One Shot

"Unfortunately the case against James Barr is very strong," she said.

"How did you get my name?" Reacher asked.

"From James Barr, of course," she said. "How else?"

"From Barr? I don’t believe it."

"Well, listen," she said.

She turned away to the desk and pressed a key on an old-fashioned cassette player. Reacher heard a voice he didn’t recognize say: Denying it is not an option. Helen touched the Pause key and kept her finger on it.

"His first lawyer," she said. "We changed representation yesterday."

"How? He was in a coma yesterday."

"Technically my client is James Barr’s sister. His next of kin."

Then she let go of the Pause key and Reacher heard room sounds and hiss and then a voice he hadn’t heard for fourteen years. It was exactly how he remembered it. It was low, and tense, and raspy. It was the voice of a man who rarely spoke. It said: Get Jack Reacher for me.

He stood there, stunned.

Helen Rodin pressed the Stop key.

"See?" she said.

Then she checked her watch.

"Ten-thirty," she said. "Stick around and join in the client conference."

She unveiled him like a conjurer on a stage. Like a rabbit out of a hat. First in was a guy Reacher immediately took for an ex-cop. He was introduced as Franklin, a freelance investigator who worked for lawyers. They shook hands.

"You’re a hard man to find," Franklin said.

"Wrong," Reacher said. "I’m an impossible man to find."

"Want to tell me why?" There were instant questions in Franklin’s eyes. A cop’s questions. Like, How much use is this guy going to be as a witness? What is he? A felon? A fugitive? Will he have credibility on the stand?

"Just a hobby," Reacher said. "Just a personal choice."

"So you’re cool?"

"You could skate on me."

Then a woman came in. She was in her mid- to late thirties, probably, dressed for an office, and stressed and sleepless. But behind the agitation she wasn’t unappealing. She looked like a kind and decent person. Even pretty. But she was clearly James Barr’s sister. Reacher knew that even before they were introduced. She had the same coloring and a softer, feminized, older version of the same face.

"I’m Rosemary Barr," she said. "I’m so glad you found us. It feels providential. Now I really feel we’re getting somewhere."

Reacher said nothing at all.

The law offices of Helen Rodin didn’t run to a conference room. Reacher figured that would come later. Maybe. If she prospered. So all four people crowded into the inner office. Helen sat at her desk. Franklin perched on a corner of it. Reacher leaned on the windowsill. Rosemary Barr paced, nervously. If there had been a rug, she would have worn holes in it.

"OK," Helen said. "Defense strategy. At the minimum we want to pursue a medical plea. But we’ll aim higher than that. How high we eventually get will depend on a number of factors. In which connection, first, I’m sure we all want to hear what Mr. Reacher has to say."

"I don’t think you do," Reacher said.

"Do what?"

"Want to hear what I’ve got to say."

"Why wouldn’t we?"

"Because you jumped to the wrong conclusion."

"Which is?"

"Why do you think I went to see your father first?"

"I don’t know."

"Because I didn’t come here to help James Barr."

Nobody spoke.

"I came here to bury him," Reacher said.

They all stared.

"But why?" Rosemary Barr asked.

"Because he’s done this before. And once was enough."

Chapter 3

Reacher moved and propped his back against the window reveal and turned sideways so that he could see the plaza. And so that he couldn’t see his audience.

"Is this a privileged conversation?" he asked.

"Yes," Helen Rodin said. "It is. It’s a client conference. It’s automatically protected. Nothing we say here can be repeated."

"Is it ethical for you to hear bad news, legally?"

There was a long silence.

"Are you going to give evidence for the prosecution?" Helen Rodin asked.

"I don’t think I’ll have to, under the circumstances. But I will if necessary."

"Then we would hear the bad news anyway. We would take a deposition from you before the trial. To guarantee no more surprises."

More silence.

"James Barr was a sniper," Reacher said. "Not the best the army ever had, and not the worst. Just a good, competent rifleman. Average in almost every way."

Then he paused and turned his head and looked down to his left. At the cheap new building with the recruitment office in it. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps.

"Four types of people join the military," he said. "First, for people like me, it’s a family trade. Second, there are patriots, eager to serve their country. Third, there are people who just need a job. And fourth, there are people who want to kill other people. The military is the only place where it’s legal to do that. James Barr was the fourth type. Deep down he thought it would be fun to kill."

Rosemary Barr looked away. Nobody spoke.

"But he never got the chance," Reacher said. "I was a very thorough investigator when I was an MP, and I learned all about him. I studied him. He trained for five years. I went through his logbooks. Some weeks he fired two thousand rounds. All of them at paper targets or silhouettes. I counted a career total of nearly a quarter-million rounds fired, and not one of them at the enemy. He didn’t go to Panama in 1989. We had a very big army back then, and we required only a very small force, so most guys missed out. It burned him up. Then Desert Shield happened in 1990. He went to Saudi. But he wasn’t in Desert Storm in 1991. They made it a mostly armored campaign. James Barr sat it out in Saudi, cleaning sand out of his rifle, firing two thousand training rounds a week. Then after Desert Storm was over, they sent him to Kuwait City for the cleanup."

"What happened there?" Rosemary Barr asked.

"He snapped," Reacher said. "That’s what happened there. The Soviets had collapsed. Iraq was back in its box. He looked ahead and saw that war was over. He had trained nearly six years and had never fired his gun in anger and was never going to. A lot of his training had been about visualization. About seeing himself putting the reticle on the medulla oblongata, where the spinal cord broadens at the base of the brain. About breathing slow and squeezing the trigger. About the split-second pause while the bullet flies. About seeing the puff of pink mist from the back of the head. He had visualized all of that. Many times. But he had never seen it. Not once. He had never seen the pink mist. And he really wanted to."

Silence in the room.

"So he went out one day, alone," Reacher said. "In Kuwait City. He set up and waited. Then he shot and killed four people coming out of an apartment building."

Helen Rodin was staring at him.

"He fired from a parking garage," Reacher said. "Second level. It was directly opposite the apartment building’s door. The victims were American noncoms, as it happened. They had weekend passes, and they were in street clothes."

Rosemary Barr was shaking her head.

"This can’t be true," she said. "It just can’t be. He wouldn’t do it. And if he did, he’d have gone to prison. But he got an honorable discharge instead. Right after the Gulf. And a campaign medal. So it can’t have happened. It can’t possibly be true."