identical twins separated at birth?”
Anya did. “Like the two women who met by chance in a cafe, appeared identical, were dressed in the same clothes and had the same job. Then discovered they were sisters.”
Kate laughed. “You intellectuals have selective memories. There were identical twin boys. One was racist and became a Nazi, but the other ended up working with natives on some island. Pretty much blows your theory about genetics.”
“No one’s saying it’s absolute, but both of those men you mention were arrogant, saw themselves as leaders and were pretty unpleasant to be around. They couldn’t even get on with each other when they met.”
“Sounds like most of the people I work with. God, they must all be related.”
Anya picked up a couple of cushions and pelted Kate, who toppled backward, then lay on papers singing, “We- are-fa-mi-ly.” She suddenly sat upright. “Hey, we can play charades. Who am I?” and pretended to vomit, multiple times.
Anya couldn’t believe how childish Kate was being, but thinking about Ben and Brody’s car still made her laugh until her stomach cramped.
Kate’s phone interrupted them. Anya retreated to make drinks.
When she returned, Kate punched the air. “That was McNab. The marks on the casing match one found at the site of a killing in Chinatown three years ago.”
The firearms expert had been right. After all the bullets and casings he and his team had examined, his memory of markings he had seen once before, years ago, was accurate.
“Were there any suspects?”
“Apparently.” She kept reading her notes from the call, placing the pen between her teeth.
Anya handed her the coffee. “Thanks,” she mumbled through the pen, before removing it from her mouth to drink.
“Before that, it was used in a drive-by where no one was injured, and an armed robbery. Chinatown victim was Andrew Li, who owned a restaurant. No one was ever charged, although the major crime squad thought Li was killed for refusing to pay protection money, as an example to anyone else in the community who thought they could stand up to the gangs.”
She searched around for a specific piece of paper and then cross-checked something while Anya made sure all the curtains were drawn without a gap. She then rechecked the backdoor lock.
“You need to find out if Natasha worked on that case, or any others involving those gangs.”
Anya knew that getting anyone to help with information would be even tougher, if it involved a closed, frightened community. Organized crime being behind her murder could explain the execution style.
It always surprised her how prosecutors made numerous enemies just for doing their job, but the same people loved their defense lawyers, even if the client ended up in jail. The list of potential suspects in Natasha’s killing was enormous.
“I’m thinking the elders in charge wouldn’t tolerate a renegade killing. They act through discipline and a hierarchy. As far as I know, killings are usually for revenge, and that’s the end of the violence.”
Kate had a valid point and sanctioning the murder of a prosecutor would be extremely risky. The last thing any criminal group wanted was even more police scrutiny into their illegal activities.
“It was found during a raid on a massage parlor, along with a cache of weapons.” She scanned further. “After that, it’s listed here as having being destroyed.” She reached into the bag and filled her mouth with more chips. A couple of crunches later she looked up.
“Shit. It’s a phantom.”
Anya climbed onto the lounge, legs folded beneath her, sipping no-name tea. “Which means?”
“Remember the national buy-back scheme after Port Arthur?” Kate arched her back and moved her neck to the side, cracking the vertebrae.
Anya nodded. Over a decade before, a lone gunman killed thirty-five people and injured another twenty or more in the popular tourist spot in Tasmania. Public outrage against the pro-gun lobby led the government to legislate another gun buy-back scheme, to promote better gun control. There had been rumors about some of those guns going missing, ranging from hundreds to thousands flooding the black market and making it into the hands of criminal networks.
Pro-gun groups hailed the scheme a dismal failure, and those in favor of gun control labeled it a success, citing a reduction in the number of mass shootings since.
“Well, those guns were combined with confiscated and recovered weapons. They went to warehouses run by contractors the public thought were impenetrable. Only thing is, hundreds of these guns have turned up since. Some of the contractors had contacts with pawnshops.”
“So the foxes were in charge of the chicken house, which was full of, let me guess,.22 guns.”
“Exactly.” Kate sipped her coffee. “The firearms squad think it’s the largest illegal gun distribution network to date. Got to give it to incompetent agencies. So people think the streets are safer, politicians pat themselves on the back and criminals have a bigger monopoly on guns. It’s a populist policy that has only made our job tougher. The licensed people with registered weapons were the ones who handed them in.”
Even so, Anya was relieved that she had seen fewer women threatened with guns in situations of domestic violence since the buy-back scheme. Even if one woman was spared being murdered on impulse by a man with easy access to a gun, the policy was, in her view, already a success. She wasn’t about to start a philosophical debate with Kate on the subject.
“Some of these demolition guys were paid by the government for incinerating the guns. The more honest ones found a loophole and officially rendered them inoperable. That way they could be sold to their pawn dealer mates as replicas, which could of course be made functional without too much effort.”
Anya enjoyed the warmth of the mug in her hands. “One casing led McNab to all that?”
“He had seen another casing that has very close markings. They retrieved the gun in a Chinatown raid, and the serial number had been ground down, but McNab’s boys managed to rescue it.”
Anya had seen it done. Hydrochloric acid, copper chloride and water was used to temporarily differentiate between the stamped metal numbers and the surrounding metal.
“So there’s no way of tracing the gun or how it got into our killer’s hands after it hit the black market?”
“We’d need the gun to prove it had the same serial number, but it’s like DNA. You need the killer to give it to you for comparison.”
Anya rested her mug on the floor. “Okay, what are we looking for?”
Kate handed her a box of old files. “Anyone from these cases who could have had a grudge against Natasha. Apart from that, I’m not even sure at the moment.
“We’ve got an assassin. Someone who apparently didn’t want anything from Natasha Ryder, just killed her. My informants have got nothing.
“It has to be someone who isn’t smart enough to understand how much heat they’d bring down on themselves, or someone who just doesn’t care.”
Like the Harbourns. Kate’s expression suggested they both had the thought at the same time.
Anya put the box down beside the lounge and asked to see the autopsy report again.
“The gun was a.22 caliber. Right?”
“A.22 rim fire with a hollow point bullet.”
And the grease, she thought. Something had bothered her about the entry wound. If the muzzle of the gun had been held against Natasha’s head as the gun was fired, there should have been specific signs present. The wound was not indented, suggesting the muzzle had not been pushed into the skin, and there was no soot or searing of the wound edges. Usually soot was so embedded in the wound, even enthusiastic washing of the skin wouldn’t remove it. The absence of findings could not be explained by examining the wound after the body had been cleaned.
There was also no mention of grease in the entry wound. That suggested a silencer hadn’t been used. So how did the killer prevent anyone from hearing the shot?
“Do you have the neighbor’s statement about the man loitering around Natasha’s house?”
Kate handed it across. “You have that clever look in your eye. What is it?”
Anya looked at the witness statement of a man with a hat, coat and large frame.
“This killer knew Natasha personally. I don’t think it was a hired assassin. Something was held between the
