Parnell Hall - The Wrong Gun

“I know, damn it,” Timberlaine said. “It’s a hell of a position to be in. That’s why I want to do everything I can to get out. And when we have the evidence in our hands-it just seems stupid to sit on it.”

“O.K.,” Steve said. “I’m glad you told me how you felt.”

“You gonna act on it?”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

“What does that mean?”

“I means I’ll think about it. I know what you want, and I know what you’re going through. I’m gonna do my best to get you out of this as quickly as possible. That’s all I can do, it’s the best I can promise you. O.K.?”

For a few moments Timberlaine didn’t say anything, just stared at Steve Winslow. Then he looked down, picked up the pen, signed the papers and pushed them through the slot in the wire-mesh screen.

“O.K.,” he said.

But he did not look happy.

Tracy Garvin looked up from her desk in the outer office when Steve Winslow came in the door. “Did you get it?” she asked.

“Yeah, I got it. Any calls?”

“Just Mark. He’s in his office waiting for reports, but nothing much is coming in.”

“At this point, I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”

“Yeah, I know. Right now you’ve got your hands full, don’t you?”

Steve Winslow looked down at the briefcase he was holding. He grinned. “That I do.”

Steve went into his inner office, put the briefcase on the desk, popped it open. He reached in, took out the test tubes containing the bullets.

Tracy, who had followed him in, said, “Now where have I seen those before?”

“Yeah, really,” Steve said. “Boy, that seems a long time ago, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll say.” Tracy jerked her thumb at the briefcase. “What else you got in there, mister?”

Steve shrugged. “Papers. Books. A few odds and ends.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a Colt.45 with the initial R carved in the handle, would you?”

Steve reached in and pulled it out. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Everybody in this case,” Tracy said. “So what are you gonna do with this stuff?”

“I thought I’d put it in the safe.”

“That safe there?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Isn’t that where the other gun and bullets are?”

“Is it? It’s been so long, I don’t remember.”

“Take my word for it.”

Steve shrugged. “You could be right.”

“So you’re gonna put ’em in the safe?”

“Yeah. Listen, why don’t you give Mark Taylor a call, tell him to come down here?”

Tracy took off her glasses, folded them up, put her hands on her hips and grinned. “Nice try,” she said.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

“Sure, play innocent,” Tracy said. “You’re going to switch guns, aren’t you?”

Steve looked at her. “Whatever gives you that idea?”

“Why else would you have it?” Tracy said. “Vaulding didn’t ask you for the gun, just the bullets.”

“Well, Timberlaine wants me to produce the gun to match the bullets.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. He was most adamant. I managed to talk him out of it, but he’s not happy. I know he’s going to ask me again.”

Tracy nodded. “Which is why you have to switch the gun.”

“I don’t quite understand. You have no reason to suspect I would be switching a gun.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tracy said. “I happen to know it for a fact.”

“How could you know that?”

She looked at him, smiled. “Moron,” she said. “You’re happy.”

“What?”

“The first time since this case started, you’re feeling good. You know why? It’s ’cause you’re gonna be a bad boy and switch the gun, and you love it. You know how I know? I know from what happened in court today.”

Steve frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Tracy waved her hand. “No, not the witnesses or the case or the evidence or anything. I’m talking about before that even started. Judge Hendrick’s opening remarks-when he held up the newspapers and bawled Vaulding out about the headlines?”

“What about it?”

“I was watching you when it happened. Considering the prosecutor was getting himself reprimanded by the court, that should have been just fine. But you were not happy at all. And suddenly I knew why. It’s not the fact that Vaulding’s young or good or that all the evidence is going against you or your client’s lying to you or the whole bit-what really got to you was that Vaulding had reversed fields on you. He was the bad boy, pulling all the quasi-legal shit and pissing off the judge. Having the judge reprimanding him and protecting you was more than you could bear.”

Steve looked at her, grinned. “Tracy, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but what the hell has all this got to do with the gun?”

“It’s got everything to do with it. You’re happy now. Why? Because you’re about to switch guns and be the bad boy again.”

“That’s very interesting, Tracy. But as it happens, no one has asked for this gun. So I’m not switching it with anything. I’m merely locking it up in the safe.”

“In which there happens to be an identical gun, which happens to have fired the bullets you have there on your desk.”

“Well, isn’t that a coincidence?”

“I know it’s been some time,” Tracy said, “but aren’t there also duplicates of those bullets in your safe?”

“You could be right.”

“In addition to the third test bullet, fired from the gun Mark bought. The gun you carved the R in the handle and filed the serial number off of. The gun you gave to Timberlaine.” Tracy pointed to the gun on the desk. “The gun that is presumably that gun.”

“‘Presumably’ is well advised, Tracy,” Steve said. “After all, we have only Timberlaine’s word for the fact that he did switch guns.”

“Imagine if he didn’t,” Tracy said.

“Yeah? What then?” Steve said.

“Well, in that case,” Tracy said, “this gun is the gun Timberlaine bought. And the bullets from it won’t match anything. Not the bullets in court. Not the bullets in your test tubes. Nothing.

“In that case, the gun in court, the murder weapon, will be Mark Taylor’s gun. In which case, you would have a test bullet in your safe that would match absolutely with the fatal bullet, which was fired before the gun barrel was altered.”

“Right,” Steve said. “Unless Timberlaine switched guns on me before he came to my office.”

“There’s always that,” Tracy said.

“If so, what’s the situation then?”

“Well, then we have two more possibilities. One, when Timberlaine left the office he switched guns again. Or at least thought he did, since he didn’t know you’d switched guns with the one Mark Taylor bought. Anyway, in that case he’d switch guns again, switching Mark Taylor’s gun with the gun he originally found substituted. In that case, this gun, the gun he put in the safe-deposit box, would be Mark Taylor’s gun, and the gun in court would be the gun he originally found, from which you had never fired any test bullets. The gun you had fired test bullets from, the gun in your safe, would then be the gun Timberlaine bought.

“Same thing if he didn’t switch guns again. I mean about the gun he bought being in the safe. As to the other guns, if he didn’t switch back, then this gun here is the gun he found. Which we can’t prove, because no test bullets were ever fired from it. And in that case, the gun in court, the murder weapon, is Mark Taylor’s gun, and the test bullets in your safe will match it.”

“Right,” Steve said. “So that covers all the eventualities.” He ticked them off. “One, Timberlaine brings me the actual gun he found. I switch it for Taylor’s gun. Timberlaine switches it for the gun he bought. The gun he bought is the murder weapon in court, Taylor’s gun goes into the safe-deposit box and is therefore the gun on my desk, and the gun he found is the one in my safe.