Deadfall

by Patricia H. Rushford

  They then headed for the crime lab to meet with Wain Carver and his ballistics water tank.

  26

  I THOUGHT YOU WERE DOWN SOUTH,” Mac said to Philly as they entered the twelfth-floor crime lab entrance at the Justice Center.

  “I heard you were trying to cut me out of the loop and thought I better get over here and make sure you and Gramps weren’t messing things up.” Philly gave them a look of almost genuine concern.

  “Where’s Russ?” Kevin ignored Philly’s comments.

  “Down on the first floor, sniffing around some latent-print tech he’s been dating. He’ll meet me down at the car when he’s done slobbering all over the hall. I brought in some handwriting evidence for comparison from our caper in the valley and heard a uniform get the dispatch to hook a gun at the pawnbroker, told him I’d bring it down to the lab if he found it.”

  It took Mac a moment to realize the gun in question was the one Jessica had hawked. “Did he get the gun?” Mac asked.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Philly opened his briefcase and produced a stainless semiautomatic. The slide was locked back and a metal tag ran from the magazine well to the ejection port, a required safety mechanism if you wanted the lab to accept the evidence for testing.

  “Looks like a 9 mm.” Kevin eyed the weapon.

  “Right on the money. One stainless steel finish, 9 mm Beretta. The gun had no magazine when the troop recovered it, so there are no cartridges to compare.” Philly slid the gun on the evidence bar over to Mac. “No way that peashooter’s going to throw enough lead to be confused with that magnum round, but you better run the test anyway. You never get lucky on the first gun. It’ll take at least . . .”

  Philly stopped midsentence when Kevin pulled out J. Z.’s revolver, dangling the prize in front of him. This gun had the same metal evidence tag through the open cylinder of the five-shot revolver.

  “You would get lucky, Bledsoe. Where’d you skin that hog’s leg?”

  “Off a punk who was making time with our vic’s girlfriend,” Mac answered.

  Kevin gave Mac a glance of disapproval. It’s okay to talk with Philly without talking like Philly.

  “You’re kidding me,” Philly said. “I bet that’s your weapon right there. Means and motive, huh?”

  “We shall soon see.” Kevin scanned the floor for the firearms expert. “Is Wain available?”

  “Yeah, he’s around. I already asked for him. The receptionist said he’d be right up.”

  “You guys all wrapped up on that murder-for-hire business?” Mac asked.

  “All the brainwork’s done, so Sarge cut me loose; the valley boys can clean up the rest. Man, that was one slick piece of work on our part. You guys should have seen this broad when Eric showed her the picture of her ‘dead’ husband.” Philly made the quote marks with his fingers. “She laughed and said she hoped he suffered big-time. Then she cut Eric a check for another ten grand. The husband was sitting in the next hotel room with Russ, listening in the wire. I thought he was going to stroke out right there he was so angry. Eric gave the arrest signal over the mic, right? Then we walked in with the husband and pinched her for conspiracy to commit murder. Her jaw almost hit the ground when she saw her husband.” Philly laughed. “She started yellin’ she wanted Eric arrested for fraud. I almost split a gut watching the whole thing. This gal was a real beaut.”

  “Is she in custody now?” Mac asked.

  “At Clackamas County jail as we speak. Sarge has been on the phone with the district attorney, trying to go over the evidence for the grand jury. The woman tried to hire a high-powered attorney, but her husband pulled the plug on the funds. This is going to be one for the books when she’s convicted. Sarge thinks she’ll pull an insanity plea.”

  “What was her motive, insurance money?” Mac leaned against the counter.

  “That may have been part of it, but I think her friend, the pool boy, also had something to do with it. According to the guys on surveillance, she had the cleanest pool on the block, if you know what I mean. That pool guy was showing up at the door the minute the husband took off for work. I guess she was looking to trade in her old man for a newer model.”

  “Did the pool guy have anything to do with the wife’s plan?”

  Kevin asked.

  “Nope—the guy had other clients to service, I guess. He never missed a beat.”

  Kevin looked over the evidence submittal counter as the clerk sat back down and pulled her chair up to her desk. “Wain’s on his way up now,” she said without looking at the detectives, as she answered the phone.

  “What about this handwriting exemplar?” Philly asked.

  “What about it?” The clerk sighed. “I’ll log it in when I’m ready, Phil. Just keep your shorts on.”

  The ballistics expert walked around the corner, the tails of his white lab coat whipping as he motioned for Mac and Kevin to come back. Philly snorted a complaint as the two men shuffled past, obviously upset Kevin and Mac were receiving service before him. “It will be today, won’t it, Wanda, when you get around to logging in this evidence? Logging in this single sheet of paper?”

  “I just thought of something else I need to do first.” The clerk winked at Mac as she stood up and walked away from the desk. Philly tapped his fingers on the counter. “I’ll get you for this.”

  “Come on in, guys—the door’s open.” Wain went right to his microscope. Kevin and Mac entered the cluttered but organized room. Mac placed the revolver and pistol on a clean spot on the table.

  “Sorry I’m late. I needed to run a quick check on a gun barrel for Medford Police Department. That should do it.”Wain placed the four-inch barrel from a semiautomatic in a plastic evidence bag and spun around on his stool. “What have you brought me?”

  Mac motioned to the handguns on the examination table.

  “These are on the bullet that killed Brad Gaynes?”Wain asked.

  “Right.”

  “Are we worried about prints on these guys?”Wain slipped on a pair of rubber gloves.

  “No, just bullet and barrel comparison. We already know who owns them; they have legit reasons for latents already.”

  “Good.” He picked up the 9 mm gun first. “This one’s no good, no way, not large enough caliber. I’ll shoot the barrel so we get a bullet into IBIS, but this isn’t the gun that put the bullet into your victim. But that’s not to say the gun didn’t put a bullet into someone else, so we’ll get a sample. Any ammunition for either weapon?”

  “Not on the nine,” Mac answered, “but the Smith had these with the gun. The kid had the rounds in the revolver, stored in his nightstand drawer.” Mac handed the examiner five cartridges.

  “Humph. These look like cheap factory rounds.”

  That fit with Jeremy’s persona. Mac didn’t peg him as a gun collector. Most gun nuts preferred hand loads instead of cartridges purchased over the counter. That didn’t mean Jeremy hadn’t done any hand loading. Especially since his father seemed to be into guns big-time.

  “These aren’t the same bullet, but we’ll see if the gun is a match.”Wain removed the metal evidence clip from the cylinder, then he removed the cylinder from the gun. He placed a small fiberoptics camera at the end of the barrel, projecting the view on his big-screen monitor that amplified the view hundreds of times.

  “She’s a real Smith and Wesson barrel, got the right twist direction for our suspect bullet. Let’s take a spin through the water tank; this guy is looking good so far.”

  Mac looked over at Kevin, trying to conceal his excitement.

  Kevin had been disappointed far too many times to share Mac’s enthusiasm.

  “You guys mind waiting around the corner?” Wain nodded toward the opening. “I’m going to put a couple rounds into the water.” Mac and Kevin walked out of the exam room to a small hallway that led to a storage closet. Through the Plexiglas wall, they watched Wain assemble the cylinder into the frame and dry fire the gun several times into a Kevlar box. Satisf
ied the gun was operating properly, he loaded a single cartridge into the cylinder and secured the gun into a contraption that looked like a cement mixer with a rifle rack mounted at the opening. After securing the gun, Wain put on a pair of safety glasses and ear muffs, then he closed the door to the soundproof room and slipped a ballistic vest onto his torso.

  “He doesn’t take any chances, does he?” Mac tipped his head toward Kevin.

  “You can’t afford to in this business,” Kevin said. “Wain has probably investigated every type of weird shooting accident known to man.”

  Wain signaled for the detectives to stick their fingers in their ears, which they both did on cue. With a thumbs-up from Wain and a nod from Mac and Kevin, the examiner pulled the trigger.

  The revolver erupted, firing a single round into the water tank. He removed his ear protection and immediately opened the cylinder of the gun to allow the hot gasses a chance to escape without going down the barrel and potentially altering the pattern on the subsequent test fire. Wain fished the bullet from the tank. After slipping on his ear protection, he repeated the process a second time.

  Mac and Kevin returned to the room while Wain dried both bullets and placed them on his microscope bench. “We’ll give them a second to totally dry under the light then take a look at them and see how they match up.”

  “Any guesses with the naked eye?” Mac asked.

  “Sorry, no guesswork in here. Too many variables.”

  “Hmm. I hope you don’t mind asking, but why fire two rounds for testing?”

  Wain smiled up at him. “Don’t mind at all, Mac. If we make a match, the defense will ask for a test sample to use at a private lab. With two samples, we can’t lose our only test piece. We can supply them their own for some hack to destroy in his lab.”

  Mac suppressed a grin at Wain’s obvious disdain.

  Wain tapped on his computer keyboard, bringing up a split-screen image on the large monitor. On the right was a large-scale view of the bullet pulled from the victim, looking as big as a loaf of bread on the magnified screen. “See these striations in-between the lands and grooves?”Wain pointed to the screen. “These little beauties will make or break the case for us. Let’s take a look at the first test fire.” Wain slipped the first bullet under the scope, displaying the familiar licorice twist shape on the big screen. He manipulated the bullet on the test tray with a large pair of tweezers until the grooves lined up on the split screen. Wain rotated the bullet for several moments before setting down the tweezers and crossing his arms.

  Mac felt his earlier excitement drain away.

  “Sorry, guys. That’s not our gun.” Wain confirmed what Mac already observed. “Our suspect bullet has deeper grooves and sharper land ridges. None of the scarring is the same either. You guys are going to have to keep on searching. I’ll run the bullets through IBIS with the 9 mm, but I won’t need the guns after today.”

  “I should have known it wouldn’t be this easy.” Kevin sighed.

  “Looks like Jeremy’s off the hook—at least where this weapon is concerned.”

  “Yeah.” Mac examined the bullets on the screen. “But we’ve still got his dad’s stash. Maybe Jeremy wasn’t being honest with us when he said he couldn’t get to his dad’s guns.”

  “Could be.”

  “Say, didn’t Donna say Jeremy’s dad was a truckdriver?”

  “You thinking maybe there’s a link?”

  “Well, Jessica did report seeing a trucker. It’s a reach, but . . .”

  Kevin chuckled. “Stranger things have happened. We may have to obtain a search warrant to get those guns ASAP.”

  “Ha, what’d I tell you?” The loud voice startled Mac, and he turned to find Philly poking his head in the door.

  “You said we probably had the gun.”

  Philly slapped Mac on the back. “No, I didn’t. I said, you never get the gun on the first try. Guess it’s back to the drawing board, ladies.”

  27

  TWO DAYS LATER, Mac attacked his pile of paperwork with the same vengeance the squirrel outside his office window was attacking the feeder on the large oak.

  “I wish the patrol troops would quit feeding those things,” he muttered to himself. “They’re getting aggressive.” The squirrel ran back down the tree with his prize, two filberts stuffed in his inflated cheeks.

  The past two days had been exhausting. Mac and Kevin had interviewed almost all of Brad’s friends and coworkers. They’d gained nothing more than speculation, and Vicki and Todd Gaynes were getting impatient for results. Mac was backed up on reports and needed a little time to himself. He was down eleven interview reports. Bad, but it could be worse. Fortunately for him, Philly, Russ, and Kevin had done some of the interviews. Even Dana had helped out on several contacts. Of course, she had somehow managed to get all her reports in the next day.

  She’s got to be doing these things at home on her own time, Mac thought as he peered at the neat stack of paperwork Dana had left for him to review. Her home phone number was at the end of her note, asking for advice on her work. Maybe she should be mentoring him—at least when it came to writing reports.

  “Detective McAllister, line 101,” the receptionist’s voice came across the office intercom.

  Mac forced his gaze away from the window and picked up the phone. “This is McAllister.”

  “Um, Detective, this is Jessica. Jessica Turner from California.”

  “Yes, Jessica.” Mac fumbled for his tape recorder and plugged it into his special phone adapter. Shoot, no fresh tape. “How are you doing?” He stood to rifle through his drawers, looking for a new mini cassette tape. There are dozens of these things lying around until you need one.

  “I’ve been better, I guess. Anyway, I’m at the Amtrak station. I lost your number and had to call information.”

  “You’re at the station now? Right now in Portland?” Mac paused, his hand still in the top drawer. He could hardly believe it.

  “In the flesh. You still want to talk to me?”

  “You bet.” Mac worked at getting his tone in the normal range.

  He didn’t want to give her the impression that he was anything but calm and efficient. “Where exactly are you? I’ll come pick you up, if that’s still okay.”

  “Sure. That’s cool. To be honest, I just want to get this whole thing over with. I’m wearing a black Adidas sweat suit. I’ll meet you in the big lobby area by the big indoor tree.”

  “I know the spot. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.” Jessica ended the call without a good-bye.

  Mac grabbed his jacket off his chair and jogged down the hall, looking for Kevin. After checking the patrol and wildlife offices, he asked one of the reception staff to page Kevin over the intercom.

  Moments later, a narcotics detective popped his head out in the hall and told Mac he recently saw Kevin going for coffee with the region captain.

  Region captain? I’ll have to page him on the way. Mac double-timed it out to his car and sped out of the parking lot, asking dispatch to send Kevin an alpha page to meet him at the office in thirty minutes. He took Burnside Street east across the Willamette River into Portland’s Old Town, heading north to Union Station. Mac parked in the loading zone, draping his raid jacket over the steering wheel in case the Portland Police Bureau officers were in the neighborhood and thought about towing his car. He adjusted his tie and walked briskly into the depot. Mac saw Jessica almost immediately in her black Adidas knit pants and hooded jacket. She waved and stood up.

  His jaw dropped and his eyes widened in disbelief. He was glad she’d told him what she was wearing because he’d never have recognized her. He gathered his wits and tried to greet the woman with some kind of normalcy. When he’d seen her at the waterfall she’d looked like a waif—no makeup, blotchy cheeks, swollen eyes. Her hair had been damp and stringy.

  Now her face glowed, and her hair was clean and shiny, swept up in a ponytail. But it wasn’t Jessica’s attractiveness that caught Mac�
��s attention.

  She laughed at his discomfort. “What’s the matter, Mac? You’ve never seen a pregnant woman?”

  He grinned, relaxing a little. “I just didn’t expect . . .”

  She nodded. “Bradley Junior is part of the reason I decided to come up here.”

  “So this is Brad’s baby?”

  “Of course. I think Brad’s family needs to know the whole story. I probably should have been more up-front with them in the beginning, but they were treating me so awful.”

  Mac rubbed his chin. He didn’t want to get too much information without Kevin there or without his tape recorder. “Can’t say I blame you. They were a bit cool.”

  “Well, I’ve had a lot of time to think, and Aaron—my boyfriend—thought I should come up and clear the air. He’s such a neat guy. He wants little Brad to know his real grandma and grandpa.”

  “I’m anxious to hear all about it, but we need to get going. My partner and I want to get a statement from you, and it’s better if we do that at the office.”

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “No.” Mac smiled. “We just want to talk with you.”

  “And record my statement, right?” She swung a bag over her shoulder and started to pick up a larger duffle bag. “You don’t have to worry, Mac. I said I’d cooperate, and I will.”

  “I’ll get that for you.” Mac scooped up the bag. “Anything else?”

  “I travel light. I probably won’t be in town long. I understand Brad’s funeral is tomorrow?”

  “As far as I know. The body has already been cremated and the ashes scattered. I think they are calling it a life celebration—something like that.” Mac wasn’t into that sort of thing, and apparently neither was Jessica.

  “Sounds weird.” She bit the corner of her lip.

  Mac shrugged. “People deal with loss in their own way.”

  “I guess.”

  “All set?” Mac asked.

  “Yeah. I already called the people I’m staying with. Will we be done by two or so? I told them that was my best guess.”