One Shot

and pony show. And that’s what I meant. He fired the most he could fire in Kuwait City, and four
less
than the most he could fire here. Which makes the psychology different here. He chose not to run the table here. Why?”
    “Because he was hurrying?”
    “He had an autoloader. The voice-mail recording shows six shots in four seconds. Which means he could have fired ten in less than seven seconds. Three seconds wouldn’t have made any kind of a difference to him.”
    Helen said nothing.
    “I asked him,” Reacher said. “When I saw him in the hospital. I asked him how he would have done it, theoretically. Like a recon briefing. So he thought about it. He knows the area. He said he would have parked on the highway. Behind the library. He said he would have buzzed the window down and
emptied the mag.
”
    Helen said nothing.
    “But he didn’t empty the mag,” Reacher said. “He stopped shooting after six. Just stopped. Coldly and calmly. Which makes the whole dynamic different. This wasn’t a crazy man sent out to terrorize the city on a dare. He wasn’t pushed into it just for the fun of the carnage. This wasn’t random, Helen. It wasn’t psychotic. There was a specific, limited, coherent purpose behind it. Which reverses the focus. We should have seen it. We should have seen that this whole thing is about the victims, not the shooter. They weren’t just unlucky people in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “They were targets?” Helen said.
    “Carefully chosen,” Reacher said. “And as soon as they were safely down, Barr packed up and left. With four bullets remaining. A random psycho episode wouldn’t have panned out like that. He’d have kept on pulling the trigger until he clicked on empty. So this wasn’t a spree. It was an assassination.”
    Silence in the office.
    “We need to look at who the victims were,” Reacher said. “And we need to look at who wanted them dead. That’s what’s going to lead us to where we need to be.”
    Helen Rodin didn’t move.
    “And we need to do it real fast,” Reacher said. “Because I don’t have much time and we already wasted the best part of three days looking at everything ass-backward.”

    The tired thirty-year-old doctor on the sixth floor of the county hospital was finishing up his afternoon rounds. He had left James Barr for last. Partly because he wasn’t expecting any dramatic change in his condition, and partly because he didn’t care anyway. Looking after sick thieves and swindlers was bad enough, but looking after a mass murderer was absurd. Doubly absurd, because straight after Barr was on his feet he was going to be laid back down on a gurney and some other doctor was going to come in and kill him.
    But ethical obligations are hard to ignore. As is habit. As is duty, and routine, and structure. So the doctor went into Barr’s room and picked up his chart. Took out his pen. Glanced at the machines. Glanced at the patient. He was awake. His eyes were moving.
    Alert,
the doctor wrote.
    “Happy?” he asked.
    “Not really,” Barr said.
    Responsive,
the doctor wrote.
    “Tough shit,” he said, and put his pen away.
    Barr’s right handcuff was rattling gently against the cot rail. His right hand itself was trembling and slightly cupped and the thumb and index finger were in constant motion, like he was trying to roll an imaginary ball of wax into a perfect sphere.
    “Stop that,” the doctor said.
    “Stop what?”
    “Your hand.”
    “I can’t.”
    “Is that new?”
    “A year or two.”
    “Not just since you woke up?”
    “No.”
    The doctor looked at the chart.
Age: Forty-one.
    “Do you drink?” he asked.
    “Not really,” Barr said. “A sip sometimes, to help me sleep.”
    The doctor disbelieved him automatically and flipped through the chart to the tox screen and the liver function test. But the tox screen was clear and the liver function was healthy.
Not a drinker. Not an alcoholic. Not even close.
    “Have you seen your own physician recently?” he asked.
    “I don’t have insurance,” Barr said.
    “Stiffness in your arms and legs?”
    “A little.”
    “Does your other hand do that, too?”
    “Sometimes.”
    The doctor took out his pen again and scribbled on the bottom of the chart:
Observed tremor in right hand, not post-traumatic, primary diagnosis alcoholism unlikely, stiffness in limbs present, possible early-onset PA?
    “What’s wrong with me?” Barr asked.
    “Shut up,” the doctor said. Then,