Chapter 14
Alice walked slowly across the tile.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Tell me what you see,” Reacher said.
She dropped her eyes toward the corpse like it required a physical effort.
“Shot in the head,” she said. “Twice.”
“How far apart are the holes?”
“Maybe three inches.”
“What else do you see?”
“Nothing,” she said.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
“So?”
“Look closer. The holes are clean, right?”
She took a step nearer the drawer. Bent slightly from the waist.
“They look clean,” she said.
“That has implications,” he said. “It means they’re not contact wounds. A contact wound is where you put the muzzle of the gun directly against the forehead. You know what happens when you do that?”
She shook her head. Said nothing.
“First thing out of a gun barrel is an explosion of hot gas. If the muzzle was tight against the forehead, the gas punches in under the skin and then can’t go anyplace, because of the bone. So it punches right back out again. It tears itself a big star-shaped hole. Looks like a starfish. Right, doc?”
The pathologist nodded.
“Star-burst splitting, we call it,” he said.
“That’s absent here,” Reacher said. “So it wasn’t a contact shot. Next thing out of the barrel is flame. If it was a real close shot, two or three inches, but not a contact shot, we’d see burning of the skin. In a small ring shape.”
“Burn rim,” the pathologist said.
“That’s absent, too,” Reacher said. “Next thing out is soot. Soft, smudgy black stuff. So if it was a shot from six or eight inches, we’d see soot smudging on his forehead. Maybe a patch a couple inches wide. That’s not here, either.”
“So?” Alice asked.
“Next thing out is gunpowder particles,” Reacher said. “Little bits of un-burned carbon. No gunpowder is perfect. Some of it doesn’t burn. It just blasts out, in a spray. It hammers in under the skin. Tiny black dots. Tattooing, it’s called. If it was a shot from a foot away, maybe a foot and a half, we’d see it. You see it?”
“No,” Alice said.
“Right. All we see is the bullet holes. Nothing else. No evidence at all to suggest they were from close range. Depends on the exact powder in the shells, but they look to me like shots from three or four feet away, absolute minimum.”
“Eight feet six inches,” the pathologist said. “That’s my estimation.”
Reacher glanced at him. “You tested the powder?”
The guy shook his head. “Crime scene diagrams. He was on the far side of the bed. The bed was near the window, gave him an alley two feet six inches wide on his side. He was found near the bedside table, up near the head, against the window wall. We know she wasn’t next to him there, or we’d have found all that close-range stuff you just mentioned. So the nearest she could\\ave been was on the other side of the bed. At the foot end, probably. Firing across it, diagonally, according to the trajectories. He was probably retreating as far as he could get. It was a king-size bed, so my best guess is eight feet six inches, to allow for the diagonal.”
“Excellent,” Reacher said. “You prepared to say so on the stand?”
“Sure. And that’s only the theoretical minimum. Could have been more.”
“But what does it mean?” Alice asked.
“Means Carmen didn’t do it,” Reacher said.
“Why not?”
“How big is a man’s forehead? Five inches across and two high?”
“So?”
“No way she could have hit a target that small from eight feet plus.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw her shoot, the day before. First time she pulled a trigger in her life. She was hopeless. Literally hopeless. She couldn’t have hit the side of a barn from eight feet plus. I told her she’d have to jam the gun in his gut and empty the magazine.”
“You’re digging her grave,” Alice said. “That sort of testimony shouldn’t be volunteered.”
“She didn’t do it, Alice. She couldn’t have.”
“She could have gotten lucky.”
“Sure, once. But not twice. Twice means they were aimed shots. And they’re close together, horizontally. He’d have started falling after the first one. Which means it was a fast double-tap. Bang bang, like that, no hesitation. That’s skillful shooting.”