John Verdon - Think of a Number

“Initial examination of the body in situ led to the hypothesis that cause of death had been the severing of the carotid artery by multiple slash and puncture wounds, inflicted by a broken bottle later discovered at the scene. Initial autopsy results indicate, however, that cause of death was the severing of the carotid artery by a single bullet fired at close range into the victim’s neck. The wounds from the broken bottle were subsequent to the gunshot and were inflicted after the victim had fallen to the ground. There were a minimum of fourteen puncture wounds, perhaps as many as twenty, several of which left shards of glass in the neck tissue and four of which passed completely through the neck muscles and trachea, emerging at the back of the neck.”

There was silence at the table, accompanied by a variety of puzzled and intrigued looks. Rodriguez placed his fingertips together to create a steeple. He was the first to speak.

“Shot, eh?”

“Shot,” said Thrasher, with the relish of a man who loved discovering the unforeseen.

Rodriguez looked accusingly at Hardwick. “How come none of your witnesses heard this gunshot? You told me there were at least twenty guests on the property, and for that matter, how come his wife didn’t hear it?”

“She did.”

“What? How long have you known this? Why wasn’t I told?”

“She heard it, but she didn’t know she heard it,” said Hardwick. “She said she heard something like a muffled slap. The significance of that didn’t occur to her at the time, and it didn’t occur to me until this minute.”

“Muffled?” said Rodriguez incredulously. “Are you telling me the victim was shot with a silencer?”

Sheridan Kline’s attention level shot up a notch.

“That explains it!” cried Thrasher.

“Explains what?” Rodriguez and Hardwick asked in unison.

Thrasher’s eyes glinted triumphantly. “The traces of goose down in the wound.”

“And in the blood samples from the area around the body.” The redhead’s voice was as gender-unspecific as her suit.

Thrasher nodded. “Of course it would be there, too.”

“This is all very tantalizing,” said Kline. “Could one of you who understands what’s being said take a moment to fill me in?”

“Goose down!” boomed Thrasher as though Kline were hard of hearing.

Kline’s expression of cordial confusion began to freeze over.

Hardwick spoke as the truth dawned on him. “The muffling of the gunshot, combined with the presence of goose down, suggests that the silencing effect might have been produced by wrapping the gun in some sort of quilted material-maybe a ski jacket or a parka.”

“You’re saying that a gun could be silenced just by holding it inside a ski jacket?”

“Not exactly. What I’m saying is that if I held the gun in my hand and wrapped it around and around-especially around the muzzle-with a thick enough quilted material, it’s possible that the report could be reduced to something that might sound like a slap, if you were listening from inside a well-insulated house with the windows closed.”

The explanation seemed to satisfy everyone except Rodriguez. “I’d want to see the results of some tests before buying into that.”

“You don’t think it was an actual silencer?” Kline sounded disappointed.

“It could have been,” said Thrasher. “But then you’d need to explain all those microscopic down particles some other way.”

“So,” said Kline, “the murderer shoots the victim point-blank-”

“Not point-blank,” interjected Thrasher. “Point-blank implies virtual contact between the muzzle and the victim, and there was no evidence of that.”

“From how far, then?”

“Hard to say. There were a few distinct single-point powder burns on the neck, which would put the gun within five feet, but the burns were not numerous enough to form a pattern. The gun may have been even closer, with the powder burns minimized by the material around the muzzle.”

“I don’t suppose you recovered a bullet.” Rodriguez addressed the criticism to a spot in the air between Thrasher and Hardwick.

Gurney’s jaw tightened. He had worked for men like Rodriguez-men who mistook their control obsession for leadership and their negativity for tough-mindedness.

Thrasher responded first. “The bullet missed the vertebrae. There’s not much in the neck tissue itself that could stop it. We have an entry wound and an exit wound-neither one easy to find, by the way, with all the puncture damage inflicted later.” If he was fishing for compliments, thought Gurney, this was a dead pond. Rodriguez shifted his querying gaze to Hardwick, whose tone was again just short of insubordinate.

“We didn’t look for a bullet. We had no reason to believe there was a bullet.”

“Well, now you do.”

“Excellent point, sir,” said Hardwick with a hint of mockery. He pulled out his cell phone and entered a number, walking away from the table. Despite his lowered voice, it was clear that he was talking to an officer at the crime scene and requesting a search for the bullet on a priority basis. When he returned to the table, Kline asked if there was any hope of recovering a bullet fired outdoors.

“Usually not,” said Hardwick. “But in this case there’s a chance. Considering the position of the body, he was probably shot with his back to the house. If it wasn’t deflected in a major way, we might find it in the wood siding.”

Kline nodded slowly. “Okay, then, as I started to say a minute ago, just to get this straight-the murderer shoots the victim at close range, the victim falls to the ground, carotid artery severed, blood spurting from his neck. Then the murderer produces a broken bottle and squats down next to the body and stabs it fourteen times. Is that the picture?” he asked incredulously.

“At least fourteen, possibly more,” said Thrasher. “When they overlap, an accurate count becomes difficult.”

“I understand, but what I’m really getting at is, why?”

“Motive,” said Thrasher, as though the concept were on a scientific par with dream interpretation, “is not my area of expertise. Ask our friends here from BCI.”

Kline turned to Hardwick. “A broken bottle is a weapon of convenience, a weapon of the moment, a barroom substitute for a knife or a gun. Why would a man who already has a loaded gun feel the need to carry a broken bottle, and why would he use it after he had already killed his victim with the gun?”

“To make sure he was dead?” offered Rodriguez.

“Then why not just shoot him again? Why not shoot him in the head? Why not shoot him in the head to begin with? Why in the neck?”

“Maybe he was a lousy shot.”

“From five feet away?” Kline turned back to Thrasher. “Are we sure about the sequence? Shot, then stabbed?”

“Yes, to a reasonable level of professional certainty, as we say in court. The powder burns, although limited, are clear. If the neck area had already been covered with blood from stab wounds at the time of the shot, it is unlikely that distinct burns could have occurred.”

“And you would have found the bullet.” The redhead said this in such a soft, matter-of-fact way that only a few people heard her. Kline was one of them. Gurney was another. He’d been wondering when this point would occur to someone. Hardwick was unreadable but did not appear surprised.

“What do you mean?” asked Kline.

She answered without taking her eyes off her laptop screen. “If he was stabbed fourteen times in the neck as part of the initial assault, with four of the wounds passing completely through, he could hardly have remained standing. And if he was then shot from above while lying on his back, the bullet would have been on the ground underneath him.”