One Shot

“I think they arranged something to get him out of the way. He remembers going out somewhere, previously. Then being optimistic, like something good was about to happen. I think they set him up with someone. I think they engineered a chance meeting that led somewhere. I think he had a date on Friday.”
    “With who?”
    “Sandy, maybe. They turned her loose on me. Maybe they turned her loose on him, too. He dressed well on Friday. The report shows his wallet was in a decent pair of pants.”
    “So who really did it?” Helen asked.
    “Someone cold as ice,” Reacher said. “Someone who didn’t even need to use the bathroom afterward.”
    “Charlie,” Rosemary said. “Got to be. Has to be. He’s small. He’s weird. He knew the house. He knew where everything was. The dog knew him.”
    “He was a terrible shooter too,” Reacher said. “That’s the other reason why I went to Kentucky. I wanted to test that theory.”
    “So who was it?”
    “Charlie,” Reacher said. “His evidence was faked, too. But in a different way. The holes in his targets were all over the place. Except they weren’t
really
all over the place. The distribution wasn’t entirely random. He was trying to disguise how good he actually was. He was aiming at arbitrary points on the paper, and he was hitting those points, every time, dead-on, believe me. Once in a while he would get bored, and he’d put one through the inner ring. Or he’d pick on a quadrant outside the outer ring and put a round straight through it. One time he drilled all four corners. The point is, it doesn’t really matter what you aim at, as long as you hit it. It’s only convention that makes us aim at the ten-ring. It’s just as good practice to aim at some other spot. Even a spot off the paper, like a tree. That’s what Charlie was doing. He was a tremendous shot, training hard, but trying to look like he was missing all the time. But like I said, true randomness is impossible for a human to achieve. There are always patterns.”
    “Why would he do that?” Helen asked.
    “For an alibi.”
    “Making people think he couldn’t shoot?”
    Reacher nodded. “He noticed that the range master was saving the used targets. He’s an ice-cold pro who thinks about every wrinkle ahead of time.”
    “Who is he?” Franklin asked.
    “His real name is Chenko and he hangs with a bunch of Russians. He’s probably a Red Army veteran. Probably one of their snipers. And they’re real good. They always have been.”
    “How do we get to him?”
    “Through the victim.”
    “Square one. The victims are all dead ends. You’ll have to come up with something better than that.”
    “His boss calls himself the Zec.”
    “What kind of a name is that?”
    “It’s a word, not a name. Old-time Soviet slang. A
zec
was a labor camp inmate. In the Gulag in Siberia.”
    “Those camps are ancient history.”
    “Which makes the Zec a very old man. But a very tough old man. Probably way tougher than we can imagine.”

    The Zec was tired after his stint with the backhoe. But he was used to being tired. He had been tired for sixty-three years. He had been tired since the day the recruiter came to his village, in the early fall of 1942. His village was four thousand miles from anywhere, and the recruiter was a type of Moscow Russian nobody had ever seen before. He was brisk, and self-assured, and confident. He permitted no argument. No discussion. All males between the ages of sixteen and fifty were to come with him.
    The Zec was seventeen at that point. Initially he was overlooked, because he was in prison. He had slept with an older man’s wife, and then beaten the guy badly when he complained about it. The beaten guy claimed exemption from the draft because of his physical condition, and then he told the recruiter about his assailant in prison. The recruiter was anxious to make his numbers, so the Zec was hauled out of his cell and told to line up with the others in the village square. He did so quite happily. He assumed he was being given a ride to freedom. He assumed there would be a hundred opportunities just to walk away.
    He was wrong.
    The recruits were locked into a truck, and then a train, for a journey that lasted five weeks. Formal induction into the Red Army happened along the way. Uniforms were issued, thick woolen garments, and a coat, and a pair of felt-lined boots, and a pay book. But no actual pay. No weapons. And no training either, beyond a brief stop