaces. They gave a soft orange glow and made the foyer warm and inviting. He ushered Alice through to the parlor. Stepped in behind her. More candles were burning in there. Dozens of them. They were glued to saucers with melted wax. There was a Coleman lantern standing on a credenza against the end wall. It was hissing softly and burning bright.

Bobby and his mother were sitting together at the red-painted table. Shadows were dancing and flickering all around them. The candlelight was kind to Rusty. It took twenty years off her. She was fully dressed, in jeans and a shirt. Bobby sat beside her, looking at nothing in particular. The tiny flames lit his face and made it mobile.

"Isn't this romantic," Reacher said.

Rusty moved, awkwardly.

"I'm scared of the dark," she said. "Can't help it. Always have been."

"You should be," Reacher said. "Bad things can happen in the dark."

She made no reply to that.

"Towel?" Reacher asked. He was dripping water all over the floor. So was Alice.

"In the kitchen," Rusty said.

There was a thin striped towel on a wooden roller. Alice blotted her face and hair and patted her shirt. Reacher did the same, and then he stepped back into the parlor.

"Why are you both up?" he asked. "It's three o'clock in the morning."

Neither of them answered.

"Your truck was out tonight," Reacher said.

"But we weren't," Bobby said. "We stayed inside, like you told us to."

Rusty nodded. "Both of us, together."

Reacher smiled.

"Each other's alibi," he said. "That would get them rolling in the aisles, down in the jury room."

"We didn't do anything," Bobby said.

Reacher heard a car on the road. Just the faint subliminal sound of tires slowing on soaked blacktop. The faint whistle of drive belts turning under a hood. Then there was a slow wet crunch as it turned under the gate. Grit and pebbles popped under the wheels as it drove up to the porch. There was a tiny squeal from a brake rotor and then silence as the engine died. The clunk of a door closing. Feet on the porch steps. The house door opening, footsteps crossing the foyer. Then the parlor door opened. The candle flames swayed and flickered. Hack Walker stepped into the room.

"Good," Reacher said. "We don't have much time."

"Did you rob my office?" Walker replied.

Reacher nodded. "I was curious."

"About what?"

"About details," Reacher said. "I'm a details guy."

"You didn't need to break in. I'd have shown you the files."

"You weren't there."

"Whatever, you shouldn't have broken in. You're in trouble for it. You can understand that, right? Big trouble."

Reacher smiled. Bad luck and trouble, been my only friends.

"Sit down, Hack," he said.

Walker paused a second. Then he threaded his way around all the chairs and sat down next to Rusty Greer. Candlelight lit his face. The lantern glowed to his left.

"You got something for me?" he asked.

Reacher sat opposite. Laid his hands palm-down on the wood.

"I was a cop of sorts for thirteen years," he said.

"So?"

"I learned a lot of stuff."

"Like?"

"Like, lies are messy. They get out of control. But the truth is messy, too. So any situation you're in, you expect rough edges. Anytime I see anything that's all buttoned up, I get real suspicious. And Carmen's situation was messy enough to be real."

"But?"

"I came to see there were a couple of edges that were just too rough."

"Like what?"

"Like, she had no money with her. I know that. Two million in the bank, and she travels three hundred miles with a single dollar in her purse? Sleeps in the car, doesn't eat? Leapfrogs from one Mobil station to the next, just to keep going? That didn't tie up for me."

"She was playacting. That's who she is."

"You know who Nicolaus Copernicus is?"

"Was," Walker said. "Some old astronomer. Polish, I think. Proved the earth goes around the sun."

Reacher nodded. "And much more than that, by implication. He asked us all to consider how likely is it that we're at the absolute center of things? What are the odds? That what we're seeing is somehow exceptional? The very best or the very worst? It's an important philosophical point."

"So?"

"So if Carmen had two million bucks in the bank but traveled with a single dollar just in case she bumped into a guy as suspicious as me, then she is undoubtedly the number-one best-prepared con artist in the history of the world. And old Copernicus asks me, how likely is that? That I should by chance happen to bump into the best con artist in the history of the world? His answer is, not very likely, really. He says the likelihood is, if I bump into a con artist at all, it'll be a very average and mediocre one."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying it didn't tie up for me. So it got me thinking about the money. And then something else didn't tie up."

"What?"

"Al Eugene's people messengered Sloops financial stuff over, right?"

"This morning. Feels like a long time ago."

"Thing is, I saw Al's office. When I went to the museum. It's literally within sight of the courthouse. It's a one-minute walk. So how likely is it they would messenger something over? Wouldn't they just walk it over? For a friend of Al's? Especially if it was urgent? It would take them ten times as long just to dial the phone for the courier service."

The candlelight danced and flickered. The red room glowed.

"People messenger things all the time," Walker said. "It's routine. And it was too hot for walking."

Reacher nodded. "Maybe. It didn't mean much at the time. But then something else didn't tie up. The collarbone."

"What about it?"

Reacher turned to face Alice. "When you fell off your inline skates, did you break your collarbone?"

"No," Alice said.

"Any injuries at all?"

"I tore up my hand. A lot of road rash."

"You put your hand out to break your fall?"

"Reflex," she said. "It's impossible not to."

Reacher nodded. Turned back through the candlelit gloom to Walker.

"I rode with Carmen on Saturday," he said. "My first time ever. My ass got sore, but the thing I really remember is how high I was. It's scary up there. So the thing is, if Carmen fell off, from that height, onto rocky dirt, hard enough to bust her collarbone, how is it that she didn't get road rash, too? On her hand?"

"Maybe she did."

"The hospital didn't write it up."

"Maybe they forgot."

"It was a very detailed report. New staff, working hard. I noticed that, and Cowan Black did, too. He said they were very thorough. They wouldn't have neglected lacerations to the palm."

"She must have worn riding gloves."

Reacher shook his head. "She told me nobody wears gloves down here. Too hot. And she definitely wouldn't have said that if gloves had once saved her from serious road rash. She'd have been a big fan of gloves, in that case. She'd have certainly made me wear them, being new to it."

"So?"

"So I started to wonder if the collarbone thing could have been from Sloop hitting her. I figured it was possible. Maybe she's on her knees, a big clubbing fist from above, she moves her head. Only she also claimed he had broken her arm and her jaw and knocked her teeth loose, too, and there was no mention of all that stuff, so I stopped wondering. Especially when I found out the ring was real."

A candle on the left end of the table died. It burned out and smoke rose from it in a thin plume that ran absolutely straight for a second and then spiraled crazily.

"She's a liar," Walker said. "That's all."

"She sure is," Bobby said.

"Sloop never hit her," Rusty said. "A son of mine would never hit a woman, whoever she was."