Joanna Brady was amazed. “I’m surprised ammunition that old still works.”
“I’m not,” Dave said. “I suppose you could expect a certain degree of unreliability, but if the bullets have been kept dry, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t work.”
“And they did,” Joanna supplied. “But where did they come from, and where have they been all this time?”
“Who knows?” Dave replied. “That’s what I’m trying to find out right now. I can’t just call up Colt and ask for records from way back then.”
“No,” Joanna agreed. “I suppose not.”
“I’ve sent a copy of the firing fingerprint to the NIBIN,” Dave Hollicker continued.
“So far there’s no match.”
Joanna was well aware of the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.
Functioning much the same way APIS does for fingerprints, NIBIN provides a computerized database of weapons signatures collected from crime scenes nationwide. It allows investigators to know when the same weapon is being used to commit crimes in more than one jurisdiction. It also makes instantaneous connections between solved and unsolved crimes that would otherwise be regarded as unrelated incidents. Following the travels of a particular weapon sometimes makes it 71
possible for detectives to track the movements of an individual perpetrator as well.
“You don’t really expect them to come up with a match, do you?” Joanna said. “How many eighty-six-year-old homicides do you think have been entered in the system?
As I recall, computers weren’t even a gleam in engineers’ eyes back in 1917.”
“That’s not true,” Dave said.
“It isn’t?”
“And you of all people should know it,” Hollicker told her. “Have you ever heard of Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace?”
“Never. Who’s she?”
“Her daddy was a guy named Lord Byron.”
‘As in Shelley and Keats-Lord Byron, the poet?”
“Right. She was born the year her parents were divorced, and her father never saw her after that, but she was one smart little girl whose mother saw to it that she was trained in mathematics. At eighteen she went to hear a lecture by Charles Babbage on what he called his ‘difference engine.’ Ada managed to finagle an introduction to the man. When she saw Babbage’s machine itself, she was one of the few people who immediately grasped how it worked and could visualize its long-term potential.
She and Babbage went on to become more than friends,” Dave said. “Not only that, from what I heard, she’s the one who created the first punch cards and invented computer programming.”
“When was all this?” Joanna demanded.
“Sometime in the mid-1800’s, I think,” Dave Hollicker answered. He was clearly getting a kick out of their sudden reversal of roles.
“And how come you know about this … What’s her name again?” Joanna asked.
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“Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace.”
“How come you know about her and I don’t?”
“Because when you sent me to CSI school in Quantico, Virginia, one of my instructors, Agent Amanda Blackner, had a real thing about women doing all of the grunt work and getting none of the credit. You’d better believe it. If you didn’t know about Lady Ada in full, essay-answer detail, you didn’t pass Blackner’s class.”
“I might not have taken that class, but I know about Ada Lovelace now. Thanks,” Joanna said and then changed the subject. “Did you pick up anything else from the crime scene last night?”
“Some tire casts,” Dave answered. “And casts of a footprint or two. Hiking boots.
Could be either a small man or a large woman.”
“Or a juvenile,” Joanna suggested.
Dave nodded. “That, too,” he said. “In fact, speaking of juveniles, I need to be on my way. Jaime said that the Explorer troop will be on tap at one to help with the foreign-object search. I want to be there when they do it.”
“Good enough,” Joanna said. “And good luck.”
With that she took the pie plate and retreated to her office, pausing long enough at the hallway water fountain to fill it. Then she continued on toward her office, holding the pie plate carefully in both hands to keep the water from spilling.
“Whose dog?” Kristin asked, nodding toward Joanna’s closed office door.
“Mine,” Joanna said.
Without having to be asked, Kristin got up and opened the door. The Australian shepherd was waiting anxiously just inside.
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