One Shot

"When will he come?" the Zec asked.

"I don’t know," Rosemary said.

"Four o’clock in the morning," Linsky said. "He’s an American. They’re trained that four o’clock in the morning is the best time for a surprise attack."

"Direction?"

"From the north would make the most sense. The stone-crushing plant would conceal his staging area and leave him only two hundred yards of open ground to cover. But I think he’ll double-bluff us there. He’ll avoid the north, because he knows it’s best."

"Not from the west," the Zec said.

Linsky shook his head. "I agree. Not down the driveway. Too straight and open. He’ll come from the south or the east."

"Put Vladimir in with Sokolov," the Zec said to him. "Tell them to watch the south and the east very carefully. But tell them to keep an eye out north and west, too. All four directions must be monitored continuously, just in case. Then put Chenko in the upstairs hallway with his rifle. He can be ready to deploy to whichever window is appropriate. With Chenko, one shot will be enough."

Then he turned to Rosemary Barr.

"Meanwhile we’ll put you somewhere safe," he told her. "Your tutorials will start as soon as the soldier is buried."

The outer western suburbs were bedroom communities for people who worked in the city, so the traffic stayed bad all the way out. The houses were much grander than in the east. They were all two-story, all varied, all well maintained. They all had big lots and pools and ambitious evergreen landscaping. With the last of the sunset behind them they looked like pictures in a brochure.

"Tight-ass middle class," Reacher said.

"What we all aspire to," Yanni said.

"They won’t want to talk," Reacher said. "Not their style."

"They’ll talk," Yanni said. "Everyone talks to me."

They drove past the Archer place slowly. There was a cast-metal sign on thin chains under the mailbox: Ted and Oline Archer. Beyond it, across a broad open lawn, the house looked closed-up and dark and silent. It was a big Tudor place. Dull brown beams, cream stucco. Three-car garage. Nobody home, Reacher thought.

The neighbor they were looking for lived across the street and one lot to the north. Hers was a place about the same size as the Archers’ but done in an Italianate style. Stone accents, little crenellated towers, dark green sun awnings on the south-facing ground-floor windows. The evening light was fading away to darkness and lamps were coming on behind draped windows. The whole street looked warm and rested and quiet and very satisfied with itself. Reacher said, "They sleep safely in their beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do them harm."

"You know George Orwell?" Yanni asked.

"I went to college," Reacher said. "West Point is technically a college."

Yanni said, "The existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions."

"It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it," Reacher said.

"I’m sure these are perfectly nice people," Helen said.

"But will they talk to us?"

"They’ll talk," Yanni said. "Everyone talks."

Helen pulled into a long limestone driveway and parked about twenty feet behind an imported SUV that had big chrome wheels. The front door of the house was made of ancient gray weathered oak with iron banding that had nail heads as big as golf balls. It felt like you could step through it straight into the Renaissance.

"Property is theft," Reacher said.

"Proudhon," Yanni said. "Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world."

"Abraham Lincoln," Reacher said. "In his first State of the Union."

There was an iron knocker shaped like a quoit in a lion’s mouth. Helen lifted it and used it to thump on the door. Then she found a discreet electric bell push and pressed that, too. They heard no answering sound inside the house. Heavy door, thick walls. Helen tried again with the bell, and before she got her finger off the button, the door sucked back off copper weatherproofing strips and opened like a vault. A guy was standing there with his hand on the inside handle.

"Yes?" he said. He was somewhere in his forties, solid, prosperous, probably a golf club member, maybe an Elk, maybe a Rotarian. He was wearing corduroy pants and a patterned sweater. He was the kind of guy who gets home and immediately changes clothes as a matter of routine.

"Is your wife at home?" Helen asked. "We’d like to speak with her about Oline Archer."

"About Oline?" the guy said. He was looking at Ann Yanni.

"I’m a lawyer," Helen said.

"What is there to be said about Oline?"

"Maybe more than you think," Yanni said.

"You’re not a lawyer."

"I’m here as a journalist," Yanni said. "But not on a human interest story. Nothing tacky. There might have been a miscarriage of justice. That’s the issue here."

"A miscarriage in what way?"

"They might have arrested the wrong man for the shootings. That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here."

Reacher watched the guy. He was standing there, holding the door, trying to decide. In the end he just sighed and stepped back.

"You better come in," he said.

Everyone talks.

He led the way through a muted yellow hallway to a living room. It was spacious and immaculate. Velvet furniture, little mahogany tables, a stone fireplace. No television. There was probably a separate room for that. A den, or a home theater. Or perhaps they didn’t watch television. Reacher saw Ann Yanni calculating the odds.

"I’ll get my wife," the guy said.

He came back a minute later with a handsome woman a little younger than himself. She was wearing pressed jeans and a sweatshirt the same yellow as the hallway walls. Penny loafers on her feet. No socks. She had hair that had been expensively styled to look casual and windswept. She was medium height and lean in a way that spoke of diet books and serious time in aerobics classes.

"What’s this about?" she asked.

"Ted Archer," Helen said.

"Ted? I thought you told my husband it was about Oline."

"We think there may be a connection. Between his situation and hers."

"How could there be a connection? Surely what happened to Oline was completely out of the blue."

"Maybe it wasn’t."

"I don’t understand."

"We suspect that Oline might have been a specific target, kind of hidden behind the confusion of the other four victims."

"Wouldn’t that be a matter for the police?"

Helen paused. "At the moment the police seem satisfied with what they’ve got."

The woman glanced at her husband.

"Then I’m not sure we should talk about it," he said.

"At all?" Yanni asked. "Or just to me?"

"I’m not sure if we would want to be on television."

Reacher smiled to himself. The other side of the tracks.

"This is deep background only," Yanni said. "It’s entirely up to you whether your names are used."

The woman sat down on a sofa and her husband sat next to her, very close. Reacher smiled to himself again. They had subconsciously adopted the standard couple-on-a-sofa pose that television interviews used all the time. Two faces close together, ideally framed for a tight camera shot. Yanni took her cue and sat in an armchair facing them, perched right on the edge, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, a frank and open expression on her face. Helen took another chair. Reacher stepped away to the window. Used a finger to move the drapes aside. It was fully dark outside.