One Shot (13 page)

Helen said.

He nodded. He believed her. She looked right at home.

The long straight hair, the black clothes. The youthful
glow. He was older and came from a different time and a
different place. 'I need you to explain something,' she
said.

She bent down and opened her briefcase. Came out
with the old tape player.

Placed it carefully on the table. Pressed play. Reacher
heard James Barr's first lawyer say: Denying it is not an
option. Then he heard Barr say: Get Jack Reacher for
me. 'You already played that for me,' he said.

'But why would he say it?' Helen asked.

'That's what you want me to explain?'

She nodded.

'I can't,' he said.

'Logically you're the last person he should have asked
for.'

'I agree.'

'Could he have been in any doubt about how you felt?

Fourteen years ago?'

'I don't think so. I made myself pretty clear.'

'Then why would he ask for you now?'

Reacher didn't answer. The food came, and they
started eating. Oranges, walnuts, Gorgonzola cheese,
all kinds of leaves and lettuces, and a raspberry
vinaigrette. It wasn't too bad. And the coffee was OK.

'Play me the whole tape,' he said.

She put her fork down and pressed the rewind key.

Kept her hand there, one fingertip on each key, like a
pianist. She had long fingers. No rings.

Polished nails, neatly trimmed. She pressed play and
picked up her fork again.

Reacher heard no sound for a moment until the blank
leader cleared the tape head. Then he heard a prison
acoustic. Echoes, distant metallic clattering. A man
breathing. Then he heard a door open and the thump of
another man sitting down. No scraping of chair legs on
concrete. A prison chair, bolted to the floor. The lawyer
started talking. He was old and bored. He didn't want to
be there. He knew Barr was guilty. He made banal small
talk for a while. Grew frustrated with Barr's silence. Then
he said, full of exasperation: 'I can't help you if you
won't help yourself. There was a long, long pause, and
then Barr's voice came through, agitated, close to the
microphone: They got the wrong guy. He said it again.

Then the lawyer started up again, not believing him,
saying the evidence was all there, looking for a reason
behind an indisputable fact. Then Barr asked for
Reacher, twice, and the lawyer asked if Reacher was a
doctor, twice. Then Barr got up and walked out. There
was the sound of hammering on a locked door, and
then nothing more.

Helen Rodin pressed the stop key.

'So why?' she asked. 'Why say he didn't do it and then
call for a guy who knows for sure he did it before?'

Reacher just shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.

But he saw in Helen's eyes that she had an answer. 'You
know something,' she said. 'Maybe you don't know you
know it. But there's got to be something there.

Something he thinks can help him.' 'Does it matter?

He's in a coma. He might never wake up.'

'It matters a lot. He could get better treatment.'

'I don't know anything.'

'Are you sure? Was there a psychiatric evaluation
made back then?'

'It never got that far.'

'Did he claim insanity?'

'No, he claimed a perfect score. Four for four.'

'Did you think he was nuts?'

'That's a big word. Was it nuts to shoot four people for
fun? Of course it was. Was he nuts, legally? I'm sure he
wasn't' 'You must know something, Reacher,' Helen
said. 'It must be way down in there. You've got to dredge
it up.' He kept quiet for a moment.

'Have you actually seen the evidence?' he asked.

'I've seen a summary.'

'How bad is it?'

'It's terrible. There's no question he did it. This is about
mitigation, nothing more. And his state of mind. I can't
let them execute an insane person.' 'So wait until he
wakes up. Run some tests.'

'They won't count. He could wake up like a fruitcake
and the prosecution will say that was caused by the
blow to the head in the jailhouse fight. They'll say he
was perfectly sane at the time of the crime.' 'Is your dad
a fair man?'

'He lives to win.'

'Like father, like daughter?'

She paused.

'Somewhat,' she said.

Reacher finished up his salad. Chased the last walnut
round with his fork and then gave up and used his
fingers instead. 'What's on your mind?' Helen asked.

'Just a minor detail,' he said. 'Fourteen years ago it
was a very tough case with barely adequate forensics.

And he confessed. This time the forensics seem to be a
total slam dunk. But he's denying it.' What does that
mean?'

'I don't know.'

'So think about what you do know,' Helen said.

'Please. You must know something. You have to ask
yourself, why did he come up with your name? There
has to be a reason.' Reacher said nothing. The kid who
had served them came back and took their plates away.

Reacher pointed at his coffee cup and the kid made
another trip and refilled it. Reacher cradled it in his
hands and smelled the steam. 'May I ask you a personal
question?' Helen Rodin said to him.

'Depends how personal,' Reacher said. ¦Why were you
so untraceable? Normally guys like Franklin can find
anybody.'

'Maybe he's not as good as you think.'

'He's probably better than I think.'

'Not everyone is traceable.'

'I agree. But you don't look like you belong in that
category.'

'I was in the machine,' Reacher said. 'My whole life.

Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I
thought, OK, if I'm out, I'm out. All the way out. I was a
little angry and it was probably an immature reaction.

But I got used to it.' 'Like a game?'

'Like an addiction,' Reacher said. 'I'm addicted to being
out'

The kid brought the check. Helen Rodin paid. Then
she put her tape player back in her briefcase and she
and Reacher left together. They walked north, past the
construction at the bottom of First Street. She was
heading to her office and he was going to look for a
hotel.

A man called Grigor Linsky watched them walk. He
was slumped low in a car parked on the kerb. He knew
where to wait. He knew where she ate, when she had
company.

FOUR

REACHER CHECKED INTO A DOWNTOWN HOTEL

CALLED THE Metropole Palace, two blocks east of First
Street, about level with the main shopping strip. He paid
cash up front for one night only and used the name
Jimmy Reese. He had cycled through all the presidents
and vice presidents long ago and was now using
second basemen from the Yankees' non championship
years. Jimmy Reese had played pretty well during part
of 1930 and pretty badly during part of 1931.

He had come from nowhere and moved on to St Louis
for part of 1932. Then he had quit. He had died in
California, aged 93. But now he was back, with a single
room and a bath in the Metropole Palace, for one night
only, due to check out the next morning before eleven
o'clock.

The Metropole was a sad, half-empty, faded old place.

But it had once been grand. Reacher could see that. He
could picture the corn traders a hundred years ago,
walking up the hill from the river wharf and staying the
night. He guessed the lobby had once looked like a
western saloon, but now it was thinly made over with
modernist touches. There was a refurbished elevator.

The rooms had swipe cards instead of keys. But he
guessed the building hadn't really changed very much.

His room was certainly old-fashioned and gloomy. The
mattress felt like a part of the original inventory.

He lay down on it and put his hands behind his head.

Thought back more than fourteen years to Kuwait City.

All cities have colours, and KC was white.

White stucco, white painted concrete, white marble.

Skies burned white by the sun. Men in white robes. The
parking garage James Barr had used was white, and the
apartment building opposite was white. Because of the
glare the four dead guys had all been wearing aviator
shades. All four men had been hit in the head, but none
of the shades had broken. They had just fallen off. All
four bullets had been recovered, and they broke the
case. They were match-grade 168-grain jacketed boat
tails. Not hollow points, because of the Geneva
Convention. They were an American sniper's bullets,
either Army or Marines. If Barr had used a battle rifle or a
sub-machine gun or a sidearm, Reacher would have got
nowhere. Every firearm in theatre except the sniper
rifles used standard NATO rounds, which would have
cast the net way too wide, because just about all of
NATO was in country. But Barr's whole purpose had
been to use his own specialist weapon, just for once,
this time for real. And in the process, his four thirteen-cent bullets had nailed him.

But it had been a tough, tough case. Maybe Reacher's
finest ever. He had used logic, deduction, paperwork,
footwork, intuition, and ultimately elimination.

At the end of the trail was James Barr, a man who had
finally seen the pink mist and was strangely at peace
with his capture.

He had confessed.

The confession was voluntary, fast, and complete.

Reacher never laid a hand on him. Barr talked quite
freely about the experience. Then he asked questions
about the investigation, like he was fascinated by the
process. Clearly he had not expected to be caught. Not
in a million years. He was simultaneously aggrieved and
admiring. He had even acted a little sympathetic when
the political snafu eventually broke him loose. Like he
was sorry that Reacher's fine efforts had come to
nothing.

Fourteen years later he had not confessed.

There was another difference between this time and
the last time, too. But Reacher couldn't pin it down.

Something to do with how hot Kuwait City had been.

Grigor Linsky used his cell phone and called the Zee.

The Zee was the man he worked for. It wasn't just Zee. It
was the Zee. It was a question of respect.

The Zee was eighty years old, but he still broke arms if
he smelled disrespect. He was like an old bull. He still
had his strength and his attitude. He was eighty years
old because of his strength and his attitude.

Without them he would have died at age twenty. Or
later, at thirty, which was about when he went insane
and his real name finally slipped his mind. 'The lawyer
went back to her office,' Linsky said. 'Reacher turned
east off First Street. I laid back and didn't follow him. But
he turned away from the bus depot. Therefore we can
assume he's staying in town. My guess is he checked
into the Metropole Palace. There's nothing else in that
direction.' The Zee made no reply.

'Should we do anything?' Linsky asked.

'How long is he here for?'

'That depends. Clearly he's on a mission of mercy.'

The Zee said nothing.

'Should we do anything?' Linsky asked again.

There was a pause. Cellular static, and an old man
breathing.