One Shot (46 page)

There were fields everywhere, north, south, east and
west, one after the other in endless ranks and files.

Each one had its own irrigation boom. Each boom was
turning at the same slow, patient pace.

He shut the engine down and slid out of the seat. He
stood and stretched and yawned. The air was full of
mist from the booms. Up close the booms were like
massive industrial machines. Like alien spaceships,
recently landed. There was a central vertical standpipe
in the middle of each field, like a tall metal chimney. The
boom arm came off it horizontally and bled water out of
a hundred spaced nozzles all along its length. At the
outer end the arm had a vertical leg supporting its
weight.

At the bottom of the leg was a wheel with a rubber tyre.

The wheel was as big as a plane's landing gear. It rolled
round a worn track, endlessly.

Reacher watched and waited until the wheel in the
nearest field came close. He walked over and stepped
alongside it. Kept pace with it. The tyre came almost to
his waist. The boom itself was way over his head. He
kept the wheel on his right and tracked it through its
long clockwise circle. He was walking through fine mist.

It was cold. The boom hissed loudly. The wheel climbed
gentle rises and rolled into low depressions. It was a
long, long circle. The boom was maybe a hundred and
fifty feet long, which made the perimeter track more than
three hundred yards. Pi times diameter. Area was pi
times the radius squared, which would therefore be
more than seventy-eight hundred square yards. More
than one and a half acres. Which meant that the wasted
corners added up to a little less than twenty-two
hundred square yards. More than twenty-one per cent.

More than five hundred square yards in each corner.

Like the shapes in the corners of a target. The Mustang
was parked on one of the corners, proportionally the
same size as a bullet hole.

Like one of Charlie's bullet holes, in the corners of the
paper.

Reacher arrived back where he had started, a little wet,
his boat shoes muddy.

He stepped away from the circle and stood still on the
gravel, facing west. On the far horizon a cloud of crows
rose suddenly and then settled. Reacher got back in the
car and turned the ignition on. Found the clamps on the
header rail and the switch on the dash and lowered the
roof. He checked his watch. He had two hours until his
rendezvous at Franklin's office. So he lay back in the
seat and let the sun dry his clothes. He took the folded
target out of his pocket and looked at it for a long time.

He sniffed it. Held it up to the sun and let the light shine
through the crisp round holes. Then he put it away
again, in his pocket. He stared upward and saw nothing
but sky. He closed his eyes against the glare and started
to think about ego and motive, and illusion and reality,
and guilt and innocence, and the true nature of
randomness.

THIRTEEN

EMERSON

READ

THROUGH

BELLANTONIO'S

REPORTS. SAW THAT Reacher had called Helen Rodin.

He wasn't surprised. It was probably just one of many
calls. Lawyers and busybodies, working hard to rewrite
history. No big shock there. Then he read Bellantonio's
twin questions: Is Reacher left handed? Did he have
access to a vehicle?

Answers: Probably, and Probably. Southpaws weren't
rare. Line up twenty people, and four or five of them
would be left-handed. And Reacher had access to a
vehicle now, that was for damn sure. He wasn't in town,
and he hadn't left on a bus. Therefore he had a vehicle,
and probably had had one all along.

Then Emerson read the final sheet: James Barr had
been in Alexandra Dupree's apartment. What the hell
was that about?

According to Ann Yanni's road maps Franklin's office
was dead centre in a tangle of streets right in the heart
of the city. Not an ideal destination.

Not by any means. Construction, the start of rush
hour, slow traffic on surface streets. Reacher was going
to be putting a lot of trust in the tint in the Ford Motor
Company's glass. That was for sure.

He started the motor and put the roof back up. Then he
eased off the turnout and headed south. He repassed
the Oliver place after twelve minutes, turned west on the
county road, and then south again on the four-lane into
town.

Emerson went back to Bellantonio's cell phone report.

Reacher had called Helen Rodin. They had business.

They had matters to discuss. He would go back to her,
sooner or later. Or she would go to him. He picked up
the phone. Spoke to his despatcher.

'Put an unmarked car on Helen Rodin's office,' he said.

'If she leaves the building, have her followed.'

Reacher drove past the motor court. He stayed low in
the seat and glanced sideways. No sign of any activity.

No obvious surveillance. He passed the barbershop,
and the gun store. Traffic slowed him as he approached
the raised highway. Then it slowed him more, to walking
speed. His face was feet away from the pedestrians on
his right. Feet away from the stalled drivers on his left.

Four lanes of traffic, the two inbound lanes moving
slow, the two outbound lanes static.

He wanted to get away from the sidewalk. He put his
turn signal on and forced his way into the next lane. The
driver behind his shoulder wasn't happy. Don't sweat it,
Reacher thought. 'I learned to drive in a deuce-and-a-

half. Time was when I would have rolled right over you.

The left-hand lane was moving a little faster. Reacher
crept past cars on his right. Glanced ahead. There was a
police cruiser three cars in front. In the right-hand lane.

There was a green light in the distance. Traffic in the left-hand lane was approaching it slowly. Traffic in the right-hand lane was approaching it slower still. Each
successive car reached the painted line and paused a
moment and then jumped the gap. Nobody wanted to
block the box. Now Reacher was two cars behind the
cop. He hung back. The irritated guy behind him
honked. Reacher inched forward. Now he was one car
behind the cop.

The light went orange.

The car in front of Reacher sprinted.

The light went red.

The cop stopped on the line and Reacher stopped
directly alongside him.

He put his elbow on the console and cupped his head
in his hand. Spread his fingers wide and covered as
much of his face as he could. Stared straight head, up
under the header rail, looking at the light, willing it to
change.

Helen Rodin rode down two floors in the elevator and
met Ann Yanni in the NBC reception area. NBC was
paying for Franklin's time, so it was only fair that Yanni
should be at the conference. They rode down to the
garage together and got into Helen's Saturn. Came up
the ramp and out into the sunshine. Helen glanced right
and made a left. Didn't register the grey Impala that
moved off the kerb twenty yards behind her.

The light stayed red an awful long time. Then it went
green and the guy behind Reacher honked and the cop
turned to look. Reacher took off through his field of
vision and didn't look back. He filtered into a left-turn
lane and the cop car swept past on his right. Reacher
watched it jam up again ahead. He didn't want to go
through the side-by-side thing again so he stuck with
the left turn. Found himself back in the street with
Martha's grocery on it. It was clogged with slow traffic.

He shifted on the seat and checked his pants pocket.

Sifted through the coins by feel. Found a quarter.

Debated with himself, twenty yards, thirty, forty.

Yes.

He pulled into Martha's tiny lot. Left the engine running
and slid out of the seat and danced round the hood to
the pay phone on the wall. He put his quarter in the slot
and took out Emerson's torn card. Chose the station
house number and dialled.

'Help you?' the desk guy said.

'Police?' Reacher asked.

'Go ahead, sir.'

Reacher kept his voice fast and light, rushed and low.

'That guy on the wanted poster? The thing you guys
were passing around?'

'Yes, sir?'

'He's right here, right now.'

'Where?'

'In my drive-through, the one on the four-lane north of
town next to the tyre store. He's inside right now, at the
counter, eating.' 'You sure it's the guy?'

'Looks just like the picture.'

'Does he have a car?'

'Big red Dodge pickup.'

'Sir, what's your name?'

'Tony Lazzeri,' Reacher said. Anthony Michael Lazzeri,
batted.273 in 118 appearances at second base in 1935.

Second-place finish. Reacher figured he would need to
move around the diamond soon. The Yankees hadn't
had enough second basemen, or enough non-championship years. 'We're on our way, sir,' the desk
cop said.

Reacher hung up and slid back into the Mustang. Sat
still until he heard the first sirens battling north.

Helen Rodin was halfway down Second Street when
she caught a commotion in her mirror. A grey Impala
sedan lurched out of the lane three cars behind her and
pulled a crazy U-turn through the traffic and took off
back the way it had come. 'Asshole,' she said.

Ann Yanni twisted in her seat.

'Cop car,' she said. 'You can tell by the antennas.'

Reacher made it to Franklin's place about ten minutes
late. It was a two-storey brick building. The lower floor
looked like some kind of a light industrial unit,
abandoned. It had steel shutters over its doors and
windows.

But the upstairs windows had Venetian blinds with
lights behind them. There was an outside staircase
leading to an upper door. The door had a white plastic
plate on it: Franklin Investigations. There was a parking
apron at street level, just a patch of blacktop one car
deep and about six wide. Helen Rodin's green Saturn
was there, and a blue Honda Civic, and a black Chevy
Suburban so long that it was overhanging the sidewalk
by a foot. The Suburban was Franklin's, Reacher
guessed. The Honda was Rosemary Barr's, maybe.

He drove past the place without slowing and circled
the block. Saw nothing he didn't want to see. So he
slotted the Mustang next to the Saturn and got out and
locked it. Ran up the staircase and went in the door
without knocking. He found himself in a short hallway
with a kitchenette to his right and what he guessed was
a bathroom to his left. Up ahead he could hear voices in
a large room. He went in and found Franklin at a desk,
Helen Rodin and Rosemary Barr in two chairs huddled
in conversation, and Ann Yanni looking out the window
at her car. All four turned as he came in. 'Do you know
any medical terminology?' Helen asked him.

'Like what?'

'PA,' she said. 'A doctor wrote it. Some kind of an
abbreviation.'

Reacher glanced at her. Then at Rosemary Barr.

'Let me guess,' he said. 'The hospital diagnosed
James Barr. Probably a mild case.'

'Early onset,' Rosemary said. 'Whatever it is.'

'How did you know?' Helen asked.