One Shot

"Did he say how long he would be gone?"

The woman just shook her head.

"Was he scared of something?"

"He was kind of beaten down. Deflated."

Deflated. Like the redhead in the auto parts store.

"OK," Reacher said. "Thanks."

"You going now?"

"Yes," Reacher said. He walked back the way he had come, listening to the glider moving, listening to the hiss of irrigation water. He backed the Toyota all the way to the road and swung the wheel and headed south.

He put the Toyota next to the Chevy and headed inside the store. Gary was still behind the register. Reacher ignored him and headed straight for the No Admittance door. The redhead was still behind the desk. She was almost through with the invoices. The stack on her right was tall, and the stack on her left had just one sheet of paper in it. She wasn’t doing anything with it. She was leaning back in the chair, unwilling to finish, unwilling to get back out to the public. Or to Gary.

Reacher put the car keys on the desk.

"Thanks for the loan," he said.

"Did you find him?" she asked.

"He’s gone."

She said nothing.

"You look tired," Reacher said.

She said nothing.

"Like you’ve got no energy. No sparkle. No enthusiasm."

"So?"

"Last night you were full of beans."

"I’m at work now."

"You were at work last night, too. You were getting paid."

"You said you were going to forget all about that."

"I am. Have a nice life, Sandy."

She watched him for a minute.

"You too, Jimmy Reese," she said.

He turned around and closed the door on her again and headed out to the daylight. Started walking south, back to town.

There were four people in Helen Rodin’s office when he got there. Helen herself, and three strangers. One of them was a guy in an expensive suit. He was sitting in Helen’s chair, behind her desk. She was standing next to him, head bent, talking. Some kind of an urgent conference. The other two strangers were standing near the window, like they were waiting, like they were next in line. One was a man, one was a woman. The woman had long dark hair and glasses. The man had no hair and glasses. Both were dressed casually. Both had lapel badges with their names printed large. The woman had Mary Mason followed by a bunch of letters that had to be medical. The man had Warren Niebuhr with the same bunch of letters. Doctors, Reacher figured, probably psychiatrists. The name badges made them look like they had been dragged out of a convention hall. But they didn’t seem unhappy about it.

Helen looked up from her discussion.

"Folks, this is Jack Reacher," she said. "My investigator dropped out and Mr. Reacher agreed to take over his role."

News to me, Reacher thought. But he said nothing. Then Helen gestured at the guy in her chair, proudly.

"This is Alan Danuta," she said. "He’s a lawyer specializing in veterans’ issues. From D.C. Probably the best there is."

"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."