“Wow,” he said.
“Consistent with a Winchester forty-five?”
“Man alive. There is always a first time.” He opened the envelope and was suddenly excited. “I’ll measure lands and grooves and tell you in a minute whether it’s a forty-five.”
He moved before the comparison microscope and used the Air Gap method to fix the bullet to the stage with wax so he didn’t leave any marks on metal that weren’t already there.
“Okay,” he talked without looking up, “the rifling is to the left, and we’ve got six lands and grooves.” He began measuring with micrometer jaws. “Land impressions are point oh-seven-four. Groove impressions are point one-five-three. I’m going to enter that into the GRC,- he said, referring to the FBI’s computerized General Rifling Characteristics. “Now let’s determine the caliber,” he spoke abstractedly as he typed.
While the computer raced through its databases, Frost checked the bullet with a vernier measuring device. Not surprisingly, what he found was that the caliber of the Black Talon was .45, and then the GRC came back with a list of twelve brands of firearms that could have fired it. All, except Sig Sauer and several Colts, were military pistols.
“What about the cartridge case?” I said. “Do we know anything about it?”
“I’ve got it on live video but I haven’t run it yet.”
He returned to the chair where I had found him when I had first come in and began typing on a workstation connected by modem to an FBI firearms evidence imaging system called DRUGFIRE. The application was part of the massive Crime Analysis Information Network known as CAIN, which Lucy had developed, and the point was to link firearms-related crimes. Succinctly put, I wanted to know if the gun that had killed Danny might have killed or maimed before, especially since the type of ammunition hinted that the assailant was no novice.
The workstation was simple, with its 486 turbo PC connected to a video camera and comparison microscope that made it possible to capture images in real time and in color on a twenty-inch screen. Frost went into another menu and the video display was suddenly filled with a checkerboard of silvery disks representing other .45 cartridge cases, each with unique impressions. The breech face of the Winchester .45 connected to my case was on the top left-hand side, and I could see every mark made by breech block, firing pin, ejector or any of her metal part of the gun that had fired the round into Danny’s head.
“Yours has a big drag to the left.” Frost showed me what looked like a tail coming out of the circular dent left by the firing pin. “And there’s this other mark here, also to the left.” He touched the screen with his finger.
“Ejector?” I said.
“Nope, I’d say that’s from the firing pin bouncing back.”
“Unusual?”
“Well, I’d just say it’s unique to this weapon,” he replied as he stared. “So we can run this if you want.”
Let’s.
He pulled up another screen and entered the information he had, such as the hemispherical shape the firing pin had impressed in the soft metal of the printer, and the direction of twist and parallel striation of the microscopic characteristics of the breech face. We did not enter anything about the bullet I had recovered from Danny’s brain, for we could not prove that the Black Talon and the cartridge case were related, no matter how much we might suspect it. The examination of those two items of evidence was really unrelated, for lands and grooves and firing pin impressions are as different as fingerprints and footwear. All one can hope is that the stories the witnesses tell are the same.
Amazingly, in this case they were. When Frost executed his search, we had to wait only a minute or two before DRUGFIRE let us know that it had several candidates that might match the small, nickel-plated cylinder found ten feet from Danny’s blood.
“Let’s see what we’ve got here.” Frost talked to himself as he positioned the top of the list on his screen. “This is your front runner.” He dragged his finger across the glass.
“No contest. This one’s way ahead of the pack.”