One Shot

"You play poker?" he asked.

"No."

"Good decision. You’re a terrible liar."

Bellantonio said nothing.

"You should start worrying," Reacher said. "He slides, he’s going to sue your ass for the dog."

"He won’t slide," Bellantonio said.

"No," Reacher said. "I don’t suppose he will."

Emerson was waiting outside Bellantonio’s door. Jacket on, tie off. Frustration in his eyes, the way cops get when they’re snagged up in lawyer stuff.

"Did you see him?" he asked. "At the hospital?"

"He’s blank from Tuesday night onward," Reacher said. "You’ve got a battle on your hands."

"Terrific."

"You should run safer jails."

"Rodin will bring experts in."

"His daughter already did."

"There are legal precedents."

"They go both ways, apparently."

"You want to see that piece of shit back on the street?"

"Your screwup," Reacher said. "Not mine."

"As long as you’re happy."

"Nobody’s happy," Reacher said. "Not yet."

He left the police station and walked all the way back to the black glass tower. Helen Rodin was at her desk, studying a sheet of paper. Danuta and Mason and Niebuhr had left. She was alone.

"Rosemary asked her brother about Kuwait City," she said. "She told me so, when she came out of his room at the hospital."

"And?" Reacher said.

"He told her it was all true."

"Not a fun conversation, probably."

Helen Rodin shook her head. "Rosemary is pretty devastated. She says James is, too. He can’t believe he did it again. Can’t believe he threw fourteen years away."

Reacher said nothing. Silence in the office. Then Helen showed Reacher the sheet of paper she was reading.

"Eileen Hutton is a Brigadier General," she said.

"Then she’s done well," Reacher said. "She was a major when I knew her."

"What were you?"

"A captain."

"Wasn’t that illegal?"

"Technically. For her."

"She was in the JAG Corps."

"Lawyers can break the law, same as anyone else."

"She’s still in the JAG Corps."

"Obviously. They don’t retrain them."

"Based in the Pentagon."

"That’s where they keep the smart people."

"She’ll be here tomorrow."

Reacher said nothing.

"For her deposition," Helen said.

Reacher said nothing.

"It’s scheduled for four o’clock in the afternoon. Chances are she’ll fly down in the morning and check in somewhere. Because she’ll have to stay the night in town. Too late for a flight back."

"You going to ask me to take her out for dinner?"

"No," Helen said. "I’m not. I’m going to ask you to take her out for lunch. Before she meets with my father. I need to know in advance what she’s here for."

"They put Barr’s dog to sleep," Reacher said.

"It was old."

"That doesn’t bother you?"

"Should it?"

"The dog didn’t do anything to anyone."

Helen said nothing.

"Which hotel will Hutton use?" Reacher asked.

"I have no idea. You’ll have to catch her at the airport."

"What flight?"

"I don’t know that, either. But there’s nothing direct from D.C. So I expect she’ll change planes in Indianapolis. She won’t get here before eleven in the morning."

Reacher said nothing.

"I apologize," Helen said. "For telling Danuta we didn’t have any evidence for the puppet master. I didn’t mean it to sound dismissive."

"You were right," Reacher said. "We didn’t have any evidence. At the time."

She looked at him. "But?"

"We do now."

"What?"

"They’ve been gilding the lily over at the police station. They’ve got fibers, ballistics, dog DNA, a receipt for the ammunition all the way from someplace in Kentucky. The traced the traffic cone to the city. They’ve got all kinds of stuff."

"But?" Helen said again.

"But they haven’t got James Barr on tape driving in to place the cone in the garage beforehand."

"Are you sure?"

Reacher nodded. "They must have looked at the tapes a dozen times by now. If they had found him, they’d have printed the stills and pinned them up for the world to see. But they’re not there, which means they didn’t find them. Which means James Barr didn’t drive in and leave the cone beforehand."

"Which means someone else did."

"The puppet master," Reacher said. "Or another of his puppets. Sometime after Tuesday night. Barr thinks the cone was still in his garage Tuesday."

Helen looked at him again. "Whoever it was must be on the tapes."

"Correct," Reacher said.

"But there’ll be hundreds of cars."

"You can narrow it down some. You’re looking for a sedan. Something too low-slung to get itself down a farm track."

"The puppet master really exists, doesn’t he?"

"No other explanation for how it went down."

"Alan Danuta is probably right, you know," Helen said. "My father will trade Barr for the puppet master. He’d be a fool not to."

Reacher said nothing.

"Which means Barr is going to walk," Helen said. "You understand that, right? There’s no alternative. The prosecution’s legal problems are overwhelming."

Reacher said nothing.

"I’m not happy about it, either," Helen said. "But for me it’s just a PR problem. I can spin my way out of it. At least I hope I can. I can blame it all on the way the jail was run. I can claim that it wasn’t me who got him off."

"But?" Reacher said.

"What are you going to do? You came here to bury him and he’s going to walk."

"I don’t know what I’m going to do," Reacher said. "What choices do I have?"

"Only two that I’m scared of. One, you could give up on helping me find the guy who’s pulling the strings. I can’t do it alone and Emerson won’t even be willing to try."

"And two?"

"You could settle things with Barr yourself."

"That’s for sure."

"But you can’t do that. You’d go to prison for life if you were lucky."

"If I got caught."

"You would get caught. I would know you did it."

Reacher smiled. "You’d rat me out?"

"I would have to," Helen said.

"Not if you were my lawyer. You couldn’t say a word."

"I’m not your lawyer."

"I could hire you."

"Rosemary Barr would know too, and she’d rat you out in a heartbeat. And Franklin. He heard you tell the story."

Reacher nodded.

"I don’t know what I’m going to do," he said again.

"How do we find this guy?"

"Like you said, why would I want to?"

"Because I don’t think you’re the type who settles for half a loaf."

Reacher said nothing.

"I think you want the truth," Helen said. "I don’t think you like it when the wool gets pulled over your eyes. You don’t like being played for a sucker."

Reacher said nothing.

"Plus, this whole situation stinks," Helen said. "There were six victims here. The five who died and Barr himself."