One Shot

Barr?”
    “Good guess.”
    “No.”
    “No?”
    “I don’t speak to reporters.”
    “I’m not a reporter.”
    “That’s a five-liter Mustang out there with a couple of options on it. So it ain’t a cop car or a rental. And it’s got Indiana plates. And it’s got an NBC sticker in the windshield. Therefore my guess is you’re a reporter fixing to gin up a television story about how James Barr used my place to train and prepare.”
    “Did he?”
    “I told you, I’m not talking.”
    “But Barr came here, right?”
    “I’m not talking,” the guy said again. No malice in his voice. Just determination. No hostility. Just self-assurance. He wasn’t talking. End of story. The hut went quiet. Nothing to hear except the distant gunfire and a low rattling hum from another room. A refrigerator, maybe.
    “I’m not a reporter,” Reacher said again. “I borrowed a reporter’s car, that’s all. To get down here.”
    “So what are you?”
    “Just a guy who knew James Barr way back. I want to know about his friend Charlie. I think his friend Charlie led him astray.”
    The guy didn’t say:
What friend?
He didn’t ask:
Who’s Charlie?
He just shook his head and said, “Can’t help you.”
    Reacher switched his gaze to the framed target.
    “Is that yours?” he asked.
    “Everything you see here is mine.”
    “What range was it?” he asked.
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m thinking that if it was six hundred yards, you’re pretty good. If it was eight hundred, you’re very good. If it was a thousand, you’re unbelievable.”
    “You shoot?” the guy asked.
    “I used to,” Reacher said.
    “Military?”
    “Once upon a time.”
    The guy turned around and lifted the frame off its hook. Laid it gently on the counter and turned it around for inspection. There was a handwritten inscription in faded ink across the bottom of the paper:
1978 U.S. Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational. Gunny Samuel Cash, third place.
Then there were three signatures from three adjudicators.
    “You’re Sergeant Cash?” Reacher said.
    “Retired and scuffling,” the guy said.
    “Me too.”
    “But not from the Corps.”
    “You can tell that just by looking?”
    “Easily.”
    “Army,” Reacher said. “But my dad was a Marine.”
    Cash nodded. “Makes you half-human.”
    Reacher traced his fingertip over the glass, above the bullet holes. A fine group of five, and a sixth that had drifted just a hair.
    “Good shooting,” he said.
    “I’d be lucky to do that at half the range today.”
    “Me too,” Reacher said. “Time marches on.”
    “You saying you could have done it back in the day?”
    Reacher didn’t answer. Truth was he had actually won the Marine Corps 1000 Yard Invitational, exactly ten years after Cash had scraped third place. He had placed all his rounds through the precise center of the target, in a ragged hole a man could put his thumb through. He had displayed the shiny cup on one office shelf after another through twelve busy months. It had been an exceptional year. He had been at some kind of a peak, physically, mentally, every way there was. That year, he couldn’t miss, literally or metaphorically. But he hadn’t defended his title the following year, even though the MP hierarchy had wanted him to. Later, looking back, he understood how that decision marked two things: the beginning of his long slow divorce from the army, and the beginning of restlessness. The beginning of always moving on and never looking back. The beginning of never wanting to do the same thing twice.
    “Thousand yards is a long way,” Gunny Cash said. “Truth is, since I left the Corps I haven’t met a man who could even put a mark on the paper.”
    “I might have been able to clip the edge,” Reacher said.
    Cash took the frame off the counter and turned and hung it back on its hook. He used the ball of his right thumb to level it.
    “I don’t have a thousand-yard range here,” he said. “It would be a waste of ammunition and it would make the customers feel bad about themselves. But I’ve got a nice three-hundred that’s not being used this morning. You could try it. A guy who could clip the paper at a thousand should be able to do pretty well at three hundred.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Don’t you think?” Cash said.
    “I guess,” Reacher said.
    Cash opened a drawer and took out a new paper target. “What’s your name?”
    “Bobby Richardson,” Reacher said.
Robert Clinton Richardson, hit .301