One Shot

"It’s not Zec. It’s the Zec. It’s a word. A word, being used as a name."

"What does it mean?"

"Look it up. Read some history books."

There was a pause. The sound of writing.

"You should come in," Emerson said. "Talk to me face-to-face."

"Not yet," Reacher said. "Do your job and I’ll think about it."

"I am doing my job. I’m hunting a fugitive. You killed that girl. Not some guy whose name you claim you heard, as big as a house."

"One more thing," Reacher said. "I think the guy called Chenko also goes by the name of Charlie and is James Barr’s friend."

"Why?"

"The description. Small guy, dark, with black hair that sticks up like a brush."

"James Barr has got a Russian friend? Not according to our inquiries."

"Like I said, do your job."

"We’re doing it. Nobody mentioned a Russian friend."

"He sounds American. I think he was involved with what happened on Friday, which means maybe this whole crew was involved."

"Involved how?"

"I don’t know. But I plan to find out. I’ll call you tomorrow."

"You’ll be in jail tomorrow."

"Like I’m in jail now? Dream on, Emerson."

"Where are you?"

"Close by," Reacher said. "Sleep well, Detective."

He clicked the phone off and put Emerson’s number back in his pocket and took out Helen Rodin’s. Dialed it and moved around the concrete pillar into deep shadow.

"Yes?" Helen Rodin said.

"This is Reacher."

"Are you OK? The cop is right outside my door now."

"Suits me," Reacher said. "Suits him too, I expect. He’s probably getting forty bucks an hour for the overtime."

"They put your face on the six o’clock news. It’s a big story."

"Don’t worry about me."

"Where are you?"

"Free and clear. Making progress. I saw Charlie. I gave Emerson his plate number. Are you making progress?"

"Not really. All I’ve got is five random names. No reason I can see why anybody told James Barr to shoot any one of them."

"You need Franklin. You need research."

"I can’t afford Franklin."

"I want you to find that address in Kentucky for me."

"Kentucky?"

"Where James Barr went to shoot."

Reacher heard her juggle the phone and flip through paper. Then she came back and read out an address. It meant nothing to Reacher. A road, a town, a state, a zip.

"What’s Kentucky got to do with anything?" Helen asked.

Reacher heard a car on the street. Close by, to his left, fat tires rolling slow. He slid around the pillar and looked. A PD prowl car, crawling, lights off. Two cops in the front, craning their necks, looking right, looking left.

"Got to go," he said. He clicked the phone off and put it on the ground at the base of the pillar. Emerson’s caller ID would have trapped the number and any cell phone’s physical location could be tracked by the recognition pulse that it sends to the network, once every fifteen seconds, regular as clockwork. So Reacher left the phone in the dirt and headed west, forty feet below the raised roadbed.

Ten minutes later he was opposite the back of the black glass tower, in the shadows under the highway, facing the vehicle ramp. There was an empty cop car parked on the curb. It looked still and cold. Settled. Like it had been there for a spell. The guy outside Helen’s door, Reacher thought. He crossed the street and walked down the ramp. Into the underground garage. The concrete was all painted dirty white and there were fluorescent tubes blazing every fifteen feet. There were pools of light and pools of darkness. Reacher felt like he was walking out of the wings across a succession of brightly-lit stages. The ceiling was low. There were fat square pillars holding up the building. The service core was in the center. The whole space was cold and silent and about forty yards deep and maybe three times as wide.

Forty yards deep.

Just like the new extension on First Street. Reacher stepped over and put his back against the front wall. Walked all the way across to the back wall. Thirty-five paces. He turned like a swimmer at the end of a lap and walked back. Thirty-five paces. He crossed diagonally to the far corner. The garage was dark back there. He threaded between two NBC vans and found the blue Ford Mustang he guessed belonged to Ann Yanni. It was clean and shiny. Recently waxed. It had small windows, because of the convertible top. A raked windshield. Tinted glass.

He tried the passenger door. Locked. He moved around the hood and tried the driver’s door. The handle moved. Unlocked. He glanced around and opened the door.

No alarm.

He reached inside and touched the unlock button. There was a triple thunk as both door locks and the trunk lock unlatched. He closed the driver’s door and stepped back to the trunk. The spare tire was under the floor. Nested inside the wheel were the jack and a length of metal pipe that both worked the jack and undid the wheel nuts. He took the pipe out and closed the trunk. Stepped around to the passenger side and opened the door and got inside the car.

The interior smelled of perfume and coffee. He opened the glove box and found a stack of road maps and a small leather folder the size of a purse diary. Inside the folder were an insurance slip and an auto registration, both made out to Ms. Janine Lorna Ann Yanni at a local Indiana address. He put the folder away again and closed the glove box. Found the right levers and lowered his seat as far as it would go. He reclined the back all the way, which wasn’t far. Then he moved the whole seat backward to give himself as much legroom as he could get. He untucked his shirt and rested the pipe in his lap and lay back in the seat. Stretched. He had about three hours to wait. He tried to sleep. Sleep when you can was the old army rule.

First thing Emerson did was contact the phone company. He confirmed that the number his caller ID had caught was a cell phone. The service contract was written out to a business operating under the name Specialized Services of Indiana. Emerson tasked a first-year detective to track the business and told the phone company to track the phone. Initial progress was mixed. Specialized Services of Indiana dead-ended because it was owned by an offshore trust in Bermuda and had no local address. But the phone company reported that the cell phone was stationary and was showing up on three cells at once, which meant it had to be in the downtown area and would be easy to triangulate.

Rosemary Barr sweet-talked her way past the Board of Corrections desk on the sixth floor of the hospital and was granted an out-of-hours visit with her brother. But when she got to his room she found he was deeply asleep. Her sweet talk was wasted. She sat for thirty minutes but James didn’t wake up. She watched the monitors. His heartbeat was strong and regular. His breathing was fine. He was still handcuffed and his head was still clamped but his body was perfectly still. She checked his chart, to make sure he was being properly cared for. She saw the doctor’s scribbled note: possible early-onset PA? She had no idea what that meant, and late in the evening she couldn’t find anyone willing to explain it to her.

The phone company marked the cell phone’s location on a large-scale city map and faxed it to Emerson. Emerson tore it out of the machine and spent five minutes trying to make sense of it. He was expecting to find the three arrows meeting at a hotel, or a bar, or a restaurant. Instead they met on a vacant lot under the raised highway. He had a brief image in his mind of Reacher sleeping rough in a cardboard box. Then he concluded that the phone was abandoned, which was confirmed ten minutes later by the patrol car he sent out to check.