One Shot (11 page)

He knocked on the inner office door. Heard the same
voice make a second reply.

He went in and found Helen Rodin at another
secondhand desk. He recognized her from her father's
photograph. But face to face she looked even better.

She was probably no more than thirty, quite tall, lightly
built. Slim, in an athletic sort of a way.

Not anorexic. Either she ran or she played soccer or
she had been very lucky with her metabolism. She had
long blond hair and her father's blue eyes. There was
intelligence behind them. She was dressed all in black,
in a trouser suit with a tight stretch top under the coat.

Lycra, Reacher thought. Can't beat it. 'Hello,' she said.

'I'm Jack Reacher,' he said.

She stared at him. 'You're kidding. Are you really?'

He nodded. 'Always have been, always will be.'

'Unbelievable.'

'Not really. Everybody's somebody.'

'I mean, how did you know to come? We couldn't find
you.'

'I saw it on the TV. Ann Yanni, Saturday morning.'

'Well, thank God for TV,' she said. 'And thank God
you're here.'

'I was in Miami,' he said. 'With a dancer.'

'A dancer?'

'She was Norwegian,' he said.

He walked to the window and looked out. He was four
storeys up and the main shopping street ran away
directly south, down a hill, emphasizing his elevation.

The ornamental pool was placed with its long axis
exactly lined up with the street. The pool was on the
street, really, except they had blocked the street off to
make the plaza. Someone returning from a long spell
away would be surprised to find a big tank of water
where once there had been roadway. The pool was
much longer and narrower than it had looked from
ground level. It looked sad and empty, with just a thin
layer of mud and scum on the black tile. Beyond it and
slightly to the right was the new parking structure.

It was slightly downhill from the plaza. Maybe half a
storey's difference.

'Were you here?' Reacher asked. "When it happened?'

'Yes, I was,' Helen Rodin said quietly.

'Did you see it?'

'Not at first. I heard the first three gunshots. They came
very fast. The first, and then a tiny pause, and then the
next two.

Then another pause, a little longer, but just a split
second, really. I stood up in time for the last three.

Horrible.' Reacher nodded. Brave girl, he thought. She
hears gunshots, and she stands up. She doesn't dive
under the desk. Then he thought: The first, and then a
tiny pause. That was the sound of a skilled rifleman
watching where his first cold shot went. So many
variables.

The cold barrel, the range, the wind, the zeroing, the
sighting-in. 'Did you see people die?' he asked.

Two of them,' she said, behind him. 'It was awful.'

'Three shots and two people?'

'He missed once. Either the fourth or the fifth shot,
they're not sure. They found the bullet in the pool.

That's why it's empty. They drained it.'

Reacher said nothing.

'The bullet is part of the evidence,' Helen said. 'It ties
the rifle to the crime.' 'Did you know any of the dead
people?'

'No. They were just people, I guess. In the wrong place
at the wrong time.'

Reacher said nothing.

'I saw flames from the gun,' Helen said. 'Way over
there, in the shadows, in the dark. Little spits of flame.'

'Muzzle flashes,' Reacher said.

He turned back from the window. She held out her
hand.

'I'm Helen Rodin,' she said. 'I'm sorry, I should have
introduced myself properly.' Reacher took her hand. It
was warm and firm.

'Just Helen?' he said. 'Not Helena Alekseyovna or
something?' She stared at him again. 'How the hell did
you know that?'

'I met your dad,' he said, and let go of her hand.

'Did you?' she said. 'Where?'

'In his office, just now.'

'You went to his office? Today?'

'I just left there.'

'Why did you go to his office? You're my witness. He
shouldn't have seen you.'

'He was very keen to talk.'

What did you tell him?'

'Nothing. I asked questions instead.'

'What questions?'

'I wanted to know how strong his case was. Against
James Barr.'

'I'm representing James Barr. And you're a defence
witness. You should have been talking to me, not him.'

Reacher said nothing.

'Unfortunately the case against James Barr is very
strong,' she said. 'How did you get my name?' Reacher
asked.

'From James Barr, of course,' she said. 'How else?'

'From Barr? I don't believe it.'

'Well, listen,' she said.

She turned away to the desk and pressed a key on an
old fashioned cassette player. Reacher heard a voice he
didn't recognize say: Denying it is not an option. Helen
touched the pause key and kept her finger on it. 'His
first lawyer,' she said. 'We changed representation
yesterday.' 'How? He was in a coma yesterday.'

'Technically my client is James Barr's sister. His next
of kin.'

Then she let go of the pause key and Reacher heard
room sounds and hiss and then a voice he hadn't heard
for fourteen years. It was exactly how he remembered it.

It was low, and tense, and raspy. It was the voice of a
man who rarely spoke. It said: Get Jack Reacher for me.

He stood there, stunned.

Helen Rodin pressed the stop key.

'See?' she said.

Then she checked her watch.

'Ten thirty,' she said. 'Stick around and join in the client
conference.'

She unveiled him like a conjurer on a stage. Like a
rabbit out of a hat. First in was a guy Reacher
immediately took for an ex-cop. He was introduced as
Franklin, a contract investigator who worked for
lawyers. They shook hands.

'You're a hard man to find,' Franklin said.

'Wrong,' Reacher said. 'I'm an impossible man to find.'

'Want to tell me why?' There were instant questions in
Franklin's eyes. A cop's questions. Like, how much use
is this guy going to be as a witness? What is he? A
felon? A fugitive? Will he have credibility on the stand?

'Just a hobby,' Reacher said. 'Just a personal choice.'

'So you're cool?'

'You could skate on me.'

Then a woman came in. She was in her mid-to late
thirties, probably, dressed for an office, and stressed
and sleepless. But behind the agitation she wasn't
unappealing. She looked like a kind and decent person.

Even pretty. But she was clearly James Barr's sister.

Reacher knew that even before they were introduced.

She had the same colouring and a softer, feminized,
fourteen-years-older version of the same face. 'I'm
Rosemary Barr,' she said.

'I'm so glad you found us. It feels providential. Now I
really feel we're getting somewhere.' Reacher said
nothing at all.

The law offices of Helen Rodin didn't run to a
conference room. Reacher figured that would come
later. Maybe. If she prospered. So all four people
crowded into the inner office. Helen sat at her desk.

Franklin perched on a corner of it. Reacher leaned on
the window sill. Rosemary Barr paced, nervously. If
there had been a rug, she would have worn holes in it.

'OK,'

Helen said. 'Defence strategy. At the minimum we want
to pursue a medical plea. But we'll aim higher than that.

How high we eventually get will depend on a number of
factors. In which connection, first, I'm sure we all want
to hear what Mr Reacher has to say.' 'I don't think you
do,' Reacher said.

'Do what?'

Want to hear what I've got to say.'

'Why wouldn't we?'

'Because you jumped to the wrong conclusion.'

'Which is?'

'Why do you think I went to see your father first?'

'I don't know.'

'Because I didn't come here to help James Barr.'

Nobody spoke.

'I came here to bury him,' Reacher said. They all stared.

'But why?' Rosemary Barr asked. 'Because he's done
this before. And once was enough.'

THREE

REACHER MOVED AND PROPPED HIS BACK

AGAINST THE WINDOW reveal and turned sideways so
that he could see the plaza. And so that he couldn't see
his audience. 'Is this a privileged conversation?' he
asked.

'Yes,' Helen Rodin said. 'It is. It's a client conference.

It's automatically protected. Nothing we say here can be
repeated.' 'Is it ethical for you to hear bad news, legally?

'

There was a long silence.

'Are you going to give evidence for the prosecution?'

Helen Rodin asked.

'I don't think I'll have to, under the circumstances. But I
will if necessary.' 'Then we would hear the bad news
anyway. We would take a deposition from you before
the trial. To guarantee no more surprises.' More silence.

'James Barr was a sniper,' Reacher said. 'Not the best
the army ever had, and not the worst. Just a good,
competent rifleman. Average in almost every way.'

Then he paused and turned his head and looked down
to his left. At the cheap new building with the
recruitment office in it. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine
Corps.

'Four types of people join the military,' he said. 'First,
for people like me, it's a family trade. Second, there are
patriots, eager to serve their country.

Third, there are people who just need a job. And fourth,
there are people who want to kill other people. The
military is the only place where it's legal to do that.

James Barr was the fourth type. Deep down he thought
it would be fun to kill.'

Rosemary Barr looked away. Nobody spoke.

'But he never got the chance,' Reacher said. 'I was a
very thorough investigator when I was an MP, and I
learned all about him. I studied him. He trained for five
years. I went through his log books. Some weeks he
fired two thousand rounds. All of them at paper targets
or silhouettes. I counted a career total of nearly a
quarter-million rounds fired, and not one of them at the
enemy. He didn't go to Panama in 1989. We had a very
big army back then, and we required only a very small
force, so most guys missed out. It burned him up. Then
Desert Shield happened, in 1990. He went to Saudi. But
he wasn't in Desert Storm, in 1991. They made it a
mostly armoured campaign. James Barr sat it out in
Saudi, cleaning sand out of his rifle, firing two thousand
training rounds a week. Then after Desert Storm was
over, they sent him to Kuwait City for the cleanup.'

'What happened there?' Rosemary Barr asked.

'He snapped,' Reacher said. 'That's what happened
there. The Soviets had collapsed. Iraq was back in its
box. He looked ahead and saw that war was over. He
had trained nearly six years and had never fired his gun
in anger and was never going to. A lot of his training
had been about visualization. About seeing himself
putting the reticle on the medulla oblongata, where the
spinal cord broadens at the base of the brain. About
breathing slow and squeezing the trigger. About the
split second pause while the bullet flies. About seeing
the puff of pink mist from the back of the head. He had
visualized all of that.