One Shot

dead-end lobby and he didn’t want to feel trapped. So he walked a long counterclockwise circuit and headed back to his cell. He got there OK. Didn’t look at anyone, didn’t speak. He lay down on his bunk. About two hours later, he felt OK. He guessed he could handle a little macho bluster. And he was bigger than the Mexican. He was bigger than two Mexicans.
    He wanted to call his sister. He wanted to know she was OK.
    He set off for the pay phones again.
    He got there unmolested. It was a small space. There were four phones on the wall, four men talking, four lines of other men waiting behind them. Noise, shuffling feet, crazed laughter, impatience, frustration, sour air, the smell of sweat and dirty hair and stale urine. Just a normal prison scene, according to James Barr’s preconceptions.
    Then it wasn’t a normal scene.
    The men in front of him vanished. Just disappeared. They just melted out of sight. Those on the phone hung up mid-sentence and ducked back past him. Those waiting in line peeled away. In half a second the lobby went from being full and noisy to being deserted and silent.
    James Barr turned around.
    He saw the Mexican with the tattoos. The Mexican had a knife in his hand and twelve friends behind him. The knife was a plastic toothbrush handle wrapped with tape and sharpened to a point, like a stiletto. The friends were all stocky little guys, all with the same tattoos. They all had cropped hair with intricate patterns shaved across their skulls.
    “Wait,” Barr said.
    But the Mexicans didn’t wait, and eight minutes later Barr was in a coma. He was found sometime after that, on the floor, beaten pulpy, with multiple stab wounds and a cracked skull and severe subdural bleeding. Afterward, jail talk said he had had it coming. He had disrespected the Latinos. But jail talk said he hadn’t gone quietly. There was a hint of admiration. The Mexicans had suffered a little. But not nearly as much as James Barr. He was medevaced to the city hospital and sewn up and operated on to relieve pressure from a swollen brain. Then he was dumped in a secure intensive care unit, comatose. The doctors weren’t sure when he would wake up again. Maybe in a day. Maybe in a week. Maybe in a month. Maybe never. The doctors didn’t really know, and they didn’t really care. They were all local people.

    The warden at the jail called late at night and told Emerson. Then Emerson called and told Rodin. Then Rodin called and told Chapman. Then Chapman called and told Franklin.
    “So what happens now?” Franklin asked him.
    “Nothing,” Chapman said. “It’s on ice. You can’t try a guy in a coma.”
    “What about when he wakes up?”
    “If he’s OK, then they’ll go ahead, I guess.”
    “What if he isn’t?”
    “Then they won’t. Can’t try a vegetable.”
    “So what do we do now?”
    “Nothing,” Chapman said. “We weren’t taking it very seriously anyhow. Barr’s guilty all to hell and gone, and there’s nothing much anyone can do for him.”

    Franklin called and told Rosemary Barr, because he wasn’t sure if anyone else would have taken the trouble. He found out that nobody else had. So he broke the news himself. Rosemary Barr didn’t have much of an outward reaction. She just went very quiet. It was like she was on emotional overload.
    “I guess I should go to the hospital,” she said.
    “If you want,” Franklin said.
    “He’s innocent, you know. This is so unfair.”
    “Did you see him yesterday?”
    “You mean, can I alibi him?”
    “Can you?”
    “No,” Rosemary Barr said. “I can’t. I don’t know where he was yesterday. Or what he was doing.”
    “Are there places he goes regularly? Movies, bars, anything like that?”
    “Not really.”
    “Friends he hangs with?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Girlfriends?”
    “Not for a long time.”
    “Other family he visits?”
    “There’s just the two of us. Him and me.”
    Franklin said nothing. There was a long, distracted pause.
    “What happens now?” Rosemary Barr asked.
    “I don’t know exactly.”
    “Did you find that person he mentioned?”
    “Jack Reacher? No, I’m afraid not. No trace.”
    “Will you keep on looking?”
    “There’s really nothing more I can do.”
    “OK,” Rosemary Barr said. “Then we’ll have to manage without him.”

    But even as they spoke, on the phone late at night on Saturday, Jack Reacher was on his way to them.

CHAPTER 2
    Reacher was on his way to them because of a woman.