by Lee Child
“But why would he say it?” Helen asked.
“That’s what you want me to explain?”
She nodded.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Logically you’re the last person he should have asked for.”
“I agree.”
“Could he have been in any doubt about how you felt? Fourteen years ago?”
“I don’t think so. I made myself pretty clear.”
“Then why would he ask for you now?”
Reacher didn’t answer. The food came, and they started eating. Oranges, walnuts, Gorgonzola cheese, all kinds of leaves and lettuces, and a raspberry vinaigrette. It wasn’t too bad. And the coffee was OK.
“Play me the whole tape,” he said.
She put her fork down and pressed the Rewind key. Kept her hand there, one fingertip on each key, like a pianist. She had long fingers. No rings. Polished nails, neatly trimmed. She pressed Play and picked up her fork again. Reacher heard no sound for a moment until the blank leader cleared the tape head. Then he heard a prison acoustic. Echoes, distant metallic clattering. A man breathing. Then he heard a door open and the thump of another man sitting down. No scraping of chair legs on concrete. A prison chair, bolted to the floor. The lawyer started talking. He was old and bored. He didn’t want to be there. He knew Barr was guilty. He made banal small talk for a while. Grew frustrated with Barr’s silence. Then he said, full of exasperation: I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself. There was a long, long pause, and then Barr’s voice came through, agitated, close to the microphone: They got the wrong guy. He said it again. Then the lawyer started up again, not believing him, saying the evidence was all there, looking for a reason behind an indisputable fact. Then Barr asked for Reacher, twice, and the lawyer asked if Reacher was a doctor, twice. Then Barr got up and walked away. There was the sound of hammering on a locked door, and then nothing more.
Helen Rodin pressed the Stop key.
“So why?” she asked. “Why say he didn’t do it and then call for a guy who knows for sure he did it before?”
Reacher just shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. But he saw in Helen’s eyes that she had an answer.
“You know something,” she said. “Maybe you don’t know you know it. But there’s got to be something there. Something he thinks can help him.”
“Does it matter? He’s in a coma. He might never wake up.”
“It matters a lot. He could get better treatment.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Are you sure? Was there a psychiatric evaluation made back then?”
“It never got that far.”
“Did he claim insanity?”
“No, he claimed a perfect score. Four for four.”
“Did you think he was nuts?”
“That’s a big word. Was it nuts to shoot four people for fun? Of course it was. Was he nuts, legally? I’m sure he wasn’t.”
“You must know something, Reacher,” Helen said. “It must be way down in there. You’ve got to dredge it up.”
He kept quiet for a moment.
“Have you actually seen the evidence?” he asked.
“I’ve seen a summary.”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s terrible. There’s no question he did it. This is about mitigation, nothing more. And his state of mind. I can’t let them execute an insane person.”
“So wait until he wakes up. Run some tests.”
“They won’t count. He could wake up like a fruitcake and the prosecution will say that was caused by the blows to the head in the jailhouse fight. They’ll say he was perfectly sane at the time of the crime.”
“Is your dad a fair man?”
“He lives to win.”
“Like father, like daughter?”
She paused.
“Somewhat,” she said.
Reacher finished up his salad. Chased the last walnut around with his fork and then gave up and used his fingers instead.
“What’s on your mind?” Helen asked.
“Just a minor detail,” he said. “Fourteen years ago it was a very tough case with barely adequate forensics. And he confessed. This time the forensics seem to be a total slam dunk. But he’s denying it.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“So think about what you do know,” Helen said. “Please. You must know something. You have to ask yourself, why did he come up with your name? There has to be a reason.”
Reacher said nothing. The kid who had served them came back and took their plates away. Reacher pointed at his coffee cup and the kid made another trip and refilled it. Reacher cradled it in his hands and smelled the steam.
“May I ask you a personal question?” Helen Rodin said to him.
“Depends how personal,” Reacher said.
“Why were you so untraceable? Normally guys like Franklin can find anybody.”
“Maybe he’s not as good as you think.”
“He’s probably better than I think.”
“Not everyone is traceable.”
“I agree. But you don’t look like you belong in that category.”
“I was in the machine,” Reacher said. “My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I’m out, I’m out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it.”
“Like a game?”
“Like an addiction,” Reacher said. “I’m addicted to being out.”
The kid brought the check. Helen Rodin paid. Then she put her tape player back in her briefcase and she and Reacher left together. They walked north, past the construction at the bottom of First Street. She was heading to her office and he was going to look for a hotel.
A man called Grigor Linsky watched them walk. He was slumped low in a car parked at the curb. He knew where to wait. He knew where she ate when she had company.
CHAPTER 4
Reacher checked into a downtown hotel called the Metropole Palace, two blocks east of First Street, about level with the main shopping strip. He paid cash up front for one night only and used the name Jimmy Reese. He had cycled through all the presidents and vice presidents long ago and was now using second basemen from the Yankees’ nonchampionship years. Jimmy Reese had played pretty well during part of 1930 and pretty badly during part of 1931. He had come from nowhere and moved on to St. Louis for part of 1932. Then he had quit. He had died in California, age ninety-two. But now he was back, with a single room and a bath in the Metropole Palace, for one night only, due to check out the next morning before eleven o’clock.
The Metropole was a sad, half-empty, faded old place. But it had once been grand. Reacher could see that. He could picture the corn traders a hundred years ago walking up the hill from the river wharf and staying the night. He guessed the lobby had once looked like a Western saloon, but now it was thinly made over with modernist touches. There was a refurbished elevator. The rooms had swipe cards instead of keys. But he guessed the building hadn’t really changed very much. His room was certainly old-fashioned and gloomy. The mattress felt like a part of the original inventory.
He lay down on it and put his hands behind his head. Thought back more than fourteen years to Kuwait City. All cities have colors, and KC was white. White stucco, white-painted concrete, white marble. Skies burned white by the sun. Men in white robes. The parking garage James Barr had used was white, and the apartment building opposite was white. Because of the glare the four dead guys had all been wearing aviator shades. All four men had been hit in the head, but none of the shades had broken. They had just fallen off. All four bullets had been recovered, and they broke the case. They were match-grade 168-grain jacketed boat tails. Not hollow points, because of the Geneva Convention. They were an American sniper’s bullets, either Army or Marines. If Barr had used a battle rifle or a submachine gun or a sidearm, Reacher would have gotten nowhere. Because every firearm in theater except the sniper rifl
es used standard NATO rounds, which would have cast the net way too wide, because just about all of NATO was in-country. But Barr’s whole purpose had been to use his own specialist weapon, just for once, this time for real. And in so doing, his four thirteen-cent bullets had nailed him.
But it had been a tough, tough case. Maybe Reacher’s finest ever. He had used logic, deduction, paperwork, footwork, intuition, and ultimately elimination. At the end of the trail was James Barr, a man who had finally seen the pink mist and was strangely at peace with his capture.
He had confessed.
The confession was voluntary, fast, and complete. Reacher never laid a hand on him. Barr talked quite freely about the experience. Then he asked questions about the investigation, like he was fascinated by the process. Clearly he had not expected to be caught. Not in a million years. He was simultaneously aggrieved and admiring. He had even acted a little sympathetic when the political snafu eventually broke him loose. Like he was sorry that Reacher’s fine efforts had come to nothing.
Fourteen years later he had not confessed.
There was another difference between this time and the last time, too. But Reacher couldn’t pin it down. Something to do with how hot Kuwait City had been.
Grigor Linsky used his cell phone and called the Zec. The Zec was the man he worked for. It wasn’t just Zec. It was the Zec. It was a question of respect. The Zec was eighty years old, but he still broke arms if he smelled disrespect. He was like an old bull. He still had his strength and his attitude. He was eighty years old because of his strength and his attitude. Without them he would have died at age twenty. Or later, at thirty, which was about when he went insane and his real name finally slipped his mind.
“The lawyer went back to her office,” Linsky said. “Reacher turned east off First Street. I laid back and didn’t follow him. But he turned away from the bus depot. Therefore we can assume he’s staying in town. My guess is he checked into the Metropole Palace. There’s nothing else in that direction.”
The Zec made no reply.
“Should we do anything?” Linsky asked.
“How long is he here for?”
“That depends. Clearly he’s on a mission of mercy.”
The Zec said nothing.
“Should we do anything?” Linsky asked again.
There was a pause. Cellular static, and an old man breathing.
“We should maybe distract him,” the Zec said. “Or discourage him. I’m told he was a soldier. Therefore he will probably maintain a predictable pattern of behavior. If he’s at the Metropole, he won’t stay in tonight. Not there. No fun for a soldier. He’ll go out somewhere. Probably alone. So there could be an incident. Use your imagination. Make it a big scenario. Don’t use our own people. And make it look natural.”
“Damage?”
“Broken bones, at least. Maybe he gets a head injury. Maybe he winds up in the coma ward along with his buddy James Barr.”
“What about the lawyer?”
“Leave her alone. For now. We’ll open that can of worms later. If we need to.”
Helen Rodin spent an hour at her desk. She took three calls. The first was from Franklin. He was bailing out.
“I’m sorry, but you’re going to lose,” the investigator said. “And I’ve got a business to run. I can’t put in unbilled hours on this anymore.”
“Nobody likes hopeless cases,” Helen said diplomatically. She was going to need him again in the future. No point in holding his feet to the fire.
“Not pro bono hopeless cases,” Franklin said.
“If I get a budget, will you come back on board?”
“Sure,” Franklin said. “Just call me.”
Then they hung up, all proprieties observed, their relationship preserved. The next call came ten minutes later. It was from her father, who sounded full of concern.
“You shouldn’t have taken this case, you know,” he said.
“It wasn’t like I was spoiled for choice,” Helen said.
“Losing might be winning, if you know what I mean.”
“Winning might be winning, too.”
“No, winning will be losing. You need to understand that.”
“Did you ever set out to lose a case?” she asked.
Her father said nothing. Then he went fishing.
“Did Jack Reacher find you?” he asked, meaning: Should I be worried?
“He found me,” she said, keeping her voice light.
“Was he interesting?” Meaning: Should I be very worried?
“He’s certainly given me something to think about.”
“Well, should we discuss it?” Meaning: Please tell me.
“I’m sure we will soon. When the time is right.”
They small-talked for a minute more and arranged to meet for dinner. He tried again: Please tell me. She didn’t. Then they hung up. Helen smiled. She hadn’t lied. Hadn’t even really bluffed. But she felt she had participated. The law was a game, and like any game it had a psychological component.
The third call was from Rosemary Barr at the hospital.
“James is waking up,” she said. “He coughed up his breathing tube. He’s coming out of the coma.”
“Is he talking?”
“The doctors say he might be tomorrow.”
“Will he remember anything?”
“The doctors say it’s possible.”
An hour later Reacher left the Metropole. He stayed east of First Street and headed north toward the off-brand stores he had seen near the courthouse. He wanted clothes. Something local. Maybe not a set of bib overalls, but certainly something more generic than his Miami gear. Because he figured he might head to Seattle next. For the coffee. And he couldn’t walk around Seattle in a bright yellow shirt.
He found a store and bought a pair of pants that the label called taupe and he called olive drab. He found a flannel shirt almost the same color. Plus underwear. And he invested in a pair of socks. He changed in the cubicle and threw his old stuff away in the store’s own trash bin. Forty bucks, for what he hoped would be four days’ wear. Extravagant, but it was worth ten bucks a day to him not to carry a bag.
He came out and walked west toward the afternoon sun. The shirt was too thick for the weather, but he could regulate it by rolling up the sleeves and opening a second button. It was OK. It would be fine for Seattle.
He came out into the plaza and saw that the fountain had been restarted. It was refilling the pool, very slowly. The mud on the bottom was an inch deep and moving in slow swirls. Some people were standing and watching it. Others were walking. But nobody was using the short route past the memorial tributes, where Barr’s victims had died. Maybe nobody would ever again. Instead everyone was looping the long way around, past the NBC sign. Instinctively, respectfully, fearfully; Reacher wasn’t sure.
He picked his way among the flowers and sat on the low wall, with the sound of the fountain behind him and the parking garage in front of him. One shoulder was warmed by the sun and the other was cool in the shade. He could feel the leftover sand under his feet. He looked to his left and watched the DMV building’s door. Looked to his right and watched the cars on the raised highway. They tracked through the curve, high up in the air, one after the other, single file, in a single lane. There weren’t many of them. Traffic up there was light, even though First Street itself was already building up to the afternoon rush hour. Then he looked to his left again and saw Helen Rodin sitting down beside him. She was out of breath.
“I was wrong,” she said. “You are a hard man to find.”
“But you triumphed nonetheless,” he said.
“Only because I saw you from my window. I ran all the way down, hoping you wouldn’t wander off. That was a half hour after calling all the hotels in town and being told you aren’t registered anywhere.”
“What hotels don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“James Barr is waking up. He might be talking tomorrow.”
“Or he might not.”
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“You know much about head injuries?”
“Only the ones I cause.”
“I want you to do something for me.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“You can help me,” she said. “With something important.”
“Can I?”
“And you can help yourself.”
He said nothing.
“I want you to be my evidence analyst,” she said.
“You’ve got Franklin for that.”
She shook her head. “Franklin’s too close to his old PD buddies. He won’t be critical enough. He won’t want to tear into them.”
“And I will? I want Barr to go down, remember.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly why you should do it. You want to confirm that they’ve got an unbreakable case. Then you can leave town and be happy.”
“Would I tell you if I found a hole?”
“I’d see it in your eyes. And I’d know from what you did next. If you go, it’s a strong case. If you stay around, it’s weak.”
“Franklin quit, didn’t he?”
She paused, and then she nodded. “This case is a loser, all ways around. I’m doing it pro bono. Because nobody else will. But Franklin’s got a business to run.”
“So he won’t do it for free, but I will?”
“You need to do it. I think you’re already planning to do it. That’s why you went to see my father first. He’s confident, for sure. You saw that. But you still want a peek at the data. You were a thorough investigator. You said so yourself. You’re a perfectionist. You want to be able to leave town knowing everything is buttoned down tight, according to your own standards.”
Reacher said nothing.
“This gets you a real good look,” she said. “It’s their constitutional obligation. They have to show us everything. The defense gets a full discovery process.”
Reacher said nothing.
“You’ve got no choice,” she said. “They’re not going to show you anything otherwise. They don’t show stuff to strangers off the street.”
A real good look. Leave town and be happy. No choice.
“OK,” Reacher said.
She pointed. “Walk four blocks west and one block south. The PD is right there. I’ll go upstairs and call Emerson.”