One Shot (8 page)

Reacher watched the screen. Emerson seemed like a
concise type of a guy. He was brief. No bullshit. He
finished his statement and in response to a reporter's
question declined to specify what if anything James
Barr had said during interrogation. Then he introduced
a district attorney. This guy's name was Rodin, and he
wasn't concise. Wasn't brief. He used plenty of bullshit.

He spent ten minutes claiming Emerson's credit for
himself. Reacher knew how that worked. He had been a
cop of sorts for thirteen years. Cops bust their tails, and
prosecutors bask in the glory. Rodin said James Barr a
few more times and then said the state was maybe
looking to fry him.

For what?

Reacher waited.

A local anchor called Ann Yanni came on. She
recapped the events of the night before. Sniper slaying.

Senseless slaughter. An automatic weapon. A parking
garage. A public plaza. Commuters on their way home
after a long working week.

Five dead. A suspect in custody, but a city still
grieving.

Reacher thought it was Yanni who was grieving.

Emerson's success had cut her story short. She signed
off and CNN went to political news. Reacher turned the
TV off. The dancer came out of the bathroom. She was
pink and fragrant. And naked. She had left her towels
inside. 'What shall we do today?' she said, with a wide
Norwegian smile.

'I'm going to Indiana,' Reacher said.

He walked north in the heat to the Miami bus depot.

Then he leafed through a greasy timetable and planned
a route. It wasn't going to be an easy trip.

Miami to Jacksonville would be the first leg. Then
Jacksonville to New Orleans. Then New Orleans to St
Louis. Then St Louis to Indianapolis. Then a local bus,
presumably, south into the heartland. Five separate
destinations.

Arrival and departure times were not well integrated.

Beginning to end, it was going to take more than forty-eight hours. He was tempted to fly or rent a car, but he
was short of money and he liked buses better and he
figured nothing much was going to happen on the
weekend anyway.

What happened on the weekend was that Rosemary
Barr called her firm's investigator back. She figured
Franklin would have a semi-independent point of view.

She got him at home, ten o'clock in the morning on the
Sunday. 'I think I should hire different lawyers,' she said.

Franklin said nothing.

'David Chapman thinks he's guilty,' Rosemary said.

'Doesn't he? So he's already given up.'

'I can't comment,' Franklin said. 'He's one of my
employers.'

Now Rosemary Barr said nothing.

'How was the hospital?' Franklin asked.

'Awful. He's in intensive care with a bunch of prison
deadbeats. They've got him handcuffed to the bed. He's
in a coma, for God's sake. How do they think he's going
to escape?' 'What's the legal position?'

'He was arrested but not arraigned. He's in a kind of
limbo. They're assuming he wouldn't have gotten bail.'

'They're probably right.'

'So they claim under the circumstances it's like he
actually didn't get bail. So he's theirs. He's in the
system. Like a twilight zone.'

What would you like to happen?'

'He shouldn't be in handcuffs. And he should be in a
VA hospital at least. But that won't happen until I find a
lawyer who's prepared to help him.' Franklin paused.

'How do you explain all the evidence?' 'I know my
brother.'

'You moved out, right?'

'For other reasons. Not because he's a homicidal
maniac' 'He blocked off a parking space,' Franklin said.

'He premeditated this thing.' 'You think he's guilty too.'

'I work with what I've got. And what I've got doesn't
look good.' Rosemary Barr said nothing.

'I'm sorry,' Franklin said.

'Can you recommend another lawyer?'

'Can you make that decision? Do you have a power of
attorney?' 'I think it's implied. He's in a coma. I'm his
next of kin.' 'How much money have you got?'

'Not much.'

'How much has he got?'

'There's some equity in his house.'

'It won't look good. It'll be like a kick in the teeth for the
firm you work for.' 'I can't worry about that.'

'You could lose everything, including your job.' 'I'll lose
it anyway, unless I help James. If he's convicted, they'll
let me go. I'll be notorious. By association. An
embarrassment' 'He had your sleeping pills,' Franklin
said.

'I gave them to him. He doesn't have insurance.' "Why
did he need them?'

'He has trouble sleeping.'

Franklin said nothing.

'You think he's guilty,' Rosemary said.

'The evidence is overwhelming,' Franklin said.

'David Chapman isn't really trying, is he?'

'You have to consider the possibility that David
Chapman is right.'

Who should I call?'

Franklin paused.

'Try Helen Rodin,' he said.

'Rodin?'

'She's the DA's daughter.'

'I don't know her.'

'She's downtown. She just hung out her shingle. She's
new and she's keen.'

'Is it ethical?'

'No law against it.'

'It would be father against daughter.'

'It was going to be Chapman, and Chapman knows
Rodin a lot better than his daughter does, probably.

She's been away for a long time.' 'Where?'

'College, law school, clerking for a judge in D.C 'Is she
any good?'

'I think she's going to be.'

Rosemary Barr called Helen Rodin on her office
number. It was like a test.

Someone new and keen should be at the office on a
Sunday. Helen Rodin was at the office on a Sunday. She
answered the call sitting at her desk. Her desk was
secondhand and it sat proudly in a mostly empty two-room suite in the same black glass tower that had NBC

as the second-floor tenant. The suite was rented cheap
through one of the business subsidies that the city was
throwing around like confetti. The idea was to kick-start
the rejuvenated downtown area and clean up later with
healthy tax revenues. Rosemary Barr didn't have to tell
Helen Rodin about the case because the whole thing
had happened right outside Helen Rodin's new office
window. She had seen some of it for herself, and she
had followed the rest on the news afterwards. She had
caught all of Ann Yanni's TV appearances. She
recognized her, from the building's lobby, and the
elevator.

Will you help my brother?' Rosemary Barr asked.

Helen Rodin paused. The smart answer would be no
way. She knew that. Like no way, forget about it, are you
out of your mind? Two reasons. One, she knew a major
clash with her father was inevitable at some point, but
did she need it now? And two, she knew that a new
lawyer's early cases defined her. Paths were taken that
led down fixed routes. To end up as a when-all-else fails
criminal defence attorney would be OK, she guessed, all
things considered. But to start out by taking a case that
had offended the whole city would be a marketing
disaster. The shootings weren't being seen as a crime.

They were being seen as an atrocity. Against humanity,
against the whole community, against the rejuvenation
efforts downtown, against the whole idea of being from
Indiana.

It was like LA or New York or Baltimore had come to
the heartland, and to be the person who tried to excuse
it or explain it away would be a fatal mistake.

Like a mark of Cain. It would follow her the rest of her
life.

'Can we sue the jail?' Rosemary Barr asked. 'For
letting him get hurt?'

Helen Rodin paused again. Another good reason to
say no. An unrealistic client.

'Maybe later,' she said. 'Right now he wouldn't
generate much sympathy as a plaintiff. And it's hard to
prove damages, if he's heading for death row anyway.'

'Then I can't pay you much,' Rosemary Barr said. 'I
don't have money.'

Helen Rodin paused for a third time. Another good
reason to say no. It was a little early in her career to be
contemplating pro bono work.

But. But. But.

The accused deserved representation. The Bill of
Rights said so. And he was innocent until proven guilty.

And if the evidence was as bad as her father said it was,
then the whole thing would be little more than a
supervisory process. She would verify the case against
him, independently. Then she would advise him to plead
guilty. Then she would watch his back as her father fed
him through the machine. That was all. It could be seen
as honest dues-paying.

A constitutional chore. She hoped.

'OK,' she said.

'He's innocent,' Rosemary Barr said. 'I'm sure of it.'

They always are, Helen Rodin thought.

'OK,' she said again. Then she told her new client to
meet her in her office at seven the next morning. It was
like a test. A sister who really believed in her brother's
innocence would show up for an early appointment.

Rosemary Barr showed up right on time, at seven
o'clock on Monday morning.

Franklin was there, too. He believed in Helen Rodin
and was prepared to defer his bills until he saw which
way the wind was blowing. Helen Rodin herself had
already been at her desk for an hour. She had informed
David Chapman of the change in representation on
Sunday afternoon and had obtained his audiotape of
his initial interview with James Barr. Chapman had been
happy to hand it over and wash his hands. She had
played the tape to herself a dozen times Sunday night
and a dozen more that morning. It was all anyone had of
James Barr.

Maybe all anyone was ever going to get. So she had
listened to it carefully, and she had drawn some early
conclusions from it.

'Listen,' she said.

She had the tape cued up and ready in an old-fashioned machine the size of a shoe box. She pressed
play and they all heard a hiss and breathing and room
sounds and then David Chapman's voice: 'I can't help
you if you won't help yourself. There was a long pause,
full of more hiss, and then James Barr spoke: They got
the wrong guy. They got the wrong guy, he said again.

Then Helen watched the tape counter numbers and
spooled forward to Chapman saying:

Denying it is not an option. Then Barr's voice came
through: Get Jack Reacher for me. Helen spooled
onward to Chapman's question: Is he a doctor? Then
there was nothing on the tape except the sound of Barr
beating on the interview room door.

'OK,' Helen said. 'I think he really believes he didn't do
it. He claims as much, and then he gets frustrated and
terminates the interview when Chapman doesn't take
him seriously. That's clear, isn't it?'

'He didn't do it,' Rosemary Barr said.

'I spoke with my father yesterday,' Helen Rodin said.

'The evidence is all there, Ms Barr. He did it, I'm afraid.

You need to accept that a sister maybe can't know her
brother as well as she'd like. Or if she once did, that he
changed for some reason.' There was a long silence.