by Lee Child
“We’re doing this now?”
“James Barr is waking up. I need this stuff out of the way early. I’m going to be spending most of tomorrow trying to find a psychiatrist who will work for free. A medical plea is still our best bet.”
Reacher walked four blocks west and one block south. It took him under the raised highway and brought him to a corner. The PD had the whole block. Their building occupied most of it and there was an L-shaped parking lot on the rest of it for their vehicles. There were black-and-whites slotted in at angles, and unmarked detective cars, and a crime-scene van, and a SWAT truck. The building itself was made of glazed tan brick. It had a flat roof with big HVAC ducts all over it. There were bars on all the windows. Razor wire here and there around the perimeter.
He went inside and got directions and found Emerson waiting for him behind his desk. Reacher recognized him from his TV spot on Saturday morning. Same guy, pale, quiet, competent, not big, not small. In person he looked like he had been a cop since birth. Since the moment of conception, maybe. It was in his pores. In his DNA. He was wearing gray flannel pants and a white short-sleeve shirt. Open neck. No tie. There was a tweed jacket on the back of his chair. His face and his body were a little shapeless, like he had been molded by constant pressures.
“Welcome to Indiana,” he said.
Reacher said nothing.
“I mean it,” Emerson said. “Really. We love it when old friends of the accused show up to tear our work to shreds.”
“I’m here for his lawyer,” Reacher said. “Not as a friend.”
Emerson nodded.
“I’ll give you the background myself,” he said. “Then my crime-scene guy will walk you through the particulars. You can see absolutely anything you want and you can ask absolutely anything you want.”
Reacher smiled. He had been a cop of sorts himself for thirteen long years, on a tough beat, and he knew the language and all its dialects. He knew the tone and he understood the nuances. And the way Emerson spoke told him things. It told him that despite the initial hostility, this was a guy secretly happy to meet with a critic. Because he knew for sure he had a solid-gold slam-dunk case.
“You knew James Barr pretty well, am I right?” Emerson asked.
“Did you?” Reacher asked back.
Emerson shook his head. “Never met him. There were no warning signs.”
“Was his rifle legal?”
Emerson nodded. “It was registered and unmodified. As were all his other guns.”
“Did he hunt?”
Emerson shook his head again. “He wasn’t an NRA member and he didn’t belong to a gun club. We never saw him out in the hills. He was never in trouble. He was just a low-profile citizen. A no-profile citizen, really. No warning signs at all.”
“You seen this kind of thing before?”
“Too many times. If you include the District of Columbia, then Indiana is tied for sixteenth place out of fifty-one in terms of homicide deaths per capita. Worse than New York, worse than California. This town isn’t the worst in the state, but it’s not the best, either. So we’ve seen it all before, and sometimes there are signs, and sometimes there aren’t, but either way around we know what we’re doing.”
“I spoke with Alex Rodin,” Reacher said. “He’s impressed.”
“He should be. We performed well. Your old buddy was toast six hours after the first shot. It was a textbook case, beginning to end.”
“No doubts at all?”
“Put it this way. I wrote it up Saturday morning and I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought since then. It’s a done deal. About the best done deal I ever saw, and I’ve seen a lot.”
“So is there any point in me walking through it?”
“Sure there is. I’ve got a crime-scene guy desperate to show off. He’s a good man, and he deserves his moment in the sun.”
Emerson walked Reacher to the lab and introduced him as a lawyer’s scout, not as James Barr’s friend. Which helped a little with the atmosphere. Then he left him there. The crime-scene guy was a serious forty-year-old called Bellantonio. His name was more exuberant than he was. He was tall, dark, thin, and stooped. He could have been a mortician. And he suspected James Barr was going to plead guilty. He thought he wasn’t going to get his day in court. That was clear. He had laid out the evidence chain in a logical sequence on long tables in a sealed police garage bay, just so that he could give visitors the performance he would never give a jury.
The tables were white canteen-style trestles and they ran all the way around the perimeter of the bay. Above them was a horizontal line of cork boards with hundreds of printed sheets of paper pinned to them. The sheets were encased in plastic page protectors and they related to the specific items found directly below. Trapped tight in the square made by the tables was James Barr’s beige Dodge Caravan. The bay was clean and brightly lit with harsh fluorescent tubes and the minivan looked huge and alien in there. It was old and dirty and smelled of gasoline and oil and rubber. The sliding rear door was open and Bellantonio had rigged a light to shine in on the carpet.
“This all looks good,” Reacher said.
“Best crime scene I ever worked,” Bellantonio said.
“So walk me through it.”
Bellantonio started with the traffic cone. It was sitting there on a square of butcher paper, looking large and odd and out of place. Reacher saw the print powder on it, read the notes above it. Barr had handled it, that was for sure. He had clamped his right hand around it, near the top, where it was narrow. More than once. There were fingerprints and palm prints. The match was a laugher. There were way more comparison points than any court would demand.
Same for the quarter from the parking meter, same for the shell case. Bellantonio showed Reacher laser-printed stills from the parking garage video, showing the minivan coming in just before the event and going out again just after it. He showed him the interior of the Dodge, showed him the automotive carpet fibers recovered from the raw new concrete, showed him the dog hairs, showed him the denim fibers and the raincoat threads. Showed him a square of rug taken from Barr’s house, showed him the matching fibers found at the scene. Showed him the desert boots, showed him how crepe rubber was the best transfer mechanism going. Showed him how the tiny crumbs of rubber found at the scene matched new scuffs on the shoes’ toes. Showed him the cement dust tracked back into Barr’s house and recovered from the garage and the basement and the kitchen and the living room and the bedroom. Showed him a comparison sample taken from the parking garage and a lab report that proved it was the same.
Reacher scanned the transcripts from the 911 calls and the radio chatter between the squad cars. Then he glanced through the crime-scene protocol. The initial sweep by the uniformed officers, the forensic examination by Bellantonio’s own people, Emerson’s inspiration with the parking meter. Then he read the arrest report. It was printed out and pinned up along with everything else. The SWAT tactics, the sleeping suspect, the ID from the driver’s license from the wallet in the pants pocket. The paramedics’ tests. The capture of the dog by the K9 officers. The clothes in the closet. The shoes. The guns in the basement. He read the witness reports. A Marine recruiter had heard six shots. A cell phone company had provided a recording. There was a graph attached. A gray smear of sound, with six sharp spikes. Left to right, they were arrayed in a pattern that matched what Helen Rodin had said she had heard. One, two-three, pause, four-five-six. The graph’s vertical axis represented volume. The shots had been faint but clear on the recording. The horizontal axis represented the time base. Six shots in less than four seconds. Four seconds that had changed a city. For a spell, at least.
Reacher looked at the rifle. It was heat-sealed into a clear plastic sleeve. He read the report pinned above it. A Springfield M1A Super Match, ten-shot box magazine, four cartridges still in it. Barr’s prints all over it. Scratches on the forestock matching varnish scrapings found at the scene. The intact bullet recovered from the pool.
A ballistics lab report matching the bullet to the barrel. Another report matching the shell case to the ejector. Slam dunk. Case closed.
“OK, enough,” Reacher said.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” Bellantonio said.
“Best I ever saw,” Reacher said.
“Better than a hundred eyewitnesses.”
Reacher smiled. Crime-scene techs loved to say that.
“Anything you’re not happy with?” he asked.
“I love it all,” Bellantonio said.
Reacher glanced at his reflection in the Dodge’s tinted window. The black glass made his new shirt look gray.
“Why did he leave the traffic cone behind?” he said. “He could have pitched it into the back of the van, easy as anything.”
Bellantonio said nothing.
“And why did he pay to park?” Reacher asked.
“I’m forensics,” Bellantonio said. “Not psychology.”
Then Emerson came back in and stood there, waiting to accept Reacher’s surrender. Reacher gave it up, no hesitation. He shook their hands and congratulated them on a well-worked case.
He walked back, one block north and four blocks east, under the raised highway, heading for the black glass tower. It was after five o’clock and the sun was on his back. He arrived at the plaza and saw that the fountain was still going and the pool had filled another inch. He went in past the NBC sign and rode up in the elevator. Ann Yanni didn’t show. Maybe she was preparing for the six o’clock news.
He found Helen Rodin at her secondhand desk.
“Watch my eyes,” he said.
She watched them.
“Pick your own cliché,” he said. “It’s a cast-iron, solid-gold slam dunk. It’s Willie Mays under a fly ball.”
She said nothing.
“See any doubt in my eyes?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
“So start calling psychiatrists. If that’s what you really want to do.”
“He deserves representation, Reacher.”
“He stepped out of line.”
“We can’t just lynch him.”
Reacher paused. Then he nodded. “The shrink should think about the parking meter. I mean, who pays for ten minutes even if they’re not shooting people? It strikes me as weird. It’s so law-abiding, isn’t it? It kind of puts the whole event into a law-abiding envelope. Maybe he really was nuts this time. You know, confused about what he was doing.”
Helen Rodin made a note. “I’ll be sure to mention it.”
“You want to get some dinner?”
“We’re on opposite sides.”
“We had lunch.”
“Only because I wanted something from you.”
“We can still be civilized.”
She shook her head. “I’m having dinner with my father.”
“He’s on the opposite side.”
“He’s my father.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Were the cops OK?” she asked.
Reacher nodded. “They were courteous enough.”
“They can’t have been very pleased to see you. They don’t understand why you’re really here.”
“They don’t need to worry. They’ve got a great case.”
“It’s not over until the fat lady sings.”
“She’s been singing since Friday at five. Pretty loud.”
“Maybe we could have a drink after dinner,” she said. “If I can get away in time. There’s a sports bar six blocks north of here. Monday night, it’s about the only place in town. I’ll drop by and see if you’re there. But I can’t promise anything.”
“Neither can I,” Reacher said. “Maybe I’ll be at the hospital, unplugging James Barr’s life support.”
He rode down in the elevator and found Rosemary Barr waiting for him in the lobby. He guessed she had just gotten back from the hospital and had called upstairs and Helen Rodin had told her he was on his way down. So she had waited. She was pacing nervously, side to side, crossing and recrossing the route between the elevator bank and the street door.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
“Outside,” he said.
He led her through the door and across the plaza to the south wall of the pool. It was still filling slowly. The fountain splashed and tinkled. He sat where he had sat before, with the funeral tributes at his feet. Rosemary Barr stood in front of him, facing him, very close, her eyes on his, not looking down at the flowers and the candles and the photographs.
“You need to keep an open mind,” she said.
“Do I?” he said.
“James wanted you here, therefore he can’t be guilty.”
“That’s a leap.”
“It’s logical,” she said.
“I just saw the evidence,” he said. “More than enough for anyone.”
“I’m not going to argue about fourteen years ago.”
“You can’t.”
“But he’s innocent now.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I understand how you feel,” Rosemary said. “You think he let you down.”
“He did.”
“But suppose he didn’t? Suppose he met your conditions and this is all a mistake? How would you feel then? What would you do for him? If you’re ready to stand up against him, don’t you think you should be equally ready to stand up for him?”
“That’s too hypothetical for me.”
“It’s not hypothetical. I’m just asking, if you’re proved wrong, if he didn’t do it, will you put the same energy into helping him?”
“If I’m proved wrong, he won’t need my help.”
“Will you?”
“Yes,” Reacher said, because it was an easy promise to make.
“So you need to keep an open mind.”
“Why did you move out?”
She paused. “He was angry all the time. It was no fun living with him.”
“Angry at what?”
“At everything.”
“So maybe it’s you who should keep an open mind.”
“I could have made up a reason. But I didn’t. I told you the truth. I don’t want to hide anything. I need you to trust me. I need to make you believe. My brother’s an unhappy man, maybe even disturbed. But he didn’t do this.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Will you keep an open mind?” she asked.
Reacher didn’t answer. Just shrugged and walked away.
He didn’t go to the hospital. Didn’t unplug James Barr’s machines. He went to the sports bar instead, after a shower back at the Metropole Palace. The six blocks north of the black glass tower took him under the highway again and out into a hinterland. Gentrification had a boundary to the south, as he had seen, and now he saw it had a boundary to the north, too. The bar was a little ways beyond it. It was in a plain square building that could have started out as anything. Maybe a feed store, maybe an automobile showroom, maybe a pool hall. It had a flat roof and bricked-up windows and moss growing where blocked rainwater gutters had spilled.
Inside it was better, but generic. It was like every other sports bar he had ever been in. It was one tall room with black-painted air-conditioning ducts pinned to the ceiling. It had three dozen TV screens hanging from the walls and the ceiling. It had all the usual sports-bar stuff all over the place. Signed uniform jerseys framed under glass, football helmets displayed on shelves, hockey sticks, basketballs, baseballs, old game-day programs. The waitstaff was all female, all of them in cheerleader-style uniforms. The bar staff was male and dressed in striped umpire uniforms.
The TVs were all tuned to football. Inevitable, Reacher guessed, on a Monday night. Some of the screens were regular TVs, and some were plasmas, and some were projectors. The same event was displayed dozens of times, all with slightly different color and focus, some big, some small, some bright, some dim. There were plenty of people in there, but Reacher got a table to himself. In a corner, which he liked. A hard-worked waitress ran over t
o him and he ordered beer and a cheeseburger. He didn’t look at the menu. Sports bars always had beer and cheeseburgers.
He ate his meal and drank his beer and watched the game. Time passed and the place filled up and got more and more crowded and noisy, but nobody came to share his table. Reacher had that kind of an effect on people. He sat there alone, in a bubble of quiet, with a message plainly displayed: Stay away from me.
Then someone ignored the message and came to join him. It was partly his own fault. He looked away from the screen and saw a girl hovering nearby. She was juggling a bottle of beer and a full plate of tacos. She was quite a sight. She had waved red hair and a red gingham shirt open at the neck and tied off at the navel. She had tight pants on that looked like denim but had to be spandex. She had the whole hourglass thing going, big-time. And she was in shiny lizard-skin boots. Open the encyclopedia to C for Country Girl and her picture was going to be right there staring back at you. She looked too young for the beer. But she was past puberty. That was for damn sure. Her shirt buttons were straining. And there was no visible panty line under the spandex. Reacher looked at her for a second too long, and she took it as an invitation.
“Can I share your table?” she asked from a yard away.
“Help yourself,” he said.
She sat down. Not opposite him, but in the chair next to him.
“Thanks,” she said.
She drank from her bottle and kept her eyes on him. Green eyes, bright, wide open. She half-turned toward him and arched the small of her back. Her shirt was open three buttons. Maybe a 34D, Reacher figured, in a push-up bra. He could see the edge of it. White lace.
She leaned close because of the noise.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“Like what?” he said.
“Football,” she said.
“A bit,” he said.
“Did you play?”
Did you, not do you. She made him feel old.
“You’re certainly big enough,” she said.
“I tried out for Army,” he said. “When I was at West Point.”