Lee Child - One Shot

“What about before the game? Earlier that day?”

“I don’t remember.”

“What would you normally be doing?”

“Not much. I don’t do much.”

“What happened in the Cardinals’ previous game?”

“I don’t recall.”

“What’s the next to last thing you remember?”

“I’m not sure. The driveway?”

“That was months ago.”

“I remember going out somewhere,” Barr said.

“When?”

“Not sure. Recently.”

“Alone?”

“Maybe with people. I’m not sure. Not sure where, either.”

Reacher said nothing. Just leaned back in his chair and listened to the quiet beep from the heart machine. It was running pretty fast. Both handcuffs were rattling.

“What’s in the IVs?” Barr asked.

Reacher squinted against the daylight and read the writing on the bags.

“Antibiotics,” he said.

“Not painkillers?”

“No.”

“I guess they think I don’t deserve any.”

Reacher said nothing.

“We go way back, right?” Barr said. “You and me?”

“Not really,” Reacher said.

“Not like we were friends.”

“You got that right.”

“But we were connected.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Weren’t we?” Barr asked.

“In a way,” Reacher said.

“So would you do something for me?” Barr asked. “As a favor?”

“Like what?” Reacher said.

“Pull the IV needles out of my hand.”

“Why?”

“So I can get an infection and die.”

“No,” Reacher said.

“Why not?”

“Not time yet,” Reacher said.

He stood up and put his chair back against the wall and walked out of the room. He processed out at the security desk and passed through the airlock and rode the elevator down to the street. Helen Rodin’s car wasn’t in the lot. She was already gone. She hadn’t waited for him. So he set out walking, all the way from the edge of town.

He picked his way past ten blocks of construction and went to the library first. It was getting late in the afternoon, but the library was still open. The sad woman at the desk told him where the old newspapers were kept. He started with the previous week’s stack of the same Indianapolis paper he had read on the bus. He ignored Sunday, Saturday, and Friday. He started with Thursday, Wednesday, and Tuesday, and he got a hit with the second paper he looked at. The Chicago Cubs had played a three-game series in St. Louis starting Tuesday. It was the series opener that had ended the way Barr had described. Tie game in the bottom of the ninth, a walk, a steal, a groundout, an error. The details were right there in Wednesday morning’s paper. A walk-off winning run without a hit in the inning. About ten in the evening, Tuesday. Barr had heard the announcers’ frenzied screams just sixty-seven hours before he opened fire.

Then Reacher backtracked all the way to the police station. Four blocks west, one block south. He wasn’t worried about its opening hours. It had looked like a 24/7 kind of a place to him. He went straight to the reception desk and claimed defense counsel’s right to another look at the evidence. The desk guy made a call to Emerson and then pointed Reacher straight to Bellantonio’s garage bay.

Bellantonio met him there and unlocked the door. Not much had changed, but Reacher noticed a couple of new additions. New sheets of paper, behind plastic, pinned above and below the original pages on the cork boards, like footnotes or addenda or appendices.

“Updates?” he asked.

“Always,” Bellantonio said. “We never sleep.”

“So what’s new?”

“Animal DNA,” Bellantonio said. “Exact match of Barr’s dog’s hair to the scene.”

“Where is the dog now?”

“Put to sleep.”

“That’s cold.”

“ That’s cold?”

“The damn dog didn’t do anything wrong.”

Bellantonio said nothing.

“What else?” Reacher asked.

“More tests on the fibers, and more ballistics. We’re beyond definite on everything. The Lake City ammo is relatively rare, and we’ve confirmed a purchase by Barr less than a year ago. In Kentucky.”

“He used a range down there.”

Bellantonio nodded. “We found that out, too.”

“Anything else?”

“The traffic cone came from the city’s construction department. We don’t know how or when.”

“Anything else?”

“I think that’s about it.”

“What about the negatives?”

“The negatives?”

“You’re giving me all the good news. What about the questions that didn’t get answered?”

“I don’t think there were any.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

Reacher glanced around the square of cork boards, one more time, and carefully.

“You play poker?” he asked.

“No.”

“Good decision. You’re a terrible liar.”

Bellantonio said nothing.

“You should start worrying,” Reacher said. “He slides, he’s going to sue your ass for the dog.”

“He won’t slide,” Bellantonio said.

“No,” Reacher said. “I don’t suppose he will.”

Emerson was waiting outside Bellantonio’s door. Jacket on, tie off. Frustration in his eyes, the way cops get when they’re snagged up in lawyer stuff.

“Did you see him?” he asked. “At the hospital?”

“He’s blank from Tuesday night onward,” Reacher said. “You’ve got a battle on your hands.”

“Terrific.”

“You should run safer jails.”

“Rodin will bring experts in.”

“His daughter already did.”

“There are legal precedents.”

“They go both ways, apparently.”

“You want to see that piece of shit back on the street?”

“Your screwup,” Reacher said. “Not mine.”

“As long as you’re happy.”

“Nobody’s happy,” Reacher said. “Not yet.”

He left the police station and walked all the way back to the black glass tower. Helen Rodin was at her desk, studying a sheet of paper. Danuta and Mason and Niebuhr had left. She was alone.

“Rosemary asked her brother about Kuwait City,” she said. “She told me so, when she came out of his room at the hospital.”

“And?” Reacher said.

“He told her it was all true.”

“Not a fun conversation, probably.”

Helen Rodin shook her head. “Rosemary is pretty devastated. She says James is, too. He can’t believe he did it again. Can’t believe he threw fourteen years away.”

Reacher said nothing. Silence in the office. Then Helen showed Reacher the sheet of paper she was reading.

“Eileen Hutton is a Brigadier General,” she said.

“Then she’s done well,” Reacher said. “She was a major when I knew her.”

“What were you?”

“A captain.”

“Wasn’t that illegal?”

“Technically. For her.”

“She was in the JAG Corps.”

“Lawyers can break the law, same as anyone else.”

“She’s still in the JAG Corps.”

“Obviously. They don’t retrain them.”

“Based in the Pentagon.”

“That’s where they keep the smart people.”

“She’ll be here tomorrow.”

Reacher said nothing.

“For her deposition,” Helen said.

Reacher said nothing.

“It’s scheduled for four o’clock in the afternoon. Chances are she’ll fly down in the morning and check in somewhere. Because she’ll have to stay the night in town. Too late for a flight back.”

“You going to ask me to take her out for dinner?”

“No,” Helen said. “I’m not. I’m going to ask you to take her out for lunch. Before she meets with my father. I need to know in advance what she’s here for.”

“They put Barr’s dog to sleep,” Reacher said.