Lee Child - One Shot

He made it to the lobby OK and stepped over to the pay phones. Took the cocktail napkin out of his pocket and dialed Helen Rodin’s cell. She picked up on the fifth ring. He pictured her rooting through her purse, squinting at the screen, fumbling with the buttons.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“Reacher?”

“Yes,” he said. “Are you alone?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you’re in trouble.”

“Who called you?”

“My father.”

“You believe him?”

“No.”

“I’m coming to see you.”

“There’s a cop in the lobby.”

“I figured. I’ll come in through the garage.”

He hung up and walked back past the desk and out the side entrance. Back under the highway. He stayed in its shelter until he was opposite the back of the black glass tower. Opposite the vehicle ramp. He checked left, checked right, and walked straight down. Past the NBC trucks, past the Mustang he figured for Ann Yanni’s, to the elevator. He pressed the call button and waited. Checked his watch. Five-thirty. Most people would be leaving the building. A down elevator was certain to stop at the lobby level. An up elevator, maybe not. He hoped.

The elevator car arrived in the garage and let three people out. They walked away. Reacher stepped in. Pressed 4 . Stood back. The car rose one floor and stopped. In the lobby. The doors slid back like a theater curtain. The cop was right there, four feet from the elevator, facing away. He had his feet apart and his hands on his hips. He was almost close enough to touch. A man stepped into the elevator. He didn’t speak. Just nodded a two-guys-in-an-elevator greeting. Reacher nodded back. The guy pressed 7 . The doors stayed open. The cop watched the street. The new guy jiggled the button. The cop moved. He swiped his cap off his head and ran his fingers through his hair. The doors closed. The elevator moved up.

Reacher got out on four and walked through a small knot of people on their way home. Helen Rodin had her door open and ready. He stepped inside her suite and she closed up after him. She was wearing a short black skirt and a white blouse. She looked young. Like a schoolgirl. And she looked worried. Like a conflicted person.

“I should turn you in,” she said.

“But you won’t,” Reacher said.

“No,” she said. “I should, but I won’t.”

“Truth is I liked that girl,” Reacher said. “She was a sweet kid.”

“She set you up.”

“I wasn’t offended.”

“Someone didn’t like her.”

“We can’t tell. Affection didn’t come into it. She was disposable, that’s all. A means to an end.”

“The puppet master really doesn’t want you around.”

Reacher nodded. “That’s for damn sure. But he’s shit out of luck there, because I’m not leaving now. He just guaranteed that for himself.”

“Is it safe to stay?”

“It’s safe enough. But this thing with the girl is going to slow me down. So you’re going to have to do most of the work.”

She led him into the inner office. She sat down at her desk. He stayed well away from the window. He sat on the floor and propped his back against the wall.

“I already started the work,” Helen said. “I spoke to Rosemary and talked to Barr’s neighbors. Then I went back to the hospital. I think we’re looking for a guy called Charlie. Small guy, bristly black hair. Interested in guns. I got the impression he’s kind of furtive. I think he’s going to be hard to find.”

“How long has he been on the scene?”

“Five or six years, apparently. He’s the only long-term friend anyone could name. And he’s the only one Barr owns up to.”

Reacher nodded again. “That works for me.”

“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 four 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.”