One Shot

"Oline Archer didn’t suspect anything?"

"She did eventually," Reacher said. "She sat on it two months and then presumably she pieced together enough to make some kind of sense out of it. Then she started to go public with it and all kinds of private alarm bells must have gone off, because a week later she was dead. Staged the way it was because to have a missing husband and then a murdered wife two months later would have raised too many flags. But as long as it looked random it was going to be seen as coincidental."

"Who had Oline taken it to? Emerson?"

Reacher said nothing.

"She took it to my father," Helen Rodin said.

There was silence for a long moment.

"So what now?" Franklin said.

"You need to hit that keyboard again," Reacher said. "Whoever got the city contracts has pretty much defined himself as the bad guy here. So we need to know who he is. And where he’s based."

"Public record," Franklin said.

"So check it."

Franklin turned away in the silence and started his fingers pattering over the keys. He pointed and clicked for a minute. Then he came up with the answer.

"Specialized Services of Indiana," he said. "They own all the current city contracts for cement, concrete, and crushed stone. Many, many millions of dollars."

"Where are they?"

"That was the good news."

"What’s the bad?"

"There’s no paperwork. They’re a trust registered in Bermuda. They don’t have to file anything."

"What kind of a system is that?"

Franklin didn’t answer.

"A Bermuda trust needs a local lawyer." Helen’s voice was low, quiet, resigned. Reacher recalled the plate outside A. A. Rodin’s office: the name, followed by the letters that denoted the law degree.

Franklin clicked his way through two more screens.

"There’s a phone number," he said. "That’s all we’ve got."

"What is it?" Helen asked.

Franklin read it out.

"That’s not my father’s number," Helen said.

Franklin clicked his way into a reverse directory. Typed in the number and the screen changed and gave him a name and a business address.

"John Mistrov," he said.

"Russian name," Reacher said.

"I guess so."

"Do you know him?"

"Vaguely. He’s a wills and trusts guy. One-man band. I’ve never worked for him."

Reacher checked his watch. "Can you find a home address?"

Franklin went into a regular directory. Typed in the name and came up with a domestic listing.

"Should I call him?" he said.

Reacher shook his head. "We’ll pay him a visit. Face-to-face works better when time is short."

Vladimir made his way down to the ground-floor surveillance room. Sokolov was in a rolling chair in front of the long table that carried the four television monitors. From left to right they were labeled North, East, South, and West, which made sense if a person viewed the world from a clockwise perspective. Sokolov was scooting his chair slowly down the line, examining each picture, moving on, returning from West to North with a powerful push off the wall. All four screens were misty and green, because it was dark outside and the thermal imaging had kicked in. Occasionally a bright dot could be seen moving fast in the distance. An animal. Nocturnal. Fox, skunk, raccoon, or a pet cat or a lost dog far from home. The North monitor showed a glow from the crushing plant. It would fade as the idle machines cooled. Apart from that all the backgrounds were a deep olive color, because there was nothing out there except for miles of fields constantly misted with cold water from the always-turning irrigation booms.

Vladimir pulled up a second wheeled chair and sat down on Sokolov’s left. He would watch North and East. Sokolov would concentrate on the South and West. That way they each had responsibility for one likely direction and one unlikely. It was a fair distribution of labor.

Upstairs in the third-floor hallway Chenko loaded his own Super Match. Ten rounds, Lake City.308s. One thing Americans did right was ammunition. He opened all the bedroom doors to speed his access north, south, east, or west, as required. He walked to a window and turned his night scope on. Set it for seventy-five yards. He figured he would get the call when the soldier was about a hundred and fifty yards out. That was about the practical limit for the cameras. He would step to the right window and acquire the target when it was still more than a hundred yards distant. He would track its progress. He would let it come to him. When it was seventy-five yards out, he would kill it.

He raised the rifle. Checked the image. It was bright and clear. He watched a fox cross the open ground east to west. Good hunting, my little friend. He walked back to the hallway and propped the gun against the wall and sat down in a straight-backed chair to wait.

Helen Rodin insisted on staying behind in Franklin’s office. So Reacher and Yanni went out alone, in the Mustang. The streets were dark and quiet. Yanni drove. She knew her way around. The address they were looking for was a loft building carved out of an old warehouse halfway between the river wharf and the railhead. Yanni said it was a part of the new urban strategy. SoHo comes to the heartland. She said she had thought about buying in the same building.

Then she said, "We should put Helen on suicide watch."

"She’ll be OK," Reacher said.

"You think?"

"I’m pretty sure."

"What if it was your old man?"

Reacher didn’t answer that. Yanni slowed as the bulk of a large brick building loomed through the darkness.

"You can ask first," Reacher said. "If he doesn’t answer, I’ll ask second."

"He’ll answer," Yanni said. "They all answer."

But John Mistrov didn’t. He was a thin guy of about forty-five. He was dressed like a post-divorce midlife-crisis victim. Acid-rinsed too-tight jeans, black T-shirt, no shoes. They found him all alone in a big white loft apartment eating Chinese food from paper cartons. Initially he was very pleased to see Ann Yanni. Maybe hanging out with celebrities was a part of the lifestyle glamour that the new development had promised. But his early enthusiasm faded fast. It disappeared completely when Yanni ran through her suspicions and then insisted on knowing the names behind the trust.

"I can’t tell you," he said. "Surely you understand there are confidentiality issues here. Surely you understand that."

"I understand that serious crimes have been committed," Yanni said. "That’s what I understand. And you need to understand that, too. You need to choose up sides, right now, fast, before this thing goes public."

"No comment," the guy said.

"There’s no downside here," Yanni said gently. "These names we want, they’ll all be in jail tomorrow. No comebacks."

"No comment," the guy said again.

"You want to go down with them?" Yanni asked. Sharply. "Like an accessory? Or do you want to get out from under? It’s your choice. But one way or the other you’re going to be on the news tomorrow night. Either doing the perp walk or standing there looking good, like, Oh my God, I had no idea, I was only too happy to help."

"No comment," the guy said for the third time.

Loud, clear, and smug.

Yanni gave up. Shrugged, and glanced at Reacher. Reacher checked his watch. Time ticking away. He stepped up close.

"You got medical insurance?" he asked.

The guy nodded.

"Dental plan?"