"I'm very sorry," Reacher said again.
The woman shrugged. "It was very common then. It was a bad time, and a bad area. We found that out, later. Either our guide didn't know, or didn't care. We found out that there were more than twenty people killed on that route in a year. For fun. Some of them in horrible ways. Raoul was lucky, just to be shot. Some of them, their screams could be heard for miles, across the desert, in the darkness. Some of the girls were carried away and never seen again."
Reacher said nothing. The woman gazed at the picture for a moment longer. Then she turned away with an immense physical effort and forced a smile and gestured that Reacher should rejoin the party in the kitchen.
"We have tequila," she said quietly. "Saved especially for this day."
There were shot glasses on the table, and the daughter was filling them from a bottle. The girl that Raoul had saved, all grown up. The younger son passed the glasses around. Reacher took his and waited. The Garcia father motioned for quiet and raised his drink toward Alice in a toast.
"To our lawyer," he said. "For proving the great Frenchman Honore de Balzac wrong when he wrote, 'Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.'"
Alice blushed a little. Garcia smiled at her and turned to Reacher. "And to you, sir, for your generous assistance in our time of need."
"De nada," Reacher said. "No hay de que. "
The tequila was rough and Raoul's memory was everywhere, so they refused a second shot and left the Garcias alone with their celebrations. They had to wait again until the air conditioner made the VW's interior bearable. Then they headed back to Pecos.
"I enjoyed that," Alice said. "Felt like I finally made a difference."
"You did make a difference."
"Even though it was you made it happen."
"You did the skilled labor," he said.
"Nevertheless, thanks."
"Did the border patrol ever get investigated?" he asked.
She nodded. "Thoroughly, according to the record. There was enough noise made. Nothing specific, of course, but enough general rumors to make it inevitable."
"And?"
"And nothing. It was a whitewash. Nobody was even indicted."
"But did it stop?"
She nodded again. "As suddenly as it started. So obviously they got the message."
"That's how it works," he said. "I've seen it before, different places, different situations. The investigation isn't really an investigation, as such. It's more like a message. Like a coded warning. Like saying, you can't get away with this anymore, so you better stop doing it, whoever you are."
"But justice wasn't done, Reacher. Twenty-some people died. Some of them gruesomely. It was like a pogrom, a year long. Somebody should have paid."
"Did you recognize that Balzac quotation?" he asked.
"Sure," she said. "I went to Harvard, after all."
"Remember Herbert Marcuse, too?"
"He was later, right? A philosopher, not a novelist."
He nodded. "Born ninety-nine years after Balzac. A social and political philosopher. He said, 'Law and order are everywhere the law and order which protect the established hierarchy.' "
"That stinks."
"Of course it does," he said. "But that's the way it is."
* * *
They made it back to Pecos inside an hour. She parked on the street right outside the legal mission so they only had to walk ten feet through the heat. But ten feet was enough. It was like walking ten feet through a blast furnace with a hot towel wrapped around your head. They made it inside and found Alice's desk covered in little handwritten notes stuck randomly to its surface. She peeled them off and scooped them up and read them through, one by one. Then she dropped them all in a drawer.
"I'm going to check in with Carmen at the jail," she said. "But the prints and the ballistics are back from the lab. Hack Walker wants to see you about them. Sounds like he's got a problem."
"I'm sure he has," Reacher said.
They walked to the door and paused a second before braving the sidewalk again. Then they split up in front of the courthouse. Alice walked on toward the jailhouse entrance and Reacher went up the front steps and inside. The public areas and the staircase had no air-conditioning. Making it up just one floor soaked him in sweat. The intern at the desk pointed silently to Hack Walker's door. Reacher went straight in and found Walker studying a technical report. He had the look of a man who thinks if he reads a thing often enough, maybe it will change what it says.
"She killed him," he said. "Everything matches. The ballistics are perfect."
Reacher sat down in front of the desk.
"Your prints were on the gun, too," Walker said.
Reacher made no reply. If he was going to lie, he was going to save it for when it would count for something.
"You're in the national fingerprint database," Walker said. "You know that?"
Reacher nodded. "All military personnel are."
"So maybe you found the gun discarded," Walker said. "Maybe you handled it because you were worried about a family with a kid having a stray firearm around. Maybe you picked it up and put it away in a place of safety."
"Maybe," Reacher said.
Walker turned a page in the file.
"But it's worse than that, isn't it?" he said.
"Is it?"
"You a praying man?"
"No," Reacher said.
"You damn well should be. You should get on your knees and thank somebody."
"Like who?"
"Maybe the state cops. Maybe old Sloop himself for calling the sheriff."
"Why?"
"Because they just saved your life."
"How?"
"Because you were on the road in a squad car when this went down. If they'd left you in the bunkhouse, you'd be our number-one suspect."
"Why?"
Walker turned another page.
"Your prints were on the gun," he said again. "And on every one of the shell cases. And on the magazine. And on the ammunition box. You loaded that gun, Reacher. Probably test-fired it too, they think, then reloaded it ready for action. She bought it, so it was technically her possession, but it looks from the fingerprint evidence that it was effectively your weapon."
Reacher said nothing.
"So you see?" Walker asked. "You should set up a little shrine to the state police and give thanks every morning you wake up alive and free. Because the obvious thing for me to do would be come right after you. You could have crept up from the bunkhouse to the bedroom, easy as anything. Because you knew where the bedroom was, didn't you? I talked to Bobby. He told me you spent the previous night in there. Did you really think he'd just sit quiet in the barn? He probably watched you two going at it, through the window."
"I didn't sleep with her," Reacher said. "I was on the sofa."
Walker smiled. "Think a jury would believe you? Or an ex-whore? I don't. So we could easily prove some kind of a sexual jealousy motive. The next night you could have crept up there and got the gun out of the drawer and shot Sloop dead, and then crept back again. Only you couldn't have, because you were in the back of a police car at the time. So you're a lucky man, Reacher. Because right now a white male shooter would be worth his weight in gold to me. You could go integrate death row single-handed. A big WASP like you, in among all the blacks and the Hispanics, I'd look like the fairest prosecutor in Texas. The election would be over before it started."
Reacher said nothing. Walker sighed.
"But you didn't do it, unfortunately," he said. "She did it. So now what have I got? The premeditation thing is going from bad to worse. It's just about shot to hell now. Clearly she thought, and she thought, even to the extent of hooking up with some ex-army guy to give her weapons training. We got your record, after we got your prints. You were a pistol-shooting champ two straight years. You did a spell as an instructor, for Christ's sake. You loaded her gun for her. What the hell am I going to do?"
"What you planned," Reacher said. "Wait for the medical reports."
Walker went quiet. Then he sighed again. Then he nodded.
"We'll have them tomorrow," he said. "And you know what I did? I hired a defense expert to take a look at them. You know there are experts who only appear for the defense? Normally we wouldn't go near them. Normally we want to know how much we can get out of a thing, not how little. But I hired a defense guy, the exact same guy Alice Aaron would hire if she could afford him. Because I want somebody who can persuade me there's a faint possibility Carmen's telling the truth, so I can let her go without looking like I'm crazy."
"So relax," Reacher said. "It'll be over tomorrow."
"I hope so," Walker said. "And it might be. Al Eugene's office is sending over some financial stuff. Al did all that kind of work for Sloop. So if there's no financial motive, and the medical reports are good, maybe I can relax."
"She had no money at all," Reacher said. "It was one of her big problems."
Walker nodded. "Good," he said. "Because her big problems solve my big problems."