'If the shooter was standing straight up with the weapon held out…' Mac went on.
'The shooter was about five foot one or two,' Hawkes continued. 'Want to hear about the flight of the bullet?'
Mac nodded.
'Bullet went through the heart, took a turn, hit a rib, turned around and came back out a few inches from the entry wound.'
Hawkes produced a thin metal trajectory rod like a magician and inserted it in the entry wound. 'As I said, and your blood-splatter test confirms, it went straight in.'
Hawkes produced another trajectory rod that he inserted into the exit wound at a sharp angle upward, carefully following the path of the bullet through the chest cavity.
Hawkes pulled out the rods and said, 'You found no bullet?'
'Not yet,' Mac confirmed. 'You find anything else?'
Hawkes reached under the table and came up with a small see-through plastic zip bag. He handed it to Mac, who held it up and looked at Hawkes.
'Came from wound one,' said Hawkes. 'Small pieces of bloody paper.'
'Aiden got some of those same fragments at the crime scene,' Mac said. 'The bullet must have gone through paper before it hit Lutnikov.'
'A lot of paper,' said Hawkes. 'Assuming some of the paper burned on impact, that still leaves the pieces Aiden found and the ones I've been able to dig out so far.'
'A book?' asked Mac.
'Your problem,' said Hawkes, reopening the chest flap. 'But a few of those fragments have ink on them. Oh, yeah, Lutnikov's blood and the sample you took in front of the elevator at Louisa Cormier's apartment. Perfect match.'
Five minutes later, Mac Taylor's cell phone rang while he stood over Aiden's shoulder in the lab where she was looking through a microscope at the bloody paper fragments.
'Taylor,' he said.
'Mr. Taylor, this is Wanda Frederichson again. I'm sorry to bother you, but I talked to Mr. Melvin in the office and he said Monday is impossible. We won't be able to get a crew in to plow the snow, and the driveways will be…'
'What if someone dies,' Mac said.
Aiden looked up from her microscope. Mac stepped away from her and across the room.
'Pardon?'
'What do you do if someone dies between now and Monday?' asked Mac.
'Do you really…?'
'Yes.'
'We keep the bodies refrigerated,' she said.
'What about Jews?' asked Mac.
'Jews?'
'They have to bury their dead within a day or two, don't they,' he said.
'That's really a question for our Jewish director, Mr. Greenberg,' she said.
'I'd like to talk to Mr. Greenberg,' Mac said.
'Please Mr. Taylor,' Wanda Frederichson said patiently. 'I know…'
'Detective Taylor,' he said. 'Do you have a number for Mr. Greenberg?'
'I can connect you,' she said with a sigh.
'Thank you,' said Mac, looking at Aiden, who was doing her best not to pay attention.
There was a double ring and then another double ring and a man's voice, 'Arthur Greenberg, can I help you?'
Mac explained the situation to him and Greenberg listened quietly.
'Let me take a look,' Greenberg said. 'Take me a few seconds to access my file here on the computer. Normally, I wouldn't be here on Shabbat, but we had a… Let's see. We've never had… Yes. Mr. Taylor, I'm reading the circumstances in your file. We'll get it done.'
Mac gave Greenberg his cell phone number, thanked him, and clicked the phone shut, moving back toward Aiden.
She looked up at him, showing her curiosity. He ignored it.
'What've we got?' he asked.
'You okay?'
'I'm fine,' he said. 'What've we got?'
'What we don't have is a weapon or a bullet,' she said. 'What we do have are pieces of heavy duty, white bond paper A4 size, 80gm/2, acid free non-erasable. They match the paper in Lutnikov's apartment.'
'And some of the paper you and Hawkes found in the entry wound had ink on them. What about the paper fragments you found outside Louisa Cormier's apartment?'
Aiden nodded and said, 'Match. It doesn't prove she shot him, but it suggests that the shot that killed Lutnikov was fired from just outside Louisa Cormier's elevator door. But there are lots of ways those six fragments could have gotten onto Louisa Cormier's foyer carpet. We might even have tracked them in on the bottom of our shoes.'
'No,' said Mac.
'No,' Aiden agreed.
'But,' said Mac. 'A good lawyer…'
'And Louisa Cormier can afford the best,' added Aiden.
Mac nodded and said, 'A good lawyer could give a lot of explanations. See if you can match any of those ink spots with Lutnikov's typewriter.'
He stood silently for a few seconds before speaking again.
'How tall would you say Louisa Cormier is?'
Aiden looked up, thought for an instant, and said, 'Maybe five two. Why?'
Before he could answer, she said, 'The blood splatter.'
'The blood splatter,' he confirmed, telling her about his conversation with Sheldon Hawkes and Hawkes's conclusion about the wound.
'Lutnikov was carrying paper he had typed on when he was shot,' said Mac. 'The bullet went through the paper. He was holding it against his chest.'
'For protection,' said Aiden.
'Against a bullet?'
'It was all he had,' she said.
'Maybe he was trying to protect what he had written,' said Mac. 'Maybe he was killed for it.'
'Then where is whatever he wrote?' she said. 'And where's the bullet…'
'And the gun,' added Mac. 'You know what we do next.'
Aiden got up.
'I put on my coat, make my way across the wild north, and come back with a typewriter ribbon.'
'And…' Mac began.
'More samples of paper in Lutnikov's apartment,' she finished. 'Samples he typed on.'
'Take a vacuum,' said Mac. 'Go over the floor on every level outside the elevator for trace.'
'We already did,' she said.
'But now we know what we're looking for,' said Mac.
Aiden nodded knowingly. 'The murder weapon, the bullet that killed Lutnikov, whatever he was carrying when he was shot and…'
'A motive,' said Mac.
'I'd better get going,' she said.
