Steve Martini - Double Tap

Under federal law, possession of a silencer or sound suppressor for a firearm by anyone other than the military or law enforcement is a felony.

“I’d been meaning to crush it, throw it away,” says Ruiz. “I should have done it.”

I’m making notes as he talks. The silencer explains why none of the neighbors heard the shots that killed Chapman. The laser sight could be critical. Up to this point the cops have been operating on the theory that only a crack marksman could have placed the two shots that killed Chapman. It is one of the key points of their case, that Ruiz owned the gun and in their own words is a “world-class expert marksman” with a handgun.

“The laser sight. How does it work?”

“Red dot. You put it on the target and pull the trigger. The sight slides in a rail under the barrel. It runs off a nine-volt battery.”

“I assume this would lower the marksmanship threshold for the shooter. Make it easier for someone shooting the gun to hit what they were aiming at.”

“You bet. As long as you can see the laser dot and the sight’s aligned properly. You put that dot on your target and that’s where the round’s gonna go. I used the sight when I took Madelyn to shoot. It was an indoor range, a shop out near Escondido. She shot the shit out of the center ring at twenty-five and thirty yards. Then nothing else would do: she wanted a silhouette target.”

“This was with the laser sight?”

“Yeah. Truth is, she had a kind of natural talent. Steady hand and a good eye. And that’s a piece with some recoil. She held it, two-handed the thing, and laid down a pretty fair pattern. Tight, if you know what I mean.”

“What you’re telling us is that somebody who was unfamiliar with that particular gun, if they could have figured out how to use the laser sight, could have made the two shots that killed her pretty easily?” Harry asks.

He makes a face. “I don’t see why not, if your target isn’t moving and it isn’t shooting back. Piece of cake,” he says. “There’s no trick to the double tap. The key is hitting the target with the first round. You don’t sight-align your second shot. You set up and just pull the trigger twice in quick succession-bang, bang. Like that. They use it to clear close-in targets, make sure of the kill.”

“According to the cops, the shooter was thirty feet away when he killed Chapman,” says Harry.

“It’s a little long,” says Ruiz, “but doable. Especially with the laser sight. Probably froze her in place if the laser got in her eyes. The red beam tends to put you in a daze.”

A client facing capital charges usually leaks more acid than the average battery. Closeted in a cell with only their own dark thoughts for company twenty-three hours a day, even rock-hard cons used to doing long stretches can sometimes lose it. Some exude enough sweat that you would swear every cell wall in their body is collapsing, leaving you to wonder how it is possible to fashion a defense around a formless bag of saline. After a few jailhouse visits, you can usually smell it in the air, fear dripping from them like the psychic odor of warm urine. But Ruiz emits none of this. It causes me to wonder what makes him tick.

“Who else knew that the gun was in that drawer?” says Harry.

“Madelyn, for one.”

“You told her you kept it there?”

“She asked me about it. When she came back for protection, after the security detail was disbanded. Said when she was alone in the house, it made her feel better knowing it was there if she needed it. That’s why I didn’t take it when I left. I’ve got half a dozen handguns. That was one I didn’t use much. It was too large for concealed use. I used it at the range with her and that was about it. I figured if it made her feel better, I’d leave it there.”

“According to the police report, you told the cops you forgot the gun at the house,” Harry points out. “Now you’re telling us you left it there because she wanted you to.”

“At first I did forget it. When she called me, after the security detail was ended, I told her I needed to come by and pick it up. That’s when she asked me if I could just leave it there a while longer. I figured there was no sense telling the cops: they weren’t gonna believe me.”

“What about other people on the security detail? Did they know the gun was there?”

“They may have. Like I said, toward the end I tried to make sure I was never alone with her at the house. It was getting to be bad form.”

“So somebody might have seen the gun in the drawer?”

“It’s possible.”

We go over the list of names. This is short: two other employees of Karr, Rufus.

“Did they find any fingerprints on the gun?” asks Ruiz.

“Should they have?” says Harry.

“I assumed that if they found somebody else’s, they wouldn’t have arrested me,” he says. “Did they find mine?”

“No.”

“I’m not surprised,” Ruiz says. “I cleaned and oiled it pretty well last time we used it. After we went to the range. Put it away wet: figured I probably wouldn’t be using it again for a while so it was best to give it a good oiling. You’re not likely to find prints on something like that.”

Ruiz seems to know a lot about this, the forensics of fingerprints on firearms. It is a truism that most people don’t realize that good prints are rarely found on a firearm after a crime. One of the reasons is the oil used to clean the gun, along with the shooter’s sweaty hands-that is, if he isn’t wearing gloves.

“The oil and the recoil usually screw up anything that might be readable,” says Ruiz.

“You sound like you might have worked crimes at one time,” I say.

“No. Just done a lot of shooting. You pick up bits and pieces of information.”

Harry changes the subject. “Have you ever heard the name Primis?”

Ruiz looks at him as if perhaps he’s talking to someone else. “Excuse me?”

“Primis software?”

He gives Harry a face, a kind of scrunched-up expression, then shakes his head, shrugs. “Never heard of it.”

“What about Protector?”

He shakes his head. “No. What is it?”

“You never heard Chapman talk about either of these?”

He thinks for a moment. “No. Like I told you, she didn’t talk about business. At least not with me. What are they?”

“You never overheard her talking to anybody else when she might have mentioned these?”

He shakes his head. “I told you. No.”

We’re done for the session. Harry begins to gather his papers, slipping them back into his briefcase.

“Oh, one other thing before I forget: the handgun. The forty-five. It has some letters engraved on the side of the frame. Do you know anything about those, what they stand for?”

“I don’t think so.”

I pull a slip of paper from my pocket, the yellow Post-it, and read from it. “The letters read USSOCOM. All capitals cut into the side of the slide.” I look up at Ruiz.

He’s standing there, one foot up on the metal chair at the other side of the table, gaze cast down at the flat stainless-steel surface in front of him. He arches his eyebrows, cigarette pressed between his lips, one hand up to cup it. He slowly shakes his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“I checked it out. Ran a Google search. You know what that is?”

“Internet, right?”

“Yeah. Seems there’s actually a site on this particular model handgun.”

“That so?”

“Yes. Heckler and Koch Model Mark Twenty-three. Originally it was made for only one customer, the United States government.”

“Really?”

“They make a civilian model now, but the original, the one you had, that was made only for military use under a special contract. The letters on the side”-I look down at the note in my hand again-“USSOCOM: it stands for United States Special Operations Command.”