The fifth picture was a close-up of the car, taken from the front right side. It was a small neat sedan, a make Reacher didn't recognize.
'Infiniti,' Peterson said. 'It's Japanese. Nissan's luxury division. That model has a V-6 engine and full-time four-wheel drive. There are snow tyres on it, all around. It's practical, and it's about as showy as a South Dakota lawyer wants to get.'
It was painted a light silver colour. It was basically clean, but grimed over by several recent winter trips. The way the light reflected off the snow and played over the paint made it look ghostly and insubstantial. The driver's window was all the way open. The dead guy was pinned upright against the seat back by the belt. Some snow had blown in on him. His chin was on his chest. He could have been asleep, except for the hole in his head.
The hole was the subject of photograph number five. It was in the centre of the guy's forehead. Like a third eye. Clearly the guy had been looking out the window, halfway between sideways and straight ahead. He had been shot right down his line of sight. He had been looking at the gun. The exit wound had spattered stuff all over the window diagonally behind him. His head had then slumped down and rotated back to a central position.
The rest of the photographs were of the body and the interior of the vehicle from every conceivable angle. Take plenty of photographs, Reacher had said, and Peterson had complied to the letter. There was a pair of rubber overshoes neatly placed in the passenger foot well. There was a small multi-purpose chrome hammer mounted centrally on the dash. Reacher had seen them advertised in mail order brochures on aeroplanes. They could tap the windshield out if the doors were jammed after a wreck. They had a blade concealed in the handle to cut seat belts. Ideal accessories for cautious, meticulous, organized people interested in cars. But Reacher wondered whether one had actually ever been used in earnest in the whole history of automotive transport. He suspected not.
The Infiniti's shifter was in Park. Its ignition key was turned to the run position. The tachometer showed an 800-rpm idle. The odometer showed fewer than ten thousand miles. Cabin temperature was set at sixty-nine degrees. The radio was tuned to a local AM station. The tick on the volume knob was all the way over at the eight o'clock position. Turned down low. The gas dial showed the tank to be close to full.
Reacher said, 'Tell me the story.'
Peterson said, 'OK, Knox is in a vehicle. He's driving. He's heading east. The lawyer is heading west. They're both driving slow, because the road is bad. Knox sees the lawyer coming. He winds his window down. Puts his arm out and flags the lawyer down. The lawyer slows and stops. He winds his own window down. Maybe he thinks that Knox is going to warn him about a danger up ahead. Driver to driver, like people do in adverse conditions. Instead, Knox shoots him and drives on.'
'Who found the body?'
'Another guy heading east. Maybe five or ten minutes after it happened. He slowed, took a look, and called us from a gas station two miles farther on. No cell phone.'
'Is Knox right-handed?'
'I don't know. But most people are.'
'Did you find a shell case?'
'No.'
'If Knox is right-handed, then he was shooting diagonally across his body. He would want reasonable arm extension. The muzzle was probably out the window, just a little. The ejection port on a Glock is on the right side of the gun. So he had to be very careful with his position. He had to keep the ejection port inside the car. Kind of cramped. No opportunity to aim down the barrel. Yet he hit the guy right between the eyes. Not easy. Is Knox that good a shot?'
'I don't know.'
'You should try to find out.'
Peterson said, 'I figure the shell case hit the door frame or the windshield, at an angle, and bounced away inside Knox's vehicle.'
'So tell me about Knox's vehicle.'
'Prearranged. He got to town yesterday and met someone today. Maybe a biker. The biker handed over a vehicle, maybe a pick-up truck. Knox did the deed and returned the vehicle and was walking home when we arrested him.'
Reacher said nothing.
Peterson said, 'The people where we put him last night said he made a point of being out all day. They say he wasn't very good company. Like he had things on his mind.'
'I met him this morning in the coffee shop.'
'How was he?'
'Not very good company. He said because he wasn't getting paid as of yesterday. Maybe he was worried about losing his job.'
'He was nervous about his mission.'
'How did he know what the lawyer was driving?'
'Whoever delivered the car told him.'
'How did he know the lawyer was going to be on that road at that time?'
'Simple arithmetic. The decoy appointment was for noon. Easy enough to work backwards in terms of the clock. Easy enough in terms of location, too, given that everyone knew the highway was closed.'
'I just don't buy how he got here in the first place. It was way too complicated. And he said a car was heading straight at him. He couldn't prearrange that. He couldn't invent it, either. He had twenty-one potential witnesses on board.'
'None of them saw it.'
'He couldn't know that in advance.'
Peterson said, 'Maybe there really was a car coming at him. Maybe he made a split second decision to exploit it, instead of faking a breakdown nearer the cloverleaf. Was there any delay before he reacted?'
Reacher said, 'I don't know. I was asleep.'
Peterson said nothing.
Reacher said, 'I think you've got the wrong guy.'
'Not what cops like to hear.'
'I know. I was a cop. Doesn't make it any less true.'
'He had a gun in his pocket and he fired it.'
Reacher asked, 'Case closed?'
'That's a big step.'
'But?'
'Right now, yes, I think it is.'
'So put your money where your mouth is. Pull those cops out of Janet Salter's house.'
Peterson paused. 'Not my decision.'
'What would you do if it was?'
'I don't know.'
'Will Holland do it?'
'We'll have to wait and see.'
Five minutes to three in the afternoon.
Thirty-seven hours to go.
Chapter Sixteen
HOLLAND DIDN'T DO IT. NOT, HE SAID, BECAUSE HE BELIEVED Knox to be innocent. But because the stakes were high enough for the bad guys to justify a second attempt, and a third, and if necessary a fourth and a fifth. Therefore Janet Salter's protection would stay in place until the trial had run its course.
Then Jay Knox started talking, and things changed again.
Knox said he carried the gun for his own personal protection, and always had. He said he was down and depressed and frustrated about the incident with the bus, and annoyed that his employers were going to dock his pay. He didn't like the creeps he had been billeted with. He had lingered over his breakfast in the coffee shop as long as he could, but Reacher had disturbed him, so he had set out on a long angry walk. He was trying to burn off his feelings. But he had arrived at a small trestle bridge over an icy stream and seen a road sign: Bridge Freezes Before Road. He had lost his temper and pulled out the Glock and shot the sign. For which he was prepared to apologize, but he added that pretty much every damn road sign he had seen in the area was pockmarked by bullet holes or shotgun pellets.
He remembered where the bridge was. He remembered where he had been standing. He was fairly exact about it. He could make a pretty good guess about where his spent shell case must have gone.
Peterson knew where the trestle bridge was, obviously. Its location made geographic sense, given the site of Knox's arrest. He figured that if Knox had really been out there, then his footprints might still be vaguely visible as smooth dents under the new accumulation. Certainly nobody else would have been walking there. Locals had more sense. He sent a patrol car to check. It had a metal detector in the trunk. Standard equipment, in jurisdictions that had gun crime and snow.