“Early days yet,” replied Devine. “Can you describe more fully the damage you saw in the wound track?”
“It was substantial,” said Guillaume.
“Define substantial.”
She looked a bit put out by this query.
“I’m not trying to be a jerk,” said Devine. “But a .300 Norma Magnum round is a high-velocity ordnance with a heavy load. It’ll drop large game with no problem.”
“You doubt the casing we found matches the bullet that hit her?” said Harper.
“Since the actual round was not found, I’m just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.” He looked expectantly at Guillaume.
“I would say that a high-velocity round was indeed used. The kinetic energy was substantial, as was the exit wound, where, as I already showed you, there was a large amount of bone and tissue extruded from the wound. The bullet was not a dumdum, because there was no evidence of mushrooming in the wound track. It went pretty much straight through her head and out the rear.”
“Then maybe a full metal-jacketed, or ball round, as the military often refers to it?” said Devine.
“It’s certainly possible.”
“What does that matter?” asked Fuss. She looked genuinely curious.
Devine said, “Most NATO military forces only use FMJ — or full metal-jacketed — ammo because of a Hague Convention international treaty signed well over a century ago. They banned the use of expanding bullets, even though FMJs have a greater risk of hitting unintended targets. Mushrooms tend to stay in the body. That’s why cops all around the world use dumdum ammo, because they put the target down with little risk of doing damage to nontargets.”
Guillaume interjected, “But the tumbling effect does catastrophic damage to the target.”
Devine continued, “The U.S. never ratified the treaty, but they’ve followed it, mostly. However, the Army now uses hollow points in some of their ammo chains. Sidearms and the like. The Hague treaty only applies to wartime — but let’s face it, the landscape of war has changed. It’s more like urban and rural street fighting rather than big armies going at each other over far-flung, isolated ground.”
Harper looked at Guillaume. “So just to be clear, Jenny was not shot by a dumdum? But by something that would include this .300 Norma round?”
“Correct,” said Guillaume. “I believe I already said that.”
Harper looked triumphantly at Devine. “Satisfied?”
“For now. Did she see anyone while she was up here? Her sister or brother?”
“We don’t know,” said Harper. “Leastways about Alex and Dak.”
“You haven’t spoken to them after all this time?” said Devine. He might not be an experienced investigator, but he knew the importance of collecting statements from persons of interest as quickly as possible because memories rapidly faded or became distorted. Or stories could be made up, practiced, and falsely corroborated.
“They’re grieving,” replied Fuss. “We’ll talk to them at the appropriate time. It’s how we do things up here.”
Devine glanced at Guillaume, who was staring at him as though awaiting his response to this professional slap.
“Okay, did you manage to talk to anyone else who wasn’t grieving?” Devine asked, his ire rising and uncomfortably so.
Dial it back, Travis — you have to work with these folks.
“A few people saw her around, nothing more than hello,” replied Harper curtly.
“Where was she staying? Jocelyn Point?”
“No,” said Harper. “Putnam Inn. Same place as you. Didn’t you know that?”
Fuss looked like she might start laughing.
Small town, thought Devine. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. Even the outsider’s.
“So she spoke to the owner?”
“Sure, she’s known Pat for years. Nothing of any note though, meaning their conversation. Just ‘hi, how you doing.’ Nothing about why she was up here.”
“Did she say whether Silkwell appeared nervous or out of sorts?”
“No, nothing like that. She visited up here pretty much every year,” said Fuss.
“Did you find anything relevant when you searched her room?” he asked.
Fuss said, “We haven’t searched it.” Before Devine could comment on that she added, “We secured it, taped it off, and waited for you to show up, because that’s what we were ordered to do from the get-go. By your folks.”
Harper didn’t look happy about this, and Devine could hardly blame him. And now he somewhat understood their unfriendly behavior toward him.
“So any idea why Silkwell was in town?” He was holding back what Clare Silkwell had told him — that Jenny was coming here to settle some unfinished business.
“No idea, yet. But like you said, early days,” added Fuss while Guillaume covered the body and then turned away to line up some instruments on a metal table. However, Devine could see from the woman’s tensed manner that she was intently listening to every word.
“Tell me about Earl Palmer, the man who found the body.”
Fuss and Harper exchanged a quick glance that Devine couldn’t readily interpret. And Guillaume’s shoulders had stiffened and then immediately relaxed when Palmer’s name had been mentioned.
Harper took a moment to clear his throat while Fuss looked away. Clearly she was going to let her boss handle this one. “Earl’s lived here his whole life. Retired lobsterman and a damn fine one. His wife, Alberta, died recently. And it rocked him to his core. He’s salt of the earth. And his wife was, too.”
“Okay. How did he happen to discover the body? She died between nine and eleven at night. But I understand that he called the police at one forty-five in the morning. What was he doing out at that hour?”
“Hell, lobstermen, like dairy farmers, don’t really sleep,” scoffed Fuss with a forced grin tacked on. “Even retired ones,” she hastily added when she saw Devine was about to interject.
“Granted, but how did he find the body? I was told it was in an isolated place.”
Harper said, “Earl likes to walk the shoreline. Ever since Bertie — that was what everybody called Alberta — died, he can’t sleep. Just drives around or goes out and walks. He likes to hear the ocean. He spent enough of his life on it to where it’s in his DNA.”
Devine slowly nodded and decided he was going to get no farther on this. “Did Jenny have a rental car?”
“Yep,” offered Fuss.
“Was it found near the crime scene? Did she drive it there?”
“No. It’s back at the Putnam Inn. White two-door Honda, you might have seen it. New York plates.”
Devine had seen such a car there. “So, like the room, have you not searched it yet?”
“Those were our instructions,” said Harper sharply. “Federal instructions.”
“Did anyone see her the night she died?” asked Devine. “Dr. Guillaume mentioned a time window.”
“Pat Kingman saw her walk out of the inn around seven thirty,” said Fuss. “She didn’t see which way she went.”
“How far from there was she found?”
“Three point two miles. I clocked it in the car,” answered Fuss.
“Weather that night?”
“Raining like cats and dogs,” answered Fuss.
Devine shifted his focus to Guillaume. “Anything else I should know? Signs of a struggle? Defensive wounds? Skin of an assailant under her nails? Any other forensic evidence at all?”
“No,” said Guillaume. “Just the casing.”