Predator

40

The round, brass head shines like a moon on the screen. Inside the Massachusetts State Police firearms lab, Tom, a firearms examiner, sits amid computers and comparison microscopes in a low-lighted room where the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, NIBIN, has finally answered his query.

He stares at the magnified images of fine striations and gouges transferred from the metal parts of a shotgun to the brass heads of two shells. The two images are superimposed, the two halves joined in the middle, the microscopic signatures, as Tom calls them, lining up perfectly.

“Of course, officially, I’m calling it a possible match until I can validate it on the comparison scope,” he is explaining to Dr. Wesley over the phone, the legendary Benton Wesley.

This is cool, Tom can’t help but think.

“Which means the examiner down inBrowardCountyneeds to send me his evidence, and fortunately, that’s not a problem,” Tom goes on. “Preliminarily, let me just say that I don’t think there’s going to be a question about this one being a hit in the computer. It’s my opinion-again, preliminarily-that the two shells were fired by the same shotgun.”

He waits for the reaction and feels charged-up, excited, as high as if he’s had two whisky sours. To say there’s a hit is like telling the investigator he won the lottery.

“What do you know about theHollywoodcase?” Dr. Wesley says without so much as a hint of gratitude.

“For one thing, it’s solved,” Tom answers, insulted.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Dr. Wesley says in the same ungracious tone.

He’s unappreciative and high-handed, and that figures. Tom has never met him, never talked to him and had no idea what to expect. But he’s heard of him, heard about his past career with the FBI, and everyone knows the FBI throws its considerable weight around, exploits the local investigators while treating them like inferiors and then takes credit for anything good that comes of a case. He’s an arrogant prick. That figures. No wonder Thrush made him talk directly to the legendary Dr. Benton Wesley. Thrush doesn’t want to deal with him or anyone that is or was or even knows the FBI.

“Two years ago,” Tom is saying, his friendliness withdrawn.

He sounds obtuse, dull. That’s what his wife tells him when his ego is bruised and he justifiably reacts. He has a right to react, but he doesn’t want his affect to become obtuse and dull, as if he’s been hit on the head with a wooden plank, as his wife puts it.

“Hollywoodhad a robbery in a convenience store,” he is saying, trying not to sound obtuse and dull. “Guy comes in wearing a rubber mask and pointing a shotgun. He shoots this kid who’s sweeping the floor, and then the night manager shoots him in the head with the pistol he kept under the counter.”

“And they ran the shotgun shell through NIBIN?”

“Apparently, to see if this same masked guy might have been connected to some other unsolved cases.”

“I don’t understand,” Dr. Wesley impatiently says again. “What happened to the weapon after the masked guy was killed? It should have been recovered by the police. And now it’s just been used again in a homicide up here inMassachusetts?”

“I asked theBrowardCountyexaminer the same thing,” he replies, trying with all his might not to sound obtuse and dull. “He said after he test-fired the gun, he returned it to Hollywood PD.”

“Well, I can promise you it’s not there now,” Dr. Wesley says as if Tom is a simpleton.

Tom chews on a hangnail, making his cuticle bleed, an old habit that annoys the hell out of his wife.

“Thanks,” Dr. Wesley says, getting off the phone, dismissing him.

Tom’s attention wanders to the NIBIN microscope where the shotgun shell in question is mounted, a red, plastic twelve-gauge shell with a brass head that has an unusual drag mark made by the firing pin. He made the case a priority. He has been sitting in his chair the entire day and now into the night, using ring lighting and side lighting and proper orientations of three o’clock and six o’clock positions and saving each picture as a file, doing this repeatedly with breech marks, the firing pin impression and the ejector mark before searching the NIBIN database.

Then he had to wait four hours for the results while his family went to the movies without him. Then Thrush was out to dinner and asked him to call Dr. Wesley but forgot to give him a direct phone number, and Tom had to call theMcLeanHospitalanswering service and be handled, at first, as if he were a patient. A little appreciation is in order, he thinks. Dr. Wesley couldn’t bother to say “thanks” or “job well done” or “I can’t believe you got results so fast or got them at all.” Does he have any idea how hard it is to run a shotgun shell through NIBIN? Most examiners won’t even try.

He stares at the shell. He’s never had one that was recovered from a dead person’s ass.

He glances at his watch and calls Thrush at home.

“Just tell me one thing,” he says when Thrush answers. “How come you made me talk to Dr. Fuck-B-I. And a thank-you would be nice.”

“You talking aboutBenton?”

“No, I’m talking about Bond. James Bond.”

“He’s a nice guy. I don’t know what you’re talking about except you got such a thing about the Feds, you constitute what I call a bigot. And you want to know what else, Tom?” Thrush goes on, and he sounds slightly drunk. “Let me give you a word to the wise. NIBIN belongs to the Feds, meaning you do, too. Where the hell you think you got all that pretty equipment to work on and all that training so you could sit there and do what you do every day? Well, guess who? The Feds.”

“I don’t need this right now,” Tom says, the phone tucked under his chin as he types on the keyboard, closing out files, getting ready to go home to his empty house while his family enjoys the movies without him.

“Besides, just so you know,Bentonquit the Bureau a long time ago, doesn’t have anything to do with them.”

“Well, he should be grateful. That’s all. It’s the first time we got a hit in NIBIN on a shotgun shell.”

“Grateful? Are you fucking kidding me? Grateful for what? That the shell from this dead lady’s ass matches up with a dead man’s gun that’s supposed to be in the custody of the fuckingHollywoodpolice or sold as scrap metal by now?” Thrush says loudly, and he tends to say fuck a lot when he’s been drinking. “Let me tell you, he ain’t fucking grateful. Like me, all he probably wants to do right now is get shit-faced drunk.”