seen any humor in that.
'You'd by God better find out whether it is or not,' he fumed. 'I want a definitive yes or no, and the sooner the better. If I were you, I'd take the damn thing straight to the crime lab and check it out. And I'd do it before Captain Powell nails you. He's hot.'
'Hot? What's he upset about?'
'About your not keeping us informed about what you're doing, that's what. If one of his officers is investigating a member of the University of Washington Board of Regents with regard to a current homicide case, then it stands to reason that the captain would appreciate having that information come to him directly from the detective involved and not from some lippy television reporter who looks like she just got her high school diploma late last week.'
A few words leaped out at me from Watty's latest harangue, and they left me stunned: Member of the Board of Regents! Did that mean Grace Highsmith?…Of course, no wonder her name had sounded so familiar.
'Now where the hell are you?' Watty continued. 'Captain Powell was looking for you a few minutes ago, and so was Detective Kramer.'
Obviously, at that precise moment, they both wanted to see me a whole lot more than I wanted to see either one of them.
'Like you suggested, I'm on my way to the State Patrol Weapons Section in Tacoma,' I said quickly. 'If I head down there right away, I may be able to make the trip before rush hour rather than being caught in the middle of it.'
'I want to hear from you the moment you know anything,' Watty said. 'You got that?'
'Got it,' I said.
'What about this next-of-kin situation on both Don Wolf and the I.D. on the second victim? With his name out over all the media, people are beginning to link the two cases. The captain wants to know-'
'Tell him I'm on it,' I said. 'I'll keep you posted.'
'Good,' Watty returned. 'You do that.'
Once I hit I-5, I turned south toward Tacoma. In the old days, two o'clock in the afternoon would most likely have been pre-rush hour. Nowadays, in the Seattle/Tacoma area, rush hour tends to last twenty-four hours a day. I made fairly good time until I got to the diamond-lane construction zone and a three-car injury accident down by Boeing Field. From then on, it was stop-and-go traffic all the way to the Midway landfill. A drive that should have taken forty-five minutes max took almost two hours.
That's the price of progress, I guess. Used to be, in order to get to the weapons experts, all I would have had to do was walk down a couple of flights of stairs. For years, most of the local functions of the Washington State Patrol crime lab were performed in the Public Safety Building in downtown Seattle. In recent months, however, all that had changed as the crime lab moved into more modern and supposedly more earthquake-proof quarters elsewhere. The firearms section was now working out of a temporary location on the outskirts of Tacoma.
Gabe Rios is a forensic scientist who specializes in weapons, especially firearms. When the receptionist led me into his cluttered office, I was pleased to note that here was a man whose work space was even messier than mine. Sitting with his feet propped up on a paper-strewn desk, Gabe was so deeply engrossed in reading a gun magazine that I wondered if he'd even notice our presence.
'Sorry,' he said, when he eventually looked up and caught sight of us. He put down the magazine, made some kind of notation on a computer keyboard, then looked back at me with a lopsided grin as the receptionist dropped me off and then backed out the door.
'Hey, Detective Beaumont. Long time no see. What brings you all the way down here to the wilds of east Tacoma?'
Without a word, I handed over the foil-wrapped package.
'Lunch?' Gabe asked. 'Beau, you shouldn't have.'
'Don't worry, I didn't,' I returned. 'It's one of those new Seecamps.'
'Pretty little thing, isn't it,' Gabe said, once he untwisted the foil and the. 32 was exposed to view. 'What is this, your new backup weapon? Did you stop by to show off and rub our noses in it? I understand these little babies are real tough to come by.'
'It's not mine,' I said. 'This one fell out of a little old lady's purse, right in the middle of lunch. There's a good possibility it's a murder weapon. Did the medical examiner's office send over the bullet from the New Year's Eve shooting?'
'Which one?' Gabe asked.
'Don Wolf. The floater with the bullet in his head. Has Audrey Cummings sent you anything on him yet?'
'I think so,' Gabe said. 'Hang on a minute.' Frowning in concentration, he rifled through the top layer of debris stacked on his desk. At last, he unearthed a large manila envelope which he waved at me in triumph.
'See there?' he said. 'I knew it was here somewhere. It came in just a little while ago. I've taken a preliminary look at it, but that's about all. The bullet's in pretty good shape, considering, so I'd say it mostly went through soft tissue.'
I nodded. 'That's right. Base of the skull at point-blank range.'
Gabe looked down at the. 32 auto and clicked his tongue. 'They may be little, but oh my.'
'How's the rifling?' I asked.
Fortunately, most people never have to look down the barrel of a gun. If they did, they'd see a series of spirals. Those markings, known in the trade as lands and grooves-lands for the raised parts and grooves for the depressions-are what put the spin on a bullet when it comes through the barrel of the gun, leaving behind a series of distinctive marks. These marks are called rifling. For an expert like Gabe, rifling patterns from one gun are distinctly different from those made by any other. To him, they're also as easy to differentiate as two different sets of fingerprints would be to someone who spends all his or her working hours dealing with the details of putting fingerprints into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
'Pretty good for a hollowpoint,' Gabe answered. 'Want me to lift prints off the gun before I test fire it?' he asked.
'You can try, but my guess is it's been wiped clean.'
Gabe shrugged. 'It can't hurt to try.' He got up and headed for the door, taking the. 32 with him. 'This may take some time, especially if we're lifting prints. Make yourself at home, Beau. You're welcome to use both my phone and my desk if you want, as long as the mess doesn't bother you too much.'
'Thanks,' I said. 'The phone would be a big help, and the mess looks just like home.'
Careful not to turn any of the stacks of paper into miniavalanches, I gingerly made my way around Gabe's desk, eased into his leather chair, and picked up his phone.
On the way down in the car, I had tried reaching Captain Kilpatrick down in La Jolla. It hadn't been a particularly satisfying experience. 'The captain's in a meeting, and I don't know anything at all about a next-of-kin notification,' the young woman on the phone had told me in a tone that implied she didn't much give a damn, either. 'I don't know if he'll be back in his office this afternoon or not. He may go straight home after the meeting.'
'Would you mind taking a message, just in case?'
'Who did you say was calling?'
'Beaumont,' I had answered. 'Detective J. P. Beaumont of Seattle P.D.'
'Where's that?' she had asked.
'Seattle. All the way up here in Washington State.'
'Oh, really?' she had said vaguely. 'I always thought Seattle was somewhere in Oregon.'
Gritting my teeth, I had gone on to leave a message asking Kilpatrick if there were any new developments in the Don Wolf case. I had ended the call and spent the rest of the trip to Tacoma grousing about the half-witted nim-nulls who had decided public schools in this country no longer needed to teach geography.
That exercise in mental curmudgeonliness had kept me occupied. It had given me an excuse to gripe at someone else, and had provided enough intellectual interference to keep me from thinking about some of my own issues. Like Grace Highsmith's all-too-public confession. Like Captain Larry Powell's current case of righteous indignation. Like Detective Paul Kramer's whining.
It took time to sort through all the hoops it takes to make a third-party long distance call from Gabe's office phone. Call me a Luddite if you want, but please spare me from all that newfangled telecommunications equipment
