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.”
“A Sig forty-five P220,” I said, looking at him in astonishment. “The cartridge case is matching with a weapon versus another cartridge case?”
“Yes. Damn if it isn’t. Jesus Christ.”
“Let me make sure I understand this.” I could not believe what I was seeing. “You wouldn’t have the characteristics of a firearm entered into DRUGFIRE unless that firearm had been turned in to a lab. By the police, for some reason.”
“That’s how it’s done,” Frost agreed as he began to print screens. “This Sig forty-five that’s in the computer is coming u p as the same one that fired the cartridge found near Danny Webster’s body. That much we know right this second. What I’ve got to do is pull the actual cartridge case from the test fire done when we originally got the gun.”
He stood.
I did not move as I continued staring at the list in DRUGFIRE with its symbols and abbreviations that told us about this pistol. It left recoil and drag marks, or its fingerprints, on the cartridge cases of every round it spent. I thought of Ted Eddings’
stiff body in the cold waters of the Elizabeth River. I thought of Danny dead near a tunnel that no longer led anywhere.
“Then this gun somehow got back out on the street,” I said.
Frost pursed his lips as he opened file drawers. “It would appear that way. But I really don’t know the details of why it was entered into the system to begin with.” Still rooting around, he added, “I believe the police department that originally turned the weapon in to us was Henrico County.
Let’s see, where’s CVA5471 ? We are seriously running out of room in this place.”
“This was submitted last fall.” I noted the date on the Computer screen. “September twenty-ninth.”
“Right. That should be the date the form was completed.”
“Do you know why the police turned the gun in?”
“You’d have to call them,” Frost said.
“Let’s get Marino on it now.”
“Good idea.”
I called Marino’s pager as Frost pulled a file folder. Inside was the usual clear plastic envelope that we used to store the thousands of cartridge cases and shotgun shells that came through Virginia’s labs every year.