One Shot (60 page)

And waited.

The kettle boiled after five minutes. The whistle started
low and quiet, and then the note and the volume rose to
full blast. Within ten seconds the second floor of the
house was full of an insane shrieking. Ten seconds
after that, the door on Reacher's right opened. A small
man stepped out. Reacher let him take a pace forward
and then spun him round and jammed the Smith 60 hard
in the base of his throat.

And stared.

The Zee. He was a wide, ancient, twisted, stooped,
battered old man. A wraith.

Barely human. He was covered in livid scars and
patches of discoloured skin.

His face was lined and drooping and seething with
rage and hatred and cruelty.

He was unarmed. His ruined hands didn't seem
capable of holding a weapon. Reacher forced him down
the hallway. Into the kitchen, backwards. To the stove.

The noise from the kettle was unbearable. Reacher used
his left hand and killed the flame. Then he hauled the
Zee back towards the living room. The kettle's whistle
died away, like an air raid siren winding down. The
house went quiet again. 'It's over,' Reacher said. 'You
lost'

'It's never over,' the Zee replied. Hoarse voice, low,
guttural.

'Guess again,' Reacher said. He kept the Smith hard
against the Zee's throat.

Too low and too close for him to see it. He eased the
hammer back. Slowly, carefully. Deliberately. Loudly.

Click-click-click-crunch. An unmistakable sound. 'I'm
eighty years old,' the Zee said.

'I don't care if you're a hundred,' Reacher said. You're
still going down.'

'Idiot,' the Zee said back. 'I meant I've survived things
worse than you.

Since long before you were born.' 'Nobody's worse
than me.'

'Don't flatter yourself. You're nothing.'

'You think?' Reacher said. 'You were alive this morning
and you won't be tomorrow. After eighty years. That
makes me something, don't you think?' No answer.

'It's over,' Reacher said. 'Believe me. Long and winding
road, OK, I understand all of that, but this is the end of it.

Had to happen sometime.'

No response.

'You know when my birthday is?' Reacher asked.

'Obviously not.'

'It's in October. You know what day?'

'Of course not.' ¦You're going to find out the hard way.

I'm counting in my head. When I reach my birthday, I'm
going to pull the trigger.' He started counting in his
head.

First, second. He watched the Zee's eyes. Fifth, sixth,
seventh, eighth. No response. Tenth, eleventh, twelfth.

'What do you want?' the Zee said.

Negotiation time.

'I want to talk,' Reacher said.

'Talk?'

'The twelfth,' Reacher said. 'That's how long you
lasted. Then you gave it up.

You know why? Because you want to survive. It's the
deepest instinct you've got. Obviously. Otherwise how
would you have gotten as old as you are? It's probably
a deeper instinct than I could ever understand. A reflex,
a habit, roll the dice, stay alive, make the next move, take
the next chance. It's in your DNA. It's what you are.' 'So?

'

'So now we've got ourselves a competition. What you
are, against what I am.'

'And what are you?'

'I'm the guy who just threw Chenko out a third-floor
window. After crushing Vladimir to death with my bare
hands. Because I didn't like what they did to innocent
people. So now you've got to pit your strong desire to
survive against my strong desire to shoot you in the
head and piss in the bullet hole.' No response.

'One shot,' Reacher said. 'In the head. Lights out.

That's your choice.

Another day, another roll of the dice. Or not. As the
case may be.' He saw calculation in the Zee's eyes.

Assessment, evaluation, speculation.

'I could throw you down the stairs,' he said. "You could
crawl over and take a look at Vladimir. I cut his throat
afterwards. Just for fun. That's who I am.

So don't think I don't mean what I say. I'll do it and I'll
sleep like a baby the rest of my life.' What do you want?'

the Zee asked again.

'Help with a problem.'

'What problem?'

'There's an innocent man I need to get out of the
prison ward. So I need you to tell the truth to a detective
called Emerson. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth. I need you to finger Chenko for the
shooting, and Vladimir for the girl, and whoever it was
for Ted Archer. And whatever else you've done. The
whole nine yards. Including how you and Linsky set it
all up.' A flicker in the Zee's eyes. 'Pointless. I'd get the
death penalty.'

'Yes, you would,' Reacher said. 'That's for damn sure.

But you'd still be alive tomorrow. And the next day, and
the next. The appeals process lasts for ever here. Ten
years, sometimes. You might get lucky. There might be a
mistrial, there might be a jailbreak, you might get a
pardon, there might be a revolution, or an earthquake.'

'Unlikely.'

'Very,' Reacher said. 'But isn't that who you are? A guy
who will take the tiniest slim fragment of a chance to live
another minute, as opposed to no chance at all?'

No response.

'You already answered me once,' Reacher said. 'When
you quit the birthday game on the twelfth of October.

That was pretty fast. There are thirty-one days in
October. Law of averages said you'd be OK until the
fifteenth or the sixteenth. A gambler would have waited
for the twentieth. But you didn't get past the twelfth. Not
because you're a coward. Nobody could accuse you of
that. But because you're a survivor. That's who you are.

Now what I want is some practical confirmation.'

No response.

'Thirteenth,' Reacher said. 'Fourteenth, fifteenth,
sixteenth.'

'OK,' the Zee said. 'You win. I'll talk to the detective.'

Reacher pinned him against the hallway wall with the
Smith. Took out his phone. 'Gunny?'

'Here.'

'Come on in, all of you. I'll open the door. And
Franklin? Wake those guys up, like we talked about
before.'

The phone went dead. Franklin had killed the comms
net to make his calls.

Reacher tied the Zee's wrists and ankles with wire torn
from table lamps and left him on the living room floor.

Then he went downstairs. Glanced into the surveillance
room. Vladimir was on his back in a lake of blood. His
eyes were open. So was his throat. Reacher could see
bone. Sokolov was slumped facedown on the table. His
blood was all over the place. Some of it must have
seeped into the wiring, because the south monitor had
shorted out. The other three pictures were still there,
green and ghostly. On the west monitor four figures
were visible on the driveway. Yellow haloes, red cores.

Close together, moving fast. Reacher turned the lights
off and closed up the room. Walked on down the
hallway and opened the front door. Yanni came in first.

Then Cash. Then Rosemary. Then Helen. She was
barefoot and carrying her shoes in her hand. She was
covered in mud. She stopped in the doorway and
hugged Reacher hard. Held him for a long moment and
then moved on. 'What's that smell?' Yanni asked.

'Blood,' Cash said. 'And other organic fluids of various
kinds.'

'Are they all dead?'

'All but one,' Reacher said.

He led the way upstairs. Stopped Rosemary outside
the living room.

'The Zee is in there,' he said. 'You OK about seeing
him?'

She nodded.

'I want to see him,' she said. 'I want to ask him a
question.'

She stepped into the living room. The Zee was on the
floor, where Reacher had left him. Rosemary stood over
him, quiet, dignified, not gloating. Just curious. 'Why?'

she said. 'I mean, to an extent I understand what you
thought you had to do. From your warped perspective.

But why didn't you just use Chenko from the highway?

Why did you have to bring my brother down?' The Zee
didn't answer. He just stared into space, seeing
something,

but

probably

not

Rosemary

Barr.

'Psychology,' Reacher said.

'His?'

'Ours. The public's.'

'How?'

'There had to be a story,' Reacher said. 'No, there was
a story, and he had to control what the story was about.

If he gave up a shooter, then the story would be about
the shooter. No shooter, the story would have been
about the victims. And if the story had been about the
victims, too many questions would have been asked.'

'So he sacrificed James.'

'That's what he does. There's a long list.'

'Why?'

'One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.'

'Joseph Stalin,' Yanni said.

Reacher kicked the Zee aside and pulled the sofa away
from the window about four feet. Grabbed the Zee's
collar and hauled him up and dumped him on one end.

Got him sitting up straight against the arm.

'Our star witness,' he said.

He told Cash to perch on the window sill behind the
sofa. Told Yanni to go find three dining chairs. Pushed
armchairs against the side walls. Yanni came back three
separate times dragging chairs behind her. Reacher put
them in a line facing the sofa. He ended up with a
square arrangement, sofa, dining chairs, armchairs off
to the sides.

His clothes were nearly dry. Just a little dampness
where the seams were thick. He ran his fingers through
his hair. Patted it down. Checked his watch.

Nearly four in the morning. Least resistance. A
biorhythm thing.

'Now we wait,' he said.

They waited less than thirty minutes. Then they heard
cars on the road far away in the distance. Tyres on the
blacktop, engine noise, exhaust pipes. The sounds
grew louder. The cars slowed. They crunched onto the
limestone driveway. There were four of them. Reacher
went downstairs and opened the door. Saw Franklin's
black Suburban. Saw Emerson sliding out of a grey
Crown Vic. Saw a compact woman with short dark hair
getting out of a blue Ford Taurus. Donna Bianca, he
assumed. He saw Alex Rodin climbing out of a silver
BMW. Rodin locked it with his remote. He was the only
one who did.

Reacher stood aside and let them gather in the
hallway. Then he led them upstairs. He put Alex Rodin
and Donna Bianca and Emerson in the dining chairs,
left to right. He put Franklin in an armchair next to Yanni.

Rosemary Barr and Helen Rodin were in armchairs on
the other side of the room. Helen was looking at her
father. He was looking at her. Cash was on the window
sill. Reacher stepped away and leaned up in the
doorway.

'Start talking,' Reacher said.

The Zee stayed silent.

'I can send these guys away again,' Reacher said.

'Just as easily as I brought them here. Then I'll start
counting again. At the seventeenth.'