The Wrong Gun

33

“Why the hell did you buy the gun?”

“Take it easy,” Timberlaine said.

“Easy, hell,” Steve said. “You lie to me, you hold out on me. I prepare my whole defense on the basis of the fact there’s no way in hell the cops can prove you bought that gun. And what happens? The whole thing blows up in my face because you did buy that gun.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh? You mean the witness is lying?”

“No. He’s not lying.”

“How can that be?”

“Well, I bought that gun, but it’s not the one I showed you.”

“What?”

“The gun I brought you in your office-the one I said I found substituted for the real gun-well, I didn’t buy it, and everything I told you was true. I found that gun just like I said.”

“And the one you bought?”

Timberlaine grimaced. “Like I said, I was afraid someone was trying to frame me with the gun. So I pulled a switch.”

Steve looked at him. “You pulled a switch?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“After.”

“After what?”

“After I gave you the gun. To test the bullets. When you gave it back to me I substituted it for my gun.”

“Wait a minute. By that you mean-?”

“The gun I bought. The one the witness just testified about.”

“You bought that gun and substituted it for the one you found?”

“That’s right.”

“You bought that gun before you came to my office?”

“That’s right. The day before.”

“You filed the serial number off it and carved the initial R in the handle?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What did you use to file off the serial number?”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“Oh. No, it wasn’t the file found in my room. There’s a grindstone in the tool shed. I used that.”

“The day before you came to my office?”

“That’s right.”

“But the gun you brought me in my office was-?”

“The other gun. The one I found.”

“You had me test the bullets and then you switched guns?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s no chance you switched the guns first?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“There’s no chance the gun you gave me and had me test bullets in was the gun you bought?”

“Not at all.”

“And the bullets I tested are in a safe-deposit box?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’s the gun?”

“In a safe-deposit box.”

“The same safe-deposit box?”

“No, a different one.”

“You rented a different box just for the gun?”

“Sure.”

“So the gun and the bullets are in separate boxes?”

“Hell, they’re in separate banks.”

Steve sighed. “Well, thank God for that.”

“Why’s that?”

“We may have to produce the gun. If so, we may not necessarily want to produce the bullets.”

“Why do we have to produce the gun?”

“Why do you think? Look, here’s the way it’s gonna go. Vaulding’s probably gonna serve a subpoena duces tecum on us, ordering us to produce the gun you bought. Of course, he won’t expect us to do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he thinks he already has it. People’s Exhibit Four. The subpoena will be just to embarrass us. He orders us to produce the gun. We can’t do it. He smiles and points out to the jury that the gun you bought is identical to the gun that’s been introduced in court as the murder weapon. As far as the jury’s concerned, that will be enough to convince ’em the gun in court is the gun you bought.”

“It is the gun I bought.

“I know,” Steve said. “But only because you switched guns. The jury doesn’t know that. As far as they’re concerned, there’s only two guns in the case, the real gun and the fake gun, and they’re both here in court. They don’t know about your substituting a fake gun you bought for a fake gun you found. As far as they’re concerned, there’s only one fake gun. And it’s the murder weapon, and it’s here in court, and the witness on the stand just testified to the fact that you bought it.”

Timberlaine thought that over. “Shit,” he said. “So what do we do now?”

“We wait and see if they try to subpoena the gun.”

“You think they will?”

Steve shrugged. “It’s a tossup. As I say, Vaulding can try to embarrass us with it. On the other hand, he may not make an issue of it at all. He’s got the murder weapon in court; as far as he, the jury and everyone else in the courtroom are concerned, the murder weapon is the gun you bought, and if we’d like to dispute that, it’s going to be up to us to prove differently.” Steve nodded. “No, the more I think of it, he’s more likely to let it go at that.”

“Is that good?”

“In a way.”

“Why?”

“Because it gives us time to figure out what the fuck to do about the damn gun. And the damn bullets.”

“What about ’em?”

“Well,” Steve said, “if you’re telling me the truth-and frankly right now that’s a big if-but if you are, then those test bullets were fired before any gun was defaced. So if you hadn’t swapped guns, those test bullets would now be significant in that they could be compared to the fatal bullet. Since you did swap guns, that is no longer true.”

Timberlaine’s face lit up. “But those bullets prove the guns were swapped.”

Steve frowned. “Yes and no.”

“They do,” Timberlaine said. “Those bullets didn’t come from the gun I bought, they came from the gun I found. The one in my safe-deposit box. If we produce that gun and we produce the bullets-still in the glass tubes, all marked and dated so we can prove when they were fired-we can prove that that’s the gun I brought you that day.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, “but so what?”

“What do you mean, so what?” Timberlaine said. “It substantiates my story.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Well, that’s like ‘I shot a deer by a big oak tree, and if you don’t believe me I’ll show you the tree.’”

“What?”

“The bullet and the gun prove nothing except that you had them on that day. They prove the existence of the other gun and that’s it. They don’t prove your story that you found a gun substituted for your real gun. See what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“Trust me on this. Yeah, it’s good, but it’s not hold-the-phone-you’re-suddenly-free type good. We’ve still gotta figure out how we want to play it.”

“And how is that?”

“The way it looks now, we probably withhold all of this stuff until we get you on the stand. Then you tell your story, and then we start introducing this evidence so fast it makes their heads spin. That’s how it looks right now, but it really depends on how things go. We got a bunch more body blows to take. So far they haven’t even hit you with the file.” Steve gave him a look. “You sure you didn’t buy that file?”

“Swear to God.”

“You found it in your room?”

“Yeah.”

“Just like you found the gun?”

“Absolutely.”

“You didn’t happen to go out and buy another file any time recently, did you?”

“No.”

Steve stood up. He exhaled, shook his head. “Christ, I hope not.”