I nodded. Arnett held it in the action. With Torrez supporting the rifle with his gloved hands, I removed my pen from the bore and peered inside. For a long time, that crisp, bright bore held my attention. When a cartridge is fired in a rifle, it’s a contained symphony. About forty grains of gun powder ignites in this particular version and burns in a microsecond, creating an incomprehensibly huge cloud of brilliantly hot gasses. Contained in a brass shell casing that is in turn contained in the chrome steel chamber of the rifle, the erupting gas seeks exit. By moving the projectile, the ‘plug’, forward, there’s relief, and the whole mass of gasses propels the bullet down the tube and out the muzzle, on the way to the target…in this case, Larry Zipoli’s forehead.
“Do you always clean your firearms after a session?”
“Absolutely. Sometimes several times during a match.”
“Always?”
“What’s your point, sheriff?”
“I think you can probably guess, Mark.” He knew-far better than I-that even a single round, a single symphony of burning powder and brass projectile hustling down the barrel, would leave its mark on the bright steel. Turning the bore light, I could see the haze of powder residue. I could see a fleck or two of unburned powder just forward of the chamber. Closing my eyes, I bent my head and inhaled slowly and deeply through my nose. Even as a mending smoker days removed from my last cigarette, I could smell the sweet aroma of burned powder.
Chapter Thirty-two
“That rifle was thoroughly cleaned after my last match,” Arnett said, but he sounded distant.
“When was that?”
He glanced across the room at the large wall calendar over the bench. “July eighteenth.”
I tipped the gun toward him. “That smell fresh to you?” I pushed the rifle away when he reached for it. “No touch. Just smell.”
He did so, and stepped back. “It’s been fired.” He reached around to put the bore light in place and examined the bore for himself.
“You recall doing that? Firing it a few times? Maybe to try out a new load?”
“No.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’ve been shooting the same load in that rifle for years. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I gotta tell you, I don’t like the way this is goin’. You’re telling me that somebody used this rifle to shoot Larry Zipoli?”
“I’m telling you that I have questions, Mark. We all have questions. Look, what do you think would happen if you fired a.30–30 round in this rifle?”
I decided at that moment, watching Mark Arnett’s face, that he was a pretty sharp fellow, even though flooded with emotions he didn’t know how to deal with. My question out of left field drew him up short, and his eyes narrowed. It was obvious to me that he wasn’t just pondering an interesting question-he was putting two and two together now. I held up the plastic evidence bag containing the fired slug. “What do you think?”
“I think it wouldn’t shoot for shit,” he said flatly.
“Might not even leave rifling marks on the bullet, would it.”
“There’s about fifteen thou difference in bore diameter,” Arnett said. “So no. The rifling wouldn’t have much to grab on to.” He opened the box of new.30–30 slugs, selected one, and motioned for Torrez to change his grip on the gun. I took the pen out of the muzzle, and he dropped the shiny new bullet down the bore of the.32. With a little clink at the end as it hit the bolt face, it dropped through slick as can be.
“And the bullet’s most likely going to keyhole, besides,” Arnett added.
The room fell silent. Arnett looked as if he wanted to say something, then thought better of it. Maybe he was mulling the warrant/attorney suggestion.
“So now you know where we’re at,” I said. “Are you going to let us take this rifle for a little while, or do you want us to get a warrant?”
“Shit, take it,” he said without hesitation. He reached into the corner and hefted a plastic rifle case. “Do what you got to do. You got a shell casing for comparison? I mean, what good, otherwise?” I finished putting the Winchester in the case without upholstering the smooth surface with my fingerprints.
I would be quickly paddling out of my depth if I tried to answer his questions, and I nodded at Bob Torrez. Anything I said would be bullshit, and Mark Arnett would know it. A shrewd guy himself, Deputy Torrez could figure out for himself how much we wanted to reveal.
“There’ll be burned powder residue imbedded in the base of the bullet.” The deputy’s voice was almost a whisper. “That can be chemically matched to the residue in the rifle’s chamber.”
“Horseshit,” Arnett scowled.
“When you crimp the cartridge casing around the brass bullet,” Torrez added, “there are characteristic scuff marks…nothing like rifling cuts, but microscopic marks that we can compare.”
“Do you think this is what happened with all this shit? A.30–30 fired from a.32?”
Torrez nodded. “I tried it.”
Arnett gazed at the young man in disbelief. “You got to be shittin’ me.”
“Nope.”
“Why would anybody do that?”
“Don’t know, Mark.”
“And if you think Mo is involved somehow, you’ve been smokin’ that funny tobacco,” Arnett said.
“We didn’t say that he was involved, Mark,” I said.
“You don’t got to. Look, the last time that rifle was out of this safe…the last time…was when I shot it in a match. You think any other way, it’s bullshit. Look.”
He opened one of the cabinets above the bench. “Look. Here’s a box of.32’s,” he said, and pulled out a large plastic ammo box that hit the counter with an authoritative thud. He fumbled the latch and opened it, revealing a hundred bright cartridges, nose down, the fresh primers facing us. “I got four of these boxes. You want to check all four hundred rounds?”
“We might.”
“Well, then,” and he hauled all the storage boxes out. When he was finished, he said, “Satisfied? And I got five boxes of thirty-thirty.” He hauled one out and opened it. “This one ain’t full, but the others are.” Sure enough, there were forty-nine loaded cartridges, their headstamps bright, announcing the caliber and the manufacturer. In additon, there were thirty-seven fired rounds, with fourteen unoccupied slots. The empties were inserted in the box mouth up, the powder residue obvious around the necks and case mouth.
With bifocals, my vision was pretty good, but not as good as Bob Torrez’s. He could see that the mouth of one fired case was larger than it should be. Arnett, intimately familiar with the reloading process, familiar with measurements and quality control, familiar with what it took to win shooting matches, moved faster than the deputy…perhaps because Mark wasn’t thinking about latent finger prints. Before we could react, he snatched the last empty round out of the box.
He read the headstamp, or tried to. His eyes were blurring. Even I could see the tears forming at the corners-rage, grief, frustration, all of the above. “Ah, come on,” he whispered, and shook his head. He clenched his eyes hard, and the veins on his neck bulged. With a hard snap, he hurled the empty shell casing across the bench. It struck the wall and skittered into a corner.
Without another word, he turned and headed for the door. This time, Bob Torrez was faster. He blocked the passage, but it didn’t appear that Mark had a clear idea where he wanted to go. He turned half a circle and pounded the table with his fist.
“Mark, use some judgment,” I said.
“You won’t even need to talk with that little fat bastard when I finish with him,” he said between clenched teeth. His vitriol took me by surprise.
“Not going to happen, Mark,” I said. “This isn’t about taking the belt to his butt and then grounding the kid for a couple weeks. The boy is scared out of his mind and on the run. That’s what it looks like to me. If he pulled that trigger on Larry Zipoli, then you’re going to need to help us, Mark.”