One Shot

“You know George Orwell?” Ya

“I went to college,” Reacher said. “West Point is technically a college.”

Ya

“It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it,” Reacher said.

“I’m sure these are perfectly nice people,” Helen said.

“But will they talk to us?”

“They’ll talk,” Ya

Helen pulled into a long limestone driveway and parked about twenty feet behind an imported SUV that had big chrome wheels. The front door of the house was made of ancient gray weathered oak with iron banding that had nail heads as big as golf balls. It felt like you could step through it straight into the Renaissance.

“Property is theft,” Reacher said.

“Proudhon,” Ya

“Abraham Lincoln,” Reacher said. “In his first State of the Union.”

There was an iron knocker shaped like a quoit in a lion’s mouth. Helen lifted it and used it to thump on the door. Then she found a discreet electric bell push and pressed that, too. They heard no answering sound inside the house. Heavy door, thick walls. Helen tried again with the bell, and before she got her finger off the button, the door sucked back off copper weatherproofing strips and opened like a vault. A guy was standing there with his hand on the inside handle.

“Yes?” he said. He was somewhere in his forties, solid, prosperous, probably a golf club member, maybe an Elk, maybe a Rotarian. He was wearing corduroy pants and a patterned sweater. He was the kind of guy who gets home and immediately changes clothes as a matter of routine.

“Is your wife at home?” Helen asked. “We’d like to speak with her about Oline Archer.”

“About Oline?” the guy said. He was looking at A

“I’m a lawyer,” Helen said.

“What is there to be said about Oline?”

“Maybe more than you think,” Ya

“You’re not a lawyer.”

“I’m here as a journalist,” Ya

“A miscarriage in what way?”

“They might have arrested the wrong man for the shootings. That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here.”

Reacher watched the guy. He was standing there, holding the door, trying to decide. In the end he just sighed and stepped back.

“You better come in,” he said.

Everyone talks.

He led the way through a muted yellow hallway to a living room. It was spacious and immaculate. Velvet furniture, little mahogany tables, a stone fireplace. No television. There was probably a separate room for that. A den, or a home theater. Or perhaps they didn’t watch television. Reacher saw A

“I’ll get my wife,” the guy said.

He came back a minute later with a handsome woman a little younger than himself. She was wearing pressed jeans and a sweatshirt the same yellow as the hallway walls. Pe

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“Ted Archer,” Helen said.

“Ted? I thought you told my husband it was about Oline.”

“We think there may be a co

“How could there be a co

“Maybe it wasn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We suspect that Oline might have been a specific target, kind of hidden behind the confusion of the other four victims.”

“Wouldn’t that be a matter for the police?”

Helen paused. “At the moment the police seem satisfied with what they’ve got.”

The woman glanced at her husband.

“Then I’m not sure we should talk about it,” he said.

“At all?” Ya

“I’m not sure if we would want to be on television.”

Reacher smiled to himself. The other side of the tracks.

“This is deep background only,” Ya

The woman sat down on a sofa and her husband sat next to her, very close. Reacher smiled to himself again. They had subconsciously adopted the standard couple-on-a-sofa pose that television interviews used all the time. Two faces close together, ideally framed for a tight camera shot. Ya

Time ticking away.

“Tell us about Ted Archer,” Ya

“Ted had business problems,” the woman said.

“Is that why he disappeared?” Ya

The woman shrugged. “That was Oline’s initial assumption.”

“But?”

“Ultimately she rejected that explanation. And I think she was right to. Ted wasn’t that kind of a man. And his problems weren’t those kind of problems. The fact is, he was getting screwed rotten and he was mad as hell about it and he was fighting. And people who fight don’t just walk away. I mean, do they?”

“How was he getting screwed?”

The woman glanced at her husband. He leaned forward. Boy stuff. “His principal customer stopped buying from him. Which happens. Power in the marketplace ebbs and flows. So Ted offered to renegotiate. Offered to drop his price. No dice. So he offered to drop it more. He told me he got to the point where he was giving it away. Still no dice. They just wouldn’t buy.”

“What do you think was happening?” Ya

“Corruption,” the guy said. “Under-the-table inducements. It was completely obvious. One of Ted’s competitors was offering kickbacks. No way for an honest man to compete with that.”

“When did this start?”

“About two years ago. It was a major problem for them. Financially they went downhill very fast. No cash flow. Ted sold his car. Oline had to go out to work. The DMV thing was all she could find. They made her supervisor after about a month.” He smiled a thin smile, proud of his class. “Another year, she’d have been ru

“What was Ted doing about it? How was he fighting?”

“He was trying to find out which competitor it was.”

“Did he find out?”

“We don’t know. He was trying for a long time, and then he went missing.”

“Didn’t Oline include this in her report?”

The guy sat back and his wife leaned forward again. Shook her head. “Oline didn’t want to. Not back then. It was all unproven. All speculation. She didn’t want to throw accusations around. And it wasn’t definitely co

“Did Oline ever go to anyone with this? Later, maybe?”

The woman nodded. “She stewed for two months after he disappeared. We talked. She was up and down with it. Eventually she decided there had to be a co