Reacher was quiet for a beat.
“Well, that’s going to be a real big problem,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because Hack Walker is the Pecos DA. And he was Sloop Greer’s best buddy. So he’ll be prosecuting the person who shot his friend.”
“Worried about a conflict of interest?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not really,” the sergeant said. “We know Hack. He’s not a fool. He sees some defense counsel about to nail him for an impropriety, he’ll pass on it. He’ll have to. What’s the word, excuse himself?”
“Recuse,” Reacher said.
“Whatever. He’ll give it to an assistant. And I think both the Pecos ADAs are women, actually. So the self-defense thing will get some sympathy.”
“It doesn’t need sympathy,” Reacher said. “It’s plain as day.”
“And Hack’s running for judge in November,” the sergeant said. “Bear that in mind. Lots of Mexican votes in Pecos County. He won’t let anybody do anything that’ll give her lawyer a chance to make him look bad in the newspaper. So she’s lucky, really. A Mexican woman shoots a white man in Echo, gets tried for it by a woman ADA in Pecos, couldn’t be better for her.”
“She’s from California,” Reacher said. “She’s not Mexican.” “But she looks Mexican,” the sergeant said. “That’s what’s important to a guy who needs votes in Pecos County.”
The two state police cruisers drove on in convoy. They caught and passed the ambulance just short of the school and the gas station and the diner at the crossroads. Left it lumbering north in their wake.
“The morgue’s in Pecos, too,” the sergeant said. “One of the oldest institutions in town, I guess. They needed it right from the get-go. Pecos was that kind of a place.”
Reacher nodded, behind him.
“Carmen told me,” he said. “It was the real Wild West.”
“You going to stick around?”
“I guess so. I need to see she’s O.K. She told me there’s a museum in town. Things to see. Somebody’s grave.”
“Clay Allison’s,” the sergeant said. “Some old gunslinger.”
“Never killed a man who didn’t need killing.”
The sergeant nodded in the mirror. “That could be her position, right? She could call it the Clay Allison defense.”
“Why not?” Reacher said. “It was justifiable homicide, any way you cut it.”
The sergeant said nothing to that.
“Should be enough to make bail, at least,” Reacher said. “She’s got a kid back there. She needs bail, like tomorrow.”
The sergeant glanced in the mirror again.
“Tomorrow could be tough,” he said. “There’s a dead guy in the picture, after all. Who’s her lawyer?”
“Hasn’t got one.”
“She got money for one?”
“No.”
“Well, shit,” the sergeant said.
“What?” Reacher asked.
“How old is the kid?”
“Six and a half.”
The sergeant went quiet.
“What?” Reacher asked again.
“Having no lawyer is a big problem, is what. Kid’s going to be seven and a half before mom even gets a bail hearing.”
“She’ll get a lawyer, right?”
“Sure, Constitution says so. But the question is, when? This is Texas.”
“You ask for a lawyer, you don’t get one right away?”
“Not right away. You wait a long, long time. You get one when the indictment comes back. And that’s how old Hack Walker is going to avoid his little conflict problem, isn’t it? He’ll just lock her up and forget about her. He’d be a fool not to. She’s got no lawyer, who’s to know? Could be Christmas before they get around to indicting her. By which time old Hack will be a judge, most likely, not a prosecutor. He’ll be long gone. No more conflict of interest. Unless he happens to pull the case later, whereupon he’d have to excuse himself anyway.”
“Recuse.”
“Whatever, not having her own lawyer changes everything.”
The trooper in the passenger seat turned and spoke for the first time in an hour.
“See?” he said. “Didn’t matter what I called it on the radio.”
“So don’t you spend your time at the museum,” the sergeant said. “You want to help her, you go find her a lawyer. You go beg, borrow or steal her one.”
Nobody Spoke the rest of the way into Pecos County. They crossed under Interstate 10 and followed the backup car across more empty blackness all the way to Interstate 20, about a hundred miles west of where Reacher had forced