One Shot (7 page)

'To your certain knowledge?'

'Never.'

'How long has he been in town?'

'Fourteen years. Since the army.'

'Were you close?'

'We lived in the same house.'

'His house?'

Rosemary Barr nodded.

'But you don't live there any more.'

Rosemary Barr looked away.

'No,' she said. 'I moved out'

'Might your brother have seen a shrink after you
moved out?'

'He would have told me.'

'OK, what about before? In the service?'

Rosemary Barr said nothing. Chapman turned back to
Franklin.

'So maybe Reacher was his army doctor,' he said.

'Maybe he has information about an old trauma. He
could be very helpful.' Franklin accepted the sheet of
paper.

'In which case I'll find him,' he said.

'We shouldn't be talking about mitigation anyway,'

Rosemary Barr said. 'We should be talking about
reasonable doubt. About innocence.' 'The evidence is
very strong,' Chapman said. 'He used his own gun.'

Franklin spent three hours failing to find Jack Reacher.

First he trawled through psychiatric associations. No
hits. Then he searched the Internet for Gulf War support
groups. No trace. He tried Lexis-Nexis and all the news
organizations. Nothing. Then he started back at the
beginning and accessed the National Personnel Record
Center's database. It listed all current and former
military. He found Jack Reacher's name in there easily
enough. Reacher had entered the service in 1984 and
there was an honourable discharge in 1997.

James Barr himself had signed up in 1985 and
mustered out in 1991. So there was a six-year overlap.

But Reacher had been no kind of doctor. No kind of a
psychiatrist. He had been a military cop. An officer. A
major. Maybe a high-level investigator. Barr had finished
as a lowly Specialist E-4.

Infantry, not military police. So what was the point of
contact between a military police major and an infantry
E-4? Something helpful, obviously, or Barr wouldn't
have mentioned the name. But what?

At the end of three hours Franklin figured he would
never find out, because Reacher fell off the radar after
1997. Completely and totally. There was no trace of him
anywhere. He was still alive, according to the Social
Security Administration. He wasn't in prison, according
to the NCIC. But he had disappeared. He had no credit
rating. He wasn't listed as title holder to any real estate,
or automobiles, or boats. He had no debts. No liens. No
address.

No phone number. No warrants outstanding, no
judgements entered. He wasn't a husband. Wasn't a
father. He was a ghost.

James Barr spent the same three hours in serious
trouble. It started when he stepped out of his cell. He
turned right to walk down to the pay phones. The
corridor was narrow. He bumped into another guy,
shoulder to shoulder. Then he made a bad mistake. He
took his eyes off the floor and glanced at the other guy
and apologized.

A bad mistake, because a fish can't make eye contact
with another prisoner.

Not without implying disrespect. It was a prison thing.

He didn't understand.

The guy he made eye contact with was a Mexican. He
had gang tattoos, but Barr didn't recognize them.

Another bad mistake. He should have put his gaze back
on the floor and moved on and hoped for the best. But
he didn't.

Instead, he said, 'Excuse me.'

Then he raised his eyebrows and half smiled in a self
deprecating way, like he was saying, This is some place,
right?

Bad mistake. Familiarity, and a presumption of
intimacy.

'What are you looking at?' the Mexican said.

At that point, James Barr understood completely. What
are you looking at? That was pretty much a standard
opener. Barrack rooms, bar rooms, street corners, dark
alleys, it was not a phrase you wanted to hear.

'Nothing,' he said, and realized he had made the
situation much worse.

'You calling me nothing?'

Barr put his eyes back on the floor and moved on, but
it was way too late. He felt the Mexican's stare on his
back and gave up on the pay phone idea. The phones
were in a dead-end lobby and he didn't want to feel
trapped. So he walked a long counterclockwise circuit
and headed back to his cell. He got there OK. Didn't look
at anyone, didn't speak. He lay down on his bunk. About
two hours later, he felt OK. He guessed he could handle
a little macho bluster. And he was bigger than the
Mexican. He was bigger than two Mexicans.

He wanted to call his sister. He wanted to know she
was OK.

He set off for the pay phones again.

He got there unmolested. It was a small space. There
were four phones on the wall, four men talking, four
lines of other men waiting behind them. Noise, shuffling
feet, crazed laughter, impatience, frustration, sour air,
the smell of sweat and dirty hair and stale urine. Just a
normal prison scene, according to James Barr's
preconceptions.

Then it wasn't a normal scene.

The men in front of him vanished. Just disappeared.

They just melted out of sight. Those on the phone hung
up mid-sentence and ducked back past him. Those
waiting in line peeled away. In half a second the lobby
went from being full and noisy to being deserted and
silent.

James Barr turned round.

He saw the Mexican with the tattoos. The Mexican had
a knife in his hand and twelve friends behind him. The
knife was a plastic toothbrush handle wrapped with
tape and sharpened to a point, like a stiletto. The friends
were all stocky little guys, all with the same tattoos.

They all had cropped hair with intricate patterns shaved
across their skulls.

'Wait,' Barr said.

But the Mexicans didn't wait, and eight minutes later
Barr was in a coma. He was found some time after that,
on the floor, beaten pulpy, with multiple stab wounds
and a cracked skull and severe subdural bleeding.

Afterwards, jail talk said he had had it coming. He had
disrespected the Latinos. But jail talk said he hadn't
gone quietly. There was a hint of admiration. The
Mexicans had suffered a little. But not nearly as much as
James Barr. He was medevacked to the city hospital
and sewn up and operated on to relieve pressure from a
swollen brain. Then he was dumped in a secure
intensive care unit, comatose. The doctors weren't sure
when he would wake up again. Maybe in a day. Maybe in
a week. Maybe in a month. Maybe never. The doctors
didn't really know, and they didn't really care. They were
all local residents.

The warden at the jail called late at night and told
Emerson. Then Emerson called and told Rodin. Then
Rodin called and told Chapman. Then Chapman called
and told Franklin. 'So what happens now?' Franklin
asked him.

'Nothing,' Chapman said. 'It's on ice. You can't try a
guy in a coma.' 'What about when he wakes up?'

'If he's OK, then they'll go ahead, I guess.'

What if he isn't?'

'Then they won't. Can't try a vegetable.'

'So what do we do now?'

'Nothing,' Chapman said. "We weren't taking it very
seriously anyhow. Barr's guilty all to hell and gone, and
there's nothing much anyone can do for him.'

Franklin called and told Rosemary Barr, because he
wasn't sure if anyone else would have taken the trouble.

He found out that nobody else had. So he broke the
news himself. Rosemary Barr didn't have much of an
outward reaction. She just went very quiet. It was like
she was on emotional overload. 'I guess I should go to
the hospital,' she said.

'If you want,' Franklin said.

'He's innocent, you know. This is so unfair.'

'Did you see him yesterday?'

'You mean, can I alibi him?'

'Can you?'

'No,' Rosemary Barr said. 'I can't. I don't know where
he was yesterday. Or what he was doing.' 'Are there
places he goes regularly? Movies, bars, anything like
that?' 'Not really.'

'Friends he hangs with?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Girlfriends?' 'Not for a long time.' 'Other family he
visits?' 'There's just the two of us. Him and me.' Franklin
said nothing. There was a long, distracted pause. "What
happens now?' Rosemary Barr asked. 'I don't know
exactly.' 'Did you find that person he mentioned?' 'Jack
Reacher? No, I'm afraid not. No trace.' "Will you keep on
looking?' 'There's really nothing more I can do.'

'OK,' Rosemary Barr said. 'Then we'll have to manage
without him.'

But even as they spoke, on the phone late at night on
the Saturday, Jack Reacher was on his way to them.

TWO

REACHER WAS ON HIS WAY TO THEM BECAUSE OF

A WOMAN. HE HAD spent Friday night in South Beach,
Miami, in a salsa club, with a dancer from a cruise ship.

The boat was Norwegian, and so was the girl. Reacher
guessed she was too tall for ballet, but she was the right
size for everything else. They met on the beach in the
afternoon. Reacher was working on his tan. He felt
better brown. He didn't know what she was working on.

But he felt her shadow fall across his face and opened
his eyes to find her staring at him. Or maybe at his
scars.

The browner he got, the more they stood out, white
and wicked and obvious. She was pale, in a black bikini.

A small black bikini. He pegged her for a dancer long
before she told him. It was in the way she held herself.

They ended up having a late dinner together and then
going out to the club.

South Beach salsa wouldn't have been Reacher's first
choice, but her company made it worthwhile. She was
fun to be with. And she was a great dancer, obviously.

Full of energy. She wore him out. At four in the morning
she took him back to her hotel, eager to wear him out
some more. Her hotel was a small Art Deco place near
the ocean. Clearly the cruise line treated its people well.

Certainly it was a much more romantic destination than
Reacher's own motel. And much closer.

And it had cable television, which Reacher's place
didn't. He woke at eight on Saturday morning when he
heard the dancer in the shower. He turned on the TV

and went looking for ESPN. He wanted Friday night's
American League highlights. He never found them. He
clicked his way through successive channels and then
stopped dead on CNN because he heard the chief of an
Indiana police department say a name he knew: James
Barr. The picture was of a press conference. Small
room, harsh light. Top of the screen was a caption that
said: Courtesy NBC. There was a banner across the
bottom that said: Friday Night Massacre. The police
chief said the name again, James Barr, and then he
introduced a homicide detective called Emerson.

Emerson looked tired. Emerson said the name for a
third time: James Barr. Then, like he anticipated the
exact question in Reacher's mind, he ran through a brief
biography: Forty-one years old, local Indiana resident,
U.S. Army infantry specialist from 1985 to 1991, Gulf War
veteran, never married, currently unemployed.