One Shot (9 page)

'Is your father telling you the truth about the evidence?

' Rosemary asked.

'He has to,' Helen said. 'We're going to see it all
anyway. There's the discovery process. We're going to
take depositions. There would be no sense in him
bluffing at this point' Nobody spoke.

'But we can still help your brother,' Helen said, in the
silence. 'He believes he didn't do it. I'm sure of that, after
listening to the tape. Therefore he's delusional now. Or
at least he was, on Saturday. Therefore perhaps he was
delusional on Friday, too.' 'How does that help him?'

Rosemary Barr asked.

'It's still admitting he did it.'

'The consequences will be different. If he recovers.

Time and treatment in an institution will be a lot better
than time and no treatment in a maximum security
prison.' 'You want to have him declared insane?'

Helen nodded. 'A medical defence is our best shot.

And if we establish it right now it might improve the way
they handle him before the trial.' 'He might die. That's
what the doctors said. I don't want him to die a criminal.

I want to clear his name.' 'He hasn't been tried yet. He
hasn't been convicted.

He's still an innocent man in the eyes of the law.'

'That's not the same.'

'No,' Helen said. 'I guess it isn't.'

There was another long silence.

'Let's meet back here at ten thirty,' Helen said. 'We'll
thrash out a strategy. If we're aiming for a change of
hospitals, we should try for it sooner rather than later.'

'We need to find this Jack Reacher person,'

Rosemary Barr said.

Helen nodded. 'I gave his name to Emerson and my
father.' "Why?" 'Because Emerson's people cleared
your brother's house out. They might have found an
address or a phone number. And my father needed to
know because we want this guy on our witness list, not
the prosecution's. Because he might be able to help us.'

'He might be an alibi.'

'Maybe an old army buddy, at best'

'I don't see how,' Franklin said. 'They were different
ranks and different branches.'

'We need to find him,' Rosemary Barr said. 'James
asked for him, didn't he?

That has to mean something.'

Helen nodded again. 'I'd certainly like to find him. He
might have something for us. Some exculpatory
information, possibly. Or at least he might be a link to
something we can use.'

'He's out of circulation,' Franklin said.

He was two hours away, in the back of a bus out of
Indianapolis. The trip had been slow, but pleasant
enough. He had spent Saturday night in New Orleans, in
a motel near the bus depot. He had spent Sunday night
in Indianapolis. So he had slept and fed himself and
showered. But mostly he had rocked and swayed and
dozed on buses, watching the passing scenes,
observing the chaos of America, and surfing along on
the memory of the Norwegian. His life was like that. It
was a mosaic of fragments. Details and contexts would
fade and be inaccurately recalled, but the feelings and
the experiences would weave over time into a tapestry
equally full of good times and bad. He didn't know yet
exactly where the Norwegian would fall. At that point he
thought of her as a missed opportunity. But she would
have sailed away soon anyway. Or he would have.

CNN's intervention had shortened things, but maybe
only by a fraction.

The bus was doing 55 on Route 37, heading south. It
stopped in Bloomington.

Six people got out. One of them left the Indianapolis
paper behind. Reacher picked it up and checked the
sports. The Yankees were still ahead in the East.

Then he flipped to the front and checked the news. He
saw the headline: Sniper Suspect Hurt in Jail Attack. He
read the first three paragraphs: Brain injury.

Coma. Uncertain prognosis. The journalist seemed
torn between condemning the Indiana Board of
Corrections for its lawless prisons and applauding
Barr's attackers for doing their civic duty.

This might complicate things, Reacher thought.

The later paragraphs carried a reprise of the original
crime story, plus updated background, plus new facts.

Reacher read them all. Barr's sister had moved out of
his house some months before the incident. The
journalist seemed to think that was either a cause or an
effect of Barr's evident instability.

Or both.

The bus moved out of Bloomington. Reacher folded
the paper and propped his head against the window
and watched the road. It was a black ribbon, wet with
recent rain, and it unspooled beside him with the centre
line flashing by like an urgent Morse Code message.

Reacher wasn't sure what it was saying to him.

He couldn't read it.

The bus pulled into a covered depot and Reacher
came out into the daylight and found himself five blocks
west of where a raised highway curled round behind an
old stone building. Indiana limestone, he guessed. The
real thing. It would be a bank, he thought, or a
courthouse, or maybe a library. There was a black glass
tower beyond it. The air was OK. It was colder than
Miami but he was still far enough south for winter to feel
safely distant. He wasn't going to have to refresh his
wardrobe because of weather. He was in white chino
pants and a bright yellow canvas shirt. Both were three
days old. He figured he would get another day out of
them. Then he would buy replacements, cheap. He had
brown boat shoes on his feet. No socks. He felt he was
dressed for the boardwalk and thought he must look a
little out of place in the city.

He checked his watch. Nine twenty in the morning. He
stood on the sidewalk in the diesel fumes and stretched
and looked around. The city was one of those heartland
places that are neither large nor small, neither new nor
old. It wasn't booming and it wasn't decrepit. There was
probably some history.

Probably some corn and soybean trading. Maybe
tobacco. Maybe livestock. There was probably a river, or
a railhead. Maybe some manufacturing. There was a
small downtown area. He could see it ahead of him, east
of where he stood.

Taller structures, some stone, some brick, some
billboards. He figured the black glass tower would be
the flagship building. No reason to build it anyplace else
than the heart of downtown.

He walked towards it. There was a lot of construction
under way. Repairs, renewals, holes in the road, gravel
piles, fresh concrete, heavy trucks moving slowly. He
crossed in front of one and hit a side street and came
out along the north side of a half-finished parking
garage extension. He recalled Ann Yanni's fevered
breaking-news recap and glanced up at it and then
away from it to a public square. There was an empty
ornamental pool with a fountain spout sticking up
forlornly in the centre. There was a narrow walkway
between the pool itself and a low wall. The walkway was
decorated with makeshift funeral tributes. There were
flowers, with their stems wrapped in aluminium foil.

Photographs under plastic, and small stuffed animals,
and candles. There was a dusting of leftover sand. The
sand had soaked up the blood, he guessed. Fire
engines carry boxes of sand, for accidents and crime
scenes. And stainless steel shovels, for removal of body
parts. He glanced back at the parking garage. Less than
thirty-five yards, he thought. Very close.

He stood still. The plaza was silent. The whole city was
quiet. It felt stunned, like a limb briefly paralysed after a
massive bruising blow. The plaza was the epicentre. It
was where the blow had landed. It was like a black hole,
with emotion compressed into it too tight to escape.

He walked on. The old limestone building was a library.

That's OK, he thought.

Librarians are nice people. They tell you things, if you
ask them. He asked for the DA's office. A sad and
subdued woman at the checkout desk gave him
directions. It wasn't a long walk. It wasn't a big city. He
walked east past a new office building that had signs for
the DMV and a military recruitment centre. Behind it was
a block of off brand stores and then a new courthouse
building. It was a plain flat-roof off-the-shelf design
dressed up with mahogany doors and etched glass. It
could have been a church, from some weird
denomination

with

a

generous

but

strapped

congregation.

He avoided the main public entrance. He circled the
block until he came to the office wing. He found a door
labelled District Attorney. Below it on a separate brass
plate he found Rodin's name.

An elected official, he thought. They use a separate
plate to make it cheaper when the guy changes every
few Novembers. Rodin's initials were A. A. He had a law
degree. Reacher went in through the door and spoke to
a receptionist at a counter. Asked to see A. A. Rodin
himself. 'About what?' the receptionist asked, quietly,
but politely. She was middle aged, well cared for, well
turned out, wearing a clean white blouse. She looked
like she had worked behind a desk all her life. A
practised bureaucrat. But stressed. She looked like she
was carrying all the town's recent troubles on her
shoulders. 'About James Barr,' Reacher said.

'Are you a reporter?' the receptionist asked.

'No,' Reacher said.

'May I tell Mr Rodin's office your connection to the
case?'

'I knew James Barr in the army.'

'That must have been some time ago.'

'A long time ago,' Reacher said.

'May I have your name?'

'Jack Reacher.'

The receptionist dialled a phone and spoke. Reacher
guessed she was speaking to a secretary, because both
he and Rodin were referred to in the third person, like
abstractions. Can he see a Mr Reacher about the case?

Not the Barr case. Just the case. The conversation
continued. Then the receptionist covered the phone by
clamping it to her chest, below her collar bone, above
her left breast. 'Do you have information?' she asked.

The secretary upstairs can hear your heart beating,
Reacher thought.

'Yes,' he said. 'Information.'

'From the army?' she asked.

Reacher nodded. The receptionist put the phone back
to her face and continued the conversation. It was a
long one. Mr A. A. Rodin had an efficient pair of
gatekeepers. That was clear. No way of getting past
them without some kind of an urgent and legitimate
reason. That was clear, too. Reacher checked his watch.

Nine forty in the morning. But there was no rush, under
the circumstances. Barr was in a coma. Tomorrow
would do it. Or the next day.

Or maybe he could get to Rodin through the cop, if
need be. What was his name?

Emerson?

The receptionist hung up the phone.

'Please go straight up,' she said. 'Mr Rodin is on the
third floor.'

I'm honoured, Reacher thought. The receptionist wrote
his name on a visitor pass and slipped it into a plastic
sleeve. He clipped it on his shirt and headed for the
elevator. Rode it to the third floor. The third floor had low
ceilings and internal corridors lit by fluorescent tubes.