One Shot

Emerson. He made a mental note to check through again to determine if four minutes was the shortest stay on the tapes. He suspected it was, easily.
    Then he scanned the forensic sweep through Alexandra Dupree’s garden apartment. He had assigned a junior guy to do it, because it wasn’t the crime scene. There was nothing of interest there. Nothing at all. Except the fingerprint evidence. The apartment was a mess of prints, like all apartments are. Most of them were the girl’s, but there were four other sets. Three of them were unidentifiable.
    The fourth set of prints belonged to James Barr.
    James Barr had been in Alexandra Dupree’s apartment. In the living room, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. No doubt about it. Clear prints, perfect matches. Unmistakable.
    Bellantonio wrote it up for Emerson.
    Then he read a report just in from the medical examiner. Alexandra Dupree had been killed by a single massive blow to the right temple, delivered by a left-handed assailant. She had fallen onto a gravel surface that contained organic matter including grass and dirt. But she had been found in an alley paved with limestone. Therefore her body had been moved at least a short distance between death and discovery. Other physiological evidence confirmed it.
    Bellantonio took a new sheet of memo paper and addressed two questions to Emerson:
Is Reacher left-handed? Did he have access to a vehicle?

    The Zec spent the morning hours deciding what to do with Raskin. Raskin had failed three separate times. First with the initial tail, then by getting attacked from behind, and finally by letting his cell phone get stolen. The Zec didn’t like failure. He didn’t like it at all. At first he considered just pulling Raskin off the street and restricting him to duty in the video room on the ground floor of the house. But why would he want to depend on a failure to monitor his security?
    Then Linsky called. They had been searching fourteen straight hours and had found no sign of the soldier.
    “We should go after the lawyer now,” Linsky said. “After all, nothing can happen without her. She’s the focal point. She’s the one making the moves here.”
    “That raises the stakes,” the Zec said.
    “They’re already pretty high.”
    “Maybe the soldier’s gone for good.”
    “Maybe he is,” Linsky said. “But what matters is what he left behind. In the lawyer’s head.”
    “I’ll think about it,” the Zec said. “I’ll get back to you.”
    “Should we keep on looking?”
    “Tired?”
    Linsky was exhausted and his spine was killing him.
    “No,” he lied. “I’m not tired.”
    “So keep on looking,” the Zec said. “But send Raskin back to me.”

    Reacher slowed to fifty where the highway first rose on its stilts. He stayed in the center lane and let the spur that ran behind the library pass by on his right. He kept on north for two more miles and came off at the cloverleaf that met the four-lane with the auto dealers and the parts store. He went east on the county road and then turned north again, on Jeb Oliver’s rural route. After a minute he was deep in the silent countryside. The irrigation booms were turning slowly and the sun was making rainbows in the droplets.
    The heartland. Where the secrets are.
    He coasted to a stop next to the Olivers’ mailbox. No way was the Mustang going to make it down the driveway. The center hump would have ripped all the parts off the bottom. The suspension, the exhaust system, the axle, the diff, whatever else was down there. Ann Yanni wouldn’t have been pleased at all. So he slid out and left the car where it was, low and crouched and winking blue in the sun. He picked his way down the track, feeling every rock and stone through his thin soles. Jeb Oliver’s red Dodge hadn’t been moved. It was sitting right there, lightly dusted with brown dirt and streaked with dried dew. The old farmhouse was quiet. The barn was closed and locked.
    Reacher ignored the front door. He walked around the side of the house to the back porch. Jeb’s mother was right there on her glider. She was dressed the same but this time she had no bottle. Just a manic stare out of eyes as big as saucers. She had one foot hooked up under her and was using the other to scoot the chair about twice as fast as she had before.
    “Hello,” she said.
    “Jeb not back yet?” Reacher said.
    She just shook her head. Reacher heard all the sounds he had heard before. The irrigation hiss, the squeak of