The Wrong Gun

48

Robert Vaulding was torn in so many directions his plight was almost comical. When court broke up he suddenly found himself with an immediate and pressing need to deal with the defendant, the suspects, the media and Steve Winslow, though not necessarily in that order. Deftly tap dancing, he left Russ Timberlaine in the custody of the court officers pending dismissal, turned the processing of Henry Crumbly and Martin Kessington over to Lieutenant Sanders, sicked the press on Veronica Dreisson and escaped to his inner office where he had asked Steve Winslow to meet him, only to discover Steve had brought along Mark Taylor and Tracy Garvin too. This was almost more than the poor man could deal with-he didn’t want them there, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to throw them out.

Aside from that, Vaulding was elated. “It’s incredible,” he said. “Absolutely incredible. But listen, there isn’t much time. I have to make a statement to the press.”

“Fine, let’s wrap things up,” Steve said.

Vaulding shot a glance at Mark and Tracy. “We need to talk freely.”

“We can,” Steve said. “Anything you say to me they’re gonna hear. They’ve been in this case all the way, and they’re gonna be here for the wrap-up. If they go, I go.”

“They stay,” Vaulding said quickly, holding up his hands. “Look, I took a chance on you and it paid off. So we have a deal, right?”

“Sure we have a deal,” Steve said. “But I want you to know where it came from. The case would have broken the same way whether we had a deal or not. I told you to go into court and ask Veronica certain questions and play it aggrieved. You did and it worked. If you hadn’t agreed, you’d have gone back into court, put Veronica on the stand and questioned her anyway. And whatever you asked her, she’d have managed to pull the same stunt. The only difference is, if it had happened that way, we wouldn’t be talking now.”

“Right,” Vaulding said. “And I appreciate it. And there’s no reason we shouldn’t go out together to meet the press.”

Steve shook his head. “That’s your bag, not mine. Your reward for playin’ ball. I’m just happy to get my client off.”

“Fine,” Vaulding said. “Now please, what do I tell ’em? I mean, all I had was your solemn assurance that gun didn’t commit the murder and if I questioned Veronica that way the case would blow up in court. Well, you’re right on both counts. But you could have given me a little more.”

“I didn’t have a little more,” Steve said. “All I knew was exactly that. The gun ballistics said committed the murder couldn’t have done it. Plus Veronica’s assurance some of Timberlaine’s guns were fakes.”

“How did that add up?” Vaulding said.

“All right,” Steve said. “Last night, all I knew was I had a problem with the ballistics evidence regarding the gun. The gun could not have committed the crime. Unfortunately, I was the only person in the position to confirm this. You and the cops would never have taken my word for that, and who could blame you? I could have come to you and told you that in utter confidence and you’d have thrown me out on my ear. But I knew that gun hadn’t been used to commit the crime.

“That’s where Veronica Dreisson comes in. Faced with a conflict of evidence, namely the identification of the murder gun, I asked Mark Taylor here to get me a gun expert. He brought me Veronica Dreisson. At first I was skeptical of the choice, but she proved me wrong. The woman is sharp, no doubt about it. I told her the basic problem, challenged her to solve it, and damned if she didn’t. The problem, of course, was how does a fatal bullet match up with a gun that was nowhere near the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. Which didn’t stop Veronica for one minute. Aside from collecting guns, the woman is a mystery buff. That sort of question was right up her alley. She said, ‘With an adapter, of course.’ It turns out it’s very simple. You fire a bullet from the gun into a bucket of water or a target or whatever. Then you retrieve the bullet, and, like she said in court, pack it in a shell casing, stick it in the adapter and fire it from a shotgun. It will of course retain all the rifling marks from the barrel of the gun from which it was originally fired.”

“And Veronica went out to Timberlaine’s to look for this adapter?”

“Sure.”

“Wasn’t that a long shot? No pun intended. But wouldn’t you figure if such a thing existed, the murderer would have disposed of it?”

“Yes. In all instances except one. Timberlaine was a gun collector. It was entirely possible that the adapter was part of his collection. If it was, I figured the murderer would be more likely not to get rid of it. Because if Timberlaine owned it, he would know of it anyway, so discovering it would not be that big a deal. But discovering it missing would give the whole thing away.”

“Right,” Vaulding said. “But the plan? The scheme? The whole deal?”

“There you know as much as I do,” Steve said. “If I didn’t give you much to go on, it’s because I didn’t know much. I didn’t know about the parties involved until they showed themselves in court.”

“You knew about the fake guns.”

“Not until this morning,” Steve said. “You grabbed off Veronica last night. She clammed up on you and I went to bed. She called me this morning, told me about the fake guns, which is how I knew to tell you. But I really don’t know any more than you do. If I’m ahead of you it’s because I’ve had the benefit of knowing my client wasn’t guilty and the benefit of knowing that gun hadn’t committed the crime. But for what it’s worth, here’s how I dope it out.

“Timberlaine originally came to me with a substituted gun-the Pistol Pete gun that got us into this whole mess. At the time he was afraid someone would use it to frame him for a crime. The way I see it now, at the time he was wrong. The gun wasn’t substituted to frame him for anything. The gun was substituted because it was a valuable gun-it was stolen, just like the other guns. Timberlaine just happened to notice this one. He brought it here and expressed his fear it might be used to frame him for a crime. So Timberlaine’s got a big mouth-he shot that theory around. That’s what gave the murderer the idea to actually do it.

“Now, we’re never really gonna know for sure unless one of the conspirators talks, but I dope it out like this. Martin Kessington and Henry Crumbly were involved in ripping off Russ Timberlaine’s gun collection-stealing valuable guns and substituting cheap imitations in their place. The joker in the piece is Jack Potter, gun expert. You recall Timberlaine’s regular expert had moved on and Jack Potter was relatively new. I’d say there were two possibilities here. One, he was involved in the scheme, or, two, he discovered it.

“I lean toward one-Potter’s involved in the ripoff, gets cold feet, wants out. Therefore becomes dangerous and expendable.

“The other, less likely, is that he discovers the substitution and has to be silenced. But then he’d go right to Timberlaine-why would he wait around to be murdered? No, the only way that would fly would be if he noticed the substitution, deduced who’d done it and tried blackmail. That I could buy. But the way I see it, in neither case were Potter’s hands clean. In a way, he kind of asked for it.

“Now, a big argument for theory number one is the fact the crime took considerable planning. Timberlaine finds the gun, shoots off his mouth, there’s been a substitution, someone’s tying to frame him for a crime. Which gives the murderer the idea. Before Timberlaine comes to my office, he gets hold of the gun, fires a bullet through it and saves the bullet.”

“Why before he comes to your office?” Vaulding said.

“Because as soon as he left my office he switched guns, remember? He put the gun I gave him in his safe-deposit box.”

“Which is how you knew it hadn’t committed the murder,” Vaulding said.

“So we know,” Steve said, “that that far in advance the murderer had an idea he might need that bullet. Which would be much more likely if Potter was a coconspirator beginning to show signs of cold feet.”

“Fine. So that’s why they killed Potter. But why frame Timberlaine?”

“Well,” Steve said, “few people like to go to jail for a crime. It’s always better to have a scapegoat in mind. And, you have to remember, Timberlaine suggested it. He kept insisting someone was going to frame him with the gun. Fine. Let’s fulfill his prophesy and frame him with the gun. No one’s gonna believe him, ’cause he’s the little boy who cried wolf.

“Particularly the way they set it up. You have to admit, that was pretty artistic. Kill Potter and leave the original Pistol Pete gun by the body. Timberlaine immediately starts screaming, ‘Frame-up, frame-up, they stole my gun to frame me with it. See, and I can prove it ’cause here’s the phony gun they left in its place.’ And he hands over that gun and swears it’s the gun he’d had with him all day long.

“And indeed he had. Only they framed him with a bullet from that gun and, surprise, surprise, it’s the murder gun.”

“Only it wasn’t,” Vaulding said.

“Right. Because Timberlaine had switched guns. Only that gun barrel had been roughed up so the ballistics expert, taken in by the class characteristics, blows it and identifies it as the murder weapon anyway.”

“But why was the gun barrel roughed up?” Vaulding said. “I mean, the murderer would want the gun identified.”

“Right,” Steve said. “But there’s the moron factor.”

Vaulding frowned. “What?”

“You may have noticed that my client is not the swiftest thing in the world-witness that whole auction thing of having Crumbly bid on the gun. Only the frame-up still has to wash. The murderer wants Timberlaine to say, ‘No, no, no, this is my gun,’ and produce it and have it turn out to be the murder weapon. But that makes Timberlaine look like a total jerk. I mean, in terms of motivation, why the hell would he do that? If he were the murderer, the only way he would turn the gun over would be if he expected it not to match the fatal bullet. If it was the fatal gun, the only way he could expect it not to match would be if he’d altered the barrel.”

“So the murderer alters the barrel to make it look like Timberlaine did?”

“Of course,” Steve said. He nodded at Tracy. “Actually, it was one of the things Tracy said that put me in the right direction.” Steve grinned. “We were discussing the fact you’d just made a damn good case for the fact I was the one who altered the gun barrel. She said if I had, I sure made a poor job of it, since they still matched up the bullet.

“That got me thinking. The murderer really had made a poor job of it. I mean, four lousy scratches. If you want to deface the barrel, you run that file up and down it pretty good. That got me thinking in the right direction. The murderer didn’t want to deface the barrel, the murderer wanted the gun and the bullet to match. The murderer just wanted to make it look like someone had defaced the barrel. That’s why the scratches weren’t that bad. But the barrel had to be scratched up or the frame-up wouldn’t work. Because of the moron factor, you see.”

“Yeah, fine,” Vaulding said. “If that’s true, why was it that gun’s barrel that was scratched up? That wasn’t the murder weapon. Why didn’t the murderer rough up the barrel at the same time he fired the bullet?”

“Because he didn’t come by the plan all at once. It was an evolving thing, you know. ‘If he claims he’s gonna be framed, let’s frame him. I’ll frame him with the bullet.’ So the murderer gets the bullet, he’s ready to make the frame-up. Then he thinks of the moron factor. ‘Hell, how do I take care of that?’ Then he thinks of the file. ‘I’ll rough it up with a file and I’ll leave the file in Timberlaine’s room, and that’ll double-dork him. The file will become a piece of evidence in itself.’ Which it did.”

“I see,” Vaulding said.

“The other thing about the file is, it was planted on Timberlaine on Friday. At least that’s when he found it. The day before the murder. That was a great touch. The guy’s in possession of the file before the murder, so if the gun barrel’s roughed up after the murder, then he must have done it. But in actuality, the barrel of the gun was roughed up at the same time the murderer planted the file. Which didn’t affect the fatal bullet, which had been shot days before that.”

“Before Timberlaine came to your office.”

“Exactly. And the murderer knew Timberlaine came to my office, and knew he had the bullets tested. That’s why it didn’t hurt to pull the stunt with the file. A few light scratches to make it look like Timberlaine tried to alter the gun, then if ballistics can still match the bullet, great, but if they can’t, no big deal. The murderer just tips the cops to the bullets Timberlaine had me test.

“Which he did. That’s why you called Donald Walcott. That was an anonymous tip, right? Telling you to ask him about Timberlaine testing the gun.”

“Yeah, right,” Vaulding said. He was standing between Steve Winslow and the door and sort of teetering back and forth. He put up his hand. “Hang on a minute,” he said, opened the door and dashed out.

“What was that all about?” Tracy said.

“Looked to me like a guy who really had to go to the bathroom,” Taylor said.

Steve grinned. “No, I’m afraid the poor guy’s just torn between the suspects, the press and us.”

“Think they’re talkin’?”

“Not yet. More than likely waiting on their lawyers. Vaulding should be right back.”

He was. Vaulding came in the door, put his hand up, shook his head and said, “Not yet. Crumbly’s lawyer’s here and we’re waiting on Kessington’s. Then they’ll need some time to confer. But the press won’t wait. Veronica’s holding her own, but she’s such good copy if I don’t get out there I’m gonna find out she’s aced me out of the whole front page.”

“Go to it,” Steve said.

“You’re really not coming?”

“It’s your show, Vaulding. That was the deal.”

“Yeah, I know. But under the circumstances, I’d almost feel better with you there. There’s gonna be questions I can’t answer.”

“Yeah, but there’s others you can. You lay on a general line of bullshit-there’s certain things you can’t discuss until the suspects talk-then you give ’em whatever you want.”

“Yeah, but what? I need some hard facts. Right now the main thing I got on ’em is they tried to run and flight is an indication of guilt. Aside from that, I got nothing. That adapter Veronica held up in court wasn’t the one they used, that was just a bluff.”

“Yeah, but one that worked. Without that you got no flight. But you want hard facts, you got hard facts. There’re the substituted guns. That backs that theory. And you remember the bump on the head? The one the medical examiner photographed? There’s your other theory. The guy was coshed on the head and then shot. It’s a nice theory, ’cause it had to be that way. You can whip out a pistol and shoot a guy in the head, but no one’s gonna stand there waiting to be shot while you fit a bullet in an adapter into a shotgun and aim it at him.”

“Yeah,” Vaulding said. “That helps. Would you happen to know who did it? I can charge ’em as coconspirators, but odds are, when they sing one of them’s gonna rat the other out. It would be nice to name the shooter.”

“Which you can easily do,” Steve said. “You said it yourself. The adapter Veronica held up in court was not the one used in the murder. She couldn’t find the one used in the murder. Why? Because the murderer had gotten rid of it. But when she held it up in court, someone ran. Who? Crumbly. Why? Because he wasn’t the shooter, so he didn’t know this couldn’t be the adapter used in the murder because he wasn’t the one who disposed of it.”

“Kessington ran too.”

“Yeah, but not when he saw the adapter. When he saw they got Crumbly. He knew the adapter had to be a plant, but he figured Crumbly would talk. Which he may.

“Incidentally, there’s another player in this you shouldn’t leave out.”

“Who’s that?”

“Crumbly’s wife.”

“You mean she probably knows about it and if I work on her she might break?”

“It’s the other way around, Vaulding. You know, for an elected official, you’re not very politically correct. For my money Crumbly’s a pretty weak tool and I wouldn’t be too surprised to find the missus was the brains behind him.”

“Son of a bitch,” Vaulding said.

“Yeah, but if so, I’ll bet she’s a tough nut to crack. The way I see it, it’s more likely you’ll get him to rat on her.

“But these are details, Vaulding. They can wait. The press won’t.”

“Right,” Vaulding said. He paused in the door. “Give me one more thing. Odds are these guys won’t talk until tomorrow, so any prediction I can make in the papers makes me the golden boy. Aside from running, give me one more thing indicates these guys were the perps.”

“O.K.,” Steve said. “You got Crumbly’s testimony. About him meeting Timberlaine at brunch and Timberlaine asking him to bid against Burdett.”

“What about it?”

“Well, that’s gotta be part of the plan, right? They’re framing Timberlaine so they gotta give him a motive. You twist Timberlaine hard enough, I’ll bet you’d find the idea of having someone else bid did not originate with him.”

“Right. They planted the idea. That’s obvious. But why does that implicate Crumbly?”

“Burdett’s testimony was that the deception did not fool him in the least.”

“Right,” Vaulding said. “It was only meant to fool Timberlaine.”

Steve grinned. “Right. But from Timberlaine’s point of view it was supposed to work. According to Burdett’s testimony there was no way it could have worked. Crumbly didn’t bid on that kind of gun and Crumbly never bid that high.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So Crumbly had to know that. He’s not stupid. But here he is, agreeing with Timberlaine to go along with this great scheme. Bullshit. Crumbly more than anyone else knew that his bidding on that gun was out of character for him and would tip Burdett off. Yet he did it. Why? Because that was the whole point. To furnish a motive for Timberlaine killing Potter. You dig around, I’m sure you’ll find the idea that Potter tipped off Burdett was indirectly planted by one of the conspirators too.”

“Yeah, right,” Vaulding said. He hesitated.

“That’s not enough for you?” Steve said. “What about Martin Kessington having the key to the gun room so he had the opportunity of switching guns? Or Crumbly and his wife being gun collectors, and therefore having the avenues to move them? Plus what Burdett said about the Crumblys not having any money, which is why they’d get involved in the ripoff in the first place.”

“All right, all right,” Vaulding said, putting up his hands. “I’ll take it from there.” He took a breath. “Look, I took a chance on you, I’m glad I did. Thanks.”

Vaulding stuck out his hand. Steve shook it.

Vaulding nodded to Mark, “Mr. Taylor,” then to Tracy, “Ms. Garvin,” then hurried out the door.

“How about that,” Tracy said. “He actually called me Ms.”

“Nothing surprising about that,” Steve said. “When we made our deal, it was practically a prerequisite.”

“Well, I’d still have liked to hear him say it in open court.”

“Take what you can get,” Taylor said. “Well, whaddya say we get out of here?”

“Hang on,” Steve said. “Give Vaulding a chance to get the reporters in tow. I don’t feel like walking out of here into the arms of the press.”

“You and me both,” Taylor said. “You can bet one of them would be bound to ask the wrong question.”

“Yeah, like what happened to the other gun,” Tracy said.

Mark Taylor almost gagged. He threw up his hands, then put his finger to his lips.

“What’s wrong with you?” Steve said.

“Oh, nothing. But this is not our office, and who knows what sort of equipment our host has.”

“Relax,” Steve said. “Even if Vaulding recorded every word we said, I guarantee you there is nothing that would make him go back on what he’s telling the press right now.”

“Even so.”

“Oh, don’t be such a worry wart,” Tracy said. “Tell me, what are you going to do about that gun?”

“There isn’t a river deep enough,” Taylor said. “Right, Steve?”

Steve considered a moment. “Actually, Mark, I thought I’d hang it on the wall.”

Taylor’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“Yeah. Don’t you think it would look good over my desk?”

“Steve, don’t joke. You don’t know how much sleep I’ve lost over that gun.”

“Who’s joking? Safest place for it. Look, if I try to get rid of it and get caught, I’m screwed. No way I can ever explain. If I hang it on the wall, no one will give it a second thought. People who make the connection at all will say, ‘Hey, is that a gun from the Pistol Pete case? You handled that, didn’t you?’ I’ll just smile and say, ‘Yes, I did.’ After all, there’s so many guns in the damn case, no one’s gonna figure out which one this is.”

Taylor exhaled noisily. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I hope you’re pulling my leg. But what the hell. Right now I’m so relieved I couldn’t care. Listen, we gotta stay here, I need a drink. This hotshot D.A. got a bar?”

“In the corner.”

“Do we dare?”

“Under the circumstances, I can’t see how he’d begrudge us.”

Taylor went to the bar, rummaged around, came back with three brandy snifters. He passed them out, raised his and said, “Here’s to crime.” He took a sip, exhaled with satisfaction. Took another sip and chuckled.

“Feeling a little better, Mark?” Steve said.

“I was thinking about Burdett coldcocking Crumbly.”

“Wasn’t that something?” Steve said.

“I’ll say. That pudgy guy sure packed a wallop.”

“Did you see him when court broke up?” Tracy said. “Before they led Timberlaine off. He goes up to him, throws his arm around his shoulders like they were the best of pals.”

“Nothing strange in that,” Steve said.

“Why? I thought Timberlaine hated his guts,” Taylor said.

“Yeah, but they’re adversaries. It’s a special relationship. In a way, it’s more personal than being friends. A good rival, one who puts up a good fight-well, you don’t have to like the guy to respect him as an opponent.”

“Funny you should say so,” Tracy said.

“Oh?”

“I was thinking about you and Vaulding. He was a pretty good opponent, wasn’t he?”

“That he was.”

“Except now,” Taylor said. “I don’t get it. The guy was givin’ you fits for most of the trial, now he’s in here asking you for explanations like he hasn’t got a clue.”

“That’s not so surprising,” Steve said. “The man spent the whole case gearing every theory to the fact Timberlaine was guilty. He’s had just this morning to adjust to the idea he might be innocent. It’s like every notion he had was pulled out from under him. If you consider that, he’s doing fine.”

“And when you consider how fast the evidence jumped around,” Tracy said. “‘Keep your eye on the gun.’ Boy, was that ever prophetic.”

“Why’d you give it to him?” Taylor said. He jerked his thumb. “The press, I mean. Like you said, you could have pulled this off without telling him at all.”

“Which wouldn’t have been fair. If the guy’s decent enough to play ball, he should have a chance to play ball. There’s a bottom line here. Vaulding didn’t want to win if it meant convicting an innocent man.”

“Of course not,” Tracy said.

“There’s no ‘of course not’ about it. Some do. Vaulding deserves credit for not being one of them. And if this case gets him reelected, hey, it’s nice to know we got a friend in this county.”

Mark Taylor set down his glass. “Can we go now?”

Tracy held up her hand. “In a minute. Let’s finish the postmortem.”

“What more is there to say?”

“There’s a lot more to say. Look, Steve, I heard what you said to Vaulding. And I’m sure a lot of it’s true. What I want to know is, how in hell did you figure it out?”

“Oh, that was easy,” Steve said.

Tracy exhaled. She snatched off her glasses, folded them up, put her hands on her hips. “I knew you were going to say that,” she said. “Now, then, you infuriating man, at the risk of being strangled, would you tell me what you mean by that?”

“Well, I should think it’s obvious,” Steve said. “Considering the fact this all started with Timberlaine inviting us out to his mansion for the weekend, then the whole bit with the switching gun and the people changing rooms and the body on the floor of the gun room-all the elements of your basic mystery novel-well, considering all that, and considering who Martin Kessington was, the solution was obvious.”

Tracy frowned. “What do you mean?”

Steve grinned, ducked his head and moved well out of Tracy’s reach before answering.

“The butler did it.”