Point of Impact

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“All rise, all rise, the Fifth United States Circuit Court is now in session, the Honorable Roland O. Hughes presiding.”

Nick and Sally stood up, with two hundred others, including dozens of reporters, about half the New Orleans FBI office and Howard and his prosecuting angel, Kelso, at the prosecution table, which happened by absurd coincidence to be near Nick and Sally’s seats in the front row of the courtroom. Hugh Meachum sat behind the prosecutor’s table, in a three-piece gray herringbone suit. He had a little red bow tie on and Nick decided he looked three hundred years old.

Sam Vincent also stood. He was a slouchy grand-pop with a face like a bowl of walnut shells, and not much hair on his head. He wore a string tie and a pair of bottle-bottom glasses; his fingers were long and gnarly and dirty from the pipe he was continually stuffing when he wasn’t in court, and the thick lenses inflated his pale blue eyes when they fixed on you, so they were as large as shark’s eyes. He was nearly eighty and had won the Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.

“You may be seated,” said Judge Hughes, a stern black man in his fifties. “Now ladies and gentlemen, first I want to warn you that although today’s case has national implications, it is first and foremost a case of law and it will be treated as such. I warn spectators, particularly those of you with the press, to conduct yourself with the proper decorum or I will clear this courtroom in one minute’s time, is that understood?”

His booming voice was met with silence.

“Now, today we are having, at the defense’s request, a preliminary hearing in the matter of the Government v. Bob Lee Swagger, in which Mr. Swagger is accused of murdering a Salvadoran citizen, the Archbishop Jorge Roberto Lopez, on federal property, namely the presidential podium erected in Louis Armstrong Park March first of this year. For you spectators let me explain: this isn’t a formal trial, it’s a hearing to make certain the government has, in my judgment, enough evidence to warrant the formal trial. So there’s no jury. The two attorneys will be arguing for my benefit. Furthermore, the defense is not entitled to bring evidence, but only to attack the evidence the government presents. Now, gentlemen, I want these arguments to be swift and clean. I don’t want procedural detail cluttering up the proceedings. You may save the logrolling for the trial, assuming there is to be a trial, and before you object, Mr. Vincent, please note I only said if there is to be a trial. I’m not prejudiced. Now you may bring in the accused, bailiff.”

And so Bob was led into the courtroom.

In a bright blue prison jumpsuit, with his hands manacled before him, and secured by a chain around his waist that was connected in turn to leg irons, he shuffled in, hair clipped short and face raw and white. He was calm, however, as calm as the last moment Nick had seen him, sitting next to Julie on the floor of Hard Bargain Valley, his face sealed off behind the war paint as Howard’s SWAT team surrounded him.

God, he looked so, so fallen.

“Your Honor” – it was Sam Vincent – “is it strictly necessary to humiliate my client, who has yet to be convicted of a single crime and who was a decorated Marine hero of this country, by festooning him in chains like a common thief?”

“Your Honor,” answered Kelso, just as fast, “Mr. Swagger has a known propensity for both extreme violence and escape. These precautions are merely prudent.”

“Ah,” said the judge, “Mr. Swagger, are you duly uncomfortable or humiliated?”

“Sir, it doesn’t matter to me,” said Bob.

“All right, we’ll undo the manacles, but the leg irons stay. Is that an adequate compromise, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is, Your Honor.”

“Bailiff, would you make the adjustments. Now, Mr. Kelso, your opening statement please.”

“Ah, thank you, Your Honor.”

Manfully, Kelso strode to the center of the courtroom.

“Your Honor, the government will demonstrate very simply that adequate proof exists to conclude that at approximately twelve-nineteen P.M., on March first of this year, Bob Lee Swagger did in fact fire a shot from an attic at Four-fifteen St. Ann Street in the French Quarter of this city, that, though aimed at the president of the United States, did strike and kill Archbishop Jorge Roberto Lopez, of Salvador, El Salvador. Mr. Swagger had the classic three-part modus operandi to accomplish such an act, that is, motive, opportunity and means, as we shall demonstrate. And that, Your Honor, should be that.”

“All right, Mr. Kelso. Thank you. Mr. Vincent.”

Nick’s heart sank a little when the old man stood on rocky legs, and essayed a little sally past the defense table where he sat alone with Bob. It was a contrast to the team of bodies that surrounded Kelso and Howard at the prosecution table.

“Well, sir,” he said, looking fully his eighty years, his rheumy blue eyes staring at nothing in particular, his suit a collection of bags that hadn’t seen a dry cleaner but had seen more than a few pipe cleanings, his clunky black shoes unshined, “I s’pose you could say we’ll show the other side and that this decorated war hero could not – ”

“Objection, Your Honor, Mr. Swagger’s war record isn’t in question here and is irrelevant to the proceedings.”

“He’s got a point, Mr. Vincent.”

“Well, hell, sir, if they say he’s a shooter then damned if they oughtn’t to point out it was the U.S. Marines that taught him to shoot and who gave the boy a chestful of medals for it.”

There was an eruption of laughter at Old Sam’s zinger.

“Well stated, Mr. Vincent. But since there’s no jury here today and since I am in fact well acquainted with your client’s military record, perhaps we could forgo, in the interests of moving into the meat of the matter, any further references to Mr. Swagger’s wartime heroism, and perhaps that would encourage the prosecution to forgo any time-consuming pattern of objections.”

“Well, I reckon that’s a tolerable deal,” said Vincent.

“Excellent. Mr. Kelso, it’s time for you to open your case.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Kelso began by introducing into evidence a letter dated December 15, 1991, addressed to the president of the United States, in which Bob Lee Swagger argued in a strident, faintly irrational tone that he deserved the Congressional Medal of Honor for his exploits in Vietnam.

The letter was projected on a portable screen that Kelso’s minions quickly assembled.

“Your Honor, this document was what initially put Bob Lee Swagger on the Secret Service list of potentially threatening suspects and earned him an investigation, albeit a tragically inefficient one, by the FBI.”

Nick winced.

Object, he protested silently. Make the point that Bob was on the C-list, felt to be the least dangerous and that even the Secret Service guys had said he could be skipped.

But Sam Vincent and his client sat mute at their table.

“Your Honor, I have here the depositions of four handwriting experts in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New Orleans Police Department, the New York City Police Department and one widely respected consultant, stating that they’ve identified – well, it varies, Your Honor – but between fifteen and thirty-one similarities in handwriting between this document and authenticated samples of Bob Lee Swagger’s penmanship.”

“Mr. Vincent.”

At last Vincent spoke.

“Your Honor, I know I can’t enter evidence, but if I could, I’d enter three depositions from handwriting experts in Los Angeles, London, England, and Chicago, Illinois, stating that the document is a forg – ”

“Objection, objection, surely Your Honor can see that the defense is trying to enter evidence which is – ”

“Objection sustained. Mr. Vincent, you do know the rules.”

“Sir, I do and I apologize. But, the truth is in handwriting analysis there’s just no way to know positively. You can have more experts than a mama possum has teats” – laughter from the spectators in the darkness – “and you won’t get any two of ’em to agree. And let me point out one last thing; Mr. Swagger unfortunately didn’t have the benefits of a fancy education like some among us. He’s a product of public schools in rural Arkansas in the 1950s, with no college experience. Thus his handwriting, as you all can see, remained somewhat in the primitive stage; it looks to sophisticated people as if it were written by a child. Now the one thing most handwriting experts agree on is that such a script – it’s called, oh, I think, ‘infantile cursive’ ” – he said this as if he were just making it up – “is indeed the easiest for any kind of accomplished forger to imitate.”

“All right, Mr. Vincent,” said the judge, “I’ll allow that, and keep it in mind, but please remember you are only permitted to attack the government’s evidence, not introduce your own.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How can they win if they can’t introduce evidence?” Sally whispered into his ear.

“He’s got to show that their evidence doesn’t add up to what they say it does,” Nick said.

Meanwhile, Kelso struck back quickly.

“Your Honor, I’m not here to indulge in comedy or groundless conspiracy speculation, even when they amount to the same thing. I’m here to argue a point of law. And although this isn’t the forum where absolute truth is to be decided, I think Your Honor will concede that I’ve made exactly what the law demands of me at this point in the proceedings: that is, I’ve established a reasonable argument for motive. It was enough for the Secret Service and the FBI to begin to monitor Mr. Swagger and it should be enough for the court.”

“Young man, it’s not necessary for you to tell me my job,” said Judge Hughes. “But let’s just say your observation isn’t without merit, even if it was delivered to this court in a fashion dangerously close to contempt.”

“I apologize, Your Honor.”

“Then you may proceed with the second part of your argument.”

“As Your Honor pleases,” said Kelso. He retreated briefly to his table.

“We’re not doing too well, are we?” whispered Sally.

“No, I’m afraid we’re not. I thought this old man would have something more than tit for tat stuff.”

“Nick, I’m scared.”

“Just hang on. My part is coming up next and – ”

But Kelso had returned to the center of the floor.

“Your Honor,” he said, “I’d like to enter into evidence the sworn statement of a New Orleans police detective named Leon Timmons. Detective Timmons is not here because, tragically, he was slain in the line of duty last April. But it was Detective Timmons who heroically interceded as Bob Lee Swagger was – ”

“Your Honor, I object,” said the old man, stirring himself to Biblical wrath. “This here evidence is hearsay, beyond the reach of cross-examination. Moreover this ‘heroic’ detective has been named in several internal affairs reports of the New Orleans Police Department of having suspected ties with organized crime in the greater – ”

“Your Honor, Leon Timmons won three commendations for valor under fire in his eighteen years with – ”

“And he drove one of them damned German convertible sports cars that cost more than sixty thousand dollars on a salary of twenty-two thousand five hundred per year – ”

“Your Honor – ”

“All right, all right, gentlemen, quit your squabbling,” Judge Hughes said with a groan. He paused.

“Mr. Kelso, don’t you have a live witness?”

“Shit,” said Nick to Sally.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then let’s end this here. You put your sworn testimony into evidence and I’ll read it at my leisure and if the issue is still in doubt, rule then on its admissibility.”

“That’s fine, Your Honor. I feel my next witness will clear up any doubts anybody will have about the viability of the government’s case.”

Suddenly a bailiff was standing next to Nick.

“Mr. Memphis. From Mr. Utey.”

It was a note.

Nick unfolded it.

It said, Last chance. As you can see, Bob is lost. You can still turn this to your benefit and the Bureau’s advantage. Don’t throw your life and that poor girl’s away for nothing that can be helped anyway.

“What is it, Nick?” Sally whispered.

So here it was.

The whole thing come to this.

His life could be so fine.

Bob was gone anyhow; that was clear. Old Sam Vincent was a cracker-barrel windbag. The evidence was overwhelming. RamDyne had won. He looked behind the prosecution table and saw Hugh Meachum sitting there, his face serene, his blue eyes opaque.

“The prosecution calls Mr. Nicholas Memphis.”

Nick leaned to Sally.

“It’s a note from a ghost,” he said, crumpling it, and walked to the witness’s box without looking at Howard.

Nick took the oath without a lot of emotional investment and tried to find a comfortable position in the hardwood chair. He could see Bob, ramrod stiff, all Marine, staring not at him but into space; and sitting beside him, his slouch carrying with it a suggestion of collapsed feed bags heaped in the barn corner, old Sam Vincent, his jowls slightly rising and falling as he breathed heavily, his eyes enormous behind the thick glasses.

“Your current employment, Mr. Memphis?” asked Kelso.

“I’m currently unemployed. As of yesterday.”

“And until yesterday?”

Nick summed himself up quickly: twelve years, Federal Bureau of Investigation, special agent.

“And can you tell us your duties on the date of March first, of last year?”

“I was part of a multidepartmental task force assigned to a presidential security detail. I was – ”

“Mr. Memphis, please just answer the question I ask without elaboration. You’ve done this before, no?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“But – ”

“Mr. Memphis, what did these responsibilities entail?”

“I was parked in a car on St. Ann Street about five blocks from the speech site, Louis Armstrong Park, on North Rampart.”

“I see. What was your job?”

“Uh. Well, it was a Secret Service operation, basically. We were just on the farthest perimeter of the security envelope, pretty much as lookouts, that’s all.”

“I see. Now, please tell me what ensured at exactly twelve-nineteen P.M. that day. You are in your car and – ”

“Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that. See, there’s context, it’s very important, what came before, what came after, what I learned, what was involved, and just to isolate – ”

“Mr. Memphis, you were asked a direct question. You answer with an essay on an irrelevant topic. What ensued at exactly twelve-nineteen P.M. that – ”

Nick felt it all draining away. He’d rehearsed a dozen times, reducing the story into the smallest understandable parts.

“Your Honor, I have to explain, because – ”

“Your Honor, I should explain the witness is here as a hostile. He’s under subpoena and may soon be indicted under federal statutes for impersonating a federal officer.”

“I just need – ”

“Mr. Memphis, you’ve testified before,” said the judge. “You know the rules. If you have a statement to make, I’ll allow you to file it in writing at the end of the proceedings.”

“Sir, I just feel – ”

“Your Honor, he’s got to answer the question.”

I’m hurting him, Nick suddenly realized. I’m coming across like a crazy man, and in doing that, I absolutely hurt the man I meant to help. Kelso knew it. Kelso counted on it. Howard had prepped Kelso well on the weaknesses of Nicholas Memphis, formerly of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Mr. Memphis, I’ll have to hold you in contempt if you don’t answer. I don’t think you want three months in jail added to your current legal difficulties.”

“I just want justice, Your Honor. I – ”

“Mr. Memphis, I have to warn you once more. Answer the question, or I’ll find you in contempt.”

“Yes, sir. But if you would just let me put it in con – ”

“Nick.”

It was Bob.

“Nick, just tell the truth. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

His deep voice resonated in the courtroom like a mourning cry. It was followed by stillness.

“Mr. Swagger, if you make an interjection again, I’ll find you in contempt, and I’ll have you restrained and gagged,” said the judge.

Nick saw how brilliantly the prosecutor had choreographed it. Put Nick in distress; gull Bob into breaking his stoicism; we both look like fools, locked in complicity, terrified of the truth.

Howard was watching intently, shaking his head as if to claim at this point the victory was too easy to take.

“All right,” Nick finally said. He’d tried; he’d lost; they’d come so far; it was over; Bob the Nailer was nailed.

It was over quickly.

“I heard a shot. I got out of the car…” He told it simply, in the end identifying Bob as the bleeding man who’d jumped from the window, hit the roof and staggered down the stairs.

“Thank you, Mr. Memphis,” said Kelso. “I’m finished, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Vincent, do you have any questions?”

At last. Nick knew his time had at last come. Now he could get it out. Now he could -

Vincent said, “No further questions, Your Honor.”

“You may step down, Mr. Memphis.”

Nick looked at the old man in utter disbelief. He felt like throwing up. That was it? It was over? It was -

“Oh, one thing, Mr. Memphis.” The old man seemed to be awakening from a dream.

“Uh, you say Detective Timmons was already inside the house out of which Mr. Swagger fled bleeding.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hmmm. Did you see him enter? As I recall, there’s only one entry to that courtyard.”

“No, sir. And I was on station at 1000 hours.”

“Damn, isn’t that strange? Yet in his log he says he saw something suspicious at Four-fifteen St. Ann Street up near the roofline and entered the courtyard and – ”

“Your Honor, I object,” said the quick Kelso. “Detective Timmons isn’t on trial here and counsel himself objected when I tried to introduce the detective’s account – ”

“Your Honor, I’m just an old country boy, but I’m wondering how this heroic detective turned himself invisible that day. That’s a hell of a trick.”

“Your Honor,” Kelso pushed ahead, “let me further point out that Mr. Memphis has been dismissed from his job in the Bureau out of gross negligence and dereliction of duty. His screwups on this case are notorious throughout the law enforcement community. To offer him as any kind of paragon of professionalism, as the defense is clearly trying, is ludicrous beyond words.”

Great. Now ritual humiliation in public added to everything else.

“He does have a point, Mr. Vincent. But I’ve marked your observation down for further study. All right, Mr. Kelso. Proceed.”

Nick lumbered back to his seat, feeling the weight of ages on his suddenly frail shoulders. Another nail in the coffin.

He fought his way back to the seat next to Sally, and she leaned over and put a hand on his.

“You tried,” she said.

“Catastrophe,” was all he could think to say.

He looked up to see the judge announce an hour recess for lunch.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

On the way out, two or three news types hounded him, but he just bulled on by; more of them were clustered around the star of the hour, the charismatic young prosecutor, who gobbled up sound-bite-sized nuggets for the six P.M. news. Sam Vincent was nowhere to be found.

“Sally,” he said, after they had sat in glum silence for a few minutes at a diner a few blocks away, the food claiming his last eleven dollars, “I think we have to talk.”

“All right.”

“I don’t think we’re going to win. In fact, I know we’re not going to win. Maybe Bob specializes in getting out of tight spots but this time…well, the point is, it’s not going to happen today. The noose is too tight. It’s over.”

“Nick, I – ”

“And when he goes, I go, and when I go, you’ll go. But it doesn’t have to happen like that. I want you to call Kelso and volunteer to testify against me. Tell him I duped you, I seduced you, I used you. I won’t deny it. It’s me they really want. If you give them me on an espionage charge, something heavier than this stupid ‘impersonating a federal officer’ thing, they’ll go for it in an instant. It’s the smart move. Okay?”

“The smart move,” she said.

“Howard only wants me destroyed, because I wouldn’t give him his phony undercover thing. And there’s this mysterious old goat named Hugh Meachum that I think works for the CIA or did or something like that, he’s here to make sure it all stays contained. That’s the point of the drill. I know they won’t – ”

“Nick, let me tell you something. Bob Lee Swagger may specialize in getting out of tight places, but you specialize in loyalty. You gave everything to the Bureau and everything to Myra all those years. I’ve watched you. I’ve been watching you for years, and how much you gave. And how I was never a honey to you; you were the only one who ever treated me like a human being, and you never came on to me, and believe me, A. B. Nick, you wouldn’t believe some of the champions of the family value system that came on to me. And that’s because at some point you are fundamentally the most decent man who ever lived. And now you’ve given your loyalty to Bob Lee Swagger. Well, Nick, I’ve loved you for half a decade and if all I get for it is today and tomorrow until we’re both indicted and held without bond, then that’s enough for me. I’ll give you the loyalty you’ve been giving everybody else all those years. It’s time for somebody to give you some loyalty.”

“Sally, I – ”

“And I’ll bet you that old country boy Bob Lee Swagger has some sly left up his sleeve. I’ll tell you this, Nick, I’m from the South and I’ve known men like that my whole life. They’re not much damn good at anything except dying in wars and shooting helpless animals, Lord knows why, and outsmarting the law. They’re sly, that’s their talent. And I never met anybody who could outsly a sly old country boy and from what I’ve heard of Bob Lee Swagger, he’s the slyest of them all. There’s just no way a carpetbagging yankee like Howdy Duty or an old ghost like Hugh Meachum could bring it off. Nick, you’ve just got to believe in Bob Lee, do you hear me?”

He touched her arm. He wanted to kiss her. All that radiance in those bright eyes. Dammit, she believed, where he himself had lost all belief.

“Come on, son,” she said, “time to git back to the show. Got me a feeling there’s fireworks to come.”

The young man’s name was Walter Jacobs. He was extremely clean-cut, balding, mild of face and demeanor, his eyes narrowly intelligent and beaming with goodwill behind his wire frames, his suit blue and crisp, his shirt white and crisp, his tie black and crisp.

And he was death.

He was the one who’d do it, finally, push it that last little bit.

“Your employment, Mr. Jacobs?”

“I’m a senior firearms technician in the FBI Forensic Ballistics Laboratory in Washington, D.C.”

And so to means at last. Kelso, grunting to make it appear heavier and more lethal for the judge, bent to lift the means.

“And this is it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jacobs.

“Your Honor, I’d like to enter this rifle as state exhibit four, please.”

“So mark it.”

“And this.”

It was a tiny, twisted piece of lead and copper – the base of a hollowtip bullet.

“Yes. Exhibit number five, Mr. Kelso.”

“And this – the final link – as state exhibit six.”

He held up a thin brass tube, 2.015 inches long, narrower at one end, rimmed at the other. It was an empty cartridge case.

“So marked,” said the judge.

“Would you identify this exhibit please, Mr. Jacobs.”

“Yes, sir. It’s a customized Remington Model 700V bolt action center-fire rifle in.308 caliber with a Leupold 10× Ultra Scope. It was recovered in the attic of Four-fifteen St. Ann Street, in this city, on the date March first, 1992.”

“All right. Can you tell us of the rifle’s background?”

Quickly, Jacobs sketched the rifle’s course from the Remington custom shop in Ilion, New York, to its special-order purchase through the Naval PX system by the commanding officer of the Marine Corps Marksmanship Unit at Camp Lejeune in 1975, where the paperwork said it was presented to Gunnery Sergeant Bob Lee Swagger, that unit, on the occasion of his disability retirement from the service.

“I see. Can you characterize the nature of the weapon?”

“Yes, sir. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble and evinced a great deal of guncraft in making that rifle superbly accurate. The original custom rifle was very accurate, what we’d call a minute-of-angle rifle. But he has done things to refine it even more. For example, the original Remington barrel has been replaced by a custom-made Hart stainless steel barrel, with button-cut rifling. That work, incidentally, was performed by Hart Rifle Barrels of Lafayette, New York, according to company records, for Bob Lee Swagger, of Blue Eye, Arkansas, in June of 1982. The new fiberglass stock was manufactured by McMillan and Company, of Phoenix, Arizona; a stock of that model was sent to Bob Lee Swagger of Blue Eye, Arkansas. The firing pin has been replaced by a much lighter one of titanium from Brownells, of Montezuma, Iowa, to improve lock time thirty-five percent, that is, increase the speed between the trigger pull and the actual firing. The rifle has been bedded in Devcon aluminum and its screws have been ‘pillar bedded,’ meaning that they’ve been driven through a pillar of aluminum inserted in the stock. All of this, of course, makes the rifle more stable and therefore more accurate.”

“Thank you. And now, the last two items.”

Kelso held up the lead and copper scrap.

“That’s what remains of a 200-grain boattail hollowpoint Sierra MatchKing bullet,” said Jacobs. “It was recovered from the podium of the Louis Armstrong Park here in New Orleans, clotted with brain tissue and skull fragments.”

“Is there enough left to make a ballistic identification?”

“No, sir. We were unable to get a rifling signature from the bullet, since it was so mutilated.”

“I see. So what did you do?”

“Sir, we carefully sluiced the barrel of the rifle and took very careful samplings of copper and lead residue that remained in its rifling channels. We took copper and lead samplings from the bullet. Then, we made neutron activation analysis examinations of each metallic sample.”

“What did you learn?”

“That the bullet and the residue were atomically identical, sir.”

“Proving?”

“Proving that either that bullet, or one exactly like it, was the last bullet fired down that barrel. There were no other identifiable lead or copper tracings.”

“Are these bullets common?”

“They’re manufactured in small lots by Sierra Bullets of Sedalia, Missouri, primarily for thousand-yard shooting. The yearly production is less than five thousand. It’s not a common hunting round. We found several boxes, including one recently opened, in the suspect’s shop in Blue Eye, Arkansas.”

“I see. And finally, the case. Would you characterize it, please?”

“Yes, sir. Well, sir, the case indicates a handload assembled with some care and skill. Both the outside and the inside of the neck had been turned, to guarantee smooth bullet release and concentricity. The primer, a Federal Bench Rest primer, had been seated precisely in the center of the primer pocket. The flash hole had been deburred for consistent ignition and the primer pocket cleaned and reamed for perfect depth and squareness.”

“Could you mate it to the rifle?”

“Yes, sir. There are six tests and measurements that one can make to ascertain whether or not a shell was fired in the chamber of a rifle and ejected from it. These include neck diameter vis-à-vis chamber diameter, thickness, chamber imperfection pattern, rim indentations…and on and on. It passed all six.”

“So it was fired in and ejected from that rifle.”

“It would be mathematically impossible for it not to be.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jacobs. What kind of case was it?”

“Sir, it was a Federal Nickel Match.308 case. Federal doesn’t make them anymore but we found several boxes of them in Bob Lee Swagger’s shop. And we found Federal large Bench Rest Rifle Primers. We identified the powder residue in the case as IMR-4895. We found an eight-pound keg of IMR-4895 in Mr. Swagger’s shop, half gone.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jacobs.” He turned. “Your Honor, I think you can see the chain. We have motive – resentment of the president as evinced in the letter. We have opportunity, as Agent Memphis’s testimony placed Swagger in the sniper’s nest at the time of the shooting. And we have means – his rifle, custom built, painfully assembled over the years into the most efficient killing machine ever made. We have the bullet from the rifle. We have the shell ejected from the rifle. And a good man is dead. And there sits his killer.”

“We’re screwed,” said Nick to Sally.

“The prosecution rests,” said Kelso.

“Mr. Vincent.”

“Your Honor, I have no – Oh. Just out of curiosity. Mr. Jacobs, how does the rifle shoot?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How does she shoot? If you’re examining a rifle to see if it killed a man, don’t you have to have some idea how it shoots?”

“I can assure you, sir, it has all the hallmarks of a rifle customized for maximum accuracy.”

“Yes, but how does it shoot?”

Jacobs was suddenly a bit uncomfortable.

“Your Honor,” said Kelso, “I object. This has no bearing on – ”

“Mr. Kelso, you introduced the rifle to evidence, not Mr. Vincent. Objection overruled. Answer the question please, Mr. Jacobs.”

“Well, sir,” said Jacobs, “I assume it shoots very well.”

“Whoa, son,” said Sam Vincent. “You assume? Now does that mean, you haven’t fired the rifle?”

“Yes, sir. There was no cause to, given the fact that the recovered bullet was too badly damaged to read the rifling signature.”

“So you can’t say how accurate this rifle is, not ever having fired it. You can’t testify that this rifle is capable of the kind of accuracy you say it is.”

Nick held his breath, wondering if the old goat had come up with just the faintest opening.

“What’s going on?” whispered Sally.

“See,” Nick explained, “because there was no ballistic signature on the murder bullet, they couldn’t shoot it, because they didn’t want to have to say in court they failed to get a match. They just passed on the test altogether. I don’t know where this is leading.”

Jacobs held his ground.

“Sir, I’ve examined thousands of rifles in my time, and I examined that one minutely, including taking it completely apart and examining it for function and reliability, and I can say – I can guarantee you – that everything in that rifle is consistent with a weapon of extreme accuracy. There was no point in shooting the rifle, as we had no sample of its rifling to test.”

“Or maybe you did test it and it didn’t match,” said Sam Vincent.

Kelso was on his feet screaming.

“I object,” he yelled. “Counsel is impugning the integrity of the FBI’s ballistic laboratories, an institution with a worldwide reputation for integrity.”

“Or maybe the FBI tampered with the rif – ” Sam started.

“That’ll be quite enough, Mr. Vincent,” said the judge. “Objection sustained. There’s no evidence to suggest tampering.”

“Sir,” said Jacobs, “may I make a statement?”

“Go ahead,” said the judge.

“Sir, I’ve been testifying in cases for over ten years and nobody has ever suggested that our lab would tamper with evidence. On my word of honor, I guarantee that that rifle is exactly, precisely the way we found it, except for disassembly and the barrel swatching process I’ve already described. It has not been altered in any way at all.”

“Seems to me he has you, Mr. Vincent,” said Judge Hughes.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” said the old man, and limped back to his chair.

“Your Honor,” said Kelso, springing up, as Jacobs left the stand. “That finishes the state’s case. I believe I’ve delivered on my promise, Your Honor. Now, the defense insisted on a preliminary, to discredit my evidence, and if you’ll allow me to point it out, he hasn’t scratched it. He hasn’t dented it. Your Honor, isn’t it time to declare this farce over and set a trial date?”

It was the contempt in his voice, as much as the triumph, that made Nick hate him.

“Mr. Vincent?”

“Your Honor.” The old man had bestirred himself. “Your Honor, I confess my best shot didn’t pay off. I’d hoped to prove that the FBI’s failure to test-fire the rifle proved the case couldn’t be made, but I just couldn’t budge that smart young feller over there.”

He had a sad moment; it was solemn in the courtroom.

Sally nudged him.

“What?”

“He’s staring at you.”

“Who?”

“Your friend.”

And so Bob was. And when their eyes met, Bob’s face suddenly lit into a big grin. Then he winked.

“What’s going on?” Sally asked.

“I think Bob the Nailer’s about to blow some smart boys to hell and gone,” Nick whispered, his breath suddenly hard to find in his chest.

“But,” said the old man, “the government has proven completely that this here rifle” – and he moved with surprising swiftness, the palsy gone from his limbs, his gut sucked in, his glasses gone – “this death rifle shot and killed Archbishop Jorge Roberto Lopez on March first of this year. That’s their whole damn case and damned if it ain’t airtight. A cat couldn’t get out of that damned bag!”

With a swift hand he picked up the rifle from the prosecutor’s table and flicked open the bolt. “Yep,” he said, booming, “Bob took a bullet, a cartridge, just like this one” – and from his pocket he pulled out a gleaming brass cartridge – “just like this Winchester Ranger 168-grain.308 hollowpoint – ”

It suddenly occurred to the judge that the cartridge was live.

“Mr. Vincent, that bullet is not to be inserted in – ”

But Sam slapped the cartridge into the chamber and drove the bolt home. The sudden overwhelming power of the loaded rifle, that utterly transforming alchemy by which a mute piece of equipment, after insertion of the little missile of brass and powder and lead, becomes an almost living presence, filled the courtroom.

Kelso didn’t even bother to object. Two bailiffs quietly put their hands on their revolvers.

“Mr. Vincent,” said the judge, “you now have a loaded weapon in your hand. I formally order you to unload it quickly, and no nonsense about it, or, sir, I will find you in contempt and lock you up for the rest of your life. Bailiff, if Mr. Vincent doesn’t comply – ”

“Your Honor, Your Honor,” said Old Sam. “I have no intention of firing this here murder gun that the FBI and the prosecution have proven Bob Lee Swagger killed the Archbishop Robert Lopez with, no sir.”

He held the rifle aloft, its muzzle skyward.

“No, sir,” he said, “no, sir, I have no intention of firing it.” Then he smiled. “On the other hand,” he said, “I didn’t say nothing about pulling the trigger.”

He pulled the trigger.

In years that followed, Nick would recollect that the loudest shot in the long and violent story of Bob Lee Swagger was also the quietest. But at the time, he had no way of knowing that. Like everybody else in the room, he watched the old man’s finger constrict on the trigger and, anticipating the hugeness of the explosion caused by the crazy old man in the constricted space, he felt his face crack into a flinch.

Click, went the rifle, no louder than a pencil dropping on the floor.

Silence. Then chaos.

“Order, order,” shouted the judge.

“Your Honor,” shouted Kelso, “I object, I don’t know what the point of inserting a dummy cartridge into – ” And then he shut up himself, and shot a look at Howard.

“Your Honor,” said Sam, “it wasn’t no dummy. I could point out the dummies in here, but this cartridge isn’t one of them. You could feed a thousand, a million live cartridges through this rifle. Because it does everything the FBI says it does, except one. It don’t shoot.”

Quickly, he ejected the cartridge to the floor, then pushed the bolt-retaining lever in front of the trigger and released the bolt. He set the rifle down on the prosecution table, and held the bolt up. Then he pressed the bolt against the tabletop to release the spring mechanism and in five expert seconds broke the bolt down to its components, one of which he held aloft.

“The firing pin, Your Honor,” he said. “As the young man pointed out, it’s a titanium firing pin, for faster lock time. What he didn’t point out, because he didn’t notice, was that it ain’t four point five-six-five inches long, as the Remington specs call for. No, sir, it’s four point four-six-five inches long. Ain’t no way it’s long enough to reach the primer. Now if you looked real careful, you’d see that a man who knew all about rifles took this little sucker and cut it in two with a file. Then he removed just one tenth of an inch of metal from the pin shaft. Then he welded it together again, and you’d have to measure it with a set of Jap calipers to tell the difference, but the one thing sure as death is that it ain’t long enough to reach the primer. Just by a hair, but close don’t count. It don’t shoot. It don’t go bang. Now why would he do that? If Bob Lee Swagger were a sly man, you might say that at some time in his past when he was shooting for some people, he noticed that somebody had removed one of the spent casings on his handloads and replaced it with another. It bothered him. A small thing, ten cents’ worth of brass, that’s all. But it bothered him. And so later he took out the firing pin and he performed that surgery and then he put it back, because he suspected something strange was going on in his life. And maybe all these months he’s known he had absolute physical proof that he could not have shot the archbishop and the FBI and the government didn’t know diddly. And maybe he used that time to find out who those men are, and what dark deeds they’d done in the past. Your Honor, you may have noticed that on the first day of deer season last month in Arkansas, there was an astonishing number of accidents. Three men killed on one day? Amazing, what with hunting accidents way down these days on account of blaze orange. But you know, Your Honor, sometimes justice happens in strange ways that men and courts can’t quite understand.

“And so who fired the shot that killed Archbishop Jorge Roberto Lopez? You’ll have to ask Bob Lee Swagger. Maybe he’ll tell you. He won’t tell me. But we do know this. Someone else fired that bullet from another rifle. ’Cause this one don’t work. That’s what the irrefutable evidence says. So, Your Honor, I ask you. Is there a case here? Or are we trying the wrong case?”

The judge asked the two attorneys to stand.

He looked at them both squarely.

“Mr. Kelso,” he finally said, “what are you doing here? You have a murder to solve and you’re nowhere near solving it. You haven’t even started. Bailiff, please release Mr. Swagger. He is free to live his own life now. I’m dismissing all charges. And I think that should do it. I think we can all go home now.”

The reporters exploded out of the courtroom to file the day’s astonishing events. In this ruckus, almost unnoticed, Bob stood, smiled easily, shook Sam Vincent’s hand, then came over to Nick, his bonds at last off.

“You did good, Nick. You can spot for me any day.”

“You did good yourself, old man.”

“Aren’t we a damn team, though? You sure you weren’t a Marine?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Well, you take care now. It was fun.”

“It was.”

Bob Lee walked away, and within seconds, somehow, was gone. It was the sniper’s gift. To disappear, leaving no trace, gone suddenly and totally.

Nick turned to Sally, but instead found himself looking upon the ruined face of Howard D. Utey.

“Howard, you weren’t even close. You didn’t even muss his hair. He just blew you away.” Over Howard’s shoulder, he could see the old man Meachum standing in the shadows, watching. Nick almost called out to him, but Meachum stepped back and he too vanished.

Then he turned to Sally.

“You want to get out of here?”

“Boy, do I.”

“Where to?”

“Oh, I think we could figure something out.”