Patricia Cornwell - Cause Of Death

"Yours has a big drag to the left." Frost showed me what looked like a tail coming out of the circular dent left by the firing pin. "And there's this other mark here, also to the left." He touched the screen with his finger.

"Ejector?" I said.

"Nope, I'd say that's from the firing pin bouncing back."

"Unusual?"

"Well, I'd just say it's unique to this weapon," he replied as he stared. "So we can run this if you want."

Let's.

He pulled up another screen and entered the information he had, such as the hemispherical shape the firing pin had impressed in the soft metal of the printer, and the direction of twist and parallel striation of the microscopic characteristics of the breech face. We did not enter anything about the bullet I had recovered from Danny's brain, for we could not prove that the Black Talon and the cartridge case were related, no matter how much we might suspect it. The examination of those two items of evidence was really unrelated, for lands and grooves and firing pin impressions are as different as fingerprints and footwear. All one can hope is that the stories the witnesses tell are the same.

Amazingly, in this case they were. When Frost executed his search, we had to wait only a minute or two before DRUGFIRE let us know that it had several candidates that might match the small, nickel-plated cylinder found ten feet from Danny's blood.

"Let's see what we've got here." Frost talked to himself as he positioned the top of the list on his screen. "This is your front runner." He dragged his finger across the glass.

"No contest. This one's way ahead of the pack."

"A Sig forty-five P220," I said, looking at him in astonishment. "The cartridge case is matching with a weapon versus another cartridge case?"

"Yes. Damn if it isn't. Jesus Christ."

"Let me make sure I understand this." I could not believe what I was seeing. "You wouldn't have the characteristics of a firearm entered into DRUGFIRE unless that firearm had been turned in to a lab. By the police, for some reason."

"That's how it's done," Frost agreed as he began to print screens. "This Sig forty-five that's in the computer is coming u p as the same one that fired the cartridge found near Danny Webster's body. That much we know right this second. What I've got to do is pull the actual cartridge case from the test fire done when we originally got the gun."

He stood.

I did not move as I continued staring at the list in DRUGFIRE with its symbols and abbreviations that told us about this pistol. It left recoil and drag marks, or its fingerprints, on the cartridge cases of every round it spent. I thought of Ted Eddings' stiff body in the cold waters of the Elizabeth River. I thought of Danny dead near a tunnel that no longer led anywhere.

"Then this gun somehow got back out on the street," I said.

Frost pursed his lips as he opened file drawers. "It would appear that way. But I really don't know the details of why it was entered into the system to begin with." Still rooting around, he added, "I believe the police department that originally turned the weapon in to us was Henrico County.

Let's see, where's CVA5471? We are seriously running out of room in this place."

"This was submitted last fall." I noted the date on the Computer screen. "September twenty-ninth."

"Right. That should be the date the form was completed."

"Do you know why the police turned the gun in?"

"You'd have to call them," Frost said.

"Let's get Marino on it now."

"Good idea."

I called Marino's pager as Frost pulled a file folder. Inside was the usual clear plastic envelope that we used to store the thousands of cartridge cases and shotgun shells that came through Virginia's labs every year.

"Here we go," he said.

"You have any Sig P220s in here?" I got up, too.

"One. It should be on the rack with the other forty-five auto loads."

While He mounted his test-fire cartridge case on the microscope's stage, I walked into a room that was either a nightmare or toy store, depending on Your point of view.

Walls were boards crowded with pistols, revolvers, and Tec- I Is and Tec-9s. It was depressing to think how many deaths were represented by the weapons in this one cramped room, at)(] how many of the cases had been mine.

The Sig Sauer P220 was black, and looked so much like the nine-milfirneter carried by Richmond police that at a glance I could not have told them apart. Of course, on close inspection, the.45 was somewhat bigger, and I suspected its muzzle mark might be different, too.

"Where's the ink pad?" I asked Frost as he leaned over the microscope, lining up both cartridge cases so he could physically compare them side by side.

"In my top desk drawer-," he said as the telephone rang -"Towards the back."

I got out the small tin of fingerprint ink and unfolded a snowy clean cotton twill cloth, which I placed on a thin, soft plastic pad. Frost picked up the phone.

"Hey, Bud. We got a hit on DRUGFIRE," he said, and I knew he was talking to Marino. "Can you run something down?"

He proceeded to tell Marino what he knew. Then Frost said to me as he hung up, "He's going to check with Henrico even as we speak."

"Good," I abstractedly said as I pressed the pistol's barrel into the ink, and then onto the cloth.

"These are definitely distinctive," I said right off as I studied several blackened muzzle marks that clearly showed the combat pistol's front sight blade, recoil guide and shape of the slide.

"You think we could identify that specific type of pistol?" he asked, and he was peering into the microscope again.

"On a contact wound, theoretically, we could," I said.

"The obvious problem is that a foriv-five loaded with highperformance ammunition is so incredibly destructive, you aren't likely to find a good pattern, not on the head."

This had been true in Danny's case, even after I had conjured up my plastic surgery skills to reconstruct the entrance wound as best I could. But as I compared the cloth to diagrams and photographs I had made downstairs in the morgue, I found nothing inconsistent with a Sig P220 beino the murder weapon. In fact, I thought I might have matched a sight mark protruding from the margin of the entrance.

"This is our confirmation," Frost said, adjusting the focus as he continued staring into the comparison microscope.

We both turned at the sound of' someone running down the hall.

"You want to see?" he asked.

"Yes, I do," I said as vet another person ran past, keys jingling madly from a bell.

"What the hell?" Frost -of up, frownin- toward the door.

Voices had gotten louder outside in the hall, and now people were hurrying by, but going the other way. Frost and I stepped outside the lab at the same moment several security guards rushed past, heading for their station. Scientists in lab coats stood in doorways casting about. Everyone was asking everyone else what was going on, when suddenly the fire alarm hammered overhead and red lights in the ceiling flashed.

"What the hell is this, a fire drill?" Frost yelled.

"There isn't one scheduled." I held my hands over my ears as people ran.

"Does that mean there's a fire?" He looked stunned.

I glanced up at sprinkler heads in the ceilings, Fiji(] said, "We've got to get out of here."

I ran downstairs and had just pushed through doors into the hall on my floor when a violent white storm of' cool halon gas blasted from the ceiling. It sounded as if I were surrounded by huge cymbals being beaten madly with a million sticks as I dashed in and Out of rooms. Fieldin- was gone, and every other office I checked had been evacuated so fast that drawers were left open, and slide displays and microscopes were on. Cool clouds rolled over me, and I had the surreal sensation I was flying through a hurricane in the middle of an air raid. I dashed into the library, the restrooms, and when satisfied that everyone was safely out, I ran down the hall and pushed my way out of the front doors. For a moment, I stood to catch my breath and let my heart slow down.