One Shot

there be a connection? Surely what happened to Oline was completely out of the blue.”
    “Maybe it wasn’t.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “We suspect that Oline might have been a specific target, kind of hidden behind the confusion of the other four victims.”
    “Wouldn’t that be a matter for the police?”
    Helen paused. “At the moment the police seem satisfied with what they’ve got.”
    The woman glanced at her husband.
    “Then I’m not sure we should talk about it,” he said.
    “At all?” Yanni asked. “Or just to me?”
    “I’m not sure if we would want to be on television.”
    Reacher smiled to himself.
The other side of the tracks
.
    “This is deep background only,” Yanni said. “It’s entirely up to you whether your names are used.”
    The woman sat down on a sofa and her husband sat next to her, very close. Reacher smiled to himself again. They had subconsciously adopted the standard couple-on-a-sofa pose that television interviews used all the time. Two faces close together, ideally framed for a tight camera shot. Yanni took her cue and sat in an armchair facing them, perched right on the edge, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, a frank and open expression on her face. Helen took another chair. Reacher stepped away to the window. Used a finger to move the drapes aside. It was fully dark outside.
    Time ticking away.
    “Tell us about Ted Archer,” Yanni said. “Please.” A simple request, only six words, but her tone said:
I think you two are the most interesting people in the world and I would love to be your friend.
For a moment Reacher thought Yanni had missed her way. She would have been a great cop.
    “Ted had business problems,” the woman said.
    “Is that why he disappeared?” Yanni asked.
    The woman shrugged. “That was Oline’s initial assumption.”
    “But?”
    “Ultimately she rejected that explanation. And I think she was right to. Ted wasn’t that kind of a man. And his problems weren’t those kind of problems. The fact is, he was getting screwed rotten and he was mad as hell about it and he was fighting. And people who fight don’t just walk away. I mean, do they?”
    “How was he getting screwed?”
    The woman glanced at her husband. He leaned forward.
Boy stuff.
“His principal customer stopped buying from him. Which happens. Power in the marketplace ebbs and flows. So Ted offered to renegotiate. Offered to drop his price. No dice. So he offered to drop it more. He told me he got to the point where he was giving it away. Still no dice. They just wouldn’t buy.”
    “What do you think was happening?” Yanni asked.
Keep talking, sir.
    “Corruption,” the guy said. “Under-the-table inducements. It was completely obvious. One of Ted’s competitors was offering kickbacks. No way for an honest man to compete with that.”
    “When did this start?”
    “About two years ago. It was a major problem for them. Financially they went downhill very fast. No cash flow. Ted sold his car. Oline had to go out to work. The DMV thing was all she could find. They made her supervisor after about a month.” He smiled a thin smile, proud of his class. “Another year, she’d have been running the place. She’d have been Commissioner.”
    “What was Ted doing about it? How was he fighting?”
    “He was trying to find out which competitor it was.”
    “Did he find out?”
    “We don’t know. He was trying for a long time, and then he went missing.”
    “Didn’t Oline include this in her report?”
    The guy sat back and his wife leaned forward again. Shook her head. “Oline didn’t want to. Not back then. It was all unproven. All speculation. She didn’t want to throw accusations around. And it wasn’t definitely connected. I guess the way we’re telling it now it sounds more obvious than it was at the time. I mean, Ted wasn’t Sherlock Holmes or anything. He wasn’t on the case twenty-four/ seven. He was still doing normal stuff. He was just talking to people when he could, you know, asking questions, comparing notes, comparing prices, trying to put it all together. It was a two-year period. Occasional conversations, phone calls, inquiries, things like that. It didn’t seem dangerous, certainly.”
    “Did Oline
ever
go to anyone with this? Later, maybe?”
    The woman nodded. “She stewed for two months after he disappeared. We talked. She was up and down with it. Eventually she decided there had to be a connection. I agreed with her. She