One Shot

point.”
    Nobody spoke.
    “But we can still help your brother,” Helen said in the silence. “He believes he didn’t do it. I’m sure of that, after listening to the tape. Therefore he’s delusional now. Or at least he was on Saturday. Therefore perhaps he was delusional on Friday, too.”
    “How does that help him?” Rosemary Barr asked. “It’s still admitting he did it.”
    “The consequences will be different. If he recovers. Time and treatment in an institution will be a lot better than time and
no
treatment in a maximum security prison.”
    “You want to have James declared insane?”
    Helen nodded. “A medical defense is our best shot. And if we establish it right now, it might improve the way they handle him before the trial.”
    “He might die. That’s what the doctors said. I don’t want him to die a criminal. I want to clear his name.”
    “He hasn’t been tried yet. He hasn’t been convicted. He’s still an innocent man in the eyes of the law.”
    “That’s not the same.”
    “No,” Helen said. “I guess it isn’t.”
    There was another long silence.
    “Let’s meet back here at ten-thirty,” Helen said. “We’ll thrash out a strategy. If we’re aiming for a change of hospitals, we should try for it sooner rather than later.”
    “We need to find this Jack Reacher person,” Rosemary Barr said.
    Helen nodded. “I gave his name to Emerson and my father.”
    “Why?”
    “Because Emerson’s people cleared your brother’s house out. They might have found an address or a phone number. And my father needed to know because we want this guy on our witness list, not the prosecution’s. Because he might be able to help us.”
    “He might be an alibi.”
    “Maybe an old army buddy, at best.”
    “I don’t see how,” Franklin said. “They were different ranks and different branches.”
    “We need to find him,” Rosemary Barr said. “James asked for him, didn’t he? That has to mean something.”
    Helen nodded again. “I’d certainly like to find him. He might have something for us. Some exculpatory information, possibly. Or at least he might be a link to something we can use.”
    “He’s out of circulation,” Franklin said.

    ______

    He was two hours away, in the back of a bus out of Indianapolis. The trip had been slow, but pleasant enough. He had spent Saturday night in New Orleans, in a motel near the bus depot. He had spent Sunday night in Indianapolis. So he had slept and fed himself and showered. But mostly he had rocked and swayed and dozed on buses, watching the passing scenes, observing the chaos of America, and surfing along on the memory of the Norwegian. His life was like that. It was a mosaic of fragments. Details and contexts would fade and be inaccurately recalled, but the feelings and the experiences would weave over time into a tapestry equally full of good times and bad. He didn’t know yet exactly where the Norwegian would fall. At that point he thought of her as a missed opportunity. But she would have sailed away soon anyway. Or he would have. CNN’s intervention had shortened things, but maybe only by a fraction.
    The bus was doing 55 on Route 37, heading south. It stopped in Bloomington. Six people got out. One of them left the Indianapolis paper behind. Reacher picked it up and checked the sports. The Yankees were still ahead in the East. Then he flipped to the front and checked the news. He saw the headline:
Sniper Suspect Hurt in Jail Attack.
He read the first three paragraphs:
Brain injury. Coma. Uncertain prognosis.
The journalist seemed torn between condemning the Indiana Board of Corrections for its lawless prisons and applauding Barr’s attackers for doing their civic duty.
    This might complicate things,
Reacher thought.
    The later paragraphs carried a reprise of the original crime story, plus updated background, plus new facts. Reacher read them all. Barr’s sister had moved out of his house some months before the incident. The journalist seemed to think that was either a cause or an effect of Barr’s evident instability. Or both.
    The bus moved out of Bloomington. Reacher folded the paper and propped his head against the window and watched the road. It was a black ribbon, wet with recent rain, and it unspooled beside him with the center line flashing by like an urgent Morse code message. Reacher wasn’t sure what it was saying to him. He couldn’t read it.

    ______

    The bus pulled into a covered depot and Reacher came out