Parnell Hall - The Wrong Gun

On the other side of the courtroom, another man slid unobtrusively from his seat and headed for the door. But despite the sensational disruption of Crumbly and Burdett, the courtroom was not too crowded for his departure to go unnoticed.

“Oh, look,” Veronica Dreisson said. She pointed at the retreating figure, cocked her head, smiled and said sweetly but distinctly, “Why, there’s the nice young man who showed me the guns.”

Robert Vaulding was torn in so many directions his plight was almost comical. When court broke up he suddenly found himself with an immediate and pressing need to deal with the defendant, the suspects, the media and Steve Winslow, though not necessarily in that order. Deftly tap dancing, he left Russ Timberlaine in the custody of the court officers pending dismissal, turned the processing of Henry Crumbly and Martin Kessington over to Lieutenant Sanders, sicked the press on Veronica Dreisson and escaped to his inner office where he had asked Steve Winslow to meet him, only to discover Steve had brought along Mark Taylor and Tracy Garvin too. This was almost more than the poor man could deal with-he didn’t want them there, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to throw them out.

Aside from that, Vaulding was elated. “It’s incredible,” he said. “Absolutely incredible. But listen, there isn’t much time. I have to make a statement to the press.”

“Fine, let’s wrap things up,” Steve said.

Vaulding shot a glance at Mark and Tracy. “We need to talk freely.”

“We can,” Steve said. “Anything you say to me they’re gonna hear. They’ve been in this case all the way, and they’re gonna be here for the wrap-up. If they go, I go.”

“They stay,” Vaulding said quickly, holding up his hands. “Look, I took a chance on you and it paid off. So we have a deal, right?”

“Sure we have a deal,” Steve said. “But I want you to know where it came from. The case would have broken the same way whether we had a deal or not. I told you to go into court and ask Veronica certain questions and play it aggrieved. You did and it worked. If you hadn’t agreed, you’d have gone back into court, put Veronica on the stand and questioned her anyway. And whatever you asked her, she’d have managed to pull the same stunt. The only difference is, if it had happened that way, we wouldn’t be talking now.”

“Right,” Vaulding said. “And I appreciate it. And there’s no reason we shouldn’t go out together to meet the press.”

Steve shook his head. “That’s your bag, not mine. Your reward for playin’ ball. I’m just happy to get my client off.”

“Fine,” Vaulding said. “Now please, what do I tell ’em? I mean, all I had was your solemn assurance that gun didn’t commit the murder and if I questioned Veronica that way the case would blow up in court. Well, you’re right on both counts. But you could have given me a little more.”

“I didn’t have a little more,” Steve said. “All I knew was exactly that. The gun ballistics said committed the murder couldn’t have done it. Plus Veronica’s assurance some of Timberlaine’s guns were fakes.”

“How did that add up?” Vaulding said.

“All right,” Steve said. “Last night, all I knew was I had a problem with the ballistics evidence regarding the gun. The gun could not have committed the crime. Unfortunately, I was the only person in the position to confirm this. You and the cops would never have taken my word for that, and who could blame you? I could have come to you and told you that in utter confidence and you’d have thrown me out on my ear. But I knew that gun hadn’t been used to commit the crime.

“That’s where Veronica Dreisson comes in. Faced with a conflict of evidence, namely the identification of the murder gun, I asked Mark Taylor here to get me a gun expert. He brought me Veronica Dreisson. At first I was skeptical of the choice, but she proved me wrong. The woman is sharp, no doubt about it. I told her the basic problem, challenged her to solve it, and damned if she didn’t. The problem, of course, was how does a fatal bullet match up with a gun that was nowhere near the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. Which didn’t stop Veronica for one minute. Aside from collecting guns, the woman is a mystery buff. That sort of question was right up her alley. She said, ‘With an adapter, of course.’ It turns out it’s very simple. You fire a bullet from the gun into a bucket of water or a target or whatever. Then you retrieve the bullet, and, like she said in court, pack it in a shell casing, stick it in the adapter and fire it from a shotgun. It will of course retain all the rifling marks from the barrel of the gun from which it was originally fired.”

“And Veronica went out to Timberlaine’s to look for this adapter?”

“Sure.”

“Wasn’t that a long shot? No pun intended. But wouldn’t you figure if such a thing existed, the murderer would have disposed of it?”

“Yes. In all instances except one. Timberlaine was a gun collector. It was entirely possible that the adapter was part of his collection. If it was, I figured the murderer would be more likely not to get rid of it. Because if Timberlaine owned it, he would know of it anyway, so discovering it would not be that big a deal. But discovering it missing would give the whole thing away.”

“Right,” Vaulding said. “But the plan? The scheme? The whole deal?”

“There you know as much as I do,” Steve said. “If I didn’t give you much to go on, it’s because I didn’t know much. I didn’t know about the parties involved until they showed themselves in court.”

“You knew about the fake guns.”

“Not until this morning,” Steve said. “You grabbed off Veronica last night. She clammed up on you and I went to bed. She called me this morning, told me about the fake guns, which is how I knew to tell you. But I really don’t know any more than you do. If I’m ahead of you it’s because I’ve had the benefit of knowing my client wasn’t guilty and the benefit of knowing that gun hadn’t committed the crime. But for what it’s worth, here’s how I dope it out.

“Timberlaine originally came to me with a substituted gun-the Pistol Pete gun that got us into this whole mess. At the time he was afraid someone would use it to frame him for a crime. The way I see it now, at the time he was wrong. The gun wasn’t substituted to frame him for anything. The gun was substituted because it was a valuable gun-it was stolen, just like the other guns. Timberlaine just happened to notice this one. He brought it here and expressed his fear it might be used to frame him for a crime. So Timberlaine’s got a big mouth-he shot that theory around. That’s what gave the murderer the idea to actually do it.

“Now, we’re never really gonna know for sure unless one of the conspirators talks, but I dope it out like this. Martin Kessington and Henry Crumbly were involved in ripping off Russ Timberlaine’s gun collection-stealing valuable guns and substituting cheap imitations in their place. The joker in the piece is Jack Potter, gun expert. You recall Timberlaine’s regular expert had moved on and Jack Potter was relatively new. I’d say there were two possibilities here. One, he was involved in the scheme, or, two, he discovered it.

“I lean toward one-Potter’s involved in the ripoff, gets cold feet, wants out. Therefore becomes dangerous and expendable.

“The other, less likely, is that he discovers the substitution and has to be silenced. But then he’d go right to Timberlaine-why would he wait around to be murdered? No, the only way that would fly would be if he noticed the substitution, deduced who’d done it and tried blackmail. That I could buy. But the way I see it, in neither case were Potter’s hands clean. In a way, he kind of asked for it.