One Shot (20 page)

'I'm looking at a situation where a trained sniper
passed up an excellent location in favour of a much
worse one.' 'He used a parking garage in Kuwait City.

You said so yourself.'

'Because that was a good location. It was directly in
line with the apartment building's door. The four guys
were walking directly towards him. They went down like
dominoes.' 'This is fourteen years later. He's not as
good as he was. That's all.'

'They don't forget,' Reacher said again.

'Whatever, how does it make him less guilty?'

'Because if a person chooses a terrible B instead of a
great A, there has to be a reason for it. And reasons
have implications.' 'What was his reason?'

'It had to be a real good one, didn't it? Because he
trapped himself inside a building, down at street level, in
a congested area, with a much harder shot, in a place
whose very nature made it the best crime scene a
twenty-year veteran like Emerson has ever seen.'

'OK, tell me why he would do that.'

'Because he was literally going out of his way to leave
every last piece of evidence he could.'

She stared at him. 'That's crazy.'

'It was a great crime scene. Everyone was so happy
with how great it was they never stopped to realize it
was way too great. Me included. It was like Crime Scene
101, Helen. It was what they must have given
Bellantonio on his first day in college. It was too good to
be true, therefore it wasn't true.

Everything was wrong with it. Like, why would he wear
a raincoat? It was warm and it wasn't raining and he
was in a car and he was never outside. He wore it so he
could scrape unique fibres off it onto the pillar. Why
would he wear those stupid shoes? You look at a pair of
shoes like that and you just know they track every last
piece of crap around. Why did he shoot out of the dark?

So that people would see his muzzle flash and
pinpoint the location so they could go up there
afterwards and find all the other clues. Why would he
scrape his rifle on the wall? That's a twenty-five-hundred-dollar purchase. Why didn't he take the traffic
cone away with him? It would have been easier just to
throw it in the back of his van than leave it there.'

'This is crazy,' Helen said.

'Two clinchers,' Reacher said. "Why did he pay to
park? That bothered me from the start. I mean, who
does that? But he did. And he did it just so he could
leave one little extra clue. Nothing else makes any
sense. He wanted to leave a quarter in the meter with his
prints on it. Just to tie it all in a nice little bow. To
connect it with the shell case, which he probably also
left there on purpose.'

'It fell in a trench.'

'He could have gotten it out. There was plenty of wire
lying around, according to Bellantonio's report. It would
have taken a second and a half.'

Helen Rodin paused. What's the other clincher?'

'That's easy, once you start looking through the right
end of the telescope.

He wanted to be looking at the pool from the south, not
the west. That was crucial. He wanted to be looking at it
lengthwise, not sideways.'

'Why?'

'Because he didn't miss, Helen. He fired into the pool
deliberately. He wanted to put a bullet in the water, down
the long diagonal axis, from a low angle, just like a
ballistics tank, just so it could be found later,
undamaged. Just so it could tie his barrel to the crime.

Sideways wouldn't have worked for him. Not enough
travel distance through the water. The bullet would have
hit the wall too hard. It would have gotten damaged.'

'But why the hell would he do all that?'

Reacher didn't answer.

'Remorse? For fourteen years ago? So he could be
found and punished?'

Reacher shook his head. 'He would have confessed as
soon as they found him. A remorseful person would
have been wanting to confess.' 'So why did he do all
that?'

'Because he was made to, Helen. Simple as that'

She stared at him.

'Someone forced him to do it,' Reacher said. 'He was
forced to do it and he was forced to take the blame for it.

He was told to go home afterwards and wait for the
arrest. That's why he took the sleeping pill. He was
probably going crazy, sitting there waiting for the shoe
to fall.' Helen Rodin said nothing.

'He was coerced,' Reacher said. 'Believe it. It's the only
logical explanation. He wasn't a lone nutcase. That's
why he said They've got the wrong guy. It was a
message. He was hoping someone would pick up on it.

He meant they should be looking for the other guy. The
guy who made him do it.

The guy he feels is more responsible.' Helen Rodin
said nothing.

'The puppet master,' Reacher said.

Reacher checked the plaza again, from the window.

The ornamental pool was about two-thirds full. The
fountain was splashing merrily. The sun was out.

There were no loiterers visible.

Helen Rodin got up from her desk. Just stood there
behind it.

'I should be turning cartwheels,' she said.

'He still killed five people.'

'But if the coercion was substantial, it's going to help
him.' Reacher said nothing.

What do you think it was? A double-dare? Some kind
of thrill-seeking?'

'Maybe,' Reacher said. 'But I doubt it. On the face of it
James Barr is twenty years too old for double-dares.

That's a kid thing. And they'd have done it from the
highway, anyway. They would have wanted to survive to
do it again.'

'So what was it?'

'Something else entirely. Something real.'

'Should we take it to Emerson?'

'No,' Reacher said.

'I think we should.'

'There are reasons not to.'

'Like?'

'For one, Emerson's got the best done deal he ever
saw. He's not going to pick at the seams now. No cop
would.' 'So what should we do?'

'We should ask ourselves three basic questions,'

Reacher said. 'Like who, and how, and why. It was a
transaction. We need to figure out who benefits.

Because James Barr certainly didn't.' "The who was
whoever set those guys on you last night. Because he
liked the way the transaction was going and he didn't
want the boat rocked by some new guy showing up.'

'Correct,' Reacher said.

'So I need to look for that person.'

'You might not want to do that.'

'Why wouldn't I?'

'It might get your client killed,' Reacher said.

'He's in the hospital, guarded night and day.'

'Your client isn't James Barr. It's Rosemary Barr. You
need to think about what kind of a threat can have made
James Barr do what he did. He was looking at life
without parole at best. Getting strapped to the gurney at
worst. He knew that, well in advance. He must have. So
why would he go along? Why would he walk meekly
into all that? It had to have been one hell of an effective
threat, Helen. And what's the only thing Barr's got to
lose? No wife, no kids, no family at all.

Except a sister.' Helen Rodin said nothing.

'He was told to keep quiet, to the end. Obviously.

That's why he asked for me.

It was like a coded communication. Because the
puppet can't talk about the puppet master, not now, not
ever, because the threat is still out there. I think he might
be trading his life for his sister's. Which gives you a big
problem. If the puppet master sees you poking around,
he'll think the puppet talked. That's why you can't go to
Emerson.' 'But the puppet didn't talk. You figured it out.'

'We could put an announcement in the paper. Think
anyone would believe it?'

'So what should I do?'

'Nothing,' Reacher said. "There's nothing you can do.

Because the more you try to help James Barr, the more
likely you are to get Rosemary Barr killed for it.' Helen
Rodin was quiet for a long moment.

'Can we protect her?' she asked.

'No,' Reacher said. 'We can't. There's only two of us.

We'd need four guys minimum, and a safe house. That
would cost a lot of money.' Helen Rodin came out from
behind her desk. Walked round and stood next to
Reacher and gazed out of the window. She put her
hands on the sill, lightly, like a pianist's on a keyboard.

Then she turned round and leaned against the glass.

She was fragrant. Some clean scent a little like soap.

'You could look for him,' she said.

'Could I?' he answered, nothing in his voice.

She nodded. 'He made a mistake. He gave you a
reason that's not connected to James Barr. Not directly.

He set those boys on you. Therefore you've got a
legitimate interest in finding their employer. An
independent interest. You could go after him and he
wouldn't necessarily conclude that James Barr had
talked.' 'I'm not here to help the defence.'

'Then look at it as helping the prosecution. If two
people were involved, then two people deserve to go
down. Why let the patsy take the fall on his own?'

Reacher said nothing.

'Just look at it as helping me,' Helen said.

Grigor Linsky dialled his cell phone.

'They're back in her office,' he said. 'I can see both of
them in the window.'

SIX

REACHER RODE THE ELEVATOR TO THE TOP OF

THE BLACK GLASS tower and found a maintenance
stairwell that led to the roof. He came out through a
triangular metal hutch next to the water tank and the
elevator winding gear. The roof was grey tarpaper
covered with gravel. It was fifteen storeys up, which
wasn't much in comparison with some cities. But it felt
like the highest point in Indiana. He could see the river
to the south. South and west, he could see where the
raised highway separated. He walked to the northwest
corner and wind whipped at him and flattened his shirt
against his body and his pants against his legs. Directly
below him the highway spur curled round behind the
library and the tower and ran away due east. Far beyond
it in the distance the state highway carried on north and
met a cloverleaf about two miles away in the haze. A
long straight road came off the cloverleaf and ran back
towards him.

He fixed its position in his mind, because that was the
road he wanted.

He rode down to the lobby and set out walking. At
street level the air was warm and still. He went north and
west, which meant he missed the sports bar by a block.

The road he wanted came in at a shallow angle south of
it and diverted him away. It was straight and wide. Four
lanes. Closest to downtown it had small rundown
establishments. There was a gun store with heavy mesh
on the windows. There was a barbershop with a sign:
Any Style $7. There was an old-fashioned motor court
hotel on a lot that once must have stood on the edge of
town. Then there was a raw cross street and beyond it
the lots got bigger and the buildings got newer. Fresh
commercial territory. No existing leases, nothing to tear
down.

Once virgin land, now paved over.

He kept on walking and after a mile he passed a fast
food drive-through. Then a tyre store. Four New Radials
$99! Then a lube franchise and a dealership for small
cars from Korea. America's Best Warranty! He looked
ahead, because he figured he was getting close.