One Shot (47 page)

'Intuition,' Reacher said.

'What is it?'

'Later,' Reacher said. 'Let's do this in order.' He turned
to Franklin. 'Tell me what you know about the victims.'

'Five random people,' Franklin said. 'No connection
between any of them. No real connection with anything
at all.

Certainly no connection to James Barr. I think you
were absolutely right. He didn't shoot them for any
reason of his own.' 'No, I was absolutely wrong,'

Reacher said. 'Thing is, James Barr didn't shoot them
at all.'

Grigor Linsky stepped back into a shadowed doorway
and dialled his phone.

'I followed a hunch,' he said.

'Which was?' the Zee asked.

'With the cops at the lawyer's office, I figured the
soldier wouldn't be able to go see her. But obviously
they still have business. So I thought maybe she would
go to him. And she did. I followed her. They're together
in the private detective's office right now. With the sister.

And that woman from the television news.' 'Are the
others with you?'

'We've got the whole block covered. East, west, north
and south.' 'Sit tight,' the Zee said. 'I'll get back to you.'

Helen Rodin said, 'You want to explain that statement?'

'The evidence is rock solid,' Franklin said.

Ann Yanni smiled. A story.

Rosemary Barr just stared.

'You bought your brother a radio,' Reacher said to her.

'A Bose. For the ballgames. He told me that. Did you
ever buy him anything else?' 'Like what?'

'Like clothes.'

'Sometimes,' she said.

'Pants?'

'Sometimes,' she said.

'What size?'

'Size?' she repeated, blankly.

'What size pants does your brother wear?'

'Thirty-four waist, thirty-four leg.'

'Exactly,' Reacher said. 'He's relatively tall.'

'How does this help us?' Helen asked.

'You know anything about numbers games?' Reacher
asked her. 'Old-fashioned illegal numbers, state
lotteries, the Power ball, things like that?' "What about
them?'

'What's the hardest part of them?'

'Winning,' Ann Yanni said.

Reacher smiled. 'From the players' point of view, sure.

But the hardest part for the organizers is picking truly
random numbers. True randomness is very hard for
humans to achieve. In the old days numbers runners
used the business pages in the newspapers. They
would agree in advance, maybe the second page of the
stock prices, maybe the second column, the last two
figures in the first six prices quoted. Or the last six, or
the middle six, or whatever. That came close to true
randomness. Now the big lotteries use complicated
machines. But you can find mathematicians who can
prove the results aren't truly random. Because humans
built the machines.'

'How does this help us?' Helen said.

'Just a train of thought,' Reacher said. 'I sat all
afternoon in Ms Yanni's car, enjoying the sun, thinking
about how hard it is to achieve true randomness.' 'Your
train is on the wrong track,' Franklin said. 'James Barr
shot five people. The evidence is crushing.' 'You were a
cop,' Reacher said.

'You put yourself in danger. Stake-outs, take-downs,
high-pressure situations, moments of extreme stress.

What's the first thing you did afterwards?'

Franklin glanced at the women.

"Went to the bathroom,' he said.

'Correct,' Reacher said. 'Me too. But James Barr didn't.

Bellantonio's report from Barr's house shows cement
dust in the garage, the kitchen, the living room, the
bedroom, and the basement. But not in the bathroom.

So he got home, but he didn't take a leak until after he
changed and showered? And how could he shower
anyway without going into the bathroom?' 'Maybe he
stopped on the way.'

'He was never there.'

'He was there, Reacher. What about the evidence?'

'There's no evidence that says he was there.'

'Are you nuts?'

'There's evidence that says his van was there, and his
shoes, and his pants, and his coat, and his gun, and his
ammo, and his quarter, but there's nothing that says he
was there.' 'Someone impersonated him?' Ann Yanni
asked.

'Down to the last detail,' Reacher said. 'Drove his car,
wore his shoes and his clothes, used his gun.' 'This is
fantasy,' Franklin said.

'It explains the raincoat,' Reacher said. 'A big roomy
garment that covered everything except the denim
jeans? Why else wear a raincoat on a warm dry day?'

¦Who?' Rosemary asked.

"Watch,' Reacher said.

He stood still, and then he took a single pace forward.

'My pants are thirty-seven-inch legs,' he said. 'I
crossed the new part of the garage in thirty-five strides.

James Barr has a thirty-four-inch leg, which means he
should have done it in about thirty-eight strides. But
Bellantonio's footprint count shows forty-eight strides.'

'A very short person,' Helen said.

'Charlie,' Rosemary said.

'I thought so, too,' Reacher said. 'But then I went to
Kentucky. Initially because I wanted to confirm
something else. I got around to thinking that maybe
James Barr just wasn't good enough. I looked at the
scene. It was tough shooting. And fourteen years ago
he was good, but he wasn't great. And when I saw him
in the hospital the skin on his right shoulder was
unmarked. And to shoot as well as he apparently did, a
guy's got to practise. And a guy who practises builds up
bruising on his shoulder. Like a callus. He didn't have it.

So I figured a guy who started out average could only
have gotten worse with time. Especially if he wasn't
practising much. That's logical, right?

Maybe he'd gotten to the point where he couldn't have
done the thing on Friday. Through a simple lack of
ability. That's what I was thinking. So I went down to
Kentucky to find out for sure how much worse he'd
gotten.'

'And?' Helen asked.

'He'd gotten better,' Reacher said. 'Way better. Not
worse. Look at this.' He took the target out of his shirt
pocket and unfolded it. 'This is the latest of thirty-two
sessions over the last three years. And this is much
better than he was shooting when he was in the army
fourteen years ago. Which is weird, right? He's fired
only three hundred and twenty rounds in the last three
years, and he's great? Whereas he was firing two
thousand a week back when he was only average?'

'So what does this mean?'

'He went down there with Charlie, every time. And the
guy who runs the range is a Marine champion. And a
real anal pack rat. He files all the used targets.

Which means that Barr had at least two witnesses to
what he was scoring, every time.'

'I'd want witnesses,' Franklin said. 'If I was shooting
like that.'

'It's not possible to get better by not practising,'

Reacher said. 'I think the truth is he had actually gotten
really bad. And I think his ego couldn't take it. Any
shooter is competitive. He knew he was lousy now, and
he couldn't face it, and he wanted to cover it up. He
wanted to show off.'

Franklin pointed at the target. 'Doesn't look lousy to
me.'

'This is faked,' Reacher said. "You're going to give this
to Bellantonio and Bellantonio is going to prove it to
you.'

'Faked how?'

'I'll bet this was done with a handgun. Nine-millimetre,
from point-blank range. If Bellantonio measures the
holes, my guess is he'll find they're forty-six thousands
of an inch bigger than.308 holes. And if he tests the
paper, he'll find gunpowder residue on it. Because my
guess is James Barr took a stroll down the range and
made these holes from an inch away, not three hundred
yards. Every time.'

'That's a stretch.'

'It's simple metaphysics. Barr was never this good.

And it's fair to assume he must have gotten worse. If
he'd gotten a little worse, he'd have owned up to it. But
he didn't own up to it, so we can assume he'd gotten a
lot worse. Bad enough to be seriously embarrassed
about it. Maybe bad enough that he couldn't hit the
paper at all.'

Nobody spoke.

'It's a theory that proves itself,' Reacher said. 'To fake
the score because of embarrassment proves he
couldn't shoot well any more. If he couldn't shoot well
any more, he didn't do the thing on Friday.'

You're just guessing,' Franklin said.

Reacher nodded. 'I was. But I'm not now. Now I know
for sure. I fired a round down in Kentucky. The guy
made me, like a rite of passage. I was full of caffeine. I
was twitching like crazy. Now I know James Barr will
have been way worse.'

'Why?' Rosemary asked.

'Because he has Parkinson's Disease,' Reacher said
to her. 'PA means Paralysis Agitans, and Paralysis
Agitans is what doctors call Parkinson's Disease. Your
brother is getting sick, I'm afraid. Shaking and twitching.

And no way on earth can you fire a rifle accurately with
Parkinson's Disease. My opinion, not only didn't he do
the thing on Friday, he couldn't possibly have done it'

Rosemary went quiet. Good news and bad news. She
glanced at the window. Looked at the floor. She was
dressed like a widow. Black silk blouse, black pencil
skirt, black nylons, black patent leather shoes with a low
heel. 'Maybe that's why he was so angry all the time,'

she said. 'Maybe he felt it coming on. Felt helpless and
out of control. His body started to let him down. He
would have hated that. Anyone would.' Then she looked
straight at Reacher.

'I told you he was innocent,' she said.

'Ma'am, I apologize unreservedly,' Reacher said. 'You
were right. He reformed.

He kept to his bargain. He deserves credit. And I'm
sorry he's sick.' 'Now you've got to help him. You
promised.'

'I am helping him. Since Monday night I haven't done
anything else.'

'This is crazy,' Franklin said.

'No, it's exactly the same as it always was,' Reacher
said. 'It's someone setting James Barr up for the fall. But
instead of actually making him do it, they just made it
look like he did it. That's the only practical difference
here.' 'But is it possible?' Ann Yanni asked.

"Why not? Think it through. Walk it through.'

Ann Yanni walked it through. She rehearsed little
movements, slowly, thoughtfully, like an actress. 'He
dresses in Barr's clothes, and shoes, and maybe finds a
quarter in a jar. Or in a pocket somewhere. He wears
gloves, so as not to mess up Barr's fingerprints. He's
already taken the traffic cone from Barr's garage, maybe
the day before. He gets the rifle from the basement.

It's already been loaded, by Barr himself, previously.

He drives to town in Barr's minivan. He leaves all the
clues. Covers himself in cement dust. Comes back to
the house and puts everything away and leaves. Fast,
not even taking the time to use the bathroom. Then
James Barr comes home some time later and walks into
a trap he doesn't even know is there.' 'That's exactly
how I see it,' Reacher said.

'But where was Barr at the time?' Helen said.