“Yes?” she said.
“You got Carmen Greer in here?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see her?”
“No.”
“Not even for a minute?”
“Not even.”
“So when can I?”
“You family?”
“I’m a friend.”
“Not a lawyer, right?”
“No.”
“Then Saturday,” the woman said. “Visiting is Saturday, two to four.”
Almost a week.
“Can you write that down for me?” he said. He wanted to get inside. “Maybe give me a list of what I’m allowed to bring her?”
The bailiff shrugged and turned and stepped inside. Reacher followed her into the dry chill of an air conditioner running on high. There was a lobby. The bailiff had a high desk, like a lectern. Like a barrier. Behind it were cubbyholes covering the back wall. He saw Carmen’s lizard-skin belt rolled into one of them. There was a small Ziploc bag with the fake ring in it. Off to the right was a barred door. A tiled corridor beyond.
“How is she?” he asked.
The bailiff shrugged again. “She ain’t happy.”
“About what?”
“About the cavity search, mainly. She was screaming fit to burst. But rules are rules. And what, she thinks I enjoy it either?”
She pulled a mimeographed sheet from a stack. Slid it across the top of the desk.
“Saturday, two to four,” she said. “Like I told you. And don’t bring her anything that’s not on the list, or we won’t let you in.”
“Where’s the DAs office?”
She pointed at the ceiling. “Second floor. Go in the front.”
“When does it open?”
“About eight-thirty.”
“You got bail bondsmen in the neighborhood?”
She smiled. “Ever see a courthouse that didn’t? Turn left at the crossroads.”
“What about lawyers?”
“Cheap lawyers or expensive lawyers?”
“Free lawyers.”
She smiled again.
“Same street,” she said. “That’s all it is, bondsmen and community lawyers.”
“Sure I can’t see her?”
“Saturday, you can see her all you want.”
“Not now? Not even for a minute?”
“Not even.”
“She’s got a daughter,” Reacher said, irrelevantly.
“Breaks my heart,” the woman said back. When will you see her?”
“Every fifteen minutes, whether she likes it or not. Suicide watch, although I don’t think your friend is the type. You can tell pretty easy. And she’s a tough cookie. That’s my estimation. But rules are rules, right?”
“Tell her Reacher was here.”
“Who?”
“Reacher. Tell her I’ll stick around.”
The woman nodded, like she’d seen it all, which she probably had.
“I’m sure she’ll be thrilled,” she said.
Then Reacher walked back to the motel strip, remembering all the jailhouse duty he’d pulled early in his career, wishing he could put his hand on his heart and say he’d acted a whole lot better than the woman he’d just met.
He walked almost all the way back to the highway, until the prices ducked under thirty bucks. Picked a place and woke the night clerk and bought the key to a room near the end of the row. It was worn and faded and crusted with the kind of dirt that shows the staff isn’t all the way committed to excellence. The bedding was limp and the air smelled dank and hot, like they saved power by turning the air conditioning off when the room wasn’t rented. But it was serviceable. One advantage of being ex-military was almost any place was serviceable. There was always somewhere worse to compare it with.
He slept restlessly until seven in the morning and showered in tepid water and went out for breakfast at the doughnut shop halfway back to the courthouse. It was open early and advertised Texas-sized doughnuts. They were larger than normal, and more expensive. He ate two with three cups of coffee. Then he went looking for clothes. Since he ended his brief flirtation with owning a house he had gone back to his preferred system of buying cheap items and junking them instead of laundering them. It worked well for him. It kept the permanence monkey off his back, literally.
He found a cheap store that had already been open an hour. It sold a little bit of everything, from bales of cheap toilet paper to work boots. He found a rack of chinos with the brand labels cut out. Maybe they were flawed. Maybe they were stolen. He found the right size and paired them with a khaki shirt. It was thin and cut loose like something from Hawaii, but it was plain, and it cost less than a Texas-sized doughnut. He found white underwear. The store had no fitting rooms. It wasn’t that kind of a place. He talked the clerk into letting him use the staff bathroom. He put on the new gear and transferred his stuff from pocket to pocket. He still had the eight shell cases from Carmen’s Lorcin, rattling around like loose change. He weighed them in his hand and then dropped them in his new pants pocket.