One Shot

didn’t know what to do. I told her she should call the police.”
    “And did she?”
    “She didn’t call. She went personally. She felt they would take her more seriously face-to-face. Not that they did, apparently. Nothing happened. It was like dropping a stone down a well and never hearing the splash.”
    “When did she go?”
    “A week before the thing in the plaza last Friday.”
    Nobody spoke. Then, kindly, gently, Ann Yanni asked the obvious question: “You didn’t suspect a connection?”
    The woman shook her head. “Why would we? It seemed to be a total coincidence. The shootings were random, weren’t they? You said so yourself. On the television news. We heard you say it. Five random victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    Nobody spoke.
    Reacher turned away from the window.
    “What business was Ted Archer in?” he asked.
    “I’m sorry, I assumed you knew,” the husband said. “He owns a quarry. Huge place about forty miles north of here. Cement, concrete, crushed stone. Vertically integrated, very efficient.”
    “And who was the customer who backed off?”
    “The city,” the guy said.
    “Big customer.”
    “As big as they come. All this construction going on right now is manna from heaven for people in that business. The city sold ninety million in tax-free municipals just to cover the first year. Add in the inevitable overruns and it’s a nine-figure bonanza for somebody.”
    “What car did Ted sell?”
    “A Mercedes-Benz.”
    “Then what did he drive?”
    “He used a truck from work.”
    “Did you see it?”
    “Every day for two years.”
    “What was it?”
    “A pickup. A Chevy, I think.”
    “An old brown Silverado? Plain steel wheels?”
    The guy stared. “How did you know that?”
    “One more question,” Reacher said. “For your wife.”
    She looked at him.
    “After Oline went to the cops, did she tell you who it was she talked to? Was it a detective called Emerson?”
    The woman was already shaking her head. “I told Oline if she didn’t want to call she should go to the station house, but she said it was too far, because she never got that long of a lunch hour. She said she’d go to the DA instead. His office is much closer to the DMV. And Oline was like that anyway. She preferred to go straight to the top. So she took it to Alex Rodin himself.”

    Helen Rodin was completely silent on the drive back to town. So silent she quivered and vibrated and shook with it. Her lips were clamped and her cheeks were sucked in and her eyes were wide-open. Her silence made it impossible for Reacher or Yanni to speak. She drove like a robot, competently, not fast, not slow, displaying a mechanical compliance with lane markers and stoplights and yield signs. She parked on the apron below Franklin’s office and left the motor running and said, “You two go on ahead. I just can’t do this.”
    Ann Yanni got out and walked over to the staircase. Reacher stayed in the car and leaned forward over the seat.
    “It’ll be OK,” he said.
    “It won’t.”
    “Helen, pull the keys and get your ass upstairs. You’re an officer of the court and you’ve got a client in trouble.” Then he opened his door and climbed out of the car and by the time he had walked around the trunk she was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

    Franklin was in front of his computer, as always. He told Reacher that Cash was on his way up from Kentucky, no questions asked. Told him that Ted Archer hadn’t shown up anywhere else in the databases. Then he noticed the silence and the tension.
    “What’s up?” he asked.
    “We’re one step away,” Reacher said. “Ted Archer was in the concrete business and he was frozen out of all these new city construction contracts by a competitor who was offering bribes. He tried to prove it and must have been getting very close to succeeding, because the competitor offed him.”
    “Can you prove that?”
    “Only by inference. We’ll never find his body without digging up First Street again. But I know where his truck is. It’s in Jeb Oliver’s barn.”
    “Why there?”
    “They used Oliver for things they can’t do themselves. For when they don’t want to show their faces, or for when they can’t. Presumably Archer knew them and wouldn’t have gone near them. But Oliver was just a local kid. Maybe he staged a flat tire or hitched a ride. Archer would have walked right into it. Then the bad guys hid the body and Oliver hid the