The Innocents: a cop pursues a violent felon to avenge his father

by Nathan Senthil

  Peter sat, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “Okay. I’m all ears.”

  “You know what rifling is?” Joshua inserted his hand into his pocket and pulled the Skoal tin out. He didn’t need much energy to explain something he knew inside out; one pouch would do.

  “Rifling?”

  Joshua said, “Yes. It’s a spiral groove, like candy cane, carved inside the gun’s barrel. It helps the bullets spin as they’re ejected from the chamber and stabilizes their flight path. Like how a moving top or a bike doesn’t fall while the stationary ones do. Angular momentum. Same principle here. The spin increases the bullet’s accuracy.”

  “I flunked in physics.” Peter gave an apologetic smile.

  “That’s not very important.” Joshua shrugged. “What is though, is the factor that determines the spin of bullets: the barrel’s twist rate.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Simply put, it’s the number of inches a bullet travels to complete one rotation after it leaves the muzzle.” Joshua paused, giving his rapt partner’s brain a moment to catch up. “For example, a barrel with a 1:10” twist rate spins the bullet in such a way that it rotates once for every ten inches it travels.”

  Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. “The lower the inch count, the higher the spin?”

  Joshua clapped and pointed a finger at Peter. “You’re smart. Barrels with lower twist rates spit more accurate bullets. You know what striations are?”

  “Um… the markings left on the cartridges where the firearms marred them?”

  “Exactly. For our case, we will just need to talk about striations made by the grooves in the barrel. This marking on the bullet is actually a mirror image of the rifling. A reverse blueprint, if you will. By examining the bullet, you can conclude the twist rate of the barrel. Combine that with the type of bullet and its grain, you can find what gun was used.”

  “I think I get it.”

  “Here is where the problem lies. We shot every pistol that uses .44 into the water tank but no recovered slug has the same striations as the ones from Lolly’s gun.”

  “Have you checked them all?”

  “I have. I even researched improvised firearms.”

  Peter blinked in confusion. “What are they?”

  “Homemade guns. Any asshole with a lathe, a milling machine, and mediocre skills to operate the apparatus can do it, which is totally legal in this God-blessed country but as illegal as Satan in other developed nations.”

  “Do you think Lolly uses homemade guns?”

  Joshua said, “I don’t. Most homemade guns use smooth bores for barrels.”

  “No grooves, meaning no striations.”

  “Yes. But the slugs obtained from his crime scenes all have rifling striations.”

  “If he is using bored barrels, then it must have come from some brand, right?”

  “That’s where I’m stagnated,” Joshua said. “The striations on Lolly’s .44 bullets reveal that he uses a gun with a barrel that creates a 1:21” twist rate.”

  “Um… so?”

  “There is no gun in the world with that combination.”

  “Oh…” Peter said. “He must be like a ballistic genius, uh?”

  Joshua laughed. “Not likely.”

  “Why not? He has been doing this for what, nineteen years? And we don’t even know what weapon he uses. His gun is peculiar, yet we are unable to trace it.”

  “I think he sucks at ballistics precisely for that reason. For using that broken gun.”

  “B-broken?” Peter said. “What do you mean?”

  “We need to go back to the spin of the bullets. Higher twist rate means the accuracy is compromised. Lolly is using a 1:21” which—”

  “See. There.” Peter’s forefinger jabbed the table. “What type of criminal knows all this? I still think he is a genius.”

  “Let me finish. Lolly knew his gun lacked accuracy, probably when he was practicing. That’s why all his victims were shot within fifteen yards or closer. Shoot someone farther than that, the bullet misses the target, according to our ballistic scientists,” Joshua said. “And get this, he never missed in his career. Not once.”

  “Oh.” Peter scratched under his chin.

  “But this accuracy problem has a simple fix. Care to guess?”

  Peter pressed his knuckles against his pursed lips, head low. Then he lit up. “It’s the barrel that spins the bullets, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So… he can easily solve it by switching to a barrel that has a lower twist rate?”

  “Yes!” Joshua clapped again. “And also, he could’ve made the gun more powerful with a barrel that supports .50 AE cartridges.”

  “But he didn’t do any of that,” Peter said, more to himself.

  “He is an expert in shooting an imperfect gun, and dare I say, I even admire the determination that went into mastering a broken gun, but an expert in ballistic? No, sir, that he isn’t.”

  “Okay. I don’t think this new robbery in Staten Island is Lolly,” Peter finally admitted.

  “But you could have learned it even before knowing all this.”

  “How?”

  “You tell me how. If you’re going to be my partner, I need you to be able to think. Not be a dead weight, dragging behind me, slowing me down.”

  Peter frowned. “Lolly never visits the same place twice. Since he’d already hit Staten Island in ‘93…?”

  “That’s something even a civilian could figure out from the MO. Dig deeper.”

  “Clue?” Peter hesitantly asked.

  Joshua pointed at a box on the back shelf. Peter walked to it, picked it up, and returned to the table. With one careless movement, Joshua upended the box and a bunch of crime scene photographs spilled out.

  Peter observed the 8x10s, his fingers drumming the desk absently. “Lolly always shoots people on his left, and the other robber, the one wearing the red mask, kills people on the right.” He looked up, eyes beaming with excitement. “Lolly never attacks on the right!”

  “Could it be that he is left-handed?” Joshua smirked.

  “No… multiple witnesses have reported he is a rightie.”

  “Why would a right-handed man prefer targets on his left? Maybe he is missing something that makes it harder for him to take the right side? Or rather, some kind of coordination?”

  Peter squeezed his head, as if the strength his thumbs applied on his temples was directly proportional to the speed at which the answer escaped his brain. “Got it!” Peter said. “Hand-eye coordination.”

  “What about it?” Joshua watched Peter expectantly.

  “Lolly could be blind in the right eye. That’s why he needs someone else to cover that side. Even though all it takes is a slight twist of the head and a few microseconds, those seemingly little things can mean life or death when robbing a bank. The robbery I have now, the perp shot the victim on his right. So it probably isn’t Lolly.”

  Joshua nodded. Peter was indeed smart. But he had one last test. “Why can’t it be that the red-masked robber, who always picks the right, is blind in the left?”

  “Because at the three robberies between 1985 and 1987, he shot people on both left and right.”

  “We have a winner. Yay…” Joshua yawned again. The energy the snus gave him had reached its limit.

  Peter smiled and shook his head.

  “What’s funny? I’m not a goof-off. I just exercise my jaws a lot.”

  “Sure you do, but it’s not that. You’re a pro when it comes to Lolly, aren’t you?”

  Joshua chuckled drily. He was a pro because he had worked hard and made sacrifices personally. Whenever news about Lolly broke, Joshua travelled to the city where the crime had happened. Then he would go through forensics and conduct parallel investigations.

  Nothing would jump out, though.

  The reports were all the same. Masked gunmen blasted through the entrance, locked it, shot either the customers or the security guards,
and threatened the cashier into filling their rucksacks. By displaying sheer violence and determination, they always managed to terrorize the cashiers and prevent them from sneaking dye packs with real wads or pressing the alarm buttons under their desks.

  “I wouldn’t call myself a pro.”

  “Then how do you know so much about Lolly?”

  “I can’t give up. And apparently, it is a bad thing.”

  “I agree. You could have let go. With your experience, you might have become a lieutenant or captain by now.”

  Joshua smiled, thinking about his ex-captain and friend Raymond. That bureaucrat had climbed two more rungs in the ladder and become Inspector, while Joshua, who joined the academy the same day as him, was still a detective.

  “The next level contains too much desk and too little policing.”

  “Isn’t that good?”

  “Not for me. I believe it’s better to die on the field than sitting around, broadening my ass.”

  Peter pondered over that for a few moments. “Perhaps I should follow that belief, too.”

  “Copy me if you want to get divorced,” Joshua muttered under his breath.

  “What’s that?” Peter tilted his head.

  “Nothing. I just said welcome to the team.”

  Chapter 19

  March 15, 2019. 06:52 P.M.

  Coke in hand, Joshua was sitting in front of the TV, watching the news, dry eyelids peeled back. Fingers scrabbling in the almost-empty bowl of nachos, Peter slouched at the other end of the same couch, head adhered to the same TV. A quarter century of chasing the most wanted criminal in the country, Joshua had never seen footage of Lolly.

  Now he’s gonna!

  There was no CCTV recording in the robbery he had investigated in 1993. And the FBI weren’t candid with their subsequent cases. Now a TV network, Daily Herald, DH as known colloquially, was going to broadcast it to the world.

  “It’s just mind boggling, what the media can get away with these days,” Peter said.

  Joshua didn’t know if it was distaste or thankfulness in Peter’s tone. A higher up in DH, one Ashley Stuart, had called Joshua a few days ago and asked if he would participate in a live telecast and share insights about Lolly.

  Insight? He was an unholy animal that murdered people for green cotton-linen! There was nothing philosophical or poetic about it. Plain old noxious stew of greed, envy, and selfishness at play.

  Joshua had declined, not so politely, but now he regretted calling her a Ms. Ashley Stooge, even though it was accurate—the girl hadn’t told him they possessed a freaking video of Lolly! Joshua would have agreed not just to give an interview, but also one of his balls if they’d so demanded, provided that they showed him the video. But everything turned out well, he guessed, for his useless ball at least. Now the DH was going to show the video anyway.

  The anchor on the TV droned on about something drab, not yet bringing up Lolly’s news that they had made the whole country wait for.

  And they cut to commercials.

  “Goddamn it!” Peter muted the TV and placed the remote beside him on the cushion. Then he upended the nachos bowl into his mouth.

  Of course the DH was not going to play their prized video clip before the final advertisement, saving the best for last. The mongrels would prolong the suspense, create hype until they made sure they got the attention of as many viewers as they could.

  Joshua placed the half empty bottle of Coke on the table, sighed, and rubbed his temples between his fingertips. Years of melancholy flooded his mind.

  Joshua had voluntarily retired from the NYPD as he was unable to concentrate on any cases except Lolly’s. An unfocused homicide detective translated to murderers walking free. So he quit the force in 2002. To pay bills, he took odd jobs like consulting security, investigating thefts, surveying adulterers, performing backgrounds on job applicants, and what have you. Not a full-blown PI exactly, but a part time one. There was not a ton of evidence to go on in Lolly’s case anyway.

  Lolly’s gang had robbed a bank in North Dakota in 2008, and poof, they were gone. No one had heard from them ever since.

  Joshua initially thought that Lolly’s two partners might have killed him and expropriated the business, but no bank robbery across the contiguous United States after 2008 fit their pattern. Joshua knew. He had been going through all the national criminal databases with the help of Raymond, who was now the commissioner of the NYPD. Lolly’s gang had truly stopped their trade.

  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, including Joshua. He kind of felt bummed as his life’s work was gonna be for nothing. But hey! At least they weren’t murdering anyone.

  Until they showed up again last month.

  A bank robbery in Bristol, Connecticut, left one dead and one gravely injured. The newspaper and media were all over it because one of the robbers was sucking a lollipop when he did the deed.

  Since they might have a new case now, Joshua called the FBI. They were stingy with video evidence but liberal in giving other information. Well, not they. Just one person had helped Joshua. The same person who had been his snitch for years: Nigel Harris.

  He was a member of the fourth or fifth special task force the FBI had created in 2003 to apprehend Lolly. Joshua and Nigel had developed a bond of sorts over the years, but it slowly severed after Lolly disappeared. Joshua hadn’t spoken with him in a decade.

  When Joshua heard about Bristol, he rang Nigel who confirmed that Lolly had truly returned. And he had promised he would call back with more information.

  Joshua had waited without sleeping that night. But when Nigel had said call back, he hadn’t mentioned it might take him twenty-one days and thirteen hours. However when he did get the call, it was worth the wait.

  As soon as Joshua answered the phone, the tired sounding FBI agent had said, sans any greetings, “We know what gun Lolly uses.”

  Joshua’s fingers gripped his cell phone.

  “A Desert Eagle.”

  “That’s impossible,” Joshua said almost immediately. A part of him, the one which knew everything about the case back and forth, took over, and he was in autopilot. “Desert Eagles create 1:18” twist rate for .44 but the bullets we recovered from Lolly’s victims bore 1:21”, which I’d like to point out, doesn’t come from any gun that uses a .44. And wasn’t Desert Eagle released only in 1983? But the very first robbery Lolly committed was in 1982?”

  “How are you even sane? Why do you know all these facts off the top of your head?”

  “Tobacco, for the first question. Because catching Lolly is the reason I live and knowing these things is half the battle, for the second.”

  “Fair enough,” Nigel said. “It’s the same old 1:21” twist rate alright. But the magic was in the casing.”

  “What did you find?”

  “The combination of firing pin impression, breech mark, and ejector striations is unique to only one gun in circulation. Desert Eagle.”

  “But you guys always had the casings. Why didn’t you figure it out sooner?”

  “Because we didn’t have the technological advancement to do so ten years ago.”

  “I don’t understand. You’re telling me we got the tech to track Lolly around the same time he breaks his ten-year hiatus? Isn’t that convenient!”

  “No, we got the tech a few years back. But as Lolly was inactive for so long, we’d forgotten about him.”

  “That’s irresponsible.”

  “You know how many cold cases we have?”

  “I know 40% of the murders go unsolved. Upwards of two hundred K, maybe?”

  “More than 250,000 cold cases from 1980, the time Lolly started contributing to it.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot. But what does that have to do with new forensic gadgets?”

  “Understatement of the year.” Nigel inhaled noisily. “It’s impossible to analyze all the tiny bits of evidence every time we have a little technical advancement in forensics. I believe Moore’s law doesn’t apply only to
processors and computers. Even other technologies, like our comparison microscope used in examining bullets—aka the best friend of Forensic Ballistic Examiners—has evolved exponentially in the last decade.”

  “You lost me somewhere in the middle.”

  “You can’t expect us to examine all the forensic evidence from every single unsolved case whenever we have new technology, can you? Forget resources, the number of times you would need to work on even one unsolved case is monumental.”

  “But Lolly is not some random murderer. He is number one in the FBI’s top ten.”

  “Who was dormant for more than a decade. You thought we had a team full of bodies, actively looking for Lolly?”

  “I didn’t,” Joshua admitted. “Would have been nice though.”

  Nigel grunted. “I don’t have time for this. Our boss works us twice as hard since Lolly came back.”

  “Same man?”

  “Yeah. Fucking Gregg.” Nigel sighed deeply. “So can we get back to the topic, please?”

  “Sorry,” Joshua said. “Lolly’s first bank robbery was in 1982, and the Desert Eagle was not available then. How the hell did Lolly procure some gun before it was released onto the market?”

  “Fuck if I know. This is all the information I have at this point. When I know something, you’ll know something.”

  Joshua blew out air.

  “Sorry, Josh. You want more gold, you’re gonna have to dig further.”

  Dig was what Joshua did. And oh boy, did he find a goldmine!

  “Say, what have you planned for your retirement?” Joshua asked Peter as he brought the lukewarm Coke to his lips.

  “Nothing as of yet. Maybe fix the wobbly couch leg, paint the house, plant some roses in the garden. Maybe have a warm glass of milk, tuck myself in, and swallow a bullet?”

  Joshua almost choked on the Coke. He wiped his nose and jabbed Peter on the shoulder. “How about a tour?”

  “Where?”

  “Detroit.”

  “Anything’s better than tasting the lead,” Peter said. “Lolly’s in Detroit?”

  “Could be. Not sure.” Joshua hesitated. “It’s just three days since I started working on it.”

  “No problem. Tell me what you’ve got so far.”