The Guilty - Jason Pinter [39]
running her finger along the spines of various books on her
shelf. She stopped at one. Took it out and laid it on her desk.
She flipped it open. It was text heavy, filled with old photographs and illustrations. She turned to the index, flipped some
more, scanned down, then stopped when she found what she
was looking for.
"You say you think this rifle bears a significance to the
case?" she asked. All the playfulness had left Agnes Trimble's
voice. She was working now, the switch I assumed made her
so good at her job was now turned on.
"I don't know about the case, but it does to the man committing these crimes. I just need to prove it. I need to know
why this gun is so special to him."
She turned the book around so it faced me.
"Could this be the gun?"
On the page was a photograph of a rifle. It had a wooden
stock, like Lourdes's assistant said. Other than that, I didn't
know.
"Look here," Agnes said. "Rather than a traditional trigger
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guard, it has a reloading mechanism with only one side
attached to the frame. Makes for easy and fast reloading.
These kind of rifles are as common as sequin jumpsuits. You
asked about the gun that won the West? Well, here it is."
The caption beneath the rifle read, Winchester 1873, First
Model Rifle, S/N 27.
It was a beautiful piece of firepower. I examined it.
"At the time, this gun was given the highest production run
of any rifle in history," she said. "As much as the Winchester
won the West, it nearly drowned it in blood as well."
"Does the Winchester 1873 take .44-40 magnum rounds?"
Agnes nodded, her fingernail underlining a passage in the
text.
The Winchester 1873 lever action rifle was originally
chambered for the .44-40--a bottlenecked cartridge that has
acquired legendary status and is often referred to as 'The car-
tridge that won the West.'
I read the line, wondered if this was the gun the killer was
using. The rifle obviously had history, a literal one at that.
But why would somebody in the twenty-first century use a
nearly hundred-and-forty-year-old gun?
"So the gun was accurate," I said to Agnes. "And fast. But
it surely can't match some of the weapons around today.
Hell...Uzis, semiautomatics, Saturday night specials."
"Yeah, I've seen movies, too. And yes, there are many
guns currently on the market that obliterate the necessity of
the Winchester. But if this is the gun, and I'm assuming at this
point that's a big if, this man is not using it for efficiency or
posterity."
"So why use it?" Amanda said. She was into this, a little
too much.
"The Winchester 1873," Agnes said, her voice taking on a
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reverential tone, "until the Uzi 9 mm came along, was the
most famous and most recognizable gun in the world. Over
half a million were produced and in circulation before the turn
of the century. Between lawmen, outlaws and other savory
and unsavory types, just about anyone who needed to kill
someone was doing it with a Winchester model 1873."
"What made it so popular?"
Agnes breathed out, whistled. "Oh, well, take your pick.
The construction was far more rugged than the previous
models. That beast could take a pounding. It had a leveraction mechanism, and what that does is allow the shooter to
fire several cartridges without having to reload. The 1873
model was lighter and faster than its grandfather, the 1866.
The 1873 had a steel frame, which allowed Winchester to use
a centerfire instead of a rimfire for the first time."
Amanda said, "You know if I knew you knew all this, I
might not have registered for your class."
"If I didn't know all this, I wouldn't have a dozen unregistered students every semester taking my class for no credit."
"So what's the difference between centerfire and rimfire?"
Agnes seemed to get that I knew a little less about weaponry than
your average twenty-five-year-old. She spoke with no condescension, and I could tell her interest was more than academic.
"The centerfire was one of the most important technological advancements in the