Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  “How long has he been on the scene?”

  “Five or six years, apparently. He’s the only long-term friend anyone could name. And he’s the only one Barr owns up to.”

  Reacher nodded again. “That works for me.”

  “And Barr doesn’t know Jeb Oliver and doesn’t use drugs.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Yes, I do,” Helen said. “Really. Right now I believe everything he says. It’s like he spent fourteen years turning his life around and now he can’t believe he went back. I think he’s as upset about all this as anyone.”

  “Except the victims.”

  “Give him a break, Reacher. Something weird was going on.”

  “Does this guy Charlie know about Kuwait City?”

  “Barr wouldn’t say. But I think he does.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Barr doesn’t know.”

  “He doesn’t know?”

  “He just sees him around. He just shows up now and then. Like I said, I think he’s going to be hard to find.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  “Did you speak to Eileen Hutton?” Helen asked.

  “She’s no threat. The army is keeping the lid on.”

  “Did you find the guy that was following you?”

  “No,” Reacher said. “I didn’t see him again. They must have pulled him off.”

  “So we’re nowhere.”

  “We’re closer than we were. We can start to see a shape. We can see four guys, at least. One, the old guy in the suit. Two, this guy called Charlie. Three, someone big and very strong and left-handed.”

  “Why him?”

  “He killed the girl last night. The old guy is too old and it sounds like Charlie might be too small. And the physical evidence suggests a left-handed blow.”

  “And number four is the puppet master.”

  Reacher nodded again. “In the shadows somewhere, making plans, pulling strings. We can assume he doesn’t run around doing this kind of stuff himself.”

  “But how can we get to him? If he’s pulled the guy off your tail, we can assume he’s pulled Charlie back, too. They’re hunkering down.”

  “There’s another way. A big wide highway.”

  “Where?”

  “We missed something very obvious,” Reacher said. “We spent all this time looking down the wrong end of the gun. All we’ve done is look at who fired it.”

  “What should we have done?”

  “We should have thought harder.”

  “About what?”

  “James Barr fired four times in Kuwait City. And he fired six times here.”

  “OK,” Helen said. “He fired two more shots here. So?”

  “But he didn’t,” Reacher said. “Not really. Not if you think about it laterally. Truth is he fired four fewer shots here.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Six is two more than four. Not four fewer.”

  “Kuwait City was very hot. Unbearable in the middle of the day. You had to be nuts to be out and about. The streets were empty most of the time.”

  “So?”

  “So in Kuwait City James Barr killed every live human he saw. One, two, three, four, game over. The street was deserted apart from our four guys. They were the only people dumb enough to be out in the heat. And Barr took them all. He ran the table. At the time it seemed logical to me. He wanted to see the pink mist. It struck me that maybe he might have been satisfied with seeing it once, but apparently he wasn’t. So it made some kind of sense that if he didn’t stop at one, he would go all the way until he ran out of targets. And he did. In Kuwait City, he ran out of targets.”

  Helen Rodin said nothing.

  “But he didn’t run out of targets here,” Reacher said. “There had to have been a dozen people in that bottleneck. Or fifteen. More than ten, anyway. And he had a ten-round magazine. But he stopped shooting after six. Just stopped. He left four rounds in the gun. They’re listed right there in Bellantonio’s dog and pony show. And that’s what I meant. He fired the most he could fire in Kuwait City, and four less than the most he could fire here. Which makes the psychology different here. He chose not to run the table here. Why?”

  “Because he was hurrying?”

  “He had an autoloader. The voice-mail recording shows six shots in four seconds. Which means he could have fired ten in less than seven seconds. Three seconds wouldn’t have made any kind of a difference to him.”

  Helen said nothing.

  “I asked him,” Reacher said. “When I saw him in the hospital. I asked him how he would have done it, theoretically. Like a recon briefing. So he thought about it. He knows the area. He said he would have parked on the highway. Behind the library. He said he would have buzzed the window down and emptied the mag.”

  Helen said nothing.

  “But he didn’t empty the mag,” Reacher said. “He stopped shooting after six. Just stopped. Coldly and calmly. Which makes the whole dynamic different. This wasn’t a crazy man sent out to terrorize the city on a dare. He wasn’t pushed into it just for the fun of the carnage. This wasn’t random, Helen. It wasn’t psychotic. There was a specific, limited, coherent purpose behind it. Which reverses the focus. We should have seen it. We should have seen that this whole thing is about the victims, not the shooter. They weren’t just unlucky people in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “They were targets?” Helen said.

  “Carefully chosen,” Reacher said. “And as soon as they were safely down, Barr packed up and left. With four bullets remaining. A random psycho episode wouldn’t have panned out like that. He’d have kept on pulling the trigger until he clicked on empty. So this wasn’t a spree. It was an assassination.”

  Silence in the office.

  “We need to look at who the victims were,” Reacher said. “And we need to look at who wanted them dead. That’s what’s going to lead us to where we need to be.”

  Helen Rodin didn’t move.

  “And we need to do it real fast,” Reacher said. “Because I don’t have much time and we already wasted the best part of three days looking at everything ass-backward.”

  The tired thirty-year-old doctor on the sixth floor of the county hospital was finishing up his afternoon rounds. He had left James Barr for last. Partly because he wasn’t expecting any dramatic change in his condition, and partly because he didn’t care anyway. Looking after sick thieves and swindlers was bad enough, but looking after a mass murderer was absurd. Doubly absurd, because straight after Barr was on his feet he was going to be laid back down on a gurney and some other doctor was going to come in and kill him.

  But ethical obligations are hard to ignore. As is habit. As is duty, and routine, and structure. So the doctor went into Barr’s room and picked up his chart. Took out his pen. Glanced at the machines. Glanced at the patient. He was awake. His eyes were moving.

  Alert, the doctor wrote.

  “Happy?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Barr said.

  Responsive, the doctor wrote.

  “Tough shit,” he said, and put his pen away.

  Barr’s right handcuff was rattling gently against the cot rail. His right hand itself was trembling and slightly cupped and the thumb and index finger were in constant motion, like he was trying to roll an imaginary ball of wax into a perfect sphere.

  “Stop that,” the doctor said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Your hand.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Is that new?”

  “A year or two.”

  “Not just since you woke up?”

  “No.”

  The doctor looked at the chart. Age: Forty-one.

  “Do you drink?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Barr said. “A sip sometimes, to help me sleep.”

  The doctor disbelieved him automatically and flipped through the chart to the tox screen and the liver function test. But the tox screen was clear and the liver function was healthy. Not a dri
nker. Not an alcoholic. Not even close.

  “Have you seen your own physician recently?” he asked.

  “I don’t have insurance,” Barr said.

  “Stiffness in your arms and legs?”

  “A little.”

  “Does your other hand do that, too?”

  “Sometimes.”

  The doctor took out his pen again and scribbled on the bottom of the chart: Observed tremor in right hand, not post-traumatic, primary diagnosis alcoholism unlikely, stiffness in limbs present, possible early-onset PA?

  “What’s wrong with me?” Barr asked.

  “Shut up,” the doctor said. Then, duty done, he clipped the chart back on the foot of the bed and walked out of the room.

  Helen Rodin searched through the evidence cartons and came out with the formal specification of charges against James Barr. Among many other technical violations of the law, the State of Indiana had listed five counts of homicide in the first degree with aggravating circumstances, and as due process required had gone on to list the five alleged victims by name, sex, age, address, and occupation. Helen scanned the page, ran her fingers down the columns for address and occupation.

  “I don’t see any obvious connections,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean they were all targets,” Reacher said. “Probably only one of them was. Two, at most. The others were window dressing. An assassination disguised as a spree. That’s my guess.”

  “I’ll get to work,” she said.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  He used the fire stairs instead of the elevator and got back to the garage unseen. He hustled up the ramp and across the street and under the highway again. The invisible man. Life in the shadows. He smiled. He stopped.

  He decided to go look for a pay phone.

  He found one on the side wall of a small grocery called Martha’s, two blocks north of the cheap clothing store he had used. The booth faced a wide alley that was used as a narrow parking lot. There were six slanted spaces full of six cars. Beyond them, a high brick wall topped with broken glass. The alley turned ninety degrees behind the grocery. He guessed it turned again somewhere and let out on the next block south.

  Safe enough, he thought.

  He took Emerson’s torn card out of his pocket. Chose the cell number. Dialed the phone. Leaned his shoulder against the wall and watched both ends of the alley at once and listened to the purr of the ring tone in his ear.

  “Yes?” Emerson said.

  “Guess who?” Reacher said.

  “Reacher?”

  “You named that tune in one.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m still in town.”

  “Where?”

  “Not far away.”

  “You know we’re looking for you, right?”

  “I heard.”

  “So you need to turn yourself in.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then we’ll come find you,” Emerson said.

  “Think you can?”

  “It’ll be easy.”

  “You know a guy called Franklin?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Ask him how easy it’ll be.”

  “That was different. You could have been anywhere.”

  “You got the motor court staked out?”

  There was a pause. Emerson said nothing.

  “Keep your people there,” Reacher said. “Maybe I’ll be back. Or on the other hand, maybe I won’t.”

  “We’ll find you.”

  “Not a chance. You’re not good enough.”

  “Maybe we’re tracing this call.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble. I’m outside a grocery called Martha’s.”

  “You should come in from the cold.”

  “I’ll trade,” Reacher said. “Find out who placed the cone in the parking garage and then I’ll think about coming in.”

  “Barr placed the cone.”

  “You know he didn’t. His van isn’t on the tapes.”

  “So he used another vehicle.”

  “He doesn’t have another vehicle.”

  “So he borrowed one.”

  “From a friend?” Reacher said. “Maybe. Or maybe the friend placed the cone for him. Either way, you find that friend, and I’ll think about coming in to talk to you.”

  “There are hundreds of cars on those tapes.”

  “You’ve got the resources,” Reacher said.

  “I don’t trade,” Emerson said.

  “I think his name is Charlie,” Reacher said. “Small guy, wiry black hair.”

  “I don’t trade,” Emerson said again.

  “I didn’t kill the girl,” Reacher said.

  “Says you.”

  “I liked her.”

  “You’re breaking my heart.”

  “And you know I didn’t stay at the Metropole last night.”

  “Which is why you dumped her there.”

  “And I’m not left-handed.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Tell Bellantonio to talk to your ME.”

  “We’ll find you,” Emerson said.

  “You won’t,” Reacher said. “Nobody ever has before.”

  Then he hung up and walked back to the street. Crossed the road and hiked half a block north and took cover behind a stack of unused concrete lane dividers in a vacant lot. He waited. Six minutes later two cruisers pulled up in front of Martha’s grocery. Lights, but no sirens. Four cops spilled out. Two went in the store and two went to find the phone. Reacher watched them regroup on the sidewalk. Watched them search the alley and check around its corner. Watched them come back. Watched them admit defeat. He saw one of the four get on his radio for a short conversation full of defensive body language. Raised palms, shrugged shoulders. Then the conversation ended and Reacher slipped away east, heading back toward the Marriott.

  The Zec had only a thumb and a single finger remaining on each hand. On the right was a stump of an index finger, blackened and gnarled by frostbite. He had once spent a week outdoors in the winter, wearing an old Red Army tunic, and the way its previous owner’s water canteen had ridden on his belt had worn the fabric of the right pocket thinner than the left. On such trivial differences survival had hung. His left hand had been saved, and his right hand lost. He had felt his fingers die from the pinkie inward. He had taken his hand out of his pocket and let it freeze hard enough to go completely numb. Then he had chewed off the dead fingers before the gangrene could spread. He remembered dropping them to the ground, one by one, like small brown twigs.

  His left hand retained the pinkie. The middle three fingers were missing. Two had been amputated by a sadist with garden shears. The Zec had removed the other himself, with a sharpened spoon, so as to be disqualified for labor in some machine shop or other. He couldn’t recall the specifics, but he remembered a persuasive rumor that it was better to lose another finger than work on that particular detail. Something to do with the overseer.

  Ruined hands. Just two of many souvenirs of another time, another place. He wasn’t very aware of them anymore, but they made modern life difficult. Cell phones had gotten so damn small. Linsky’s number was ten digits long, and it was a pig to dial. The Zec never retained a phone long enough to make it worth storing a number. That would be madness.

  Eventually he got the number entered and he concentrated hard and pressed the call button with his left-hand pinkie. Then he juggled the phone into his other palm and cupped it near his ear. He didn’t need to hold it close. His hearing was still excellent, which was a miracle all by itself.

  “Yes?” Linsky said.

  “They can’t find him,” the Zec said. “I shouldn’t have told you to break off our own surveillance. My mistake.”

  “Where have they looked?”

  “Here and there. He stayed last night at the motor court. They’ve got it staked out, but I’m sure he won’t go back. They’ve got a man at the lawyer’s office. Other than that, they’re stumbling
around in the dark.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to find him. Use Chenko and Vladimir. And I’ll send Raskin to you. Work together. Find him tonight and then call me.”

  Reacher stopped two blocks short of the Marriott. He knew what Emerson would be doing. He had been Emerson for thirteen years. Emerson would be running down a mental list. Likely haunts, known associates. Likely haunts at this time of day would include eating places. So Emerson would be sending cars to diners and restaurants and cafés, including the salad place that Helen Rodin liked and the sports bar. Then he would move on to known associates, which pretty much limited him to Helen Rodin herself. He would have the lobby cop ride up to the fourth floor and knock on the office door.

  Then he would take a chance on Eileen Hutton.

  So Reacher stopped two blocks short of the Marriott and looked around for a place to wait. He found one behind a shoe store. There was a three-sided corral made of head-high brick walls shielding a shoulder-high plastic garbage receptacle from public view. Reacher stepped in and found that if he leaned his shoulder on the trash can he could see a yard-wide sliver of the Marriott’s main door. He wasn’t uncomfortable. And it was the best-smelling garbage dump he had ever been in. The can smelled of fresh cardboard and new shoes. Better than the kind of place you find behind a fish store.

  He figured if Emerson was efficient he would have to wait less than thirty minutes. Very efficient, less than twenty. Average, somewhere up around an hour. He leaned on the trash can and passed the time. It wasn’t late but the streets were already quiet. There were very few people out and about. He watched, and waited. Then the smell of new leather from the discarded shoe boxes distracted him. It started him thinking about footwear. Maybe he should drop by the store sometime and pick out a brand-new pair. He stuck his foot out and looked down. The boat shoes he had on were soft and light and the soles were thin. They had been fine for Miami. Not so good for his current situation. He could foresee a time when he would appreciate something heavier.

  Then he looked down again. Rocked back and brought his feet together and took the same pace forward. And stopped. He tried it again with his other foot, and stopped again, like a freeze-frame of a man walking. He stared down, with something in the back of his mind. Something from Bellantonio’s evidence. Something among all those hundreds of printed pages.