One Shot (15 page)

'No doubts at all?' 'Put it this way. I wrote it up
Saturday morning and I haven't given it a whole lot of
thought since then. It's a done deal.

About the best done deal I ever saw, and I've seen a
lot.' 'So is there any point in me walking through it?'

'Sure there is. I've got a crime scene guy desperate to
show off. He's a good man, and he deserves his
moment in the sun.'

Emerson walked Reacher to the lab and introduced
him as a lawyer's scout, not as James Barr's friend.

Which helped a little with the atmosphere. Then he left
him there. The crime scene guy was a serious forty-year-old called Bellantonio. His name was more
exuberant than he was. He was tall, dark, thin, and
stooped. He could have been a mortician. And he
suspected James Barr was going to plead guilty. He
thought he wasn't going to get his day in court.

That was clear. He had laid out the evidence chain in a
logical sequence on long tables in a sealed police
garage bay, just so that he could give visitors the
performance he would never give a jury.

The tables were white canteen-style trestles and they
ran all the way round the perimeter of the bay. Above
them was a horizontal line of cork boards with
hundreds of printed sheets of paper pinned to them.

The sheets were cased in plastic page protectors and
they related to the specific items found directly below.

Trapped tight in the square made by the tables was
James Barr's beige Dodge Caravan. The bay was clean
and brightly lit with harsh fluorescent tubes and the
minivan looked huge and alien in there. It was old and
dirty and smelled of gasoline and oil and rubber. The
sliding rear door was open and Bellantonio had rigged a
light to shine in on the carpet.

"This all looks good,' Reacher said.

'Best crime scene I ever worked,' Bellantonio said.

'So walk me through it.'

Bellantonio started with the traffic cone. It was sitting
there on a square of butcher paper, looking large and
odd and out of place. Reacher saw the print powder on
it, read the notes above it. Barr had handled it, that was
for sure.

He had clamped his right hand round it, near the top,
where it was narrow.

More than once. There were fingerprints and palm
prints. The match was a laugher. There were way more
comparison points than any court would demand.

Same for the quarter from the parking meter, same for
the shell case.

Bellantonio showed Reacher laser-printed stills from
the parking garage video, showing the minivan coming
in just before the event and going out again just after it.

He showed him the interior of the Dodge, showed him
the automotive carpet fibres recovered from the raw
new concrete, showed him the dog hairs, showed him
the denim fibres and the raincoat threads. Showed him
a square of rug taken from Barr's house, showed him
the matching fibres found at the scene. Showed him the
desert boots, showed him how crepe rubber was the
best transfer mechanism going. Showed him how the
tiny crumbs of rubber found at the scene matched new
scuffs on the shoes' toes. Showed him the cement dust
tracked back into Barr's house and recovered from the
garage and the basement and the kitchen and the living
room and the bedroom. Showed him a comparison
sample taken from the parking garage and a lab report
that proved it was the same.

Reacher scanned the transcripts from the 911 calls
and the radio chatter between the squad cars. Then he
glanced through the crime scene protocol. The initial
sweep by the uniformed officers, the forensic
examination by Bellantonio's own people, Emerson's
inspiration with the parking meter. Then he read the
arrest report. It was printed out and pinned up along
with everything else. The SWAT tactics, the sleeping
suspect, the ID from the driver's licence from the wallet
in the trouser pocket. The paramedics' tests.

The capture of the dog by the K9 officers. The clothes
in the closet. The shoes. The guns in the basement. He
read the witness reports. A Marine recruiter had heard
six shots. A cell phone company had provided a
recording.

There was a graph attached. A grey smear of sound,
with six sharp spikes. Left to right, they were arrayed in
a pattern that matched what Helen Rodin had said she
had heard. One, two-three, pause, four-five-six. The
graph's vertical axis represented volume. The shots had
been faint but clear on the recording. The horizontal
axis represented the time base. Six shots in less than
four seconds. Four seconds that had changed a city.

For a spell, at least. Reacher looked at the rifle. It was
heat-sealed into a clear plastic sleeve. He read the
report pinned above it. A Springfield MIA Super Match,
ten shot box magazine, four cartridges still in it. Barr's
prints all over it. Scratches on the forestock matching
varnish scrapings found at the scene. The intact bullet
recovered from the pool. A ballistics lab report matching
the bullet to the barrel. Another report matching the shell
case to the ejector. Slam dunk. Case closed. 'OK,
enough,'

Reacher said.

'It's good, isn't it?' Bellantonio said.

'Best I ever saw,' Reacher said.

'Better than a hundred eyewitnesses.'

Reacher smiled. Crime scene techs loved to say that.

'Anything you're not happy with?' he asked.

'I love it all,' Bellantonio said.

Reacher glanced at his reflection in the Dodge's tinted
window. The black glass made his new shirt look grey.

Why did he leave the traffic cone behind?' he said. 'He
could have pitched it into the back of the van, easy as
anything.' Bellantonio said nothing.

'And why did he pay to park?' Reacher asked.

'I'm forensics,' Bellantonio said. 'Not psychology.'

Then Emerson came back in and stood there, waiting
to accept Reacher's surrender. Reacher gave it up, no
hesitation. He shook their hands and congratulated
them on a well-worked case.

He walked back, one block north and four blocks east,
under the raised highway, heading for the black glass
tower. It was after five o'clock and the sun was on his
back. He arrived at the plaza and saw that the fountain
was still going and the pool had filled another inch. He
went in past the NBC sign and rode up in the elevator.

Ann Yanni didn't show. Maybe she was preparing for the
six o'clock news. He found Helen Rodin at her
secondhand desk.

'Watch my eyes,' he said.

She watched them.

'Pick your own cliche,' he said. 'It's a cast-iron, solid
gold slam dunk. It's Willie Mays under a fly ball.' She
said nothing.

'See any doubt in my eyes?' he asked.

'No,' she said. 'I don't'

'So start calling psychiatrists. If that's what you really
want to do.' 'He deserves representation, Reacher.'

'He stepped out of line.'

'We can't just lynch him.'

Reacher paused. Then he nodded. 'The shrink should
think about the parking meter. I mean, who pays for ten
minutes even if they're not shooting people?

It strikes me as weird. It's so law-abiding, isn't it? It
kind of puts the whole event into a law-abiding
envelope. Maybe he really was nuts this time.

You know, confused about what he was doing.' Helen
Rodin made a note. 'I'll be sure to mention it.' 'You want
to get some dinner?'

We're on opposite sides.'

'We had lunch.'

'Only because I wanted something from you.' "We can
still be civilized.'

She shook her head. 'I'm having dinner with my father.'

'He's on the opposite side.'

'He's my father.'

Reacher said nothing.

Were the cops OK?' she asked.

Reacher nodded. 'They were courteous enough.'

'They can't have been very pleased to see you. They
don't understand why you're really here.' 'They don't
need to worry. They've got a great case.'

'It's not over until the fat lady sings.'

'She's been singing since Friday at five. Pretty loud.'

'Maybe we could have a drink after dinner,' she said. 'If I
can get away in time. There's a sports bar six blocks
north of here. Monday night, it's about the only place in
town. I'll drop by and see if you're there. But I can't
promise anything.' 'Neither can I,' Reacher said. 'Maybe
I'll be at the hospital, unplugging James Barr's life
support.'

He rode down in the elevator and found Rosemary
Barr waiting for him in the lobby. He guessed she had
just got back from the hospital and had called upstairs
and Helen Rodin had told her he was on his way down.

So she had waited. She was pacing nervously, side to
side, crossing and recrossing the route between the
elevator bank and the street door. 'Can we talk?' she
asked.

'Outside,' he said.

He led her through the door and across the plaza to
the south wall of the pool. It was still filling, slowly. The
fountain splashed and tinkled. He sat where he had sat
before, with the funeral tributes at his feet. Rosemary
Barr stood in front of him, facing him, very close, her
eyes on his, not looking down at the flowers and the
candles and the photographs. 'You need to keep an
open mind,' she said.

'Do I?' he said.

'James wanted you here, therefore he can't be guilty.'

'That's a leap.'

'It's logical,' she said.

'I just saw the evidence,' he said. 'More than enough
for anyone.'

'I'm not going to argue about fourteen years ago.'

'You can't.'

'But he's innocent now.'

Reacher said nothing.

'I understand how you feel,' Rosemary said. 'You think
he let you down.'

'He did.'

'But suppose he didn't? Suppose he met your
conditions and this is all a mistake? How would you feel
then? What would you do for him? If you're ready to
stand up against him don't you think you should be
equally ready to stand up for him?' 'That's too
hypothetical for me.'

'It's not hypothetical. I'm just asking, if you're proved
wrong, if he didn't do it, will you put the same energy
into helping him?' 'If I'm proved wrong he won't need
my help.'

Will you?'

'Yes,' Reacher said, because it was an easy promise to
make.

'So you need to keep an open mind.'

'Why did you move out?'

She paused. 'He was angry all the time. It was no fun
living with him.'

'Angry at what?'

'At everything.'

'So maybe it's you who should keep an open mind.'

'I could have made up a reason. But I didn't. I told you
the truth. I don't want to hide anything. I need you to
trust me. I need to make you believe.

He's an unhappy man, maybe even disturbed. But he
didn't do this.' Reacher said nothing.

'Will you keep an open mind?' she asked.

Reacher didn't answer. Just shrugged and walked
away.

He didn't go to the hospital. Didn't unplug James
Barr's machines. He went to the sports bar instead, after
a shower back at the Metropole Palace. The six blocks
north of the black glass tower took him under the
highway again and out into a hinterland. Gentrification
had a boundary to the south, as he had seen, and now
he saw it had a boundary to the north, too. The bar was
a little way beyond it. It was in a plain square building
that could have started out as anything. Maybe a feed
store, maybe an automobile showroom, maybe a pool
hall.