One Shot

"I liked him," Helen said, to nobody in particular.

"How is he?" Niebuhr asked.

"Weak," Helen said. "Smashed up. Like he got hit by a truck."

"Is he making sense?"

"He’s coherent. But he doesn’t remember anything. And I don’t think he’s faking."

"How far back is he blanking?"

"I can’t tell. He remembers listening to a baseball game on the radio. Could have been last week or last month."

"Or last year," Reacher said.

"Did he accept your representation?" Danuta asked.

"Verbally," Helen said. "He can’t sign anything. He’s handcuffed to the bed."

"Did you walk him through the charges and the evidence?"

"I had to," Helen said. "He wanted to know why I thought he needed a lawyer."

"And?"

"He assumes he’s guilty."

There was silence for a moment. Then Alan Danuta closed his briefcase and took it off his knees and put it on the floor. Sat up straight, fast, all in one fluid movement.

"Welcome to the gray areas," he said. "This is where good law comes from."

"Nothing good about it," Helen said. "Not so far."

"We absolutely cannot let him go to trial. The government injured him through its own negligence and now it wants to put him on trial for his life? I don’t think so. Not if he can’t even remember the day in question. What kind of a defense could he conduct?"

"My father will have kittens."

"Obviously. We’ll have to cut him out. We’ll have to go straight to federal court. It’s a Bill of Rights issue anyway. Federal, then Appeals, then the Supremes. That’s the process."

"That’s a long process."

Danuta nodded.

"Three years," he said. "If we’re lucky. The most applicable precedent is Wilson, and that case took three and a half years. Almost four."

"And we’ve got no guarantee of winning. We might lose."

"In which case we’ll go to trial down the road and we’ll do the best we can."

"I’m not qualified for this," Helen said.

"Intellectually? That’s not what I heard."

"Tactically and strategically. And financially."

"There are veterans’ associations that can help with the money. Mr. Barr served his country, after all. With honor."

Helen didn’t reply to that. Just glanced Reacher’s way. Reacher said nothing. He turned away and stared at the wall. He was thinking: This guy is going to get away with murder again? Twice?

Alan Danuta moved in his chair.

"There is an alternative," he said. "Not very exciting legally, but it’s out there."

"What is it?" Helen asked.

"Give your father the puppet master. Under these circumstances, half a loaf is better than none. And the puppet master is the better half anyway."

"Would he go for it?"

"You know him better than I do, presumably. But he’d be a fool not to go for it. He’s looking at a minimum three-year appeals process before he even gets Mr. Barr inside a courtroom. And any prosecutor worth his salt wants the bigger fish."

Helen glanced at Reacher again.

"The puppet master is only a theory," she said. "We don’t have anything that even remotely resembles evidence."

"Your choice," Danuta said. "But one way or the other, you can’t let Barr go to trial."

"One step at a time," Helen said. "Let’s see what Dr. Mason thinks."

Dr. Mason came back twenty minutes later. Reacher watched her walk. The length of her stride and the look in her eyes and the set of her jaw told him she had arrived at a firm conclusion. There was no uncertainty there. No diffidence, no doubt. None at all. She sat back down and smoothed her skirt across her knees.

"Permanent retrograde amnesia," she said. "Completely genuine. As clear a case as I ever saw."

"Duration?" Niebuhr asked.

"Major League Baseball will tell us that," she said. "The last thing he remembers is a particular Cardinals game. But my bet would be a week or more, counting backward from today."

"Which includes Friday," Helen said.

"I’m afraid so."

"OK," Danuta said. "There it is."

"Great," Helen said. She stood up and the others joined her and they all moved around and ended up facing the exit, either consciously or unconsciously; Reacher wasn’t sure. But it was clear that Barr was behind them, literally and figuratively. He had changed from being a man to being a medical specimen and a legal argument.

"You guys go on ahead," he said.

"You’re staying here?" Helen asked.

Reacher nodded.

"I’m going to look in on my old buddy," he said.

"Why?"

"I haven’t seen him for fourteen years."

Helen stepped away from the others and came close.

"No, why?" she asked quietly.

"Don’t worry," he said. "I’m not going to switch his machines off."

"I hope you’re not."

"I can’t," he said. "I don’t have much of an alibi, do I?"

She stood still for a moment. Said nothing. Then she stepped back and joined the others. They all left together. Reacher watched them process out at the security desk, and as soon as they were through the steel door and in the elevator lobby he turned around and walked down the corridor to James Barr’s door. He didn’t knock. Just paused a beat and turned the handle and went inside.

Chapter 7

The room was overheated. You could have roasted chickens in it. There was a wide window with white venetian blinds closed against the sun. They glowed and filled the room with soft white light. There was medical equipment piled everywhere. A silent respirator, disconnected. IV stands and heart monitors. Tubes and bags and wires.

Barr was flat on his back in a bed in the middle of the room. No pillow. His head was clamped in a brace. His hair was shaved and he had bandages over the holes they had drilled in his skull. His left shoulder was wrapped in bandages that reached to his elbow. His right shoulder was bare and unmarked. The skin there was pale and thin and marbled. His chest and his sides were bandaged. The bedsheet was folded down at his waist. His arms were straight at his sides and his wrists were handcuffed to the cot rails. He had IV needles taped to the back of his left hand. There was a peg on his right middle finger that was connected by a gray wire to a box. There were red wires leading out from under the bandages on his chest. They led to a machine with a screen. The screen was showing a rolling pattern that reminded Reacher of the cellular company’s recording of the gunshots. Sharp peaks, and long troughs. The machine made a muted beep every time a peak hit the screen.

"Who’s there?" Barr asked.

His voice was weak and rusty, and slow. And scared.

"Who’s there?" he asked again. The way his head was clamped limited his field of vision. His eyes were moving, left and right, up and down.

Reacher stepped closer. Leaned over the bed. Said nothing.

"You," Barr said.

"Me," Reacher said.

"Why?"

"You know why."

Barr’s right hand trembled. The motion put a ripple in the wire from the peg. The handcuff moved against the bed rail and made a quiet metallic sound.

"I guess I let you down," he said.

"I guess you did."

Reacher watched Barr’s eyes, because they were the only part of him that could move. He was incapable of body language. His head was immobile and most of the rest of him was trussed up like a mummy.