One Shot (26 page)

Like something good was on the horizon.'

Reacher said nothing.

'I really blew that call, didn't I?' Barr said. 'Tell me about
your sister,'

Reacher said.

'She was just here. Before the lawyer came in.' 'How
do you feel about her?'

'She's all I've got.'

'How far would you go to protect her?'

'I would do anything,' Barr said.

"What kind of anything?'

'I'll plead guilty if they let me. She'll still have to move,
maybe change her name. But I'll spare her what I can.

She bought me the radio. For the baseball. Birthday gift.'

Reacher said nothing.

'Why are you here?' Barr asked him.

'To bury you.'

'I deserve it'

'You didn't fire from the highway. You were in the new
parking garage.' 'On First Street?'

'North end.'

'That's insane. Why would I fire from there?' 'You
asked your first lawyer to find me. On Saturday.' "Why
would I do that? You ought to be the last person I
wanted to see. You know about Kuwait City. Why would
I want that brought up?' 'What was the Cards' next
game?'

'I don't know.'

'Try to remember. I need to understand the
circumstances here.' 'I can't remember,' Barr said.

'There's nothing there. I remember that winning run, and
that's all. The announcers were going crazy. You know
how they are. They were kind of incredulous. I mean,
what a stupid way to lose a ballgame. But it's the Cubs,
right? They were saying they always find some way to
lose.' "What about before the game? Earlier that day?' 'I
don't remember.'

'What would you normally be doing?' 'Not much. I
don't do much.'

'What happened in the Cardinals' previous game?' 'I
don't recall.'

'What's the next to last thing you remember?' 'I'm not
sure. The driveway?'

'That was months ago.'

'I remember going out somewhere,' Barr said. 'When?'

'Not sure. Recently.'

'Alone?'

'Maybe with people. I'm not sure. Not sure where,
either.' Reacher said nothing. Just leaned back in his
chair and listened to the quiet beep from the heart
machine. It was running pretty fast. Both handcuffs
were rattling.

'What's in the IVs?' Barr asked. Reacher squinted
against the daylight and read the writing on the bags.

'Antibiotics,' he said.

'Not painkillers?'

'No.'

'I guess they think I don't deserve any.' Reacher said
nothing.

'We go way back, right?' Barr said. 'You and me?' 'Not
really,' Reacher said.

'Not like we were friends.'

'You got that right.'

'But we were connected.'

Reacher said nothing.

Weren't we?' Barr asked.

'In a way,' Reacher said.

'So would you do something for me?' Barr asked. 'As a
favour?' 'Like what?'

Reacher said.

'Pull the IV needles out of my hand.' my?'

'So I can get an infection and die.'

'No,' Reacher said.

"Why not?'

'Not time yet,' Reacher said.

He stood up and put his chair back against the wall
and walked out of the room. He processed out at the
security desk and passed through the airlock and rode
the elevator down to the street. Helen Rodin's car
wasn't in the lot. She was already gone. She hadn't
waited for him. So he set out walking, all the way from
the edge of town.

He picked his way past ten blocks of construction and
went to the library first. It was getting late in the
afternoon, but the library was still open.

The sad woman at the desk told him where the old
newspapers were kept. He started with the previous
week's stack of the same Indianapolis paper he had
read on the bus. He ignored Sunday, Saturday, and
Friday. He started with Thursday, Wednesday, and
Tuesday, and he got a hit with the second paper he
looked at. The Chicago Cubs had played a three-game
series in St Louis starting Tuesday. It was the series
opener that had ended the way Barr had described. Tie
game in the bottom of the ninth, a walk, a steal, a
ground out, an error. The details were right there in
Wednesday morning's paper. A walk-off winning run
without a hit in the inning. About ten in the evening,
Tuesday. Barr had heard the announcers' frenzied
screams just sixty-seven hours before he opened fire.

Then Reacher backtracked all the way to the police
station. Four blocks west, one block south. He wasn't
worried about its opening hours. It had looked like a
24/7 kind of a place to him. He went straight to the
reception desk and claimed defence counsel's right to
another look at the evidence. The desk guy made a call
to Emerson and then pointed Reacher straight to
Bellantonio's garage bay.

Bellantonio met him there and unlocked the door. Not
much had changed, but Reacher noticed a couple of
new additions.

New sheets of paper, behind plastic, pinned above and
below the original pages on the cork boards, like
footnotes or addenda or appendices. 'Updates?' he
asked.

'Always,' Bellantonio said. 'We never sleep.' 'So what's
new?'

'Animal DNA,' Bellantonio said. 'Exact match of Barr's
dog's hair to the scene.' "Where is the dog now?'

'Put to sleep.'

'That's cold.'

'That's cold?'

'The damn dog didn't do anything wrong.' Bellantonio
said nothing.

What else?' Reacher asked.

'More tests on the fibres, and more ballistics. We're
beyond definite on everything. The Lake City ammo is
relatively rare, and we've confirmed a purchase by Barr
less than a year ago. In Kentucky.' 'He used a range
down there.'

Bellantonio nodded. We found that out, too.' 'Anything
else?'

'The traffic cone came from the city's construction
department. We don't know how or when.' 'Anything
else?'

'I think that's about it.'

What about the negatives?'

'The negatives?' "You're giving me all the good news.

What about the questions that didn't get answered?' 'I
don't think there were any.'

'You sure about that?'

'I'm sure.'

Reacher glanced round the square of cork boards,
one more time, and carefully.

'You play poker?' he asked.

'No.'

'Good decision. You're a terrible liar.' Bellantonio said
nothing.

'You should start worrying,' Reacher said. 'He slides,
he's going to sue your ass for the dog.' 'He won't slide,'

Bellantonio said. 'No,' Reacher said. 'I don't suppose he
will.'

Emerson was waiting outside Bellantonio's door.

Jacket on, tie off.

Frustration in his eyes, the way cops get when they're
snagged up in lawyer stuff. 'Did you see him?' he asked.

'At the hospital?'

'He's blank from Tuesday night onward,' Reacher said.

"You've got a battle on your hands.' 'Terrific'

'You should run safer jails.'

'Rodin will bring experts in.'

'His daughter already did.'

'There are legal precedents.'

'They go both ways, apparently.' "You want to see that
piece of shit back on the street?'

'Your screw-up,' Reacher said. 'Not mine.'

'As long as you're happy.'

'Nobody's happy,' Reacher said. 'Not yet.'

He left the police station and walked all the way back
to the black glass tower. Helen Rodin was at her desk,
studying a sheet of paper. Danuta and Mason and
Niebuhr had left. She was alone. 'Rosemary asked her
brother about Kuwait City,' she said. 'She told me so,
when she came out of his room at the hospital.' 'And?'

Reacher said.

'He told her it was all true.'

'Not a fun conversation, probably.'

Helen Rodin shook her head. 'Rosemary is pretty
devastated. She says James is, too. He can't believe he
did it again. Can't believe he threw fourteen years away.'

Reacher said nothing. Silence in the office. Then Helen
showed Reacher the sheet of paper she was reading.

'Eileen Hutton is a brigadier general,' she said.

'Then she's done well,' Reacher said. 'She was a major
when I knew her.'

'What were you?'

'A captain.'

'Wasn't that illegal?'

'Technically. For her.'

'She was in the JAG Corps.'

'Lawyers can break the law, same as anyone else.'

'She's still in the JAG Corps.'

'Obviously. They don't retrain them.'

'Based in the Pentagon.'

'That's where they keep the smart people.' 'She'll be
here tomorrow.'

Reacher said nothing.

'For her deposition,' Helen said.

Reacher said nothing.

'It's scheduled for four o'clock in the afternoon.

Chances are she'll fly down in the morning and check in
somewhere. Because she'll have to stay the night in
town. Too late for a flight back.' 'You going to ask me to
take her out for dinner?' 'No,' Helen said. 'I'm not. I'm
going to ask you to take her out for lunch. Before she
meets with my father. I need to know in advance what
she's here for.' 'They put Barr's dog to sleep,' Reacher
said. 'It was old.'

'That doesn't bother you?'

'Should it?'

"The dog didn't do anything to anyone.'

Helen said nothing.

'Which hotel will Hutton use?' Reacher asked.

'I have no idea. You'll have to catch her at the airport.'

What flight?'

'I don't know that either. But there's nothing direct from
D.C. So I expect she'll change planes in Indianapolis.

She won't get here before eleven in the morning.'

Reacher said nothing.

'I apologize,' Helen said. 'For telling Danuta we didn't
have any evidence for the puppet master. I didn't mean it
to sound dismissive.' 'You were right,'

Reacher said. We didn't have any evidence. At the
time.'

She looked at him. 'But?'

'We do now.'

'What?'

'They've been gilding the lily over at the police station.

They've got fibres, ballistics, dog DNA, a receipt for the
ammunition all the way from some place in Kentucky.

They traced the traffic cone to the city. They've got all
kinds of stuff.' 'But?' Helen said again.

'But they haven't got James Barr on tape driving in to
place the cone in the garage beforehand.' 'Are you
sure?'

Reacher nodded. 'They must have looked at the tapes
a dozen times by now. If they had found him, they'd
have printed the stills and pinned them up for the world
to see. But they're not there, which means they didn't
find them. Which means James Barr didn't drive in and
leave the cone beforehand.' Which means someone
else did.'

'The puppet master,' Reacher said. 'Or another of his
puppets. Sometime after Tuesday night. Barr thinks the
cone was still in his garage Tuesday.' Helen looked at
him again. 'Whoever it was must be on the tapes.'