She led him into the inner office. She sat down at her desk. He stayed well away from the window. He sat on the floor and propped his back against the wall.
"I already started the work," Helen said. "I spoke to Rosemary and talked to Barr's neighbors. Then I went back to the hospital. I think we're looking for a guy called Charlie. Small guy, bristly black hair. Interested in guns. I got the impression he's kind of furtive. I think he's going to be hard to find."
"How long has he been on the scene?"
"Five or six years, apparently. He's the only long-term friend anyone could name. And he's the only one Barr owns up to."
Reacher nodded again. "That works for me."
"And Barr doesn't know Jeb Oliver and doesn't use drugs."
"You believe him?"
"Yes, I do," Helen said. "Really. Right now I believe everything he says. It's like he spent fourteen years turning his life around and now he can't believe he went back. I think he's as upset about all this as anyone."
"Except the victims."
"Give him a break, Reacher. Something weird was going on."
"Does this guy Charlie know about Kuwait City?"
"Barr wouldn't say. But I think he does."
"Where does he live?"
"Barr doesn't know."
"He doesn't know?"
"He just sees him around. He just shows up now and then. Like I said, I think he's going to be hard to find."
Reacher said nothing.
"Did you speak to Eileen Hutton?" Helen asked.
"She's no threat. The army is keeping the lid on."
"Did you find the guy that was following you?"
"No," Reacher said. "I didn't see him again. They must have pulled him off."
"So we're nowhere."
"We're closer than we were. We can start to see a shape. We can see four guys, at least. One, the old guy in the suit. Two, this guy called Charlie. Three, someone big and very strong and left-handed."
"Why him?"
"He killed the girl last night. The old guy is too old and it sounds like Charlie might be too small. And the physical evidence suggests a left-handed blow."
"And number four is the puppet master."
Reacher nodded again. "In the shadows somewhere, making plans, pulling strings. We can assume he doesn't run around doing this kind of stuff himself."
"But how can we get to him? If he's pulled the guy off your tail, we can assume he's pulled Charlie back, too. They're hunkering down."
"There's another way. A big wide highway."
"Where?"
"We missed something very obvious," Reacher said. "We spent all this time looking down the wrong end of the gun. All we've done is look at who fired it."
"What should we have done?"
"We should have thought harder."
"About what?"
"James Barr fired four times in Kuwait City. And he fired six times here."
"OK," Helen said. "He fired two more shots here. So?"
"But he didn't," Reacher said. "Not really. Not if you think about it laterally. Truth is he fired four fewer shots here."
"That's ridiculous. Six is two more than four. Not four fewer."
"Kuwait City was very hot. Unbearable in the middle of the day. You had to be nuts to be out and about. The streets were empty most of the time."
"So?"
"So in Kuwait City James Barr killed every live human he saw. One, two, three, four, game over. The street was deserted apart from our four guys. They were the only people dumb enough to be out in the heat. And Barr took them all. He ran the table. At the time it seemed logical to me. He wanted to see the pink mist. It struck me that maybe he might have been satisfied with seeing it once, but apparently he wasn't. So it made some kind of sense that if he didn't stop at one, he would go all the way until he ran out of targets. And he did. In Kuwait City, he ran out of targets."
Helen Rodin said nothing.
"But he didn't run out of targets here," Reacher said. "There had to have been a dozen people in that bottleneck. Or fifteen. More than ten, anyway. And he had a ten-round magazine. But he stopped shooting after six. Just stopped. He left four rounds in the gun. They're listed right there in Bellantonio's dog 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.