by Lee Child
Reacher smiled. “Ambulance chasing?”
“Looking out for you.”
Reacher picked up the napkin. Put it in his back pocket.
“OK,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Are you still going to leave tomorrow?”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll stick around and think about why someone would use violence to protect a case that’s already a hundred percent watertight.”
Grigor Linsky called the Zec on his cell phone from his car.
“They failed,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”
The Zec said nothing, which was worse than a tirade.
“They won’t be traced to us,” Linsky said.
“Will you make sure of that?”
“Certainly.”
The Zec said nothing.
“No harm, no foul,” Linsky said.
“Unless it served merely to provoke the soldier,” the Zec said. “Then there would be harm. Possibly considerable harm. He is James Barr’s friend, after all. That fact will have implications.”
Now Linsky said nothing.
“Let him see you one more time,” the Zec said. “A little additional pressure might help. But after that, don’t let him see you again.”
“And then?”
“Then monitor the situation,” the Zec said. “Make absolutely certain it doesn’t turn from bad to worse.”
Reacher saw Helen Rodin into a cab and then went upstairs to his room. He took off his shirt and put it in the bathroom sink and left it to soak in cold water. He didn’t want bloodstains on a one-day-old shirt. Three days old, maybe. But not a brand-new garment.
Questions. There were a lot of questions, but as always the key would be finding the basic question. The fundamental question. Why would someone use violence to protect a case that was already watertight? First question: Was the case already watertight? He trawled through the day in his head and heard Alex Rodin say: It’s as good as it gets. The best I’ve ever seen. Emerson had said: It’s the best done deal I ever saw. The morticianlike Bellantonio had said: It’s the best crime scene I ever worked. I love it all. Those guys all had professional self-interest in play, of course. And pride, and expediency. But Reacher himself had seen Bellantonio’s work. And had said: It’s a cast-iron solid-gold slam dunk. It’s Willie Mays under a fly ball.
Was it?
Yes, it was. It was Lou Gehrig with the bases loaded. It was as close to a certainty as human life offers.
But that wasn’t the fundamental question.
He rinsed his shirt and wrung it out hard and spread it on the room heater. Turned the heater on high and opened the window. There was no noise outside. Just silence. New York City it wasn’t. It sounded like they rolled up the sidewalks at nine o’clock. I went to Indiana, but it was closed. He lay down on the bed. Stretched out. Damp heat came off his shirt and filled the room with the smell of wet cotton.
What was the fundamental question?
Helen Rodin’s cassette tape was the fundamental question. James Barr’s voice, low, hoarse, frustrated. His demand: Get Jack Reacher for me.
Why would he say that?
Who was Jack Reacher, in James Barr’s eyes?
Fundamentally?
That was the basic question.
The best crime scene I ever worked.
The best I’ve ever seen.
Why did he pay to park?
Will you keep an open mind?
Get Jack Reacher for me.
Jack Reacher stared at his hotel room ceiling. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Then he rolled over one way and pulled the cocktail napkin out of his back pocket. Rolled the other way and dialed the phone. Helen Rodin answered after eight rings. She sounded sleepy. He had woken her up.
“It’s Reacher,” he said.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No, but I’ve got some questions. Is Barr awake yet?”
“No, but he’s close. Rosemary went back to the hospital. She left me a message.”
“What was the weather like last Friday at five?”
“The weather? Friday? It was kind of dull. Cloudy.”
“Is that normal?”
“No, not really. It’s usually sunny. Or else raining. This time of year it’s usually one or the other. More likely sunny.”
“Was it warm or cold?”
“Not cold. But not hot. It was comfortable, I guess.”
“What did you wear to work?”
“What is this, a dirty phone call?”
“Just tell me.”
“Same as I wore today. Pantsuit.”
“No coat?”
“Didn’t need one.”
“Have you got a car?”
“A car? Yes, I’ve got a car. But I use the bus for work.”
“Use your car tomorrow. I’ll meet you at eight o’clock in your office.”
“What’s this about?”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Eight o’clock. Go back to sleep now.”
He hung up. Rolled off the bed and checked his shirt. It was warm and wet. But it would be dry by morning. He hoped it wouldn’t shrink.
CHAPTER 5
Reacher woke at six. Took a long cold shower, because the room was hot. But his shirt was dry. It was as stiff as a board, and still the right size. There was no room service. He went out for breakfast. The roads were full of trucks, hauling gravel, hauling fill, mixing concrete, feeding the work zones’ appetites. He dodged them and walked south toward the waterfront. Through the gentrification frontier. He found a workingman’s diner with a basic menu. He drank coffee and ate eggs. He sat at a window and watched the street for aimless doorway lurkers or men in parked cars. Because if he had been followed the night before it was logical to assume he would be followed again. So he kept his eyes open. But he saw nobody.
Then he walked the length of First Street, north. The sun was up on his right. He used store windows as mirrors and watched his back. Plenty of people were going his way, but none of them was following him. He guessed whoever it was would be waiting for him in the plaza, ready to confirm what he expected to see: The witness went to the lawyer’s office.
The fountain was still going. The pool was nearly half full. The tributes were still there, neatly lined up, another day older, a little more faded, a little more wilted. He figured they would be there for a week or so. Until after the last of the funerals. Then they would be removed, discreetly, maybe in the middle of the night, and the city would move on to the next thing.
He sat for a moment on the NBC monolith, with his back to the tower, like a guy wasting time because he was early. Which he was. It was only seven forty-five. There were other people in the same situation. They stood around, singly or in groups of two or three, smoking last cigarettes, reading the morning news, chilling before the daily grind. Reacher looked first at men on their own with newspapers. That was a pretty traditional surveillance cover. Although in his opinion it was due for replacement with a new exiled-smoker cover. Guys standing near doorways and smoking were the new invisibles. Or guys on cell phones. You could stand there with a Nokia up to your ear forever and nobody thought twice.
In the end he settled on a guy who was smoking and talking on a cell phone. He was a short man of about sixty. Maybe more. A damaged man. There was a permanent lopsided tension in the way he held himself. An old spinal injury, maybe. Or busted ribs that had been badly set, years ago. Whatever it was, it made him look uncomfortable and querulous. He wasn’t the type of guy who would happily converse at length. But there he was, on his phone, just talking, aimlessly. He had thin gray hair, recently barbered but not stylishly. He was in a double-breasted suit that had been expensively tailored, but not in the United States. It was square and boxy, too heavy for the weather. Polish, maybe. Or Hungarian. Eastern European, certainly. His face was pale and his eyes were dark. They didn’t glance Reacher’s way, even once.
Reacher checked his watch. Seven fifty-five. He slid off the shiny granite and walked into t
he tower’s lobby.
Grigor Linsky stopped pretending and dialed an actual number on his phone.
“He’s here,” he said. “He just went up.”
“Did he see you?” the Zec asked.
“Yes, I’m sure he did.”
“So make that the last time. Now you stay in the shadows.”
Reacher found Helen Rodin already at her desk. She looked settled in, like she had been there a long time already. She was in the same black suit, but her shirt was different. It was a simple scoop neck, not tight. It was china blue and matched her eyes exactly. Her hair was tied back in a long pony tail. Her desk was covered with legal books. Some were facedown, some were faceup. They were all open. She had about eight pages of notes going, on a yellow legal pad. References, case notes, decisions, precedents.
“James Barr is conscious,” she said. “Rosemary called me at five this morning.”
“Is he talking?”
“Only to the doctors. They won’t let anyone else near him yet. Not even Rosemary herself.”
“What about the cops?”
“They’re waiting. But I’ll need to be there first. I can’t let him talk to the cops without representation.”
“What is he saying to the doctors?”
“That he doesn’t know why he’s there. That he doesn’t remember anything about Friday. The doctors say that’s to be expected. Amnesia is predictable with head injuries, possibly covering several days before the trauma. Several weeks, sometimes.”
“Where does that leave you?”
“With two big problems. First, he might be faking the amnesia. And that’s actually very hard to test, either way. So now I’m going to have to find a specialist opinion on that, too. And if he isn’t faking, we’re in a real gray area. If he’s sane now, and he was sane before, but he’s missing a week, then how can he get a fair trial? He won’t be able to participate in his own defense. Not if he hasn’t got the slightest idea what anyone is talking about. And the state put him in that position. They let him get hurt. It was their jail. They can’t do that and then go ahead and try him.”
“What’s your father going to think?”
“He’s going to fight it tooth and nail. Obviously. No prosecutor can afford to admit the possibility that amnesia might screw up a trial. Otherwise everyone would jump right on it. Everyone would be looking to get beat up in pretrial detention. Suddenly nobody would be able to remember anything.”
“It must have happened before.”
Helen nodded. “It has.”
“So what do the law books say?”
“I’m reading them now. As you can see. Dusky versus the United States, Wilson versus the United States.”
“And?”
“There are lots of ifs and buts.”
Reacher said nothing. Helen looked straight at him.
“It’s spinning out of control,” she said. “Now there’ll be a trial about a trial. It’s something that might need to go all the way to the Supreme Court. I’m not equipped for that. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to be the lawyer who gets people off on weird technicalities. That’s not who I am and it’s a label I can’t afford right now.”
“So plead him guilty and the hell with it.”
“When you called me last night I thought you were going to walk in here this morning and tell me he’s innocent.”
“Dream on,” Reacher said.
She looked away.
“But,” he said.
She looked back. “There’s a but?”
He nodded. “Unfortunately.”
“What’s the but?”
“He’s not quite as guilty as I thought he was.”
“How?”
“Get your car and I’ll show you.”
They rode down together to a tenants-only underground parking garage. There were NBC broadcast trucks in there and cars and pickups and SUVs of various makes and vintages. There was a new blue Mustang convertible with an NBC sticker in the windshield. Ann Yanni’s, probably, Reacher thought. It was right for her. She would drive top-down on her days off and top-up during the workweek, to keep her hair OK for the cameras. Or maybe she used a lot of spray.
Helen Rodin’s ride was a small dark-green sedan so anonymous Reacher didn’t know what it was. A Saturn, maybe. It was unwashed and not new. It was a graduate student’s car, the sort of thing a person uses until a first salary kicks in and lease payments become affordable. Reacher knew all about lease payments. Baseball on the TV carried a lot of commercials. Every half-inning, and every call to the bullpen.
“Where are we going?” Helen asked.
“South,” Reacher said.
He racked his seat back and crunched a whole lot of stuff in the footwell behind him. She had her seat close to the wheel, even though she wasn’t a short woman. He ended up looking at her more or less from behind.
“What do you know?” she asked.
“It’s not what I know,” he said. “It’s what James Barr knows.”
“About what?”
“About me.”
She came up out of the garage and started south down a street parallel with First. Eight o’clock in the morning, the rush hour traffic was still heavy. Going the opposite way from the afternoon rush, he guessed.
“What does James Barr know about you?” she asked.
“Something that made him want me here,” he said.
“He ought to hate you.”
“I’m sure he does. But he still wanted me here.”
She crawled south, toward the river.
“He never met me before,” Reacher said. “Never saw me again afterward. We knew each other for three weeks, more than fourteen years ago.”
“He knew you as an investigator. Someone who broke a tough case.”
“A case he thought couldn’t be broken. He watched me do it every step of the way. He had a front row seat. He thought I was an investigative genius.”
“That’s why he wanted you here?”
Reacher nodded. “I spent last night trying to live up to his opinion.”
They crossed the river on a long iron trestle. The sun was on their left. The wharf was on their right. The slow gray water moved listlessly past it.
“Go west now,” Reacher said.
She made a right and took a two-lane county road. There were bait stores on the riverbank and shacks selling barbecue and beer and crushed ice.
“But this case was already broken,” she said. “He knew that.”
“This case was only halfway broken,” Reacher said. “That’s what he knew.”
“Halfway?”
Reacher nodded, even though he was behind her.
“There’s more to this case than Emerson saw,” he said. “Barr wanted someone else to understand that. But his first lawyer was lazy. He wasn’t very interested. That’s why Barr got so frustrated.”
“What more is there?”
“I’ll show you.”
“A lot?”
“I think so.”
“So why didn’t he just lay out the facts, whatever they are?”
“Because he couldn’t. And because nobody would have believed him anyway.”
“Why? What the hell happened here?”
There was a highway cloverleaf ahead, just like he had hoped.
“I’ll show you,” he said again. “Take the highway north.”
She powered the little car through the ramp and merged with the traffic. There was a mixed stream flowing north. Eighteen-wheelers, panel trucks, pickups, cars. The road recrossed the river on a concrete bridge. The wharf was visible to the east, in the distance. The city center was ahead, on the right. The highway rose gently on its stilts. Helen drove onward, with the roofs of low edge-of-town buildings flashing past on the left and the right.
“Be ready to take the spur that runs behind the library,” Reacher said.
It was going to be a right exit. It was announced well in advance with a sign. The broken line separati
ng the right lane from the center lane became a solid line. Then the solid line became a narrow wedge. The through traffic was forced away to the left. The exit lane angled slightly right. They stayed in it. The wedge grew wider and was filled in with bold cross-hatched lines. Up ahead were yellow drums. They passed them by, onto the spur that would lead behind the library. Reacher twisted in his seat and checked the rear window. Nobody behind them.
“Go slow,” he said.
Two hundred yards ahead the spur started to curve, behind the library, behind the black glass tower. The roadbed was wide enough for two lanes. But the radius was too tight to make it safe for two lanes to run side by side at high speed into the corner. Traffic engineers had thought better of it. They had advised a gentler trajectory. They had marked out a single lane through the curve. It was a little wider than a normal lane, to allow for misjudgments. It started way on the left and then swung sharply to the right and cut across the apex of the curve at a more shallow angle.
“Go real slow now,” Reacher said.
The car slowed. Way up ahead of them on the left was a crescent-moon shape of white cross-hatching. Beginning right next to them on the right was a long thin triangle of white cross-hatching. Just lines of paint on the blacktop, but they shepherded people along and kept them safe.
“Pull over,” Reacher said. “Here, on the right.”
“Can’t stop here,” Helen said.
“Like you had a flat. Just pull over. Right here.”
She braked hard and turned the wheel and steered onto the cross-hatched no-man’s-land on their right. They felt the thick painted lines thumping under the tires. A juddery little rhythm. It slowed as she slowed.
She stopped.
“Back up a little,” Reacher said.
She backed up, like she was parallel parking against the concrete parapet.
“Now forward a yard,” Reacher said.
She drove forward a yard.
“OK,” he said.
He wound his window down. The traffic lane on their left was clear and smooth, but the cross-hatched no-man’s-land they were stopped on was covered with grit and trash and debris blown across it by years of passing vehicles. There were cans and bottles and detached mud flaps and tiny cubes of broken headlight glass and plastic splinters from old fender benders. Far away to the left the through traffic rumbled north on a separate bridge. There was a constant stream over there. But they sat for a whole minute before anyone else came the way they had taken. A lone pickup passed close on their left and rocked them with its slipstream. Then the spur went quiet again.