stunned and quiet. And depopulated, which suited the killing crew just fine. The ranch hands weren't there, the tall stranger was gone, and Carmen Greer was gone. And her husband, obviously. That left just the old woman, the second son, and the granddaughter. Three of them, all at home. It was Monday, but the kid hadn't gone to school. The bus came and went without her. She just hung around, in and out of the barn. She looked confused and listless. They all did. Which made them easier to watch. Better targets.
The two men were behind a rock, opposite the ranch gate, well hidden and elevated about twenty feet up the slope. Their view was good enough. The woman had dropped them three hundred yards north and driven back toward Pecos.
"When do we do this?" they had asked her.
"When I say," she had replied.
* * *
Reacher turned left at the crossroads in the center of Pecos and followed a street that ran parallel with the railroad tracks. He passed the bus depot and hit a strip that might have started out as anything but now was made up entirely of low-rent operations serving the courthouse population, bail bondsmen and storefront legal missions, like the night shift woman had said. The legal missions all had rows of desks facing the store windows with customer chairs in front of them and waiting areas inside the doors. All of them were grimy and undecorated and messy, with piles of files everywhere, and notes and memos taped and tacked to the walls next to the desks. Twenty past eight in the morning, they were all busy. They all had patient knots of people waiting inside and anxious clients perched on the customer chairs. Some of the clients were on their own, but most of them were in family groups, some of them with a bunch of children. All of them were Hispanic. So were some of the lawyers, but overall they were a mixed bunch. Men, women, young, old, bright, defeated. The only thing they had in common was they all looked harassed to the breaking point.
He chose the only establishment that had an empty chair in front of a lawyer. It was halfway down the street and the chair was way in back of the store and the lawyer was a young white woman of maybe twenty-five with thick dark hair cut short. She had a good tan and was wearing a white sports bra instead of a shirt and there was a leather jacket slung over the back of her chair. She was nearly hidden behind two tall stacks of files. She was on the phone, and she was at the point of tears.
He approached her desk and waited for a sit down gesture. He didn't get one, but he sat down anyway. She glanced at him and glanced away. Kept on talking into the phone. She had dark eyes and white teeth. She was talking slow Spanish with an East Coast accent, haltingly enough that he could follow most of it. She was saying yes, we won. Then but he won't pay. He simply won't. He just refuses. Time to time she would stop and listen to whoever was on the other end. Then she would repeat herself. We won, but he still won't pay. Then she listened again. The question must have been so what do we do now, because she said we go back to court, to enforce the judgment. Then the question was obviously how long does that take because she went very quiet and said a year. Maybe two. Reacher heard clear silence at the other end and watched the woman's face. She was upset and embarrassed and humiliated. Blinking back tears of bitter frustration. She said, "Llamarede nuevo mds tarde" and hung up. "I'll call again soon."
Then she faced front and closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose, in and out, in and out. She rested her hands palms-down on the desk. Breathed some more. Maybe it was a relaxation technique they taught you in law school. But it didn't seem to be working. She opened her eyes and dropped a file into a drawer and focused between the piles of paper across the desk at Reacher.
"Problem?" he asked her.
She shrugged and nodded all at the same time. An all-purpose expression of misery.
"Winning the case is only half the battle," she said. "Sometimes, a lot less than half, believe me."