AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 13
Emerson read through Bellantonio's reports. Saw that Reacher had called Helen Rodin. He wasn't surprised. It was probably just one of many calls. Lawyers and busybodies working hard to rewrite history. No big shock there. Then he read Bellantonio's twin questions: Is Reacher left-handed? Did he have access to a vehicle?
Answers: probably, and probably. Southpaws weren't rare. Line up twenty people, and four or five of them would be left-handed. And Reacher had access to a vehicle now, that was for damn sure. He wasn't in town, and he hadn't left on a bus. Therefore he had a vehicle, and probably had had one all along.
Then Emerson read the final sheet: James Barr had been in Alexandra Dupree's apartment. What the hell was that about?
According to Ann Yanni's road maps Franklin's office was dead-center in a tangle of streets right in the heart of the city. Not an ideal destination. Not by any means. Construction, the start of rush hour, slow traffic on surface streets. Reacher was going to be putting a lot of trust in the tint in the Ford Motor Company's glass. That was for sure.
He started the motor and put the roof back up. Then he eased off the turnout and headed south. He repassed the Oliver place after twelve minutes, turned west on the county road, and then south again on the four-lane into town.
Emerson went back to Bellantonio's cell phone report. Reacher had called Helen Rodin. They had business. They had matters to discuss. He would go back to her, sooner or later. Or she would go to him. He picked up the phone. Spoke to his dispatcher.
"Put an unmarked car on Helen Rodin's office," he said. "If she leaves the building, have her followed. "
Reacher drove past the motor court. He stayed low in the seat and glanced sideways. No sign of any activity. No obvious surveillance. He passed the barbershop, and the gun store. Traffic slowed him as he approached the raised highway. Then it slowed him more, to walking speed. His face was feet away from the pedestrians on his right. Feet away from the stalled drivers on his left. Four lanes of traffic, the two inbound lanes moving slow, the two outbound lanes static.
He wanted to get away from the sidewalk. He put his turn signal on and forced his way into the next lane. The driver behind his shoulder wasn't happy. Don't sweat it, Reacher thought. I learned to drive in a deuce-and-a-half. Time was when I would have rolled right over you.
The left-hand lane was moving a little faster. Reacher crept past cars on his right. Glanced ahead. There was a police cruiser three cars in front. In the right-hand lane. There was a green light in the distance. Traffic in the left-hand lane was approaching it slowly. Traffic in the right-hand lane was approaching it slower still. Each successive car reached the painted line and paused a moment and then jumped the gap. Nobody wanted to block the box. Now Reacher was two cars behind the cop. He hung back. The irritated guy behind him honked. Reacher inched forward. Now he was one car behind the cop.
The light went yellow.
The car in front of Reacher sprinted.
The light went red.
The cop stopped on the line and Reacher stopped directly alongside him.
He put his elbow on the console and cupped his head in his hand. Spread his fingers wide and covered as much of his face as he could. Stared straight head, up under the header rail, looking at the light, willing it to change.
Helen Rodin rode down two floors in the elevator and met Ann Yanni in the NBC reception area. NBC was paying for Franklin's time, so it was only fair that Yanni should be at the conference. They rode down to the garage together and got into Helen's Saturn. Came up the ramp and out into the sunshine. Helen glanced right and made a left. Didn't register the gray Impala that moved off the curb twenty yards behind her.
The light stayed red an awful long time. Then it went green and the guy behind Reacher honked and the cop turned to look. Reacher took off through his field of vision and didn't look back. He filtered into a left-turn lane and the cop car swept past on his right. Reacher watched it jam up again ahead. He didn't want to go through the side-by-side thing again so he stuck with the left turn. Found himself back in the street with Martha's grocery on it. It was clogged with slow traffic. He shifted on the seat and checked his pants pocket. Sifted through the coins by feel. Found a quarter. Debated with himself, twenty yards, thirty, forty.
Yes.
He pulled into Martha's tiny lot. Left the engine running and slid out of the seat and danced around the hood to the pay phone on the wall. He put his quarter in the slot and took out Emerson's torn card. Chose the station house number and dialed.
"Help you?" the desk guy said.
"Police?" Reacher asked.
"Go ahead, sir. "
Reacher kept his voice fast and light, rushed and low. "That guy on the Wanted poster? The thing you guys were passing around?"
"Yes, sir?"
"He's right here, right now. "
"Where?"
"In my drive-through, the one on the four-lane north of town next to the tire store. He's inside right now, at the counter, eating. "
"You sure it's the guy?"
"Looks just like the picture. "
"Does he have a car?"
"Big red Dodge pickup. "
"Sir, what's your name?"
"Tony Lazzeri," Reacher said. Anthony Michael Lazzeri, batted. 273 in 118 appearances at second base in 1935. Second-place finish. Reacher figured he would need to move around the diamond soon. The Yankees hadn't had enough second basemen, or enough nonchampionship years.
"We're on our way, sir," the desk cop said.
Reacher hung up and slid back into the Mustang. Sat still until he heard the first sirens battling north.
Helen Rodin was halfway down Second Street when she caught a commotion in her mirror. A gray Impala sedan lurched out of the lane three cars behind her and pulled a crazy U-turn through the traffic and took off back the way it had come.
"Asshole," she said.
Ann Yanni twisted in her seat.
"Cop car," she said. "You can tell by the antennas. "
Reacher made it to Franklin's place about ten minutes late. It was a two-story brick building. The lower floor looked like some kind of a light industrial unit, abandoned. It had steel shutters over its doors and windows. But the upstairs windows had venetian blinds with lights behind them. There was an outside staircase leading to an upper door. The door had a white plastic plate on it: Franklin Investigations. There was a parking apron at street level, just a patch of blacktop one- car deep and about six wide. Helen Rodin's green Saturn was there, and a blue Honda Civic, and a black Chevy Suburban so long that it was overhanging the sidewalk by a foot. The Suburban was Franklin's, Reacher guessed. The Honda was Rosemary Barr's, maybe.
He drove past the place without slowing and circled the block. Saw nothing he didn't want to see. So he slotted the Mustang next to the Saturn and got out and locked it. Ran up the staircase and went in the door without knocking. He found himself in a short hallway with a kitchenette to his right and what he guessed was a bathroom to his left. Up ahead he could hear voices in a large room. He went in and found Franklin at a desk, Helen Rodin and Rosemary Barr in two chairs huddled in conversation, and Ann Yanni looking out the window at her car. All four turned as he came in.
"Do you know any medical terminology?" Helen asked him.
"Like what?"
"PA," she said. "A doctor wrote it. Some kind of an abbreviation. "
Reacher glanced at her. Then at Rosemary Barr.
"Let me guess," he said. "The hospital diagnosed James Barr. Probably a mild case. "
"Early onset," Rosemary said. "Whatever it is. "
"How did you know?" Helen asked.
"Intuition," Reacher said.
"What is it?"
"Later," Reacher said. "Let's do this in order. " He turned to Franklin. "Tell me what you know about the victims. "
"Five random people," Franklin said. "No connection between any of
them. No real connection with anything at all. Certainly no connection to James Barr. I think you were absolutely right. He didn't shoot them for any reason of his own. "
"No, I was absolutely wrong," Reacher said. "Thing is, James Barr didn't shoot them at all. "
Grigor Linsky stepped back into a shadowed doorway and dialed his phone.
"I followed a hunch," he said.
"Which was?" the Zec asked.
"With the cops at the lawyer's office, I figured the soldier wouldn't be able to go see her. But obviously they still have business. So I thought maybe she would go to him. And she did. I followed her. They're together in the private detective's office right now. With the sister. And that woman from the television news. "
"Are the others with you?"
"We've got the whole block covered. East, west, north, and south. "
"Sit tight," the Zec said. "I'll get back to you. "
Helen Rodin said, "You want to explain that statement?"
"The evidence is rock solid," Franklin said.
Ann Yanni smiled. A story.
Rosemary Barr just stared.
"You bought your brother a radio," Reacher said to her. "A Bose. For the ballgames. He told me that. Did you ever buy him anything else?"
"Like what?"
"Like clothes. "
"Sometimes," she said.
"Pants?"
"Sometimes," she said.
"What size?"
"Size?" she repeated blankly.
"What size pants does your brother wear?"
"Thirty-four waist, thirty-four leg. "
"Exactly," Reacher said. "He's relatively tall. "
"How does this help us?" Helen asked.
"You know anything about numbers games?" Reacher asked her. "Old-fashioned illegal numbers, state lotteries, the Powerball, things like that?"
"What about them?"
"What's the hardest part of them?"
"Winning," Ann Yanni said.
Reacher smiled. "From the players' point of view, sure. But the hardest part for the organizers is picking truly random numbers. True randomness is very hard for humans to achieve. In the old days numbers runners used the business pages in the newspapers. They would agree in advance, maybe the second page of the stock prices, maybe the second column, the last two figures in the first six prices quoted. Or the last six, or the middle six, or whatever. That came close to true randomness. Now the big lotteries use complicated machines. But you can find mathematicians who can prove the results aren't truly random. Because humans built the machines. "
"How does this help us?" Helen said.
"Just a train of thought," Reacher said. "I sat all afternoon in Ms. Yanni's car, enjoying the sun, thinking about how hard it is to achieve true randomness. "
"Your train is on the wrong track," Franklin said. "James Barr shot five people. The evidence is crushing. "
"You were a cop," Reacher said. "You put yourself in danger. Stakeouts, takedowns, high-pressure situations, moments of extreme stress. What's the first thing you did afterward?"
Franklin glanced at the women.
"Went to the bathroom," he said.
"Correct," Reacher said. "Me too. But James Barr didn't. Bellantonio's report from Barr's house shows cement dust in the garage, the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, and the basement. But not in the bathroom. So he got home, but he didn't take a leak until after he changed and showered? And how could he shower anyway without going into the bathroom?"
"Maybe he stopped on the way. "
"He was never there. "
"He was there, Reacher. What about the evidence?"
"There's no evidence that says he was there. "
"Are you nuts?"
"There's evidence that says his van was there, and his shoes, and his pants, and his coat, and his gun, and his ammo, and his quarter, but there's nothing that says he was there. "
"Someone impersonated him?" Ann Yanni asked.
"Down to the last detail," Reacher said. "Drove his car, wore his shoes and his clothes, used his gun. "
"This is fantasy," Franklin said.
"It explains the raincoat," Reacher said. "A big roomy garment that covered everything except the denim jeans? Why else wear a raincoat on a warm dry day?"
"Who?" Rosemary asked.
"Watch," Reacher said.
He stood still, and then he took a single pace forward.
"My pants are thirty-seven-inch legs," he said. "I crossed the new part of the garage in thirty-five strides. James Barr has a thirty-four-inch leg, which means he should have done it in about thirty-eight strides. But Bellantonio's footprint count shows forty-eight strides. "
