One Shot

"Homicide. Late last night. Local girl got her neck broken. A single blow to the right temple. In an alley outside a hotel. Not this one, I hope."

"No," Reacher said. "It wasn’t this one."

"Brutal."

"I guess it was."

Eileen Hutton sat down at the table. Not across from him. In the chair next to him. Just like Sandy, at the sports bar.

"You look great," he said. "You really do."

She said nothing.

"It’s good to see you," he said again.

"Likewise," she said.

"No, I mean it."

"I mean it, too. Believe me, if we were at some Beltway cocktail party I would be getting all misty and nostalgic with the best of them. I might still, as soon as I find out you’re not here for the reason I think you’re here."

"What reason would that be?"

"To keep your promise."

"You remember that?"

"Of course I do. You talked about it all one night."

"And you’re here because the Department of the Army got a subpoena."

Hutton nodded. "From some idiot prosecutor."

"Rodin," Reacher said.

"That’s the guy."

"My fault," Reacher said.

"Christ," Hutton said. "What did you tell him?"

"Nothing," Reacher said. "I didn’t tell him anything. But he told me something. He told me my name was on the defense’s witness list."

"The defense list?"

Reacher nodded. "That surprised me, obviously. So I was confused. So I asked him if my name had come from some old Pentagon file."

"Not in this lifetime," Hutton said.

"As I found out," Reacher said. "But still, I had said the magic words. I had mentioned the Pentagon. The type of guy he is, I knew he would go fishing. He’s very insecure. He likes his cases armor-plated. So I’m sorry."

"You should be. I get to spend two days in the back of beyond and I get to perjure myself from here to breakfast time."

"You don’t need to do that. You can claim national security."

Hutton shook her head. "We talked about it, long and hard. We decided to stay away from anything that draws attention. That Palestinian thing was very thin. If that unravels, everything unravels. So I’m here to swear blind that James Barr was GI Joe."

"You OK with that?"

"You know the army. None of us is a virgin anymore. It’s about the mission, and the mission is to keep a lid on the KC thing."

"Why did they delegate you?"

"Two birds with one stone. No good to them to send someone else and still have me out there knowing the truth. This way, I can’t talk about it ever again, anywhere. Not without effectively confessing to perjury one time in Indiana. They’re not dumb."

"I’m surprised they still care. It’s practically ancient history."

"How long have you been out?"

"Seven years."

"And clearly you don’t have a subscription to the Army Times."

"What?"

"Or maybe you never knew."

"Never knew what?"

"Where it went back then, up the chain of command."

"Division, I supposed. But maybe not all the way to the top."

"It stopped on a certain colonel’s desk. He was the one who nixed it."

"And?"

"His name was Petersen."

"And?"

"Colonel Petersen is now Lieutenant General Petersen. Three stars. Congressional liaison. About to get his fourth star. About to be named Vice Chief of Staff of the Army."

That could complicate things, Reacher thought.

"Embarrassing," he said.

"You bet your ass embarrassing," Hutton said. "So believe me, this is one lid that is going to stay on. You need to bear that in mind. Whatever you want to do about your promise, you can’t talk about what happened. Any more than I can. They would find a way to get to you."

"Neither of us needs to talk about it. It’s a done deal."

"I’m very glad to hear it."

"I think."

"You think?"

"Ask me how they really got my name."

"How did they really get your name?"

"From James Barr himself."

"I don’t believe it."

"I didn’t believe it, either. But I do now."

"Why?"

"We should have lunch. We really need to talk. Because I think there’s someone else out there who knows."

Emerson and Bianca called it quits at twelve-fifty. Reacher never showed. The feeder flight came in on time. Nobody that could have been a female Brigadier General from the Pentagon got off. The two cops waited until the arrivals hall emptied out and went quiet. Then they got in their car and drove back to town.

Reacher and Hutton had lunch. A waitress came over, happy to get some business out of her corner table at last. The menu was coffee-shop-basic. Reacher ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee. Hutton went with chicken Caesar and tea. They ate and talked. Reacher ran through the details of the case. Then he ran through his theory. The perverse choice of location, the presumed coercion. He told Hutton about Niebuhr’s theory of the new and persuasive friend. Told her that Barr claimed he had no new friends, and very few old ones.

"Can’t be a new friend anyway," Hutton said. "Because this is a multilayered setup. There’s the contemporaneous evidence, and the historical parallels. Second story of a parking garage fourteen years ago in KC, second story of a parking garage here and now. Virtually the same rifle. Boat tail sniper ammunition. And the desert boots. I never saw them before Desert Shield. They’re suggestive. Whoever scripted this for him knew all about his past. Which means it isn’t a new friend. It can’t be. It would take years and years before Barr would feel like sharing anything about KC."

Reacher nodded. "But obviously he did, eventually. Which is why I said there’s someone else out there who knows."

"We need to find that person," Hutton said. "The mission is to keep the lid on this thing."

"Not my mission. I don’t care if this Petersen guy gets his fourth star."

"But you do care that a quarter million veterans don’t get their reputations trashed. The scandal would taint all of them. And they were good people."

Reacher said nothing.

"It’s easy enough," Hutton said. "If James Barr doesn’t have many friends, you don’t have a very big pool to search through. One of them has to be the guy."

Reacher said nothing.

"Two birds with one stone," Hutton said. "You get to the puppet master and the army gets to relax."

"So why doesn’t the army do it for me?"

"We can’t afford to draw attention."

"I’ve got operational problems," Reacher said.

"No jurisdiction?"

"Worse than that. I’m about to get arrested."

"For what?"

"For killing that girl behind the hotel."

"What?"

"The puppet master doesn’t like me being here. He already tried something on Monday night, with that same girl as bait. So I went to see her yesterday, twice. And now they killed her and I’m sure I’m her last unexplained contact."

"Have you got an alibi?"

"Depends on the exact timing, but probably not. I’m sure the cops are already looking for me."

"Problem," Hutton said.

"Only temporary," Reacher said. "Science is on my side. If her neck was broken by a single blow to her right temple, then her head rotated a little, counterclockwise, which means the punch was thrown by a left-hander. And I’m right-handed. If I had hit her in the right temple I would have knocked her out for sure, but I wouldn’t have broken her neck. I would have had to do that separately, afterward."