There was always routine to fall back on.
Routine now dictated that he send the gun over to the Ballistics Section of the Police Laboratory with a Rush-Urgent request, and then run a Pistol Permits check on Harrod and the girl. Routine further dictated that he get somebody from the Safe and Loft Squad to open Harrod’s file drawers. Or would he need a goddamn court order for that, too?
Sometimes he wished he worked in an office building, running an elevator.
Detective First Grade Michael O. Dorfsman worked for the Ballistics Section, and it was he who took the hurry-up call from Cotton Hawes. He was already in possession of the two spent 9-mm cartridge cases, as well as the pair of bullets dug from the head of Frank Reardon. One of those bullets had been slightly deformed through collision with bone, but the other, once buried deep in Reardon’s brain matter, was in excellent condition. He had not yet begun work on the evidence, because the cartridge cases had been sent to him only yesterday, and the bullets had arrived this morning, sent to him from the morgue after the autopsy had been performed.
There were ways of determining the make of an unknown firearm by examination of the shell casings and bullets, and since Dorfsman was an expert, he undoubtedly would have discovered before long that the gun that had fired the 9-mm cartridges had been a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic Pistol. But this would have involved a thorough search for marks on the cartridges, dismissing such insignificant marks as those left by the gun’s guide lips or the magazine slide and concentrating instead on more characteristic marks. Then, too, Dorfsman might have examined the one bullet that was still in good condition and come up with a classification in terms of caliber, direction of rifling twist, and number of lands and grooves that would have eventually yielded the murder weapon’s make — even without the corroborative cartridge evidence.
Hawes merely saved him a lot of time.
Hawes sent over a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic Pistol, and now all Dorfsman had to do was compare the cartridges he had on hand with test cartridges fired from the suspect weapon, and lo and behold, he would know whether this gun was indeed the gun.
As simple as that.
Even Dorfsman’s wife knew that the word “automatic” as it applies to a handgun means, simply, that the introduction of a new cartridge into the firing chamber is accomplished by the weapon rather than the shooter. In other words, an automatic pistol is in reality a “self-loading” pistol. When one cartridge is fired, another moves into place immediately, ready for subsequent firing, whereas a revolver needs to be cocked by the thumb or the trigger finger. Dorfsman’s wife didn’t much care to know that the action of an automatic pistol is what makes it possible to identify shells fired from such a pistol. Dorfsman, on the other hand, had to understand the action if he was to perform his job properly. And, as he had said to his wife on more than one occasion, “This is where the action is, baby.”
(1) You have a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic Pistol.
(2) You slide a magazine into the butt of your gun. The magazine contains eight cartridges. You slip an extra cartridge into the firing chamber, giving you a total capacity of nine shots. You are ready now for killing people, if that’s your bag.
(3) When you squeeze the trigger, the bullet comes out of the gun barrel and hits somebody in the head.
(4) At the same time, the pistol’s recoil forces the empty cartridge case back, and causes the barrel slide to retreat and to open, and the empty shell is ejected.
(5) The slide, with a spring assist, moves back to its original forward position, and another cartridge moves up into the firing chamber, and the firing pin is ready once again, and if you squeeze the trigger yet another time, another bullet will come rushing out of the barrel.
Since all this action involves a number of movable parts, and since those parts are made of steel whereas shell casings are made of softer metals like copper or brass, the gun parts will leave marks on the cartridges. And since no two guns are exactly alike, no two guns will mark a cartridge in exactly the same way. That’s what makes a Ballistics Section possible, and that’s why Michael O. Dorfsman had a job.
The parts of the gun that mark a cartridge are:
(1) The breechblock. That’s the whatchamacallit on top of the gun, where the cartridge sits just before you pull the trigger to send the bullet zooming on its way. The breechblock has little ridges and scratches left by tools at the factory (tools, tools, capitalist tools!) and these in turn leave impressions on the cartridge.
(2) The firing pin. That’s the little sharp whozits there that hits the percussion cap when you squeeze the trigger, and causes an explosion of gasses that propel the bullet out of the metal cartridge case and down that old gun barrel and into somebody’s head. The firing pin, naturally, leaves a mark where it strikes the percussion cap.
(3) The extractor. That’s the little mother-grabber there that recoils with the slide mechanism after a cartridge is fired, leaving marks in front of the shell rim.
(4) The ejector. That’s the dojigger there that throws the empty cartridge case out of the pistol and onto the floor where smart cops can find it and figure immediately that the gun used was an automatic since revolvers don’t throw anything on the floor except people who happen to be standing in front of them when they go off. The ejector leaves marks on the head of the shell.
If you know the marks a gun can leave, and if you know where to look for them on a spent cartridge case, why then, all you have to do is fire some shells from the suspect gun, retrieve them, and mark them for identification. Then you take the shell found at the scene of the crime, and you also mark that for identification, since any normal Ballistics Section has a lot of loose shells around, and you don’t want to spend all your time playing the shell game when you’ve got more important matters to consider — like homicide, for example. Then you wash (yes, that’s right, wash) all the shells in your favorite detergent (a woman works from sun to sun, but a man’s work is never done) and you are now ready to compare them. You do this with a microscope, of course, and you photograph your findings under oblique light to bring the marks into sharp relief, and then you paste up an enlargement of the suspect shell alongside an enlargement of the comparison shell, and you record the marks on each the way you would record the whorls and tents and loops and ridges of a fingerprint — and there you are.
Where you are, if you are Michael O. Dorfsman, is in that euphoric land known as Positive Identification. It is very nice when all those marks and scratches line up like separate halves of the same face. It makes a man feel good when he’s able to pick up the telephone and call the investigating detective to report without question that the gun delivered to Ballistics was definitely the gun that fired the bullets that killed somebody.
Which is exactly what Dorfsman did late that Friday afternoon.
Cotton Hawes, in turn, felt as though he had just caught a pass hurled by the quarterback. All he had to do now was run it to the goal line. Pistol Permits had earlier reported that no license had been issued to either Charles Harrod or Elizabeth Benjamin to carry a handgun or to keep one on the premises. The last permit issued for the particular gun in question, a Smith & Wesson 9-mm Automatic Pistol bearing the serial number 41-911-R, had been issued on October 12, 1962, to a man named Anthony Reed, then residing in Isola. A check of the telephone directories for all five sections of the city disclosed no listing for an Anthony Reed. But 1962 was a long time ago, and God knew how many hands that pistol had traveled through since Reed was issued his premises permit. A chat with the lieutenant had assured Hawes that since the pistol had been found in the refrigerator on the premises normally occupied by Elizabeth Benjamin, possession could be presumed to be hers, and if she didn’t have a permit for it, they could nail her with a gun violation at the very least. In addition, if and when Ballistics came up with a positive make, Hawes could feel free to arrest Elizabeth as either a principal or an accessory to the crime of murder. Lieutenant Byrnes wasn’t sure either charge would stick, but her arrest would give them an opportunity to question her legally. Hawes now had a green light from Ballistics, and he was ready to go uptown after Elizabeth. He was, in fact, putting on his jacket preparatory to leaving the squadroom when the telephone rang again. He picked up the receiver.