by Lee Child
“You got here fast,” Reacher said to him.
“I had to,” the guy said back. “Today is the critical day for Mr. Barr.”
“We’re all headed for the hospital,” Helen said. “The doctors say he’s ready for us. I was hoping that Alan would consult by phone or e-mail, but he flew right in.”
“Easier for me that way,” Danuta said.
“No, I got lucky,” Helen said. “And then even luckier, because there’s a psychiatric conference in Bloomington all week. Dr. Mason and Dr. Niebuhr drove straight down.”
“I specialize in memory loss,” Dr. Mason said.
“And I specialize in coercion,” Dr. Niebuhr said. “Dependency issues in the criminal mind, and so on.”
“So this is the team,” Helen said.
“What about his sister?” Reacher asked.
“She’s already with him.”
“We need to talk.”
“Privately?”
“Just for a moment.”
She made an excuse-me face to the others and led Reacher into the outer office.
“You get anywhere?” she asked him.
“The bimbo and the four other guys were recruited by a friend of theirs called Jeb Oliver. He paid them a hundred bucks each. I figure he kept another five for his trouble. I went to his house, but he’s gone.”
“Where?”
“Nobody knows. He was picked up by a guy in a car.”
“Who is he?”
“He works at the store with the bimbo. But he’s also a small-time dope dealer.”
“Really?”
Reacher nodded. “There’s a barn behind his house with a fancy lock on it. Maybe a meth lab, maybe a storeroom. He spends a lot of time on his cell phone. He owns a truck that had to cost twice what a store clerk makes in a year. And he lives with his mother.”
“What does that prove?”
“Drug dealers are more likely than anyone else to live with their mothers. I read it in the paper.”
“Why?”
“They’ve usually got small-time priors. They can’t pass the kind of background checks that landlords like to run.”
Helen said nothing.
“They were all hopped up last night,” Reacher said. “All six of them. Speed, probably, judging by the way the bimbo looked today. She was different. Really down, like an amphetamine hangover.”
“They were doped up? Then you were lucky.”
Reacher shook his head. “You want to fight with me, your best choice would be aspirin.”
“Where does this get us?”
“Look at it from Jeb Oliver’s point of view. He was doing something for somebody. Part work, part favor. Worth a thousand bucks. Had to be for someone higher up on one of his various food chains. And it probably wasn’t for the auto parts manager.”
“So you think James Barr was involved with a dope dealer?”
“Not necessarily involved. But maybe coerced by one for some unknown reason.”
“This raises the stakes,” Helen said.
“A little,” Reacher said.
“What should we do?”
“We should go to the hospital. Let Dr. Mason find out if Barr is bullshitting about the amnesia. If he is, then the fastest way through all of this is to slap him around until he tells us the truth.”
“What if he isn’t bullshitting?”
“Then there are other approaches.”
“Like what?”
“Later,” Reacher said. “Let’s hear what the shrinks have to say first.”
Helen Rodin drove out to the hospital in her Saturn with the lawyer Alan Danuta sitting beside her in the front and Reacher sprawling in the back. Mason and Niebuhr followed her in the Taurus they had rented that morning in Bloomington. They parked side by side in a large visitors’ lot, and all five people got out and stood for a moment and then headed together toward the building’s main entrance.
Grigor Linsky watched them walk. He was fifty feet across the lot, in the Cadillac that Jeb Oliver’s mother had seen in the dark the night before. He kept the motor running and dialed his cell phone. The Zec answered on the first ring.
“Yes?” he said.
“The soldier is very good,” Linsky said. “He’s already been out to the boy’s house.”
“And?”
“Nothing. The boy is no longer there.”
“Where is the boy?”
“Distributed.”
“Specifically?”
“His head and his hands are in the river. The rest of him is under eight yards of crushed stone in the new First Street roadbed.”
“What’s happening now?”
“The soldier and the lawyer are at the hospital. With three others. Another lawyer and two doctors, I think. Specialist counsel and expert witnesses, I imagine.”
“Are we relaxed?”
“We should be. They have to try. That’s the system here, as you know. But they won’t succeed.”
“Make sure they don’t,” the Zec said.
The hospital was on the outer edge of the city and therefore relatively spacious. Clearly there had been no real estate restraints. Just county budget restrictions, Reacher figured, that had limited the building to plain concrete and six stories. The concrete was painted white inside and out, and the stories were short of headroom. But other than those factors the place looked like any hospital anywhere. And it smelled like any hospital anywhere. Decay, disinfectant, disease. Reacher didn’t like hospitals very much. He was following the other four down a long bright corridor that led to an elevator. The two shrinks were leading the way. They seemed pretty much at home. Helen Rodin and Alan Danuta were right behind them. They were side by side, talking. The shrinks reached the elevator bank and Niebuhr hit the button. The little column of people closed up behind him. Then Helen Rodin turned back and stopped Reacher before he caught up with the others. Stepped close and spoke quietly.
“Does the name Eileen Hutton mean anything to you?”
“Why?”
“My father faxed a new witness list. He added her name.”
Reacher said nothing.
“She seems to be from the army,” Helen said. “Do you know her?”
“Should I?”
Helen came closer and turned away from the others.
“I need to know what she knows,” she said quietly.
This could complicate things, Reacher thought.
“She was the prosecutor,” he said.
“When? Fourteen years ago?”
“Yes.”
“So how much does she know?”
“I think she’s at the Pentagon now.”
“How much does she know, Reacher?”
He looked away.
“She knows it all,” he said.
“How? You never got anywhere near a courtroom.”
“Even so.”
“How?”
“Because I was sleeping with her.”
She stared at him. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“You told her everything?”
“We were in a relationship. Naturally I told her everything. We were on the same side.”
“Just two lonely people in the desert.”
“We had a good thing going. Three great months. She was a nice person. Still is, probably. We were close.”
“That’s more information than I need, Reacher.”
He said nothing.
“This is way out of control now,” Helen said.
“She can’t use what she’s got. Even less than I can. It’s still classified and she’s still in the army.”
Helen Rodin said nothing.
“Believe it,” Reacher said.
“Then why is she on the damn list?”
“My fault,” Reacher said. “I mentioned the Pentagon to your father. When I couldn’t understand how my name had come up. He must have poked around. I thought he might.”
“It’s over before it
starts if she talks.”
“She can’t.”
“Maybe she can. Maybe she’s going to. Who knows what the hell the military is going to do?”
The elevator bell rang and the small crowd shuffled closer to the doors.
“You’re going to have to talk to her,” Helen said. “She’ll be coming here for a deposition. You’re going to have to find out what she’s going to say.”
“She’s probably a one-star general by now. I can’t make her tell me anything.”
“Find a way,” Helen said. “Exploit old memories.”
“Maybe I don’t want to. She and I are still on the same side, remember. As far as Specialist E-4 James Barr is concerned.”
Helen Rodin turned away and stepped into the elevator car.
The elevator opened into a sixth-floor lobby that was all blank, painted concrete except for a steel-and-wired-glass door that led into a security airlock. Beyond that, Reacher could see signs to an ICU and two isolation wards, one male, one female, and two general wards, and a neonatal facility. Reacher guessed the whole sixth floor had been funded by the state. It wasn’t a pleasant place. It was a perfect blend of prison and hospital, and neither thing was a fun ingredient.
A guy in a Board of Corrections uniform met the party at a reception desk. Everyone was searched and everyone signed a liability waiver. Then a doctor showed up and led them to a small waiting area. The doctor was a tired man of about thirty, and the waiting area had chairs made of tubular steel and green vinyl. They looked like they had been ripped out of 1950s Chevrolets.
“Barr is awake and reasonably lucid,” the doctor said. “We’re listing him as stable, but that doesn’t mean he’s a well man. So today we’re restricting his visitors to a maximum of two at any one time, and we want them to keep things as brief as possible.”
Reacher saw Helen Rodin smile, and he knew why. The cops would want to come in pairs, and therefore Helen’s presence as defense counsel would make three at a time. Which meant that the medical restrictions were handing her a defense-only day.
“His sister is with him right now,” the doctor said. “She’d prefer it if you would wait until they’ve finished their visit before going in.”
The doctor left them there and Helen said, “I’ll go first, on my own. I need to introduce myself and get his consent for the representation. Then Dr. Mason should see him, I think. Then we’ll decide what to do next based on her conclusions.”
She spoke fast. Reacher realized she was a little nervous. A little tense. All of them were, apart from him. None of them apart from him had ever met James Barr before. Barr had become an unknown destination for each of them, all in separate ways. He was Helen’s client, albeit one that she didn’t really want. He was an object of study for Mason and Niebuhr. Maybe the subject of future academic papers, even fame and reputation. Maybe he was a condition waiting to be named. Barr’s syndrome. Same for Alan Danuta. Maybe to him the whole thing was a Supreme Court precedent waiting to be argued. A textbook chapter. A law school class. Indiana versus Barr. Barr versus the United States. They were all investing in a man they didn’t know.
They took a green vinyl chair each and settled in. The little lobby smelled of chlorine disinfectant, and it was silent. There was no sound at all except for a faint rush of water in pipes and a distant electronic pulse from a machine in another room. Nobody said anything but everyone seemed to know they were in for a long slow process. No point in starting out impatient. Reacher sat opposite Mary Mason and watched her. She was relatively young, for an expert. She seemed warm and open. She had chosen eyeglasses with large frames so that her eyes could be clearly seen. Her eyes looked kind and welcoming, and reassuring. How much of that was bedside manner and how much was for real, Reacher didn’t know.
“How do you do this?” he asked her.
“The assessment?” she said. “I start out assuming it’s more likely to be real than fake. A brain injury bad enough for a two-day coma almost always produces amnesia. Those data were settled long ago. Then I just watch the patient. True amnesiacs are very unsettled by their condition. They’re disoriented and frightened. You can see them really trying to remember. They want to remember. Fakers show up different. You can see them avoiding the days in question. They look away from them mentally. Sometimes even physically. There’s often some distinctive body language.”
“Kind of subjective,” Reacher said.
Mason nodded. “It is basically subjective. It’s very hard to prove a negative. You can use brain scans to show differing brain activity, but what the scans actually mean is still subjective. Hypnotism is sometimes useful, but courts are scared of hypnotism, generally. So yes, I’m in the opinion business, nothing more.”
“Who does the prosecution hire?”
“Someone exactly like me. I’ve worked both sides of the fence.”
“So it’s he said, she said?”
Mason nodded again. “It’s usually about which of us has more letters after her name. That’s what juries respond to.”
“You’ve got a lot of letters.”
“More than most people,” Mason said.
“How much will he have forgotten?”
“Several days, minimum. If the trauma happened Saturday, I’d be very surprised if he remembers anything after Wednesday. Before that there’ll be a shadowy period just about as long where he remembers some things and not others. But that’s the minimum. I’ve seen cases where months are missing, sometimes after concussions, not even comas.”
“Will anything come back?”
“From the initial shadowy period, possibly. He might be able to work backward from the last thing he remembers, through the preceding few days. He might be able to pick out a few previous incidents. Working forward, he’ll be much more limited. If he remembers his last lunch, he might eventually get as far as dinner. If he remembers being out at a movie, he might eventually recall driving home. But there’ll be a hard boundary somewhere. Typically it would be when he went to sleep on the last day he’s aware of.”
“Will he remember fourteen years ago?”
Mason nodded. “His long-term memory should be unimpaired. Different people seem to have different internal definitions of long-term, because there seems to be a literal chemical migration from one part of the brain to another, and no two brains are identical. The physical biology isn’t well understood. People like to use computer metaphors now, but that’s all wrong. It’s not about hard drives and random access memory. The brain is entirely organic. It’s like throwing a bag of apples down the stairs. Some bruise, some don’t. But I would say fourteen years counts as long-term for just about anybody.”
The waiting area went quiet. Reacher listened to the distant electronic pulse. It was a sinus rhythm, he guessed, from a machine that was either monitoring a heartbeat or causing one. It was running at about seventy beats a minute. It was a restful sound. He liked it. Then a door opened halfway down a corridor and Rosemary Barr stepped out of a room. She was showered and her hair was brushed but she looked thin and exhausted and sleepless and ten years older than the day before. She stood still for a moment and then looked right, looked left, and walked slowly toward the waiting area. Helen Rodin got up and went to meet her halfway. They stood together, talking low. Reacher couldn’t hear what they were saying. A two-way progress report, he guessed, first medical, then legal. Then Helen took Rosemary’s arm and led her onward to the group. Rosemary looked at the two psychiatrists, at Alan Danuta, at Reacher. She said nothing. Then she walked on alone toward the security desk. Didn’t look back.
“Avoidance,” Niebuhr said. “We’re all here to poke and prod at her brother, physically, mentally, legally, metaphorically. That’s invasive and unattractive. And to acknowledge us means to acknowledge her brother’s jeopardy.”
“Maybe she’s just tired,” Reacher said.
“I’m going in to see him now,” Helen said.
She walked back up the corridor and went into
the room Rosemary had come out of. Reacher watched her until he heard the door close. Then he turned back to Niebuhr.
“Seen this kind of thing before?” he asked him.
“Coercion? Have you seen it before?”
Reacher smiled. Every psychiatrist he had ever met liked to answer questions with questions. Maybe they were taught to, day one at psychiatry school.
“I’ve seen it a lot,” he said.
“But?”
“Usually there was more evidence of a dire threat.”
“A threat against the sister isn’t dire? You came up with that hypothesis yourself, I believe.”
“His sister hasn’t been kidnapped. She’s not a prisoner somewhere. He could have arranged to have her safeguarded. Or told her to get out of town.”
“Exactly,” Niebuhr said. “We can only conclude that he was instructed not to do any such thing. Evidently he was told to leave her open, and ignorant, and vulnerable. That demonstrates to us how powerful the coercion must have been. And it demonstrated to him how powerful it was. And it demonstrated to him how powerless he was in comparison. Every day. He must have been living with deep dread, and helplessness, and guilt for his obedience.”
“Ever seen a rational man afraid enough to do what he did?”
“Yes,” Niebuhr said.
“Me too,” Reacher said. “Once or twice.”
“The threatener must be a real monster. Although I’d expect to see other factors present, as enhancers, or multipliers. Very likely a recent relationship, some kind of dependency, an infatuation, a desire to please, to impress, to be valued, to be loved.”
“A woman?”
“No, you don’t kill people to impress women. That usually has the opposite effect. This will be a man. Seductive, but not in a sexual way. Compelling, somehow.”
“An alpha male and a beta male.”
“Exactly,” Niebuhr said again. “With any final reluctance resolved by the threat to the sister. Possibly Mr. Barr was never entirely sure whether the threat was a joke or for real. But he chose not to test it. Human motivation is very complex. Most people don’t really know why they do things.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Do you know why you do things?”