“I hear ya, buddy.” Nick offered, “Go on and send me the details. Might as well put it in the pipeline. Whether or not we end up taking over, if there’s a trial, it’d be good to have a Fee-Bee on the stand looking all J. Edgar for the jury.”
“You’ll have it by the end of the day.” Jeffrey returned the receiver to the cradle. He kept his hand on the phone. He debated calling Brock for a report, but he knew that Sara would’ve called immediately if something useful had turned up during the autopsy.
He rolled up the topographical map and set it aside. He skimmed his emails. The mayor wanted to talk to him. The dean wanted a meeting. The district attorney wanted a check-in. The Grant Tech student newspaper wanted a written interview. The Grant Observer wanted an in-person sit-down. Jeffrey sent back anodyne responses to everyone, resisting the desire to tell them what they wanted and what they actually needed were two different things.
At least his mother was off his back. After the umpteenth missed call, he had finally called Mae to wish her happy birthday. When she’d balked, Jeffrey had gaslighted his own mother. He’d created a false memory of a conversation they’d never had, “reminding” Mae that he’d promised her months ago to take her out to dinner the weekend after her birthday. Like any knee-walking drunk, she had pretended to remember, and like any child of an alcoholic, Jeffrey was simultaneously filled with satisfaction that he’d finally found a way to use her drinking in his favor and eaten up with guilt for tricking her.
He was saved further introspection by the fax machine grinding out a page behind him. Brock had sent him details on the hammer Sara had excised from Leslie Truong’s vagina. By sheer luck, there was a manufacturing mark stamped on the end.
Jeffrey looked up the product number on his computer. He recognized the distinctive yellow and green stripes of the tool brand.
The Brawleigh twenty-four-ounce cross-peen was part of a three-hammer set that was aptly called a Machinist’s Dead Blow Kit. Peening hammers were specifically designed for metalwork. In fact, peening referred to the process of working a metal surface to improve its material properties. Brawleigh offered a straight-peen hammer and a bossing mallet to round out its Dead Blow collection.
Jeffrey scanned the details. The head of the 1.5-pound mallet was filled with sand and coated in polyurethane. The two hammers had plastic disks covering the flat sides of the heads. All of the tools were engineered to minimize the elastic rebound from a struck surface; hence the narrow neck of the wooden handle on the murder weapon.
He zoomed in on the hammer. There was something sinister-looking about the metal head. The peen, the opposite end of the face, was conical in shape, used to shape sharp angles. He had no way of knowing whether the hammer had been used on Tommi Humphrey. Had the killer purchased it specifically for the attacks, or was it something that he’d found lying around his shop?
Brawleigh was a nationally known brand, as ubiquitous in the tool industry as Snap-On and Crafstman. Jeffrey did a general search for the cross-peen hammer and found it was readily available at Pep Boys, Home Depot, Costco, Walmart and Amazon. Subpoenaing the records of sales in the area would be a David vs. Goliath quest. Grant County’s district attorney worked on a part-time basis. Filing the subpoenas would take days. Jeffrey didn’t have days.
He closed the tabs and returned to the Brawleigh site. The Dead Blow kit was under the METALWORKS menu. He hovered the mouse over the sub-menus. Nothing stood out. He went to WOODWORKS and found exactly what he was looking for.
NAILSETS AND AWLS.
He studied the nailsets, which were used to sink finish nails into wood. The tool was tempered steel, round, about six inches in length, thick at the top so a hammer could strike it, narrow to a point at the bottom to countersink the head of a nail. Jeffrey fisted his hand. He had held his share of nailsets. The tool was too small to effectively use as a weapon, let alone as a device to puncture the spinal cord.
He clicked on AWLS.
Scratch awls. Stitching awls. Bradawls.
He zoomed in on the bradawl, which was similar in look to a screwdriver. Instead of a flat or Phillips head, the metal tip was honed to a sharp point. The tool was another one that was familiar to Jeffrey. It was used to make indentations in wood to help guide a nail or screw into the correct position.
It was also long enough, and precise enough, to puncture a woman’s spinal cord.
There was movement in the squad room. Matt was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Frank was taking off his suit jacket and hanging it on the back of his chair.
Jeffrey went out to meet them, asking Frank, “Autopsy?”
He shook his head. “Nothing but a sick fuck.”
Jeffrey had expected the news, but he was still frustrated. “How many autobody and mechanic shops do you think we’ve got in town?”
“Between Avondale and Madison?” Matt asked. “I can think of twelve off the top of my head.”
Since he was the first to volunteer the information, Jeffrey told him, “I need you to go to each shop and discreetly figure out if anyone is missing a Brawleigh cross-peen hammer.”
“Brawleigh,” Frank said. “That’s my brand.”
Matt volunteered, “I’m a Milwaukee man myself.”
They’d stumbled onto a good point. Men tended to stick with the same tool brand. Jeffrey’s own workbench was marked by a distinctive DeWalt yellow.
He told Matt, “Mechanics usually have their own tools. Pay attention to who buys Brawleigh.”
“Yessir.” Matt gave him a salute as he walked toward the door.
Jeffrey asked Frank, “Any luck tracking down the Daryl from Caterino’s phone?”
“I checked all of our incident reports, FIs, traffic stops. The only Daryl that came up was Farley Daryl
