One Shot (14 page)

"We should maybe distract him,' the Zee said. 'Or
discourage him. I'm told he was a soldier. Therefore he
will probably maintain a predictable pattern of
behaviour. If he's at the Metropole, he won't stay in
tonight. Not there. No fun for a soldier. He'll go out
somewhere. Probably alone. So there could be an
incident. Use your imagination. Make it a big scenario.

Don't use our own people. And make it look natural.'

'Damage?'

'Broken bones, at least. Maybe he gets a head injury.

Maybe he winds up in the coma ward along with his
buddy James Barr.' 'What about the lawyer?'

'Leave her alone. For now. We'll open that can of
worms later. If we need to.'

Helen Rodin spent an hour at her desk. She took three
calls. The first was from Franklin. He was bailing out.

'I'm sorry, but you're going to lose,' he said. 'And I've got
a business to run. I can't put in unbilled hours on this
any more.' 'Nobody likes hopeless cases,' Helen said,
diplomatically. She was going to need him again, in the
future. No point in holding his feet to the fire. 'Not pro
bono hopeless cases,' Franklin said.

'If I get a budget, will you come back on board?'

'Sure,' Franklin said. 'Just call me.'

Then they hung up, all proprieties observed, their
relationship preserved. The next call came ten minutes
later. It was from her father, who sounded full of
concern. 'You shouldn't have taken this case, you
know,' he said.

'It wasn't like I was spoiled for choice,' Helen said.

'Losing might be winning, if you know what I mean.'

Winning might be winning, too.'

'No, winning will be losing. You need to understand
that.'

'Did you ever set out to lose a case?' she asked.

Her father said nothing. Then he went fishing.

'Did Jack Reacher find you?' he asked, meaning:
Should I be worried? 'He found me,' she said, keeping
her voice light.

Was he interesting?' Meaning: Should I be very
worried? 'He's certainly given me something to think
about.'

'Well, should we discuss it?' Meaning: Please, tell me.

'I'm sure we will soon. When the time is right.'

They small-talked for a minute more and arranged to
meet for dinner. He tried again: Please, tell me. She
didn't. Then they hung up. Helen smiled. She hadn't lied.

Hadn't even really bluffed. But she felt she had
participated.

The law was a game, and like any game it had a
psychological component. The third call was from
Rosemary Barr at the hospital.

'James is waking up,' she said. 'He coughed up his
breathing tube. He's coming out of the coma.' 'Is he
talking?'

'The doctors say he might be tomorrow.'

Will he remember anything?'

'The doctors say it's possible.'

An hour later Reacher left the Metropole. He stayed
east of First Street and headed north towards the off-brand stores he had seen near the courthouse. He
wanted clothes. Something local. Maybe not a set of bib
overalls, but certainly something more generic than his
Miami gear. Because he figured he might head to Seattle
next. For the coffee. And he couldn't walk around
Seattle in a bright yellow shirt.

He found a store and bought a pair of pants that the
label called taupe and he called olive drab. He found a
flannel shirt almost the same colour. Plus underwear.

And he invested in a pair of socks. He changed in the
cubicle and threw his old stuff away in the store's own
trash bin. Forty bucks, for what he hoped would be four
days' wear. Extravagant, but it was worth ten bucks a
day to him not to carry a bag.

He came out and walked west towards the afternoon
sun. The shirt was too thick for the weather, but he
could regulate it by rolling up the sleeves and opening a
second button. It was OK. It would be fine for Seattle.

He came out into the plaza and saw that the fountain
had been restarted. It was refilling the pool, very slowly.

The mud on the bottom was an inch deep and moving in
slow swirls. Some people were standing and watching
it. Others were walking. But nobody was using the short
route past the memorial tributes, where Barr's victims
had died. Maybe nobody would ever again. Instead
everyone was looping the long way round, past the
NBC sign. Instinctively, respectfully, fearfully, Reacher
wasn't sure.

He picked his way among the flowers and sat on the
low wall, with the sound of the fountain behind him, and
the parking garage in front of him. One shoulder was
warmed by the sun and the other was cool in the shade.

He could feel the leftover sand under his feet. He looked
to his left and watched the DMV building's door. Looked
to his right and watched the cars on the raised highway.

They tracked through the curve, high up in the air, one
after the other, single file, in a single lane. There weren't
many of them. Traffic up there was light, even though
First Street itself was already building up to the
afternoon rush hour. Then he looked to his left again
and saw Helen Rodin sitting down beside him. She was
out of breath.

'I was wrong,' she said. 'You are a hard man to find.'

'But you triumphed none the less,' he said.

'Only because I saw you from my window. I ran all the
way down, hoping you wouldn't wander off. That was a
half-hour after calling all the hotels in town and being
told you aren't registered anywhere.' 'What hotels don't
know won't hurt them.'

'James Barr is waking up. He might be talking
tomorrow.'

'Or he might not.'

'You know much about head injuries?'

'Only the ones I cause.'

'I want you to do something for me.'

'Like what?' he asked.

'You can help me,' she said. With something
important.'

'Can I?'

'And you can help yourself.'

He said nothing.

'I want you to be my evidence analyst,' she said.

'You've got Franklin for that.'

She shook her head. 'Franklin's too close to his old PD

buddies. He won't be critical enough. He won't want to
tear into them." 'And I will? I want Barr to go down,
remember.'

'Exactly. That's exactly why you should do it. You want
to confirm that they've got an unbreakable case. Then
you can leave town and be happy.'

'Would I tell you if I found a hole?'

'I'd see it in your eyes. And I'd know from what you did
next. If you go, it's a strong case. If you stay around, it's
weak.' 'Franklin quit, didn't he?'

She paused, and then she nodded. 'This case is a
loser, all ways around. I'm doing it pro bono. Because
nobody else will. But Franklin's got a business to run.'

'So he won't do it for free, but I will?'

'You need to do it. I think you're already planning to do
it. That's why you went to see my father first. He's
confident, for sure. You saw that. But you still want a
peek at the data.

You were a thorough investigator. You said so
yourself. You're a perfectionist. You want to be able to
leave town knowing everything is buttoned down tight,
according to your own standards.'

Reacher said nothing.

'This gets you a real good look,' she said. 'It's their
constitutional obligation. They have to show us
everything. The defence gets a full discovery process.'

Reacher said nothing.

You've got no choice,' she said. 'They're not going to
show you anything otherwise. They don't show stuff to
strangers off the street.'

A real good look. Leave town and be happy. No choice.

'OK,' Reacher said.

She pointed. 'Walk four blocks west and one block
south. The PD is right there. I'll go upstairs and call
Emerson.'

We're doing this now?'

'James Barr is waking up. I need this stuff out of the
way early. I'm going to be spending most of tomorrow
trying to find a psychiatrist who will work for free. A
medical plea is still our best bet'

Reacher walked four blocks west and one block south.

It took him under the raised highway and brought him to
a corner. The PD had the whole block. Their building
occupied most of it and there was an L-shaped parking
lot on the rest of it for their vehicles. There were black-and-whites slotted in at angles, and unmarked detective
cars, and a crime scene van, and a SWAT truck. The
building itself was made of glazed tan brick. It had a flat
roof with big HVAC ducts all over it. There were bars on
all the windows. Razor wire here and there round the
perimeter.

He went inside and got directions and found Emerson
waiting for him behind his desk. Reacher recognized
him from his TV spot on Saturday morning. Same guy,
pale, quiet, competent, not big, not small. In person he
looked like he had been a cop since birth. Since the
moment of conception, maybe. It was in his pores. In his
DNA. He was wearing grey flannel pants and a white
short-sleeved shirt. Open neck. No tie. There was a
tweed jacket on the back of his chair. His face and his
body were a little shapeless, like he had been moulded
by constant pressures. 'Welcome to Indiana,' he said.

Reacher said nothing.

'I mean it,' Emerson said. 'Really. We love it when old
friends of the accused show up to tear our work to
shreds.' 'I'm here for his lawyer,' Reacher said.

'Not as a friend.'

Emerson nodded.

'I'll give you the background myself,' he said. 'Then my
crime scene guy will walk you through the particulars.

You can see absolutely anything you want and you can
ask absolutely anything you want.' Reacher smiled. He
had been a cop of sorts himself for thirteen long years,
on a tough beat, and he knew the language and all its
dialects. He knew the tone and he understood the
nuances.

And the way Emerson spoke told him things. It told
him that despite the initial hostility this was a guy
secretly happy to meet with a critic. Because he knew
for sure he had a solid gold slam-dunk case. 'You knew
James Barr pretty well, am I right?' Emerson asked.

'Did you?' Reacher asked back.

Emerson shook his head. 'Never met him. There were
no warning signs.'

'Was his rifle legal?'

Emerson nodded. 'It was registered and unmodified.

As were all his other guns.'

'Did he hunt?'

Emerson shook his head again. 'He wasn't an NRA
member and he didn't belong to a gun club. We never
saw him out in the hills. He was never in trouble. He was
just a low-profile citizen. A no-profile citizen, really. No
warning signs at all.' 'You seen this kind of thing
before?'

'Too many times. If you include the District of
Columbia then Indiana is tied for sixteenth place out of
fifty-one in terms of homicide deaths per capita.

Worse than New York, worse than California. This town
isn't the worst in the state, but it's not the best, either. So
we've seen it all before, and sometimes there are signs,
and sometimes there aren't, but either way around we
know what we're doing.'

'I spoke with Alex Rodin,' Reacher said. 'He's
impressed.' 'He should be. We performed well. Your old
buddy was toast six hours after the first shot. It was a
textbook case, beginning to end.'