Point Of Impact

“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 For example, the original Remington barrel has been replaced by a custom-made Hart stainless steel barrel, with button-cut rifling.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 The firing pin has been replaced by a much lighter one of titanium from Brownells, of Montezuma, Iowa, to improve lock time thirty-five percent, that is, increase the speed between the trigger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-a-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.