alice walked slowly across the tile.

"what's wrong?" she asked.

"tell me what you see," reacher said.

she dropped her eyes toward the corpse like it required a physical effort.

"shot in the head," she said. "twice."

"how far apart are the holes?"

"maybe three inches."

"what else do you see?"

"nothing," she said.

he nodded. "exactly."

"so?"

"look closer. the holes are clean, right?"

she took a step nearer the drawer. bent slightly from the waist.

"they look clean," she said.

"that has implications," he said. "it means they're not contact wounds. a contact wound is where you put the muzzle of the gun directly against the forehead. you know what happens when you do that?"

she shook her head. said nothing.

"first thing out of a gun barrel is an explosion of hot gas. if the muzzle was tight against the forehead, the gas punches in under the skin and then can't go anyplace, because of the bone. so it punches right back out again. it tears itself a big star-shaped hole. looks like a starfish. right, doc?"

the pathologist nodded.

"star-burst splitting, we call it," he said.

"that's absent here," reacher said. "so it wasn't a contact shot. next thing out of the barrel is flame. if it was a real close shot, two or three inches, but not a contact shot, we'd see burning of the skin. in a small ring shape."

"burn rim," the pathologist said.

"that's absent, too," reacher said. "next thing out is soot. soft, smudgy black stuff. so if it was a shot from six or eight inches, we'd see soot smudging on his forehead. maybe a patch a couple inches wide. that's not here, either."

"so?" alice asked.

"next thing out is gunpowder particles," reacher said. "little bits of un-burned carbon. no gunpowder is perfect. some of it doesn't burn. it just blasts out, in a spray. it hammers in under the skin. tiny black dots. tattooing, it's called. if it was a shot from a foot away, maybe a foot and a half, we'd see it. you see it?"

"no," alice said.

"right. all we see is the bullet holes. nothing else. no evidence at all to suggest they were from close range. depends on the exact powder in the shells, but they look to me like shots from three or four feet away, absolute minimum."

"eight feet six inches," the pathologist said. "that's my estimation."

reacher glanced at him. "you tested the powder?"

the guy shook his head. "crime scene diagrams. he was on the far side of the bed. the bed was near the window, gave him an alley two feet six inches wide on his side. he was found near the bedside table, up near the head, against the window wall. we know she wasn't next to him there, or we'd have found all that close-range stuff you just mentioned. so the nearest she could have been was on the other side of the bed. at the foot end, probably. firing across it, diagonally, according to the trajectories. he was probably retreating as far as he could get. it was a king-size bed, so my best guess is eight feet six inches, to allow for the diagonal."

"excellent," reacher said. "you prepared to say so on the stand?"

"sure. and that's only the theoretical minimum. could have been more."

"but what does it mean?" alice asked.

"means carmen didn't do it," reacher said.

"why not?"

"how big is a man's forehead? five inches across and two high?"

"so?"

"no way she could have hit a target that small from eight feet plus."

"how do you know?"

"because i saw her shoot, the day before. first time she pulled a trigger in her life. she was hopeless. literally hopeless. she couldn't have hit the side of a barn from eight feet plus. i told her she'd have to jam the gun in his gut and empty the magazine."

"you're digging her grave," alice said. "that sort of testimony shouldn't be volunteered."

"she didn't do it, alice. she couldn't have."

"she could have gotten lucky."

"sure, once. but not twice. twice means they were aimed shots. and they're close together, horizontally. he'd have started falling after the first one. which means it was a fast double-tap. bang bang, like that, no hesitation. that's skillful shooting."

alice was quiet for a second.

"she could have been faking," she said. "you know, before. about needing to learn. she lied about everything else. maybe she was really an expert shot, but she claimed not to be. because she wanted you to do it for her. for other reasons."

reacher shook his head.

"she wasn't faking," he said. "all my life i've seen people shoot. either you can or you can't. and if you can, it shows. you can't hide it. you can't unlearn it."

alice said nothing.

"it wasn't carmen," reacher said. "even i couldn't have done it. not with that piece of junk she bought. not from that distance. a fast double-tap to the head? whoever did this is a better shooter than me."

alice smiled, faintly. "and that's rare?"

"very," he said, unselfconsciously.

"but she confessed to it. why would she do that?"

"i have no idea."

ellie wasn't sure she understood completely. she had hidden on the stairs above the foyer when her grandmother talked to the strangers. she had heard the words new family. she understood what they meant. and she already knew she needed a new family. the greers had told her that her daddy had died and her mommy had gone far away and wasn't ever coming back. and they had told her they didn't want to keep her with them. which was o.k. with her. she didn't want to stay with them, either. they were mean. they had already sold her pony, and all the other horses, too. a big truck had come for them, very early that morning. she didn't cry. she just somehow knew it all went together. no more daddy, no more mommy, no more pony, no more horses. everything had changed. so she went with the strangers, because she didn't know what else to do.

then the strangers had let her talk to her mommy on the phone. her mommy had cried, and at the end she said be happy with your new family. but the thing was, she wasn't sure if these strangers were her new family, or if they were just taking her to her new family. and she was afraid to ask. so she just kept quiet. the back of her hand was sore, where she put it in her mouth.

it's a can of worms, hack walker said. "you know what i mean? best not to open it at all. things could get out of hand, real quick."

they were back in walker's office. it was easily fifty degrees hotter than the interior of the morgue building. they were both sweating heavily.

"you understand?" walker asked. "it makes things worse again."

"you think?" alice said.

walker nodded. "it muddies the waters. let's say reacher is right, which is a stretch, frankly, because all he's got is a highly subjective opinion here. he's guessing, basically. and his guess is based on what, exactly? it's based on an impression she chose to give him beforehand, that she couldn't shoot, and we already know every other impression she chose to give him beforehand was total bullshit from beginning to end. but let's say he's right, just for the sake of argument. what does that give us?"

"what?"

"a conspiracy, is what. we know she tried to rope reacher in. now you've got her roping somebody else in. she gets ahold of somebody else, she tells them to come to the house, she tells them where and when, she tells them where her gun is concealed, they show up, get the gun, do the deed. if it happened that way, she's instigated a conspiracy to commit murder for remuneration. hired a killer, cold-blooded as hell. we go down that road, she's headed for the lethal injection again. because that looks a whole lot worse than a solo shot, believe me. in comparison, a solo shot looks almost benign. it looks like a crime of the moment, you know? we leave it exactly the way we got it, along with the guilty plea, i'm happy asking for a life sentence. but we start talking conspiracy, that's real evil, and we're back on track for death row."

alice said nothing.

"so you see what i mean?" walker said. "there's no net benefit. absolutely the opposite effect. it makes things much worse for her. plus, she already said she did it herself. which i think is true. but if it isn't, then her confession was a calculated lie, designed to cover her ass, because she knew a conspiracy would look worse. and we'd have to react to that. we couldn't let that go. it would make us look like fools."

alice said nothing. reacher just shrugged.

"so leave it alone," walker said. "that's my suggestion. if it would help her, i'd look at it. but it won't. so we should leave it alone. for her sake."

"and for your judgeship's sake," reacher said.

walker nodded. "i'm not hiding that from you."

"you happy to leave it alone?" alice asked. "as a prosecutor? somebody could be getting clean away with something."

walker shook his head. "if it happened the way reacher thinks. if, if, if. if is a very big word. i got to say i think it's highly unlikely. believe me, i'm a real enthusiastic prosecutor, but i wouldn't build a case and waste a jury's time on one person's purely subjective opinion about how well another person could shoot. especially when that other person is as accomplished a liar as carmen is. all we know, she's been shooting every day since she was a kid. a rough kid from some barrio in l.a., certainly a rural texas jury wouldn't see any problem in swallowing that."

reacher said nothing. alice nodded again.

"o.k.," she said. "i'm not her lawyer, anyway."

"what would you do if you were?"

she shrugged. "i'd leave it, probably. like you say, blundering into a conspiracy rap wouldn't help her any."

she stood up, slowly, like it was an effort in the heat. she tapped reacher on the shoulder. gave him a what can we do? look and headed for the door. he stood up and followed her. walker said nothing. just watched them partway out of the room and then dropped his eyes to the old photograph of the three boys leaning on the pick-up's fender.

they crossed the street together and walked as far as the bus depot. it was fifty yards from the courthouse, fifty yards from the legal mission. it was a small, sleepy depot. no buses in it. just an expanse of diesel-stained blacktop ringed with benches shaded from the afternoon sun by small white fiberglass roofs. there was a tiny office hut papered on the outside with schedules. it had a through-the-wall air conditioner running hard. there was a woman in it, sitting on a high stool, reading a magazine.

"walker's right, you know," alice said. "he's doing her a favor. it's a lost cause."

reacher said nothing.

"so where will you head?" she asked.

"first bus out," he said. "that's my rule."

they stood together and read the schedules. next departure was to topeka, kansas, via oklahoma city. it was due in from phoenix, arizona, in a half hour. it was making a long slow counterclockwise loop.

"been to topeka before?" alice asked.

"i've been to leavenworth," he said. "it's not far."

he tapped on the glass and the woman sold him a one-way ticket. he put it in his pocket.

"good luck, alice," he said. "four and a half years from now, i'll look for you in the yellow pages."

she smiled.

"take care, reacher," she said.

she stood still for a second, like she was debating whether to hug him or kiss him on the cheek, or just walk away. then she smiled again, and just walked away. he watched her go until she was lost to sight. then he found the shadiest bench and sat down to wait.

she still wasn't sure. they had taken her to a very nice place, like a house, with beds and everything. so maybe this was her new family. but they didn't look like a family. they were very busy. she thought they looked a bit like doctors. they were kind to her, but busy too, with stuff she didn't understand. like at the doctor's office. maybe they were doctors. maybe they knew she was upset, and they were going to make her better. she thought about it for a long time, and then she asked.

"are you doctors?" she said.

"no," they answered.

"are you my new family?"

"no," they said. "you'll go to your new family soon."

"when?"

"a few days, o.k.? but right now you stay with us."

she thought they all looked very busy.

the bus rolled in more or less on time. it was a big greyhound, dirty from the road, wrapped in a diesel cloud, with heat shimmering visibly from its air conditioner grilles. it stopped twenty feet from him and the driver held the engine at a loud shuddering idle. the door opened and three people got off. reacher stood up and walked over and got on. he was the only departing passenger. the driver took his ticket.

"two minutes, o.k.?" the guy said. "i need a comfort stop."

reacher nodded and said nothing. just shuffled down the aisle and found a double seat empty. it was on the left, which would face the evening sun all the way after they turned north at abilene. but the windows were tinted dark blue and the air was cold, so he figured he'd be o.k. he sat down sideways. stretched out and rested his head against the glass. the eight spent shells in his pocket were uncomfortable against the muscle of his thigh. he hitched up and moved them through the cotton. then he took them out and held them in his palm. rolled them together like dice. they were warm, and they made dull metallic sounds.

abilene, he thought.

the driver climbed back in and hung off the step and looked both ways, like an old railroad guy. then he slid into his seat and the door wheezed shut behind him.

"wait," reacher called.

he stood up and shuffled forward again, all the way down the aisle.

"i changed my mind," he said. "i'm getting off."

"i already canceled your ticket," the driver said. "you want a refund, you'll have to mail a claim."

"i don't want a refund," reacher said. "just let me out, o.k.?"

the driver looked blank, but he operated the mechanism anyway and the doors wheezed open again. reacher stepped down into the heat and walked away. he heard the bus leave behind him. it turned right where he had turned left and he heard its noise fade and die into the distance. he walked on to the law office. working hours elsewhere were over and it was crowded again with groups of quiet worried people, some of them talking to lawyers, some of them waiting to. alice was at her desk in back, talking to a woman with a baby on her knee. she looked up, surprised.

"bus didn't come?" she asked.

"i need to ask you a legal question," he said.

"is it quick?"

he nodded. "civilian law, if some guy tells an attorney about a crime, how far can the cops press the attorney for the details?"

"it would be privileged information," alice said. "between lawyer and client. the cops couldn't press at all."

"can i use your phone?"

she paused a moment, puzzled. then she shrugged.

"sure," she said. "squeeze in."

he took a spare client chair and put it next to hers, behind the desk.

"got phone books for abilene?" he asked.

"bottom drawer," she said. "all of texas."

she turned back to the woman with the baby and restarted their discussion in spanish. he opened the drawer and found the right book. there was an information page near the front, with all the emergency services laid out in big letters. he dialed the state police, abilene office. a woman answered and asked how she could help him.

"i have information," he said. "about a crime."

the woman put him on hold. maybe thirty seconds later the call was picked up elsewhere. sounded like a squad room. other phones were ringing in the background and there was faint people noise all around.

"sergeant rodriguez," a voice said.

"i have information about a crime," reacher said again.

"your name, sir?"

"chester a. arthur," reacher said. "i'm a lawyer in pecos county."

"o.k., mr. arthur, go ahead."

"you guys found an abandoned automobile south of abilene on friday. a mercedes benz belonging to a lawyer called al eugene. he's currently listed as a missing person."

there was the sound of a keyboard pattering.

"o.k.," rodriguez said. "what can you tell me?"

"i have a client here who says eugene was abducted from his car and killed very near the scene."

"what's your client's name, sir?"

"can't tell you that," reacher said. "privileged information. and the fact is i'm not sure i even believe him. i need you to check his story from your end. if he's making sense, then maybe i can persuade him to come forward."

"what is he telling you?"

"he says eugene was flagged down and put in another car. he was driven north to a concealed location on the lefthand side of the road, and then he was shot and his body was hidden."

alice had stopped her conversation and was staring sideways at him.

"so i want you to search the area," reacher said.

"we already searched the area."

"what kind of a radius?"

"immediate surroundings."

"no, my guy says a mile or two north. you need to look under vegetation, in the cracks in the rock, pumping houses, anything there is. some spot near where a vehicle could have pulled off the road."

"a mile or two north of the abandoned car?"

"my guy says not less than one, not more than two."

"on the left?"

"he's pretty sure," reacher said.

"you got a phone number?"

"i'll call you back," reacher said. "an hour from now."

he hung up. the woman with the baby was gone. alice was still staring at him.

"what?" she said.

"we should have focused on eugene before."

"why?"

"because what's the one solid fact we've got here?"

"what?"

"carmen didn't shoot sloop, that's what."

"that's an opinion, not a fact."

"no, it's a fact, alice. believe me, i know these things."

she shrugged. "o.k., so?"

"so somebody else shot him. which raises the question, why? we know eugene is missing, and we know sloop is dead. they were connected, lawyer and client. so let's assume eugene is dead, too, not just missing. for the sake of argument. they were working together on a deal that sprung sloop from jail. some kind of a big deal, because that isn't easy. they don't hand out remissions like candy. so it must have involved some heavy-duty information. something valuable. big trouble for somebody. suppose that somebody took them both out, for revenge, or to stop the flow of information?"

"where did you get this idea?"

"from carmen, actually," he said. "she suggested that's how i should do it. off sloop and make like stopping the deal was the pretext."

"so carmen took her own advice."

"no, carmen's parallel," reacher said. "she hated him, she had a motive, she's all kinds of a liar, but she didn't kill him. somebody else did."

"yes, for her."

"no," reacher said. "it didn't happen that way. she just got lucky. it was a parallel event. like he was run over by a truck someplace else. maybe she's thrilled with the result, but she didn't cause it."

"how sure are you?"

"very sure. any other way is ridiculous. think about it, alice. anybody who shoots that well is a professional. professionals plan ahead, at least a few days. and if she had hired a professional a few days ahead, why would she trawl around texas looking for guys like me hitching rides? and why would she allow sloop to be killed in her own bedroom, where she would be the number-one suspect? with her own gun?"

"so what do you think happened?"

"i think some hit team took eugene out on friday and covered their ass by hiding the body so it won't be found until the trail is completely cold. then they took sloop out on sunday and covered their ass by making it look like carmen did it. in her bedroom, with her own gun."

"but she was with him. wouldn't she have noticed? wouldn't she have said?"

he paused. "maybe she was with ellie at the time. maybe she walked back into the bedroom and found it done. or maybe she was in the shower. her hair was wet when they arrested her."

"then she'd have heard the shots."

"not with that shower. it's like niagara falls. and a .22 pistol is quiet."

"how do you know where they'll find eugene's body? assuming you're right?"

"i thought about how i would do it. they obviously had a vehicle of their own, out there in the middle of nowhere. so maybe they staged a breakdown or a flat. flagged him down, forced him into their vehicle, drove him away. but they wouldn't want to keep him in there long. too risky. two or three minutes maximum, i figure, which is a mile or two from a standing start."

"why north? why on the left side?"

"i'd have driven way north first. turned back and scouted the nearside shoulder. picked my place and measured a couple of miles backward, turned around again and set up and waited for him."

"conceivable," she said. "but the sloop thing? that's impossible. they went down to that house? in echo, in the middle of nowhere? hid out and crept in? while she was in the shower?"

"i could have done it," he said. "and i'm assuming they're as good as me. maybe they're better than me. they certainly shoot better."

"you're crazy," she said.

"maybe," he said.

"no, for sure," she said. "because she confessed to it. why would she do that? if it was really nothing at all to do with her?"

"we'll figure that out later. first, we wait an hour."

he left alice with work to do and went back out into the heat. decided he'd finally take a look at the wild west museum. when he got there, it was closed. too late in the day. but he could see an alley leading to an open area in back. there was a locked gate, low enough for him to step over. behind the buildings was a collection of rebuilt artifacts from the old days. there was a small one-cell jailhouse, and a replica of judge roy bean's courthouse, and a hanging tree. the three displays made a nice direct sequence. arrest, trial, sentence. then there was clay allison's grave. it was well tended, and the headstone was handsome. clay was his middle name. his first name was robert. robert clay allison, born 1840, died 1887. never killed a man that did not need killing. reacher had no middle name. it was jack reacher, plain and simple. born 1960, not dead yet. he wondered what his headstone would look like. probably wouldn't have one. there was nobody to arrange it.

he strolled back up the alley and stepped over the gate again. facing him was a long low concrete building, two stories. retail operations on the first floor, offices above. one of them had albert e. eugene, attorney at law painted on the window in old-fashioned gold letters. there were two other law firms in the building. the building was within sight of the courthouse. these were the cheap lawyers, reacher guessed. separated geographically from the free lawyers in alice's row and the expensive lawyers who must be on some other street. although eugene had driven a mercedes benz. maybe he did a lot of volume. or maybe he was just vain and had been struggling with a heavy lease payment.

he paused at the crossroads. the sun was dropping low in the west and there were clouds stacking up on the southern horizon. there was a warm breeze on his face. it was gusting strong enough to tug at his clothes and stir dust on the sidewalk. he stood for a second and let it flatten the fabric of his shirt against his stomach. then it died and the dull heat came back. but the clouds were still there in the south, like ragged stains on the sky.

he walked back to alice's office. she was still at her desk. still facing an endless stream of problems. there were people in her client chairs. a middle-aged mexican couple. they had patient, trusting expressions on their faces. her stack of paperwork had grown. she pointed vaguely at his chair, which was still placed next to hers. he squeezed in and sat down. picked up the phone and dialed the abilene number from memory. he gave his name as chester arthur and asked for sergeant rodriguez.

he was on hold a whole minute. then rodriguez picked up and reacher knew right away they had found eugene's body. there was a lot of urgency in the guy's voice.

"we need your client's name, mr. arthur," rodriguez said.

"what did your people find?" reacher asked.

"exactly what you said, sir. mile and a half north, on the left, in a deep limestone crevasse. shot once through the right eye."

"was it a .22?"

"no way. not according to what i'm hearing. nine millimeter, at least. some big messy cannon. most of his head is gone."

"you got an estimated time of death?"

"tough question, in this heat. and they say the coyotes got to him, ate up some of the parts the pathologist likes to work with. but if somebody said friday, i don't think we'd argue any."

reacher said nothing.

"i need some names," rodriguez said.

"my guy's not the doer," reacher said. "i'll talk to him and maybe he'll call you."

then he hung up before rodriguez could start arguing. alice was staring at him again. so were her clients. clearly they spoke enough english to follow the conversation.

"which president was chester arthur?" alice asked.

"after garfield, before grover cleveland," reacher replied. "one of two from vermont."

"who was the other?"

"calvin coolidge."

"so they found eugene," she said.

"sure did."

"so now what?"

"now we go warn hack walker."

"warn him?"

reacher nodded. "think about it, alice. maybe what we've got here is two out of two, but i think it's more likely to be two out of three. they were a threesome, hack and al and sloop. carmen said they all worked together on the deal. she said hack brokered it with the feds. so hack knew what they knew, for sure. so he could be next."

alice turned to her clients.

"sorry, got to go," she said, in english.

hack walker was packing up for the day. he was on his feet with his jacket on and he was latching his briefcase closed. it was after six o'clock and his office windows were growing dim with dusk. they told him that eugene was dead and watched the color drain out of his face. his skin literally contracted and puckered under a mask of sweat. he clawed his way around his desk and dumped himself down in his chair. he said nothing for a long moment. then he nodded slowly.

"i guess i always knew," he said. "but i was, you know, hoping."

he turned to look down at the photograph.

"i'm very sorry," reacher said.

"do they know why?" walker asked. "or who?"

"not yet."

walker paused again. "why did they tell you about it before me?"

"reacher figured out where they should look," alice said. "he told them, effectively."

then she went straight into his two-for-three theory. the deal, the dangerous knowledge. the warning. walker sat still and listened to it. his color came back, slowly. he stayed quiet, thinking hard. then he shook his head.

"can't be right," he said. "because the deal was really nothing at all. sloop caved in and undertook to pay the taxes and the penalties. that was all. nothing more. he got desperate, couldn't stand the jail time. it happens a lot. al contacted the irs, made the offer, they didn't bat an eye. it's routine. it was handled at a branch office. by junior-grade personnel. that's how routine it was. the federal prosecutor needed to sign off on it, which is where i came in. i hustled it through, is all, a little faster than it might have gone without me. you know, the old boys' club. it was a routine irs matter. and believe me, nobody gets killed over a routine irs matter."

he shook his head again. then he opened his eyes wide and went very still.

"i want you to leave now," he said.

alice nodded. "we're very sorry for your loss. we know you were friends."

but walker just looked confused, like that wasn't what he was worrying about.

"what?" reacher said.

"we shouldn't talk anymore, is what," walker said.

"why not?"

"because we're going around in a circle, and we're finishing up in a place where we don't want to be."

"we are?"

"think about it, guys. nobody gets killed over a routine irs matter. or do they? sloop and al were fixing to take the trust money away from carmen and give most of it to the government. now sloop and al are dead. two plus two makes four. her motive is getting bigger and better all the time. we keep talking like this, i've got to think conspiracy. two deaths, not one. no choice, i've got to. and i don't want to do that."

"there was no conspiracy," reacher said. "if she'd already hired people, why did she pick me up?"

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