Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

Already weary, he turned to a fresh page in the steno pad and reached for Michael Darnal’s folder.

Late-afternoon sun slanted through the window and onto the cork bulletin board with its yellowed clippings and curling Wanted posters. Paper plates and sandwich wrappings filled a deli carry-out box on the bookcase behind Frank.

He was opening his seventh folder. James Charles Rivers… DOB 14 May 1973… Resident Barry Farms… DOA 17 Sept 1996… multiple gunshot wounds…

He paused to leaf through the steno pad, reviewing the timelines. Frustration inside him was a voice screaming down an endless corridor of interwoven dates, places, names. The review board-Chief Noah Day’s review board-had the authority to close cases administratively. Department Directive 304.1 spelled out the requirements.

And 304.1 let you close cases on stuff you’d never get into court-suppositions, conjectures, hearsay. Frank hated 304.1. You close a case that way, you feel greasy. You want to take a shower. He and Jose served once on the board. They’d balked so hard and so often and raised so much hell that Day had never picked them to serve again. And here Emerson had thrown them into this goddamn pit, and no matter how they got out, they were going to get dirty.

“I’ll get it.” Jose spoke before Frank even realized the phone had been ringing. Jose listened, then hung up.

“R.C.,” he said.

Frank shook his head, trying to clear the brain-numbing fog of names, dates, and deadly dull bureaucratic police prose.

“Says he’s got something.” Relief lightened Jose’s voice.

Frank shut the Rivers file with a prayer of thanksgiving. You went when Renfro Calkins called. You did what Calkins said do. And in return, Calkins, the department’s forensics magician, would make fibers, dust, blood spatters, and a thousand other minute things tell stories about where they’d been and what they’d seen.

Frank got up and followed Jose. He was at the door when he stopped. He returned to his desk and rummaged through the center drawer till he found a small cardboard box, then slipped it into his jacket pocket.

Here.” Renfro Calkins, a wiry man in a white lab jacket, stood at a counter, a clipboard with an aluminum cover under one arm.

In front of Calkins was a comparison microscope-actually two microscopes, side by side and joined at the hip with a single set of stereo eyepieces. Calkins motioned to the instrument and moved aside to make room.

Jose stepped to the microscope and began adjusting the eyepieces.

Frank reached into his pocket and pulled out the cardboard box. He handed it to Calkins.

“What’s this?”

“Found it at the flea market yesterday,” Frank explained.

Calkins thumbed open a flap and shook a thimble into his palm. The overhead fluorescent flashed bars across the lenses of his steel-rimmed glasses. He turned the thimble to see the delicate carving around its base, and smiled in delight.

“Early-nineteenth-century scrimshaw,” he declared, eyes still on the thimble. He rotated it once more, then focused on Frank.

“I thought it might have been plastic,” Frank said.

Calkins grinned and shook his head. “Ivory, Frank, ivory.” His eyes returned to the thimble. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he whispered, half to himself, half to the thimble.

“It’s yours,” Frank said.

Calkins rewarded Frank with a kid’s smile of surprise. He reached for his wallet. “How much…?”

Frank shook his head. “Nothing. It was in with some marbles I bought.”

“But…”

Frank waved him off. “Next time you buy a box of thimbles and find a marble…”

Calkins gave the thimble another once-over, put it back in the box, and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“Got a match, here,” Jose said, moving away from the microscope.

Frank stepped up and bent to the eyepieces.

A blur, silver and dark gray. He fiddled with the eyepieces. The focus sharpened. A vertical line split the image. On either side of the line, were horizontal lines like a compressed bar code. He adjusted a knob. The lines on the left moved down a fraction to match precisely those on the right. He was looking at two bullets. The horizontal lines-silver against dark gray-were the marks left by the grooves in a pistol’s barrel as the bullet passed through.

Calkins’s dry, matter-of-fact voice came in as Frank was still studying the comparisons.

“Slug on the right killed Skeeter Hodges, and…”

Frank looked up from the microscope.

“… I sent it over to the Bureau to run it against Drug-fire.”

“Yeah?”

“They got a match.” Calkins pointed to the microscope. “Like I said, the slug on the right killed Skeeter Friday night.”

Calkins stopped to make certain he’d nailed this fact down with Frank and Jose, then dropped the other shoe.

“The one on the left killed Kevin Gentry.”

“Gentry?” Frank asked. He wasn’t certain he’d heard right. Then he was afraid he had.

“Gentry?” Jose echoed in the background.

“Gentry,” Frank repeated. “Kevin Gentry… Capitol South Metro station… early ’ninety-nine. January?… February?”

“February,” Jose said. “A real shitstorm.”

“A very high-intensity shitstorm.” Calkins slipped into his classroom tutorial voice.

“They did a Three-oh-four-point-one, didn’t they?” Jose asked.

Calkins nodded. “Administrative closure. Zelmer Austin ring a bell? Do you remember the grounds?”

Getting blank looks from Jose and Frank, Calkins frowned. He took the clipboard from under his arm, flipped open the aluminum cover and found a page. “Zelmer Darryl Austin…” he said. “Fifteen April 1999… Eaton Road, Barry Farms… DOA, hit-and-run, Washington Hospital Center.”

Calkins looked up from the clipboard. “Grounds for closing the case were Austin’s track record, and testimony from an informant.”

Jose nodded. “Yeah. Austin… one of Juan Brooks’s enforcers. When Brooks got busted, Austin stayed on with Skeeter Hodges until they fell out.”

Frank took that in, then glanced around the lab. He looked back at Calkins.

“So we have the weapon that killed Gentry showing up. Does that mean Austin didn’t kill Gentry?”

“No,” Calkins said. “All it tells us is that the weapon survived Zelmer Austin.”

Jose shrugged. “Austin knew the business. You make a hit, you don’t keep the weapon. You do, it’s a go-to-jail card. So what we got is a scenario where Austin pops this guy Gentry. Austin dumps the weapon. Austin gets done in with a hit-and-run. Somebody inherits the piece, maybe it changes hands a couple a times. Two years later, somebody uses it to pop Skeeter and Pencil on Bayless Place. And the piece is still out there.”

Calkins began smiling as he listened to Jose’s story. “A precise summary, Detective Phelps. May I help you fill it out?” he asked, the smile turning slightly mischievous.

“Please do, Dr. Calkins. Be my guest.”

“At some time or another, the weapon that killed Kevin Gentry and Skeeter Hodges was in Pencil Crawfurd’s custody.”

Calkins leaned against the edge of the lab counter and watched Frank and Jose exchange puzzled glances.

Frank sighed. “Okay, R.C. We give up.”

Calkins motioned to another microscope, down the counter from the comparison instrument.

“Shell casing from Bayless Place. It had a print on it. A partial, but enough.” He stopped.

“Damn it, R.C., you’re gonna find your car towed, you keep this shit up,” Jose said.

“The print, gentlemen,” Calkins said archly, “is none other than that of Pencil Crawfurd.”

“Pencil…” Frank said, trying to make sense of it.

“Pencil,” Calkins echoed. “Unless he was a contortionist or a magician, he didn’t do the shooting on Bayless Place, but he damn sure loaded the weapon that did the shooting.”