One Shot (35 page)

'And Barr doesn't know Jeb Oliver and doesn't use
drugs.'

'You believe him?'

'Yes, I do,' Helen said. 'Really. Right now I believe
everything he says. It's like he spent fourteen years
turning his life around and now he can't believe he went
back. I think he's as upset about all this as anyone.'

'Except the victims.'

'Give him a break, Reacher. Something weird was
going on.'

'Does this guy Charlie know about Kuwait City?'

'Barr wouldn't say. But I think he does.' "Where does
he live?'

'Barr doesn't know.'

'He doesn't know?'

'He just sees him around. He just shows up now and
then. Like I said, I think he's going to be hard to find.'

Reacher said nothing.

'Did you speak to Eileen Hutton?' Helen asked.

'She's no threat. The army is keeping the lid on.'

'Did you find the guy that was following you?'

'No,' Reacher said. 'I didn't see him again. They must
have pulled him off.'

'So we're nowhere.'

'We're closer than we were. We can start to see a
shape. We can see four guys, at least. One, the old guy
in the suit. Two, this guy called Charlie. Three, someone
big and very strong and left-handed.' 'Why him?'

'He killed the girl last night. The old guy is too old and
it sounds like Charlie might be too small. And the
physical evidence suggests a left-handed blow.' 'And
number four is the puppet master.'

Reacher nodded again. 'In the shadows somewhere,
making plans, pulling strings. We can assume he
doesn't run around doing this kind of stuff himself.' 'But
how can we get to him? If he's pulled the guy off your
tail, we can assume he's pulled Charlie back, too.

They're hunkering down.'

'There's another way. A big wide highway.'

'Where?'

'We missed something very obvious,' Reacher said.

'We spent all this time looking down the wrong end of
the gun. All we've done is look at who fired it.' 'What
should we have done?'

'We should have thought harder.'

'About what?'

'James Barr fired four times in Kuwait City. And he fired
six times here.'

'OK,' Helen said. 'He fired two more shots here. So?'

'But he didn't,' Reacher said. 'Not really. Not if you
think about it laterally. Truth is he fired four fewer shots
here.' 'That's ridiculous. Six is two more than four. Not
lour fewer.'

'Kuwait City was very hot. Unbearable in the middle of
the day. You had to be nuts to be out and about. The
streets were empty most of the time.'

'So?'

'So in Kuwait City James Barr killed every live human
he saw. One, two, three, four, game over. The street was
deserted apart from our four guys. They were the only
people dumb enough to be out in the heat. And Barr
took them all. He ran the table. At the time it seemed
logical to me. He wanted to see the pink mist. It struck
me that maybe he might have been satisfied with seeing
it once, but apparently he wasn't. So it made some kind
of sense that if he didn't stop at one, he would go all the
way until he ran out of targets. And he did. In Kuwait
City, he ran out of targets.'

Helen Rodin said nothing.

'But he didn't run out of targets here,' Reacher said.

'There had to have been a dozen people in that
bottleneck. Or fifteen. More than ten, anyway. And he
had a ten-round magazine. But he stopped shooting
after six. Just stopped. He left four rounds in the gun.

They're listed right there in Bellantonio's dog and pony
show. And that's what I meant. He fired the most he
could fire in Kuwait City, and four less than the most he
could fire here. Which makes the psychology different
here. He chose not to run the table here. Why?'

'Because he was hurrying?'

'He had an autoloader. The voice mail recording shows
six shots in four seconds. Which means he could have
fired ten in less than seven seconds. Three seconds
wouldn't have made any kind of a difference to him.'

Helen said nothing.

'I asked him,' Reacher said. 'When I saw him in the
hospital. I asked him how he would have done it,
theoretically. Like a recon briefing. So he thought about
it. He knows the area. He said he would have parked on
the highway.

Behind the library. He said he would have buzzed the
window down and emptied the mag.'

Helen said nothing.

'But he didn't empty the mag,' Reacher said. 'He
stopped shooting after six.

Just stopped. Coldly and calmly. Which makes the
whole dynamic different. This wasn't a crazy man sent
out to terrorize the city on a dare. He wasn't pushed into
it just for the fun of the carnage. This wasn't random,
Helen. It wasn't psychotic. There was a specific, limited,
coherent purpose behind it. Which reverses the focus.

We should have seen it. We should have seen that this
whole thing is about the victims, not the shooter. They
weren't just unlucky people in the wrong place at the
wrong time.'

'They were targets?' Helen said.

'Carefully chosen,' Reacher said. 'And as soon as they
were safely down, Barr packed up and left. With four
bullets remaining. A random psycho episode wouldn't
have panned out like that. He'd have kept on pulling the
trigger until he clicked on empty. So this wasn't a spree.

It was an assassination.'

Silence in the office.

'We need to look at who the victims were,' Reacher
said. 'And we need to look at who wanted them dead.

That's what's going to lead us to where we need to be.'

Helen Rodin didn't move.

'And we need to do it real fast,' Reacher said. 'Because
I don't have much time and we already wasted the best
part of three days looking at everything ass-backward.'

The tired thirty-year-old doctor on the sixth floor of the
county hospital was finishing up his afternoon rounds.

He had left James Barr for last. Partly because he wasn't
expecting any dramatic change in his condition, and
partly because he didn't care anyway. Looking after sick
thieves and swindlers was bad enough, but looking
after a mass-murderer was absurd. Doubly absurd,
because straight after Barr was on his feet he was going
to be laid back down on a gurney and some other
doctor was going to come in and kill him.

But ethical obligations are hard to ignore. As is habit.

As is duty, and routine, and structure. So the doctor
went into Barr's room and picked up his chart. Took out
his pen. Glanced at the machines. Glanced at the
patient. He was awake. His eyes were moving.

Alert, the doctor wrote.

'Happy?' he asked.

'Not really,' Barr said.

Responsive, the doctor wrote.

Tough shit,' he said, and put his pen away.

Barr's right handcuff was rattling gently against the
cot rail. His right hand itself was trembling and slightly
cupped and the thumb and index finger were in
constant motion, like he was trying to roll an imaginary
ball of wax into a perfect sphere. 'Stop that,' the doctor
said.

'Stop what?'

'Your hand.'

'I can't.'

'Is that new?'

'A year or two.'

'Not just since you woke up?'

'No.'

The doctor looked at the chart. Age: Forty-one.

'Do you drink?' he asked.

'Not really,' Barr said. 'A sip sometimes, to help me
sleep.'

The doctor disbelieved him automatically and flipped
through the chart to the tox screen and the liver
function test. But the tox screen was clear and the liver
function was healthy. Not a drinker. Not an alcoholic.

Not even close.

'Have you seen your own physician recently?' he
asked.

'I don't have insurance,' Barr said.

'Stiffness in your arms and legs?'

'A little.'

'Does your other hand do that too?'

'Sometimes.'

The doctor took out his pen again and scribbled on the
bottom of the chart:

Observed tremor in right hand, not posttraumatic,
primary diagnosis alcohol unlikely, stiffness in limbs
present, possible early-onset PA? 'What's wrong with
me?' Barr asked.

'Shut up,' the doctor said. Then, duty done, he clipped
the chart back on the foot of the bed and walked out of
the room.

Helen Rodin searched through the evidence cartons
and came out with the formal specification of charges
against James Barr. Among many other technical
violations of the law the State of Indiana had listed five
counts of homicide in the first degree with aggravating
circumstances, and as due process required had gone
on to list the five alleged victims by name, sex, age,
address, and occupation.

Helen scanned the page, ran her fingers down the
columns for address and occupation. 'I don't see any
obvious connections,' she said.

'I didn't mean they were all targets,' Reacher said.

'Probably only one of them was. Two, at most. The
others were window dressing. An assassination,
disguised as a spree. That's my guess.' 'I'll get to work,'

she said.

'I'll see you tomorrow,' he said.

He used the fire stairs instead of the elevator and got
back to the garage unseen. He hustled up the ramp and
across the street and under the highway again. The
invisible man. Life in the shadows. He smiled. He
stopped. He decided to go look for a pay phone.

He found one on the side wall of a small grocery called
Martha's two blocks north of the cheap clothing store
he had used. The booth faced a wide alley that was
used as a narrow parking lot. There were six slanted
spaces full of six cars. Beyond them, a high brick wall
topped with broken glass. The alley turned ninety
degrees behind the grocery. He guessed it turned again
somewhere and let out on the next block south. Safe
enough, he thought.

He took Emerson's torn card out of his pocket. Chose
the cell number. Dialled the phone. Leaned his shoulder
against the wall and watched both ends of the alley at
once and listened to the purr of the ring tone in his ear.

'Yes?'

Emerson said.

'Guess who?' Reacher said.

'Reacher?'

'You named that tune in one.'

'Where are you?'

'I'm still in town.'

'Where?'

'Not far away.'

'You know we're looking for you, right?'

'I heard.'

'So you need to turn yourself in.'

'I don't think so.'

'Then we'll come find you,' Emerson said. 'Think you
can?'

'It'll be easy.'

"You know a guy called Franklin?'

'Sure I do.'

'Ask him how easy it'll be.'

'That was different. You could have been anywhere.'

'You got the motor court staked out?' There was a
pause. Emerson said nothing. 'Keep your people there,'

Reacher said. 'Maybe I'll be back. Or on the other hand,
maybe I won't' 'We'll find you.'