"You think I should cut her a break just because I'm Hispanic and she is too?"
"You wouldn't be cutting her a break," Reacher said. "You'd be being accurate, is all. She needs your help."
The trooper hung up the microphone.
"Now you're offending me," he said.
He backed out of the car and slammed the door. Walked away, up to the house again. Reacher glanced through the window to his right, toward the rocky land west of the compound, full of regret. I knew how it would be, he thought. I should have made her leave the damn gun up there on the mesa. Or I should have taken care of the whole thing myself.
The state cops stayed inside the house and Reacher saw nothing until the backup arrived more than an hour later. It was an identical cruiser with another trooper driving and another sergeant riding alongside him. This time the trooper was white and the sergeant was Hispanic. They got out of their car and walked straight into the house. The heat and the quiet came back. There were animal howls in the far distance and the whisper of insects and the beating of invisible wings. Lights came on in some of the house windows and then snapped off again. After twenty minutes, the Echo sheriff left. He came out of the house and stumbled down the porch steps to his car. He looked tired and disoriented. His shirt was dark with sweat. He maneuvered his cruiser out from behind the tangle of police vehicles and drove away.
Another hour later, the ambulance came. It had its emergency lights on. Reacher saw the night pulsing red far to the south and then bright headlight beams and a boxy vehicle painted red and gold and white lurching in through the gate. It was marked PRESIDIO FIRE DEPARTMENT. Maybe it was the same truck Billy had called the night before. It turned a slow circle in the yard and backed up to the porch steps. The crew got out lazily and stretched and yawned in the dark. They knew they weren't about to be called on for their paramedic skills.
They opened the rear doors and took out a rolling gurney and the backup sergeant met them on the steps and led them inside. Reacher was sweating inside the car. It was airless and hot. He traced in his mind the medics walking through the interior hallways to the bedroom. Attending to the corpse. Lifting it onto the gurney. Rolling the gurney out. It was going to be difficult to handle. There were narrow stairs and tight corners.
But they came back out about as fast as was feasible and lifted the gurney down the porch steps. Sloop Greer was just a large heavy shape on it, wound into a white sheet. The medics lined up the gurney with the rear of the ambulance and pushed. The wheels folded up and the gurney slid inside and the medics closed the doors on it.
Then they stood around in a group with three of the cops. The trooper who Reacher had offended wasn't there. He must have been guarding Carmen, somewhere inside the house. The three cops out in the yard were slow and relaxed. The excitement was over. The deal was done. So they were standing there a little deflated, and maybe a little disappointed, like cops often get, like something had happened they were supposed to prevent from happening. Reacher knew exactly how they felt.
They talked for a couple of minutes and then the ambulance crew climbed back into their cab and bounced their vehicle across the yard to the gate. It paused there for a second and turned right and headed slowly north. The cops watched it until it was gone and then they turned together and headed back inside the house. Five minutes later they came out again, all four of them, and this time they brought Carmen with them.
She was dressed in the same jeans and shirt. Her hair was heavy with water. Her hands were cuffed behind her back. Her head was down and her face was pale and filmed with sweat and her eyes were blank. The backup cops held an elbow each. They brought her down the steps slowly and clumsily, three people moving out of step. They stopped and regrouped in the dirt and walked her over to their cruiser. The trooper opened the rear door and the sergeant placed a hand on the top of