Lee Child - One Shot

“OK,” she said. “Come back later.”

Alex Rodin stepped back into his office and closed the door and called Emerson.

“Have you got him yet?” he asked.

“Just a matter of time,” Emerson said. “We’re looking for him all over. And we’re watching his room. He’s at the old motor court. Under a false name.”

“That’s interesting,” Rodin said. “It means he might have used a false name at the Metropole, too.”

“I’ll check,” Emerson said. “I’ll show the clerk the picture.”

“We might really be able to nail him,” Rodin said. He clicked off, thinking about two new framed headlines for his office wall. First Barr, and then Reacher.

Reacher let himself out of Hutton’s suite and used the stairs instead of the elevator. On the ground floor he turned away from the lobby and found a back corridor with a fire door at the end of it. He pushed the fire door open and held it ajar with his foot. Took Emerson’s card out of his pocket and tore it in half lengthwise and folded the half with the name on it four times. He pressed the tongue into the fire door’s lock with the ball of his thumb and wedged it there with the folded cardboard. He closed the door gently and pushed it flush with the frame with the flat of his hand. Then he walked away, past a Dumpster, through the staff lot, out to the street, heading north. The sidewalks were busy and the traffic lanes were starting to clog. He walked at a normal pace and used his height to scan the middle distance for patrol cars or cops on corners. The day was still warm. There was a weather system somewhere out there. Somewhere near. There was high pressure in the sky, clamping down, trapping the smell of damp earth and nitrogen fertilizer in the air.

He reached the raised highway and turned west in its shadow. The roadbed strode along on pillars forty feet high. Underneath it were untidy lots, some vacant and full of trash, some with old brick buildings with dark skylights in their roofs, some with new metal sheds housing body shops and spray paint operations. He passed the back of the black glass tower and stayed in the highway’s shadow and turned south, ready to pass behind the library. He stopped suddenly and crouched and fiddled with his shoe. Like he had a stone. Glanced back under his arm and saw nobody behind him. No tail.

He moved on. After the library he was exposed for forty yards. The plaza was east of him. He stopped momentarily on a spot he judged was directly below where Helen Rodin had parked the day before and where James Barr should have parked on Friday. Forty feet lower down the view was different but the geometry was the same. He could see the wilted tributes propped against the pool’s southern wall. They were small splashes of faded color in the distance. Beyond them was the DMV’s door. People were coming out in ones and twos. He checked his watch. Ten to five.

He moved on, in the open, and made it across to First Street’s northernmost block. He looped one block south and three blocks east and came up on the parking garage’s entrance from the west. He walked up the ramp and found the security camera’s lens. It was a small circle of dirty glass mounted on a plain black box that was bolted high up in the angle of two concrete beams. He waved at it. It was too high, ideally. It should have been lower, at license plate level. But all the pillars below waist height were scuffed and scraped. A rainbow of different colors. Drivers were careless. Mounted lower, the camera would have lasted a day and a half. Maybe less.

He walked up the ramps to the second level. Headed north and east, to the far back corner. The garage was still and quiet, but full. The space that James Barr had used was occupied. No room for sentiment in the scramble for downtown parking. No room for reverence.

The border between the old garage and the new construction was marked by a triple barrier of tape strung between pillars. There was standard yellow-and-black contractor’s Caution Do Not Enter tape and above it and below it were new lengths of blue-and-white Police Line Do Not Cross tape. He used his forearm and stretched all three lines higher and just ducked underneath. No need to drop to one knee. No need to scuff a pair of jeans. No need to leave a mess of fibers. Not even for a guy six inches taller than Barr, and not even with a new line of tape six inches lower than the one Barr had encountered. He was literally going out of his way to leave every last piece of evidence he could .

Reacher walked on into the gloom. The new construction was rectangular in shape. Maybe forty yards south to north, maybe two hundred east to west. Which meant Reacher arrived at the new northeast corner after thirty-five paces. He stood six feet back from the perimeter wall and looked down and right. He had a perfectly good view. No need to press up against a pillar. No need to squirm around like a horse on its back in a summer meadow.

He stood there and watched. People were coming out of the government office in increasing numbers. There was quite a flow. Some paused and lit cigarettes as soon as they were out in the air. Others moved on directly west, some fast, some slow. All of them turned and tracked around the north end of the pool. None of them walked where Barr’s victims had walked. The funeral tributes were a disincentive. A reminder. Therefore it was hard to judge what Friday’s scene had looked like. Hard, but not impossible. Reacher watched the walking people and in his mind made them forgo their respectful right turns. He made them continue straight on. They would be slow entering the bottleneck. But not too slow. And they would be close. The combination of moderate speed and proximity would exaggerate the deflection angles. It would make the job harder. It was a basic principle of long-gun use. A bird traversing the sky a hundred yards away was an easy target. The same bird at the same speed flying six feet in front of your face was an impossible target.

He pictured the people streaming right-to-left. He closed one eye and extended his arm and pointed his finger. Click, click-click, click-click-click . Six aimed shots. Four seconds. Fast. Tough geometry. Tension, exposure, vulnerability.

Six hits, including the deliberate miss.

Exceptional shooting.

They don’t forget.

He dropped his arm to his side. It was cold in the gloom. He shivered. The air was clammy and damp and full of the smell of lime. It had been hot in Kuwait City. The air had been shimmering and full of the smell of baked dust and desert sand. Reacher had stood in the parking garage and sweated. The street below him had been blinding. Murderous. Like a blast furnace.

Hot in Kuwait City.

Four shots there.

Six shots here.

He stood and watched the people coming out the DMV door. There were plenty of them. Ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty. They turned and looped north and then turned again and walked west between the pool and the NBC peacock. They gave each other space. But if they had been in the bottleneck they would have bunched up tight.

Plenty of them.

Six shots, in four seconds.

He looked for anyone not moving. Didn’t see anybody. No cops, no old men in boxy suits. He turned around and retraced his steps. Lifted the tape again and ducked under it and walked back down the ramps. Slipped out to the street and turned west, heading for the shadows under the highway. Heading for the library.

He crossed the forty yards of open ground and hugged the library’s side wall and went in through a handicapped entrance. He had to walk close to the desk, but he wasn’t worried about that. If Emerson started circulating Wanted notices he would hit the post offices and bars and hotels first. It would be a long time before he started canvassing librarians.