One Shot

the blank leader cleared the tape head. Then he heard a prison acoustic. Echoes, distant metallic clattering. A man breathing. Then he heard a door open and the thump of another man sitting down. No scraping of chair legs on concrete. A prison chair, bolted to the floor. The lawyer started talking. He was old and bored. He didn’t want to be there. He knew Barr was guilty. He made banal small talk for a while. Grew frustrated with Barr’s silence. Then he said, full of exasperation:
I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.
There was a long, long pause, and then Barr’s voice came through, agitated, close to the microphone:
They got the wrong guy.
He said it again. Then the lawyer started up again, not believing him, saying the evidence was all there, looking for a reason behind an indisputable fact. Then Barr asked for Reacher, twice, and the lawyer asked if Reacher was a doctor, twice. Then Barr got up and walked away. There was the sound of hammering on a locked door, and then nothing more.
    Helen Rodin pressed the
Stop
key.
    “So why?” she asked. “Why say he didn’t do it and then call for a guy who knows for sure he did it before?”
    Reacher just shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. But he saw in Helen’s eyes that she had an answer.
    “You know something,” she said. “Maybe you don’t know you know it. But there’s got to be something there. Something he thinks can help him.”
    “Does it matter? He’s in a coma. He might never wake up.”
    “It matters a lot. He could get better treatment.”
    “I don’t know anything.”
    “Are you sure? Was there a psychiatric evaluation made back then?”
    “It never got that far.”
    “Did he claim insanity?”
    “No, he claimed a perfect score. Four for four.”
    “Did you think he was nuts?”
    “That’s a big word. Was it nuts to shoot four people for fun? Of course it was. Was
he
nuts, legally? I’m sure he wasn’t.”
    “You must know something, Reacher,” Helen said. “It must be way down in there. You’ve got to dredge it up.”
    He kept quiet for a moment.
    “Have you actually seen the evidence?” he asked.
    “I’ve seen a summary.”
    “How bad is it?”
    “It’s terrible. There’s no question he did it. This is about mitigation, nothing more. And his state of mind. I can’t let them execute an insane person.”
    “So wait until he wakes up. Run some tests.”
    “They won’t count. He could wake up like a fruitcake and the prosecution will say that was caused by the blows to the head in the jailhouse fight. They’ll say he was perfectly sane at the time of the crime.”
    “Is your dad a fair man?”
    “He lives to win.”
    “Like father, like daughter?”
    She paused.
    “Somewhat,” she said.
    Reacher finished up his salad. Chased the last walnut around with his fork and then gave up and used his fingers instead.
    “What’s on your mind?” Helen asked.
    “Just a minor detail,” he said. “Fourteen years ago it was a very tough case with barely adequate forensics. And he confessed. This time the forensics seem to be a total slam dunk. But he’s denying it.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “So think about what you
do
know,” Helen said. “Please. You must know something. You have to ask yourself, why did he come up with your name? There has to be a reason.”
    Reacher said nothing. The kid who had served them came back and took their plates away. Reacher pointed at his coffee cup and the kid made another trip and refilled it. Reacher cradled it in his hands and smelled the steam.
    “May I ask you a personal question?” Helen Rodin said to him.
    “Depends how personal,” Reacher said.
    “Why were you so untraceable? Normally guys like Franklin can find anybody.”
    “Maybe he’s not as good as you think.”
    “He’s probably better than I think.”
    “Not everyone is traceable.”
    “I agree. But you don’t look like you belong in that category.”
    “I was in the machine,” Reacher said. “My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I’m out, I’m out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it.”
    “Like a game?”
    “Like an addiction,” Reacher said. “I’m addicted to being out.”
    The kid brought the check. Helen Rodin paid. Then she put her tape player back in her briefcase and she and Reacher left together. They walked north, past the construction at