The Big Thaw - Donald Harstad [38]
Back in the car, the consensus was that Carrie had, single-handedly, eliminated her father as a suspect. She was absolutely believable. You can tell, especially with kids. Well, within their knowledge, of course. But there was no doubt that both her parents had been present when that snowmobile came blasting through the yard. And, if that was our killer, and it sure looked like it could be, she’d eliminated her whole family as suspects.
As we stopped at the end of the lane, before entering the roadway, Art said, “Looks like what we got left is Fred.”
Sure did. Great news, except that I didn’t think he’d done it.
We discussed things.
What we had was a fairly good circumstantial case against Fred. Sure. At this point, however, we had absolutely no physical evidence placing him in close proximity to the two victims when they were shot. None.
We had no evidence of animosity between Fred and his cousins. Fine. Interviews were required there, and we’d get on them. They’d be lengthy, though, and we decided to use whatever other officers we could.
We had to find out if Fred had access to a .22 caliber weapon. True, several .22s had been stolen in the course of the residential burglaries, but we didn’t know where the weapons were. That had to be checked.
We had to try to see if it was a .22 rifle or handgun. That would be a good start, and we’d have to rely on the expert opinion of Dr. Peters for that. As soon as he could open the heads, he might be able to give us some idea.
.22 caliber ammunition comes in three flavors: short, long, and long rifle. Short being the least powerful, long rifle the most. Problem: the longer the barrel of the weapon, the higher the velocity of the bullet. So, a short fired from a rifle could hit with the same force as a long or long rifle from a handgun.
It gets worse. Pistols come in two basic types: revolvers and semiautos. Because of the fit of the pieces, a lot more gas escapes from the gap between the cylinder and barrel of the revolver than escapes from the sealed chamber of the semiauto. Yep. That means that a long rifle fired from a revolver might hit with the same force as a long from an auto. Even worse, with the small bullet and small forces we were dealing with here, the differences might not even be pronounced.
Then there would be the spent shell casings. Revolvers don’t throw their empty shells out the way auto pistols do. Rifles have to eject the preceding cartridge case in some way, regardless. Art was assuming a revolver. I was waiting to see what the lab team found in the bag of the Borglans’ vacuum cleaner. It would all be moot, however, ever, if we didn’t find the murder weapon. Only then would we be able to try to test to see if the bullets or shell casings came from that particular weapon.
I hated the .22 for another reason. The size of things made it very difficult to do comparisons, and they were all what they call “rim fire” cartridges. No pin striking the center of the cartridge, here. That would be too easy, because center-firing are all a bit off center, and that can be an ID point. No, with a .22, you have a small rectangular notch struck in the edge of the shell rim. Hence “rim fire.” They aren’t nearly as individually distinctive.
That’s why it was always so very nice to find the murder weapon at the scene.
“I sure wish we had something puttin’ our man there,” I said.
“We’re doing all right,” said Art.
“I’d feel a lot better if we could place him at the scene. You know,” I said, “even if Fred confesses, we can’t convict unless we have some evidence puttin’ him at the house when they were shot.”
“You,” said Art, “are just depressing the shit out of me.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
It was pretty close to 1500 by the time we got back to the office. Waiting for us