Emerson left James Barr’s house at four in the morning, replaced by forensic specialists who would go through the whole place with a fine-tooth comb. He checked with his desk sergeant and confirmed that Barr was sleeping peacefully in a cell on his own with round-the-clock medical supervision. Then he went home and caught a two-hour nap before showering and dressing for the press conference.
______
The press conference killed the story stone dead. A story needs the guy to be still out there. A story needs the guy roaming, sullen, hidden, shadowy, dangerous. It needs fear. It needs to make everyday chores exposed and hazardous, like pumping gas or visiting the mall or walking to church. So to hear that the guy was found and arrested even before the start of the second news cycle was a disaster for Ann Yanni. Immediately she knew what the network offices were going to think. No legs, over and done with, history. Yesterday’s news, literally. Probably wasn’t much of anything anyway. Just some inbred heartland weirdo too dumb to stay free through the night. Probably sleeps with his cousin and drinks Colt 45. Nothing sinister there. She would get one more network breaking news spot to recap the crime and report the arrest, and that would be it. Back to obscurity.
So Ann Yanni was disappointed, but she hid it well. She asked questions and made her tone admiring. About halfway through she started putting together a new theme. A new narrative. People would have to admit the police work had been pretty impressive. And this perp wasn’t a weirdo. Not necessarily. So a serious bad guy had been caught by an even-more-serious police department. Right out there in the heartland. Something that had taken considerable time on the coasts in previous famous cases. Could she sell it? She started drafting titles in the back of her mind. America’s Fastest? Like a play on Finest?
The Chief yielded the floor to Detective Emerson after about ten minutes. Emerson filled in full details on the perp’s identity and his history. He kept it dry. Just the facts, ma’am. He outlined the investigation. He answered questions. He didn’t boast. Ann Yanni thought that he felt the cops had been lucky. That they had been given much more to go on than they usually got.
Then Rodin stepped up. The DA made it sound like the PD had been involved in some early minor skirmishing and that the real work was about to begin. His office would review everything and make the necessary determinations. And yes, Ms. Yanni, because he thought the circumstances warranted it, certainly he would seek the death penalty for James Barr.
______
James Barr woke up in his cell with a chemical hangover at nine o’clock Saturday morning. He was immediately fingerprinted and re-Mirandized once, and then twice. The right to remain silent, the right to a lawyer. He chose to remain silent. Not many people do. Not many people can. The urge to talk is usually overwhelming. But James Barr beat it. He just clamped his mouth shut and kept it that way. Plenty of people tried to talk to him, but he didn’t answer. Not once. Not a word. Emerson was relaxed about it. Truth was, Emerson didn’t really want Barr to say anything. He preferred to line up all the evidence, scrutinize it, test it, polish it, and get to a point where he could anticipate a conviction without a confession. Confessions were so vulnerable to defense accusations of coercion or confusion that he had learned to run away from them. They were icing on the cake. Literally the last thing he wanted to hear, not the first. Not like on the TV cop shows, where relentless interrogation was a kind of performance art. So he just stayed out of the loop and let his forensics people complete their slow, patient work.
James Barr’s sister was younger than him and unmarried and living in a rented downtown condo. Her name was Rosemary. Like the rest of the city’s population, she was sick and shocked and stunned. She had seen the news Friday night. And she caught it again Saturday morning. She heard a police detective say her brother’s name. At first she thought it was a mistake. That she had misheard. But the guy kept on saying it. James Barr, James Barr, James Barr. Rosemary burst into tears. First tears of confusion, then tears of horror, then tears of fury.
Then she forced herself to calm down, and got busy.
She worked as a secretary in an eight-man law firm. Like most firms in small heartland cities, hers did a little bit of everything. And it treated its employees fairly well. The salary wasn’t spectacular, but there were intangibles to compensate. One was a full package of benefits. Another was being called a paralegal instead of a secretary. Another was a promise that the firm would handle legal matters for its employees and their families free, gratis, and for nothing. Mostly that was about wills and probate and divorce, and insurance company hassles after fender benders. It wasn’t about defending adult siblings who were wrongly accused in notorious urban sniper slayings. She knew that. But she felt she had to give it a try. Because she knew her brother, and she knew he couldn’t be guilty.
She called the partner she worked for, at home. He was mostly a tax guy, so he called the firm’s criminal litigator. The litigator called the managing partner, who called a meeting of all the partners. They held it over lunch at the country club. From the start, the agenda was about how to turn down Rosemary Barr’s request in the most tactful way possible. A defense to a crime of this nature wasn’t the sort of thing they were equipped to handle. Or inclined to handle. There were public relations implications. There was immediate agreement on that point. But they were a loyal bunch, and Rosemary Barr was a good employee who had worked many years for them. They knew she had no money, because they did her taxes. They assumed her brother had no money, either. But the Constitution guaranteed competent counsel, and they didn’t have a very high opinion of public defenders. So they were caught in a genuine ethical dilemma.
The litigator resolved it. His name was David Chapman. He was a hardscrabble veteran who knew Rodin over at the DA’s office. He knew him pretty well. It would have been impossible for him not to, really. They were two of a kind, raised in the same neighborhood and working in the same business, albeit on opposite sides. So Chapman went to the smoking room and used his cell phone to call the DA at home. The two lawyers had a full and frank discussion. Then Chapman came back to the lunch table.
“It’s a slam dunk,” he said. “Ms. Barr’s brother is guilty all to hell and gone. Rodin’s case is going to read like a textbook. Hell, it’s probably going to be a textbook one day. He’s got every kind of evidence there is. There’s not a chink of daylight anywhere.”
“Was he leveling with you?” the managing partner asked.
“There’s no bullshitting between old buddies,” Chapman said.
“So?”
“All we would have to do is plead in mitigation. If we can get the lethal injection reduced to life without parole, there’s a big win right there. That’s all Ms. Barr has a right to expect. Or her damn brother, with all due respect.”
“How much involvement?” the managing partner asked.
“Sentencing phase only. Because he’ll have to plead guilty.”
“You happy to handle it?”
“Under the circumstances.”
“How many hours will it cost us?”
“Not many. There’s practically nothing we can do.”
“What grounds for mitigation?”
“He’s a Gulf War vet, I believe. So there’s probably chemical stuff going on. Or some kind of delayed post-traumatic thing. Maybe we could get Rodin to agree beforehand. We could get it done over lunch.”
The managing partner nodded. Turned to the tax guy. “Tell your secretary we’ll do everything in our power to help her brother in his hour of need.”
Barr was moved from the police station lockup to the county jail before either his sister or Chapman got a chance to see him. His blanket and pajamas were taken away and he was issued paper underwear, an orange jumpsuit, and a pair of rubber shower sandals. The county jail wasn’t a pleasant place to be. It smelled bad and it was noisy. It was radically overcrowded and the social and ethnic tensions that were kept in control on the street were left to rage unchecked inside. Men were sta
cked three to a cell and the guards were shorthanded. New guys were called fish, and fish were left to fend for themselves.
But Barr had been in the army, so the culture shock for him was a little less than it might have been. He survived as a fish for two hours, and then he was escorted to an interview room. He was told there was a lawyer waiting there for him. He found a table and two chairs bolted to the floor in a windowless cubicle. In one of the chairs was a guy he vaguely recognized from somewhere. On the table was a pocket tape recorder. Like a Walkman.
“My name is David Chapman,” the guy in the chair said. “I’m a criminal defense attorney. A lawyer. Your sister works at my firm. She asked us to help you out.”
Barr said nothing.
“So here I am,” Chapman said.
Barr said nothing.
“I’m recording this conversation,” Chapman said. “Putting it on tape. I take it that’s OK with you?”
Barr said nothing.
“I think we met once,” Chapman said. “Our Christmas party one year?”
Barr said nothing.
Chapman waited.
“Have the charges been explained to you?” he asked.
Barr said nothing.
“The charges are very serious,” Chapman said.
Barr stayed quiet.
“I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself,” Chapman said.
Barr just stared at him. Just sat still and quiet for several long minutes. Then he leaned forward toward the tape machine and spoke for the first time since the previous afternoon.
He said, “They got the wrong guy.”
“They got the wrong guy,” Barr said again.
“So tell me about the right guy,” Chapman said immediately. He was a good courtroom tactician. He knew how to get a rhythm going. Question, answer, question, answer. That was how to get a person to open up. They fell into the rhythm, and it all came out.
But Barr just retreated back into silence.
“Let’s be clear about this,” Chapman said.
Barr didn’t answer.
“Are you denying it?” Chapman asked him.
Barr said nothing.
“Are you?”
No response.
“The evidence is all there,” Chapman said. “It’s just about overwhelming, I’m afraid. You can’t play dumb now. We need to talk about why you did it. That’s what’s going to help us here.”
Barr said nothing.
“You want me to help you?” Chapman said. “Or not?”
Barr said nothing.
“Maybe it was your old wartime experience,” Chapman said. “Or post-traumatic stress. Or some kind of mental impairment. We need to focus on the reason.”
Barr said nothing.
“Denying it is not smart,” Chapman said. “The evidence is right there.”
Barr said nothing.
“Denying it is not an option,” Chapman said.
“Get Jack Reacher for me,” Barr said.
“Who?”
“Jack Reacher.”
“Who’s he? A friend?”
Barr said nothing.
“Someone you know?” Chapman said.
Barr said nothing.
“Someone you used to know?”
“Just get him for me.”
“Where is he? Who is he?”
Barr said nothing.
“Is Jack Reacher a doctor?” Chapman asked.
“A doctor?” Barr repeated.
“Is he a doctor?” Chapman asked.
But Barr didn’t speak again. He just got up from the table and walked to the cubicle’s door and pounded on it until the jailer opened it up and led him back to his overcrowded cell.
______
Chapman arranged to meet Rosemary Barr and the firm’s investigator at his law offices. The investigator was a retired cop shared by most of the city’s law firms. They all had him on retainer. He was a private detective, with a license. His name was Franklin. He was nothing like a private eye in a TV show. He did all his work at a desk, with phone books and computer databases. He didn’t go out, didn’t wear a gun, didn’t own a hat. But he had no equal as a fact-checker or a skip tracer and he still had plenty of friends in the PD.
“The evidence is rock solid,” he said. “That’s what I’m hearing. Emerson was in charge and he’s pretty reliable. So is Rodin, really, but for a different reason. Emerson’s a stiff and Rodin is a coward. Neither one of them would be saying what they’re saying unless the evidence was there.”
“I just can’t believe he did it,” Rosemary Barr said.
“Well, certainly he seems to be denying it,” Chapman said. “As far as I can understand him. And he’s asking for someone called Jack Reacher. Someone he knows or used to know. You ever heard that name? You know who he is?”
Rosemary Barr just shook her head. Chapman wrote the name Jack Reacher on a sheet of paper and slid it across to Franklin. “My guess is he may be a psychiatrist. Mr. Barr brought the name up right after I told him how strong the evidence is. So maybe this Reacher guy is someone who can help us out with the mitigation. Maybe he treated Mr. Barr in the past.”
“My brother never saw a psychiatrist,” Rosemary Barr said.
“To your certain knowledge?”
“Never.”
“How long has he been in town?”
“Fourteen years. Since the army.”
“Were you close?”
“We lived in the same house.”
“His house?”
Rosemary Barr nodded.
“But you don’t live there anymore.”
Rosemary Barr looked away.
“No,” she said. “I moved out.”
“Might your brother have seen a shrink after you moved out?”
“He would have told me.”
“OK, what about before? In the service?”
Rosemary Barr said nothing. Chapman turned back to Franklin.
“So maybe Reacher was his army doctor,” he said. “Maybe he has information about an old trauma. He could be very helpful.”
Franklin accepted the sheet of paper.
“In which case I’ll find him,” he said.
“We shouldn’t be talking about mitigation anyway,” Rosemary Barr said. “We should be talking about reasonable doubt. About innocence.”
“The evidence is very strong,” Chapman said. “He used his own gun.”
Franklin spent three hours failing to find Jack Reacher. First he trawled through psychiatric associations. No hits. Then he searched the Internet for Gulf War support groups. No trace. He tried Lexis-Nexis and all the news organizations. Nothing. Then he started back at the beginning and accessed the National Personnel Record Center’s database. It listed all current and former military. He found Jack Reacher’s name in there easily enough. Reacher had entered the service in 1984 and received an honorable discharge in 1997. James Barr himself had signed up in 1985 and mustered out in 1991. So there was a six-year overlap. But Reacher had been no kind of a doctor. No kind of a psychiatrist. He had been a military cop. An officer. A major. Maybe a high-level investigator. Barr had finished as a lowly Specialist E-4. Infantry, not military police. So what was the point of contact between a military police major and an infantry E-4? Something helpful, obviously, or Barr wouldn’t have mentioned the name. But what?
At the end of three hours Franklin figured he would never find out, because Reacher fell off the radar after 1997. Completely and totally. There was no trace of him anywhere. He was still alive, according to the Social Security Administration. He wasn’t in prison, according to the NCIC. But he had disappeared. He had no credit rating. He wasn’t listed as title holder to any real estate, or automobiles, or boats. He had no debts. No liens. No address. No phone number. No warrants outstanding, no judgments entered. He wasn’t a husband. Wasn’t a father. He was a ghost.
James Barr spent the same three hours in serious trouble. It started when he stepped out of his cell. He turned ri
ght to walk down to the pay phones. The corridor was narrow. He bumped into another guy, shoulder to shoulder. Then he made a bad mistake. He took his eyes off the floor and glanced at the other guy and apologized.
A bad mistake, because a fish can’t make eye contact with another prisoner. Not without implying disrespect. It was a prison thing. He didn’t understand.
The guy he made eye contact with was a Mexican. He had gang tattoos, but Barr didn’t recognize them. Another bad mistake. He should have put his gaze back on the floor and moved on and hoped for the best. But he didn’t.
Instead, he said, “Excuse me.”
Then he raised his eyebrows and half-smiled in a self-deprecating way, like he was saying, This is some place, right?
Bad mistake. Familiarity, and a presumption of intimacy.
“What are you looking at?” the Mexican said.
At that point, James Barr understood completely. What are you looking at? That was pretty much a standard opener. Barrack rooms, barrooms, street corners, dark alleys, it was not a phrase you wanted to hear.
“Nothing,” he said, and realized he had made the situation much worse.
“You calling me nothing?”
Barr put his eyes back on the floor and moved on, but it was way too late. He felt the Mexican’s stare on his back and gave up on the pay phone idea. The phones were in a dead-end lobby and he didn’t want to feel trapped. So he walked a long counterclockwise circuit and headed back to his cell. He got there OK. Didn’t look at anyone, didn’t speak. He lay down on his bunk. About two hours later, he felt OK. He guessed he could handle a little macho bluster. And he was bigger than the Mexican. He was bigger than two Mexicans.
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