One Shot

she said. “Now there’ll be a trial about a trial. It’s something that might need to go all the way to the Supreme Court. I’m not equipped for that. And I don’t
want
that. I don’t want to be the lawyer who gets people off on weird technicalities. That’s not who I am and it’s a label I can’t afford right now.”
    “So plead him guilty and the hell with it.”
    “When you called me last night I thought you were going to walk in here this morning and tell me he’s innocent.”
    “Dream on,” Reacher said.
    She looked away.
    “But,” he said.
    She looked back. “There’s a but?”
    He nodded. “Unfortunately.”
    “What’s the but?”
    “He’s not quite as guilty as I thought he was.”
    “How?”
    “Get your car and I’ll show you.”

    They rode down together to a tenants-only underground parking garage. There were NBC broadcast trucks in there and cars and pickups and SUVs of various makes and vintages. There was a new blue Mustang convertible with an NBC sticker in the windshield. Ann Yanni’s, probably, Reacher thought. It was right for her. She would drive top-down on her days off and top-up during the workweek, to keep her hair OK for the cameras. Or maybe she used a lot of spray.
    Helen Rodin’s ride was a small dark-green sedan so anonymous Reacher didn’t know what it was. A Saturn, maybe. It was unwashed and not new. It was a graduate student’s car, the sort of thing a person uses until a first salary kicks in and lease payments become affordable. Reacher knew all about lease payments. Baseball on the TV carried a lot of commercials. Every half-inning, and every call to the bullpen.
    “Where are we going?” Helen asked.
    “South,” Reacher said.
    He racked his seat back and crunched a whole lot of stuff in the footwell behind him. She had her seat close to the wheel, even though she wasn’t a short woman. He ended up looking at her more or less from behind.
    “What do you know?” she asked.
    “It’s not what I know,” he said. “It’s what James Barr knows.”
    “About what?”
    “About me.”
    She came up out of the garage and started south down a street parallel with First. Eight o’clock in the morning, the rush hour traffic was still heavy. Going the opposite way from the afternoon rush, he guessed.
    “What does James Barr know about you?” she asked.
    “Something that made him want me here,” he said.
    “He ought to hate you.”
    “I’m sure he does. But he still wanted me here.”
    She crawled south, toward the river.
    “He never met me before,” Reacher said. “Never saw me again afterward. We knew each other for three weeks, more than fourteen years ago.”
    “He knew you as an investigator. Someone who broke a tough case.”
    “A case he thought couldn’t be broken. He watched me do it every step of the way. He had a front row seat. He thought I was an investigative genius.”
    “That’s why he wanted you here?”
    Reacher nodded. “I spent last night trying to live up to his opinion.”
    They crossed the river on a long iron trestle. The sun was on their left. The wharf was on their right. The slow gray water moved listlessly past it.
    “Go west now,” Reacher said.
    She made a right and took a two-lane county road. There were bait stores on the riverbank and shacks selling barbecue and beer and crushed ice.
    “But this case was already broken,” she said. “He knew that.”
    “This case was only halfway broken,” Reacher said. “That’s what he knew.”
    “Halfway?”
    Reacher nodded, even though he was behind her.
    “There’s more to this case than Emerson saw,” he said. “Barr wanted someone else to understand that. But his first lawyer was lazy. He wasn’t very interested. That’s why Barr got so frustrated.”
    “What more is there?”
    “I’ll show you.”
    “A lot?”
    “I think so.”
    “So why didn’t he just lay out the facts, whatever they are?”
    “Because he couldn’t. And because nobody would have believed him anyway.”
    “Why? What the hell happened here?”
    There was a highway cloverleaf ahead, just like he had hoped.
    “I’ll show you,” he said again. “Take the highway north.”
    She powered the little car through the ramp and merged with the traffic. There was a mixed stream flowing north. Eighteen-wheelers, panel trucks, pickups, cars. The road recrossed the river on a concrete bridge. The wharf was visible to the east, in the distance. The city center was ahead, on the right.