61 Hours

position. He had to keep the ejection portinside the car. Kind of cramped. No opportunity to aim down the barrel. Yet he hit the guy right between the eyes. Not easy. Is Knox that good a shot?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You should try to find out.’
    Peterson said, ‘I figure the shell case hit the door frame or the windshield, at an angle, and bounced away inside Knox’s vehicle.’
    ‘So tell me about Knox’s vehicle.’
    ‘Prearranged. He got to town yesterday and met someone today. Maybe a biker. The biker handed over a vehicle, maybe a pick-up truck. Knox did the deed and returned the vehicle and was walking home when we arrested him.’
    Reacher said nothing.
    Peterson said, ‘The people where we put him last night said he made a point of being out all day. They say he wasn’t very good company. Like he had things on his mind.’
    ‘I met him this morning in the coffee shop.’
    ‘How was he?’
    ‘Not very good company. He said because he wasn’t getting paid as of yesterday. Maybe he was worried about losing his job.’
    ‘He was nervous about his mission.’
    ‘How did he know what the lawyer was driving?’
    ‘Whoever delivered the car told him.’
    ‘How did he know the lawyer was going to be on that road at that time?’
    ‘Simple arithmetic. The decoy appointment was for noon. Easy enough to work backwards in terms of the clock. Easy enough in terms of location, too, given that everyone knew the highway was closed.’
    ‘I just don’t buy how he got here in the first place. It was way too complicated. And he said a car was heading straight at him. He couldn’t prearrange that. He couldn’t invent it, either. He had twenty-one potential witnesses on board.’
    ‘None of them saw it.’
    ‘He couldn’t know that in advance.’
    Peterson said, ‘Maybe there really was a car coming at him. Maybe he made a split second decision to exploit it, instead of faking a breakdown nearer the cloverleaf. Was there any delay before he reacted?’
    Reacher said, ‘I don’t know. I was asleep.’
    Peterson said nothing.
    Reacher said, ‘I think you’ve got the wrong guy.’
    ‘Not what cops like to hear.’
    ‘I know. I was a cop. Doesn’t make it any less true.’
    ‘He had a gun in his pocket and he fired it.’
    Reacher asked, ‘Case closed?’
    ‘That’s a big step.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘Right now, yes, I think it is.’
    ‘So put your money where your mouth is. Pull those cops out of Janet Salter’s house.’
    Peterson paused. ‘Not my decision.’
    ‘What would you do if it was?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Will Holland do it?’
    ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
    Five minutes to three in the afternoon.
    Thirty-seven hours to go.

SIXTEEN
    H OLLAND DIDN’T DO IT . N OT, HE SAID, BECAUSE HE BELIEVED Knox to be innocent. But because the stakes were high enough for the bad guys to justify a second attempt, and a third, and if necessary a fourth and a fifth. Therefore Janet Salter’s protection would stay in place until the trial had run its course.
    Then Jay Knox started talking, and things changed again.
    Knox said he carried the gun for his own personal protection, and always had. He said he was down and depressed and frustrated about the incident with the bus, and annoyed that his employers were going to dock his pay. He didn’t like the creeps he had been billeted with. He had lingered over his breakfast in the coffee shop as long as he could, but Reacher had disturbed him, so he had set out on a long angry walk. He was trying to burn off his feelings. But he had arrived at a small trestle bridge over an icy stream and seen a road sign:
Bridge Freezes Before Road
. He had lost his temper and pulled out the Glock and shot thesign. For which he was prepared to apologize, but he added that pretty much every damn road sign he had seen in the area was pockmarked by bullet holes or shotgun pellets.
    He remembered where the bridge was. He remembered where he had been standing. He was fairly exact about it. He could make a pretty good guess about where his spent shell case must have gone.
    Peterson knew where the trestle bridge was, obviously. Its location made geographic sense, given the site of Knox’s arrest. He figured that if Knox had really been out there, then his footprints might still be vaguely visible as smooth dents under the new accumulation. Certainly nobody else would have been walking there. Locals had more sense. He sent a patrol car to check. It had a metal