One Shot (27 page)

'Correct,' Reacher said.

'But there'll be hundreds of cars.'

'You can narrow it down some. You're looking for a
sedan. Something too low-slung to get itself down a
farm track.' 'The puppet master really exists, doesn't
he?'

'No other explanation for how it went down.'

'Alan Danuta is probably right, you know,' Helen said.

'My father will trade Barr for the puppet master. He'd be
a fool not to.' Reacher said nothing.

"Which means Barr is going to walk,' Helen said. 'You
understand that, right?

There's no alternative. The prosecution's legal
problems are overwhelming.'

Reacher said nothing.

'I'm not happy about it either,' Helen said. 'But for me
it's just a PR problem. I can spin my way out of it. At
least I hope I can.

I can blame it all on the way the jail was run. I can claim
that it wasn't me who got him off.' 'But?' Reacher said.

'What are you going to do? You came here to bury him
and he's going to walk.'

'I don't know what I'm going to do,' Reacher said.

'What choices do I have?'

'Only two that I'm scared of. One, you could give up on
helping me find the puppet master. I can't do it alone
and Emerson won't even be willing to try.'

'And two?'

'You could settle things with Barr yourself.'

'That's for sure.'

'But you can't do that. You'd go to prison for life if you
were lucky.' 'If I got caught.'

'You would get caught. I would know you did it.'

Reacher smiled. 'You'd rat me out?'

'I would have to,' Helen said.

'Not if you were my lawyer. You couldn't say a word.'

'I'm not your lawyer.'

'I could hire you.'

'Rosemary Barr would know too, and she'd rat you out
in a heartbeat. And Franklin. He heard you tell the story.'

Reacher nodded.

'I don't know what I'm going to do,' he said again. 'How
do we find this guy?'

'Like you said, why would I want to?'

'Because I don't think you're the type who settles for
half a loaf.' Reacher said nothing.

'I think you want the truth,' Helen said. 'I don't think
you like it when the wool gets pulled over your eyes.

You don't like being played for a sucker.'

Reacher said nothing.

'Plus this whole situation stinks,' Helen said. 'There
were six victims here.

The five who died and Barr himself.' 'That expands the
definition of victimhood a little too far for me.'

'Dr Niebuhr expects we'll find a pre-existing
relationship. Probably recent.

Some new friend. We could go at it that way.' 'Barr told
me he doesn't have any new friends,' Reacher said.

'Only has one or two old friends.' Was he telling the
truth?'

'I think he was.'

'So is Niebuhr wrong?'

'Niebuhr's guessing. He's a shrink. All they do is
guess.'

'I could ask Rosemary.'

Would she know his friends?'

'Probably. They're pretty close.'

'So get a list,' Reacher said.

'Is Dr Mason guessing too?'

'No question. But in her case I think she's guessing
right'

'If Niebuhr's wrong about the friend, what do we do?'

'We go proactive.'

'How?'

'There had to have been a guy following me last night
and I know for sure there was one following me this
morning. I saw him out there in the plaza. So the next
time I see him I'll have a word with him. He'll tell me who
he's working for.' 'Just like that?'

'People usually tell me what I want to know.'

'Why?'

'Because I ask them nicely.'

'Don't forget to ask Eileen Hutton nicely.'

'I'll see you around,' Reacher said.

He walked south, beyond his hotel, and found a cheap
place to eat dinner. Then he walked north, slowly,
through the plaza, past the black glass tower, under the
highway spur, all the way back to the sports bar.

Altogether he was on the street the best part of an hour,
and he saw nobody behind him. No damaged men in
odd suits. Nobody at all. The sports bar was half empty
and there was baseball on every screen. He found a
corner table and watched the Cardinals play the Astros
in Houston. It was a listless late season game between
two teams well out of contention. During the
commercial breaks he watched the door. Saw nobody.

Tuesday was even quieter than Monday, out there in
the heartland.

Grigor Linsky dialled his cell.

'He's back in the sports bar,' he said.

'Did he see you?' the Zee asked.

'No.'

Why is he in the sports bar again?'

'No reason. He needed a destination, that's all. He
paraded around for nearly an hour, trying to make me
show myself.' Silence for a beat.

'Leave him there,' the Zee said. 'Come in and we'll talk.'

Alex Rodin called Emerson at home. Emerson was
eating a late dinner with his wife and his two daughters,
and he wasn't thrilled about taking the call. But he did.

He went out to the hallway and sat on the second-to-bottom stair, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees,
the phone trapped between his shoulder and his ear.

'We need to do something about this Jack Reacher guy,'

Rodin said to him.

'I don't see how he's a huge problem,' Emerson said.

'Maybe he wants to, but he can't make the facts go
away. We've got more than we need on Barr.' 'This is not
about facts now,' Rodin said. 'It's about the amnesia. It's
about how hard the defence is going to push it.' "That's
up to your daughter.'

'He's a bad influence on her. I've been reading the case
law. It's a real grey area. The test isn't really about
whether Barr remembers the day in question.

It's about whether he understands the process, right
now, today, and whether we've got enough other stuff
on him to convict without his direct testimony.'

'I would say we do.'

'Me too. But Helen needs to swallow that. She needs to
agree. But she's got that guy standing over her all the
time, turning her head. I know her. She's not going to
suck it up until he's out of the picture.' 'I don't see what I
can do.'

'I want you to bring him in.'

'I can't,' Emerson said. 'Not without a complaint.'

Rodin went quiet.

'Well, keep an eye on him,' he said. 'He spits on the
sidewalk, I want you to bring him in and do something
to him.'

'This isn't the Wild West,' Emerson said. 'I can't run him
out of town.'

'An arrest might be enough. We need something that
breaks the spell. He's pushing Helen where she doesn't
want to go. I know her. On her own she'll give Barr up,
no question.'

Linsky was in pain on the way back to his car. An hour
on his feet was about all he could take. A long time ago
the bones in his spine had been methodically cracked
with an engineer's ball-peen hammer, one after the
other, starting with the coccyx and moving upward
through all the lower vertebrae, and not in rapid
sequence. Generally one bone had been allowed to heal
before the next was broken. When the last had healed,
they had started over again.

Playing the xylophone, they had called it. Playing
scales. Ultimately he had lost count of how many scales
they had played on him.

But he never spoke of it. Worse had happened to the
Zee.

The Cadillac had a soft seat and it was a relief to get in.

It had a quiet motor and a gentle ride and a nice radio.

Cadillacs were the kind of thing that made America such
a wonderful place, along with the trusting population
and the hamstrung police departments. Linsky had
spent time in several different countries and there was
no question in his mind about which was the most
satisfactory. Elsewhere he had walked or run or crawled
through dirt or hauled carts and sleds by hand. Now he
drove a Cadillac.

He drove it to the Zee's house, which stood eight miles
north and west of town, next to his stone-crushing
plant. The plant was a forty-year-old industrial facility
built on a rich limestone seam that had been discovered
under farmland. The house was a big fancy palace built
a hundred years ago when the landscape was still
unspoiled, for a rich dry goods merchant. It was
bourgeois and affected in every way, but it was a
comfortable house in the same way that the Cadillac
was a comfortable car.

Best of all it stood alone in the centre of many acres of
flat land. Once there had been beautiful gardens, but the
Zee had razed the trees and levelled the shrubberies to
create a completely flat and open vista all round. There
were no fences, because how could the Zee bear to live
another day behind wire? For the same reason there
were no extra locks, no bolts, no bars. The openness
was the Zee's gift to himself. But it was also excellent
security in its own right. There were surveillance
cameras.

Nobody

could

approach

the

house

undetected. By day visitors were clearly visible at least
two hundred yards away and after dark night-vision
enhancement picked them up only a little closer.

Linsky parked and eased himself out of the car. The
night was quiet. The stone-crushing plant shut down at
seven every evening and sat brooding and silent until
dawn. Linsky glanced in its direction and walked
towards the house. The front door opened before he got
near it. Warm light spilled out and he saw that Vladimir
himself had come down to welcome him, which meant
that Chenko had to be there too, upstairs, which meant
that the Zee had assembled all his top boys, which
meant that the Zee was worried.

Linsky took a breath, but he walked inside without a
moment's hesitation.

After all, what could be done to him that hadn't been
done to him before? It was different for Vladimir and
Chenko, but for men with Linsky's age and experience
nothing was entirely unimaginable any more.

Vladimir said nothing. Just closed the door again and
followed Linsky upstairs. It was a three-storey house.

The ground floor was used for nothing at all, except
surveillance. All the rooms were completely empty,
except one that had four TV screens on a long table,
showing wide-angle views north, east, south and west.

Sokolov would be in there, watching them. Or Raskin.

They alternated twelve-hour shifts. The second floor of
the house had a kitchen, a dining room, a living room,
and an office. The third floor had bedrooms and
bathrooms. The second floor was where all the
business was done.

Linsky could hear the Zee's voice from the living room,
calling him. He went straight in without knocking. The
Zee was in an armchair with a glass of tea clamped
between his palms. Chenko was sprawled on a sofa.

Vladimir pushed in behind Linsky and sat down next to
Chenko.

Linsky stood still and waited.

'Sit, Grigor,' the Zee said. 'Nobody's upset at you. It
was the boy's failure.'