talking. Not that suicide had ever been a consideration. But murders for
hire were usually of the barrel-to-flesh variety.
That particular method cut down considerably on the margin of error.
Frank leaned closer to his desk. Why more than one shot? The woman most
certainly was killed with the first round. Was the assailant a sadist,
pumping round after round into a dead body? And yet they could account
for only two entries into the body, hardly the lead barrage of some
madman. Then there was the issue of the slugs. A dumdum and a mystery
bullet.
He held up a bag with his mark on it. Only one round had been recovered
from the body. It had entered below the right temple, flattened and
expanded on impact, penetrated the skull and brain, causing a shock wave
of the soft brain tissue, like rolling up a carpet.
He carefully nudged the caged creature or what was left of it. A
gruesome projectile that was designed to flatten upon impact and then
proceed to rip apart everything in its path, it had worked as designed
on Christine Sullivan.
Problem was dumdums were everywhere now. And the projectile deformity
had been immense. Ballistics had been next to useless.
The second round had entered a half-inch above the other, traversed the
entire brain, and exited the other side, leaving a gaping hole much
larger than the entrance wound.
The bone and tissue damage had been considerable.
This bullet’s resting place had given them all a surprise.
A half-inch hole in the wall against the bed. Ordinarily after having
cut out the piece of plaster, the lab personnel, using special tools,
would have extracted the slug, being carefur to preserve the grooving of
the bullet, which would enable them to narrow down the make of gun from
which it was fired and hopefully to eventually match it to a particular
piece of ordnance. Fingerprints and ballistics identification were as
close to certain as you got in this business.
Except in this case, while the hole was there, there was no slug in the
hole, and no other slug in the room. When the lab had called him to
report that finding, Seth Frank had gone down to see for himself. That
was as angry as he had gotten in a long time.
Why go to the trouble of digging out a slug when you still had one in
the corpse? What would the second slug show that the first wouldn’t?
There were possibilities.
Frank made some notes – The missing bullet could be a different caliber
or type, which probably would show there were at least two assailants.
Strong as his imagination was, Frank could not realistically envision
one person wielding a gun in each hand and popping off at the woman. So
now he had a probable two suspects. That would also explain the
different entry, exit and internal wound patterns. The t mu, bling
dumdums entry hole was larger than the other slug S.
So the second slug wasn’t a hollow or softnose. It had blown right
through her head, leaving a tunnel half the width of a pinkie in its
wake. Projectile deformity had probably been minimal, which was
meaningless since he didn’t have the damn slug.
He looked over his initial scene notes. He was in the
collection-of-information stage. He hoped he would not be stuck there
forever. At least he didn’t have to worry about the statute of
limitations expiring on this one.
He looked at the report one more time, and his frown returned.
He picked up his phone and dialed. Ten minutes later he was sitting
across from the Medical Examiner in the latter’s office.
The big man pried at his cuticles with an old scalpel and finally
glanced up at Frank.
“Strangulation marks. Or at least attempted strangulation. Understand,
the trachea wasn’t crushed, although there was some swelling ‘ and
hemorrhaging in the tissue.
and I found evidence of a slight.fracture of the hyoid bone.
Got traces of petechia in the conjunctiva of the eyelids too.
Nonligature. It’s all in the protocol.”
Frank turned that over in his mind. Petechia, or tiny hemorrhages in the
conjunctiva, or mucous membrane, of the eyes and eyelids, could be