When the one with the rifle is killed
The one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots.
The Zec was handed an ammunition clip. No rifle. He was shoved forward, and blindly followed the back of the man ahead. He turned a corner. Passed in front of a Red Army machine-gun nest. At first he thought the front line must therefore be very close. But then a commissar with a flag and another huge megaphone roared at him: No retreat! If you turn back even one step we will shoot you down! So the Zec ran helplessly onward and turned another corner and stepped into a hail of German bullets. He stopped, half-turned, and was hit three times in the arms and legs. He was bowled over and came to rest lying on the shattered remains of a brick wall and within minutes was buried under a mounting pile of corpses.
He came to forty-eight hours later in an improvised hospital and made his first acquaintance with Soviet military justice: harsh, ponderous, ideological, but running strictly in accordance with its own arcane rules. The matter at issue was caused by his having half-turned: Were his wounds inflicted by the Motherland's enemy, or had he been retreating toward his own side's guns? Because of the physical ambiguity he was spared execution and sentenced to a penal battalion instead. Thus began a process of survival that had so far lasted sixty-three years.
A process he intended to continue.
He dialed Grigor Linsky's number.
"We can assume the soldier is talking," he said. "Whatever he knows, they all know now. Therefore it's time to get ourselves an insurance policy. "
Franklin said, "We're really no further ahead. Are we? No way is Emerson going to accept a damn thing unless we give him more than we've got right now. "
"So work the victim list," Reacher said.
"That could take forever. Five lives, five life histories. "
"So let's focus. "
"Great. Terrific. Just tell me which one you want me to focus on. "
Reacher nodded. Recalled Helen Rodin's description of what she had heard. The first shot, and then a tiny pause, and then the next two. Then another pause, a little longer, but really only a split second, and then the last three. He closed his eyes. In his mind he pictured Bellantonio's audio graph from the cell phone voice mail. Pictured his own mute simulation, in the gloom of the new parking garage, his right arm extended like a rifle: click, click-click, click-click-click.
"Not the first one," he said. "Not the first cold shot. No guarantee of hitting anything with that. Therefore the first victim was meaningless. Part of the window dressing. Not the last three, either. That was bang-bang-bang. The deliberate miss, and more window dressing. The job was already done by then. "
"So, the second or the third. Or both of them. "
Click, click-click.
Reacher opened his eyes.
"The third," he said. "There's a rhythm there. The first cold shot, then a lead-in, and then the money shot. The target. Then a break. His eye is lagging in the scope. He's making sure the target is down. It is. So then the last three. "
"Who was the third?" Helen asked.
"The woman," Franklin said.
Linsky called Chenko, and then Vladimir, and then Sokolov. He explained the mission and pulled them all in tighter. Franklin's office had no back entrance. There was just the exposed staircase. The target's car was right there on the apron. Easy.
Reacher said, "Tell me about the woman. "
Franklin shuffled his notes. Put them in a new order of priority.
"Her name was Oline Archer," he said. "Caucasian female, married, no children, thirty-seven years old, lived west of here in the outer suburbs. "
"Employed in the DMV building," Reacher said. "If she was the specific target, Charlie had to know where she was and when she would be coming out. "
Franklin nodded. "Employed by the DMV itself. Been there a year and a half. "
"Doing what exactly?"
"Clerical supervisor. Doing whatever they do in there. "
"So was it work-related?" Ann Yanni asked.
"Too long of a counter delay?" Franklin said. "A bad photo on a driver's license? I doubt it. I checked the national databases. DMV clerks don't get killed by customers. That just doesn't happen. "
"So what about her personal life?" Helen Rodin asked.
"Nothing jumped out at me," Franklin said. "She was just an ordinary woman. But I'll keep digging. I'll go down a few levels. Got to be something there. "
"Do it fast," Rosemary Barr said. "For my brother's sake. We have to get him out. "
"We need medical opinions for that," Ann Yanni said. "Regular doctors now, not psychiatrists. "
"Will NBC pay?" Helen Rodin asked.
"If it's likely to work. "
"It should," Rosemary said. "I mean, shouldn't it? Parkinson's is a real thing, isn't it? Either he's got it or he hasn't. "
"It might work at trial," Reacher said. "A plausible reason why James Barr couldn't have done it, plus a plausible narrative about someone else doing it? That's usually how you create reasonable doubt. "
"Plausible is a big word," Franklin said. "And reasonable doubt is a risky concept. Better to get Alex Rodin to drop the charges altogether. Which means convincing Emerson first. "
"I can't talk to either one of them," Reacher said.
"I can," Helen said.
"I can," Franklin said.
"And I sure as hell can," Ann Yanni said. "We all can, apart from you. "
"But you might not want to," Reacher said.
"Why not?" Helen asked.
"You're not going to like this part very much. "
"Why not?" Helen asked again.
"Think," Reacher said. "Work backward. The thing with Sandy being killed, and the thing in the sports bar Monday night, why did those two things happen?"
"To tie you up. To prevent you hurting the case. "
"Correct. Two attempts, same aim, same goal, same perpetrator. "
"Obviously. "
"And the thing Monday night started with me being followed from my hotel. Sandy and Jeb Oliver and his other pals were cruising around, standing by, waiting until someone called them and told them where I ended up. So really it started with me being followed to my hotel. Much earlier in the day. "
"We've been through all of this. "
"But how did the puppet master get my name? How did he even know I was in town? How did he know there was a guy here who was a potential problem?"
"Someone told him. "
"Who knew, early in the day on Monday?"
Helen paused a beat.
"My father," she said. "Since early on Monday morning. And then Emerson, presumably. Shortly afterward. They'd have talked about the case. They'd have communicated immediately if there was a danger that the wheels were coming off. "
"Correct," Reacher said. "Then one of those two guys called the puppet master. Well before lunch on Monday. "
Helen said nothing.
"Unless one of those two guys is the puppet master," Reacher said.
"The Zec is the puppet master. You said so yourself. "
"I said he's Charlie's boss. That's all. We've got no way of knowing whether he's actually at the top of
the tree. "
"You're right," Helen said. "I don't like this line of thinking at all. "
"Someone communicated," Reacher said. "That's for damn sure. Either your father or Emerson. My name was on the street two hours after I got off the bus. So one of them is bent and the other one won't help us either because he already likes the case exactly the way it is. "
The room went quiet.
"I need to get back to work," Ann Yanni said.
Nobody spoke.
"Call me if there's news," Yanni said.
The room stayed quiet. Reacher said nothing. Ann Yanni crossed the room. Stopped next to him.
"Keys," she said.
He dug in his pocket and handed them over.
"Thanks for the loan," he said. "Nice car. "
Linsky watched the Mustang leave. It went north. Loud engine, loud exhaust. It was audible for a whole block. Then the street went quiet again and Linsky dialed his phone.
"The television woman is out of there," he said.
"The private detective will stay at work," the Zec said.
"So what if the others leave together?"
"I hope they don't. "
"What if they do?"
"Take them all. "
Rosemary Barr asked, "Is there a cure? For Parkinson's disease?"
"No," Reacher said. "No cure, no prevention. But it can be slowed down. There are drugs for it. Physiotherapy helps. And sleep. The symptoms disappear when a person is asleep. "
"Maybe that's why he wanted the pills. To escape. "
"He shouldn't try to escape too much. Social contact is good. "