One Shot (23 page)

'They were all hopped up last night,' Reacher said. 'All
six of them. Speed, probably, judging by the way the
bimbo looked today. She was different. Really down, like
an amphetamine hangover.' 'They were doped up?

Then you were lucky.'

Reacher shook his head. 'You want to fight with me,
your best choice would be aspirin.' "Where does this
get us?'

'Look at it from Jeb Oliver's point of view. He was
doing something for somebody. Part work, part favour.

Worth a thousand bucks. Had to be for someone higher
up on one of his various food chains. And it probably
wasn't for the auto parts manager.' 'So you think James
Barr was involved with a dope dealer?'

'Not necessarily involved. But maybe coerced by one
for some unknown reason.'

'This raises the stakes,' Helen said.

'A little,' Reacher said.

"What should we do?'

'We should go to the hospital. Let Dr Mason find out if
Ban is bullshitting about the amnesia. If he is, then the
fastest way through all of this is to slap him around until
he tells us the truth.' What if he isn't bullshitting?'

'Then there are other approaches.'

'Like what?'

'Later,' Reacher said. 'Let's hear what the shrinks have
to say first.'

Helen Rodin drove out to the hospital in her Saturn
with the lawyer Alan Danuta sitting beside her in the
front and Reacher sprawling in the back.

Mason and Niebuhr followed her in the Taurus they
had rented that morning in Bloomington. The two cars
parked side by side in a large visitors' lot and all five
people got out and stood for a moment and then
headed together towards the building's main entrance.

Grigor Linsky watched them walk. He was fifty feet
across the lot, in the Cadillac that Jeb Oliver's mother
had seen in the dark the night before. He kept the motor
running and dialled his cell phone. The Zee answered
on the first ring. 'Yes?' he said.

'The soldier is very good,' Linsky said. 'He's already
been out to the boy's house.' 'And?'

'Nothing. The boy is no longer there.'

'Where is the boy?'

'Distributed.'

'Specifically?'

'His head and his hands are in the river. The rest of him
is under eight yards of crushed stone in the new First
Street roadbed.' 'What's happening now?'

'The soldier and the lawyer are at the hospital. With
three others. Another lawyer and two doctors, I think.

Specialist counsel and expert witnesses, I imagine.' 'Are
we relaxed?'

'We should be. They have to try. That's the system
here, as you know. But they won't succeed.'

'Make sure they don't,' the Zee said.

The hospital was on the outer edge of the city and
therefore relatively spacious. Clearly there had been no
real estate restraints. Just county budget restrictions,
Reacher figured, that had limited the building to plain
concrete and six storeys. The concrete was painted
white inside and out and the storeys were short of
headroom. But other than those factors the place
looked like any hospital anywhere. And it smelled like
any hospital anywhere. Decay, disinfectant, disease.

Reacher didn't like hospitals very much. He was
following the other four down a long bright corridor that
led to an elevator.

The two shrinks were leading the way. They seemed
pretty much at home. Helen Rodin and Alan Danuta
were right behind them. They were side by side, talking.

The shrinks reached the elevator bank and Niebuhr hit
the button. The little column of people closed up behind
him. Then Helen Rodin turned back and stopped
Reacher before he caught up with the others. Stepped
close and spoke quietly. 'Does the name Eileen Hutton
mean anything to you?'

'Why?'

'My father faxed a new witness list. He added her
name.'

Reacher said nothing.

'She seems to be from the army,' Helen said. 'Do you
know her?'

'Should I?'

Helen came closer and turned away from the others.

'I need to know what she knows,' she said quietly. This
could complicate things, Reacher thought. 'She was the
prosecutor,' he said.

'When? Fourteen years ago?'

'Yes.'

'So how much does she know?'

'I think she's at the Pentagon now.'

'How much does she know, Reacher?'

He looked away.

'She knows it all,' he said.

'How? You never got anywhere near a courtroom.'

'Even so.'

'How?'

'Because I was sleeping with her.'

She stared at him. 'Tell me you're kidding.' 'I'm not
kidding.'

'You told her everything?'

We were in a relationship. Naturally I told her
everything. We were on the same side.' 'Just two lonely
people in the desert.'

We had a good thing going. Three great months. She
was a nice person. Still is, probably. I liked her very
much.' 'That's more information than I need, Reacher.'

He said nothing.

'This is way out of control now,' Helen said. 'She can't
use what she's got.

Even less than I can. It's still classified and she's still in
the army.'

Helen Rodin said nothing.

'Believe it,' Reacher said.

'Then why is she on the damn list?'

'My fault,' Reacher said. 'I mentioned the Pentagon to
your father. When I couldn't understand how my name
had come up. He must have poked around. I thought he
might' 'It's over before it starts if she talks.' 'She can't'

'Maybe she can. Maybe she's going to. Who knows
what the hell the military is going to do?' The elevator
bell rang and the small crowd shuffled closer to the
doors.

"You're going to have to talk to her,' Helen said. 'She'll
be coming here for a deposition. You're going to have to
find out what she's going to say.'

'She's probably a one-star general by now. I can't
make her tell me anything.'

'Find a way,' Helen said. 'Exploit old memories.'

'Maybe I don't want to. She and I are still on the same
side, remember. As far as Specialist E-4 James Barr is
concerned.'

Helen Rodin turned away and stepped into the
elevator car.

The elevator opened into a sixth-floor lobby that was
all blank painted concrete except for a steel-and-wired-glass door that led into a security airlock. Beyond that
Reacher could see signs to an ICU, and two isolation
wards, one male, one female, and two general wards,
and a neonatal facility.

Reacher guessed the whole sixth floor had been
funded by the state. It wasn't a pleasant place. It was a
perfect blend of prison and hospital, and neither thing
was a fun ingredient.

A guy in a Board of Corrections uniform met the party
at a reception desk.

Everyone was searched and everyone signed a
liability waiver. Then a doctor showed up and led them
to a small waiting area. The doctor was a tired man of
about thirty and the waiting area had chairs made of
tubular steel and green vinyl. They looked like they had
been ripped out of 1950s Chevrolets.

'Barr is awake and reasonably lucid,' the doctor said.

'We're listing him as stable, but that doesn't mean he's a
well man. So today we're restricting his visitors to a
maximum of two at any one time, and we want them to
keep things as brief as possible.'

Reacher saw Helen Rodin smile, and he knew why.

The cops would want to come in pairs, and therefore
Helen's presence as defence counsel would make three
at a time. Which meant that the medical restrictions were
handing her a defence-only day.

'His sister is with him right now,' the doctor said.

'She'd prefer it if you would wait until they've finished
their visit before going in.'

The doctor left them there and Helen said, 'I'll go first,
on my own. I need to introduce myself and get his
consent for the representation. Then Dr Mason should
see him, I think. Then we'll decide what to do next based
on her conclusions.'

She spoke fast. Reacher realized she was a little
nervous. A little tense. All of them were, apart from him.

None of them apart from him had ever met James Barr
before. Barr had become an unknown destination for
each of them, all in separate ways. He was Helen's
client, albeit one that she didn't really want.

He was an object of study for Mason and Niebuhr.

Maybe the subject of future academic papers, even
fame and reputation. Maybe he was a condition waiting
to be named. Barr's Syndrome. Same for Alan Danuta.

Maybe to him the whole thing was a Supreme Court
precedent waiting to be argued. A textbook chapter. A
law school class. Indiana versus Barr. Barr versus the
United States. They were all investing in a man they had
never even seen.

They took a green vinyl chair each and settled in. The
little lobby smelled of chlorine disinfectant and it was
silent. There was no sound at all except for a faint rush
of water in pipes and a distant electronic pulse from a
machine in another room. Nobody said anything but
everyone seemed to know they were in for a long slow
process. No point in starting out impatient. Reacher sat
opposite Mary Mason and watched her. She was
relatively young, for an expert.

She seemed warm and open. She had chosen
eyeglasses with large frames so that her eyes could be
clearly seen. Her eyes looked kind and welcoming, and
reassuring. How much of that was bedside manner and
how much was for real, Reacher didn't know.

'How do you do this?' he asked her.

'The assessment?' she said. 'I start out assuming it's
more likely to be real than fake. A brain injury bad
enough for a two-day coma almost always produces
amnesia. Those data were settled long ago. Then I just
watch the patient. True amnesiacs are very unsettled by
their condition. They're disoriented and frightened. You
can see them really trying to remember. They want to
remember.

Fakers show up different. You can see them avoiding
the days in question. They look away from them,
mentally. Sometimes even physically. There's often
some distinctive body language.'

'Kind of subjective,' Reacher said.

Mason nodded. 'It is basically subjective. It's very hard
to prove a negative.

You can use brain scans to show differing brain
activity, but what the scans actually mean is still
subjective. Hypnotism is sometimes useful, but courts
are scared of hypnotism, generally. So yes, I'm in the
opinion business, nothing more.'

'Who does the prosecution hire?'

'Someone exactly like me. I've worked both sides of
the fence.'

'So it's he said, she said?'

Mason nodded again. 'It's usually about which of us
has more letters after her name. That's what juries
respond to.' "You've got a lot of letters.'

'More than most people,' Mason said.

'How much will he have forgotten?'

'Several days, minimum. If the trauma happened
Saturday, I'd be very surprised if he remembers
anything after Wednesday. Before that there'll be a
shadowy period just about as long where he
remembers some things and not others. But that's the
minimum. I've seen cases where months are missing,
sometimes after concussions, not even comas.'