Lincoln Rhyme: The Kill Room Part 35

She measured it with a caliber gauge, a flat metal disk with holes of various sizes punched into it. "And a rare caliber. A big one. Four twenty."

Rhyme frowned. "Not four sixteen?" His first thought upon seeing it in the Kill Room. The .416 was a recent innovation in rifle bullets, designed by the famous Barrett Arms. The cartridge was a variation on the .50 round used by snipers around the world. While some countries and states in the U.S. banned the .50 for civilian use, the .416 was still legal most places.

"No, definitely bigger." Sachs then examined the round with a microscope, low power. "And it's a sophisticated design. It's a hollow-point with a plastic tip-a modified spitzer."

Arms manufacturers began to incorporate aerodynamics into the design of their projectiles around the time, not surprisingly, that airplanes were developed. The spitzer round-from the German word for "pointed bullet"-was developed for long-distance rifle shooting. Being so streamlined, it was very accurate; the downside was that it remained intact on striking the target and caused much less damage than a blunt-tipped, hollow-point round, which would mushroom inside the flesh.

Some bullet manufacturers came up with the idea of grafting a sharp plastic tip onto a hollow-point slug. The tip produced the streamlined quality of a spitzer round but broke away upon hitting the target, allowing the projectile to expand.

This was the type of bullet that Barry Shales had used to kill Robert Moreno.

Completing the streamlined design, she added, the slug was a boattail-it narrowed in the rear, just like a racing yacht, to further cut drag as it sped through the air.

She summarized, "It's big, heavy, accurate as h.e.l.l." Nodded at the crime scene photo of Moreno sprawled on the couch in the Kill Room, blood and tissue radiating out behind him. "And devastating."

She sc.r.a.ped the slug and a.n.a.lyzed some of the ejecta residue-the gas and particles that result when the powder ignites. "The best of the best," she said. "The primers were Federal 210 match quality, the powder was Hodgdon Extreme Extruded-made to the highest tolerances. This's your Ferrari of bullets."

"Who makes it?" This was the important question.

But an Internet search returned very few hits. None of the big manufacturers like Winchester, Remington or Federal offered it and none of the retail ammo sellers stocked the bullet. Sachs, however, found some references to the mysterious round's existence in some obscure shooting forums and learned that an arms company in New Jersey, Walker Defense Systems, might be the maker. Its website revealed that, though Walker didn't make rifles, it manufactured a plastic-tipped spitzer .420 boattail.

Sachs looked at Rhyme. "They only sell to the army, police...and the federal government."

The first goal was satisfied, the ID of the bullet. Now the team turned to finding the type of weapon that had fired it.

"First of all," Rhyme asked, "what kind of action was it? Bolt, semiauto, three-shot burst, full auto? Sachs, what do you think?"

"Snipers never use full auto or bursts-too hard to compensate for repeated recoil over distance. If it was bolt-action, he wouldn't have fired three rounds. If the first one missed, he'd've alerted the target, who'd go to cover. Semiauto, I'd vote."

Sellitto said, "Can't be that hard to find. There's gotta be only one or two kinds of guns in the world that'll fire a slug like that. It's pretty unique."

"Pretty unique," Rhyme blurted, with a frosting of sarcasm. "Just like being sort of pregnant."

"Linc," Sellitto replied cheerfully, "you ever think about teaching grade school? I'm sure the kids'd love ya."

Sellitto was right substantively, though, Rhyme knew. The rarer the bullet, the fewer the types of guns that will fire it. This would make it easier to identify the rifle and therefore easier to trace it to Barry Shales.

The two characteristics of a bullet that link it to the weapon that fired it are caliber, which they now knew, and rifling marks.

All modern firearms barrels have spiral troughs cut into them to make the bullet rotate and thus move more accurately to the target. This is known as rifling (even though it applies to pistols too). Gun manufacturers make these troughs-called lands (the raised part) and grooves-in various configurations, depending on the type of gun, the bullet it's intended to shoot and its purpose. The twist, as it's called, might spin the bullet clockwise or counter, and will spin it faster or slower depending on how many times the slug revolves in the barrel.

A look at the slug revealed that Barry Shales's gun spun the slug counterclockwise, once every ten inches.

This was unusual, Rhyme knew; spirals are generally tighter, with the ratio of 1:7 or 1:8.

"Means it's a long barrel, right?" Rhyme asked Cooper.

"Yep. Very long. Odd."

Given the rare caliber and rifling, it would normally be easy to isolate brands of semiautomatic rifles that produced characteristics like that. Ballistics databases correlate all this information and a simple computer search returns the results in seconds.

But nothing was normal about this case.

Sachs looked up from her computer and reported, "Not a single hit. No record of any commercial arms manufacturer making a rifle like that."

"Is there anything else we can tell about the gun?" Rhyme asked. "Look over the crime scene photos, Moreno's body. See if that tells us anything."

The crime scene specialist shoved his gla.s.ses up high and rocked back and forth as he regarded the grim pictures. If anybody had insights it would be Mel Cooper. The detective was active in the International a.s.sociation for Identification, which was nearly a hundred years old, and he had the highest levels of certification you could attain from the IAI, in all areas of specialty: Forensic Art, Footwear and Tire Track a.n.a.lysis, Forensic Photography/Imaging, Tenprint Fingerprint, and Latent Print-as well as Bloodstain Pattern a.n.a.lysis, a personal interest of both Cooper and Rhyme.

He could read crime scene photos the way a doctor could an X-ray. He now said, "Ah, take a look at that, the spread." He touched a photo, indicating the blood and bits of flesh and bone on the couch and floor behind it. "He fired from two thousand yards, right?"

"About that," Rhyme said.

"Amelia, what would the typical velocity of a round that big be?"

She shrugged. "Out of the muzzle at twenty-seven hundred feet per second, tops. Speed at impact? I'd say eighteen hundred."

Cooper shook his head. "That slug was traveling at over three thousand feet a second when it hit Moreno."

Sachs said, "Really?"

"Positive."

"Fast. Real fast. Confirms the rifle had a particularly long barrel and means the sh.e.l.l'd be loaded with a lot of powder. Normally a slug that size would have forty or forty-two grains of propellant. For that speed, I'd guess twice as much, and that means a reinforced receiver."

This was the part of the rifle that held the cartridge for firing. The receiver was thicker than the barrel to withstand the initial pressure of the expanding gases, so that the gun didn't blow up when the shooter pulled the trigger.

"Any conclusions?"

"Yeah," Sachs said. "That Barry Shales, or somebody at NIOS, made the gun himself."

Rhyme grimaced. "So there's no way to trace a sale of a serial-numbered rifle to NIOS or Shales. h.e.l.l."

His third goal, linking the bullet to Shales through his weapon, had just grown considerably more difficult.

Sachs said, "We're still waiting on Information Services to get back to us on the datamining. Maybe they'll find a record of Shales buying gun parts or tools."

Rhyme shrugged. "Well, let's see what else the slug tells us. Mel, friction ridge?"

Fingerprints actually can survive a bullet's transit through the air, through a body and sometimes even through a wall.

Provided Barry Shales had touched the bullets with his bare fingers. Which wasn't the case. Sachs, goggled, was blasting the slug with an alternative light source wand. "None."

"What about trace?"

Cooper was going over the slug now. "Bits of gla.s.s dust from the window." He then used tweezers to remove some minuscule bits of material. He examined the specimens closely under the microscope. "Vegetation," Rhyme postulated, looking at the monitor.

"Yes, that's right," the tech said. He ran a chemical a.n.a.lysis. "It's urus.h.i.+ol. A skin-irritating allergen." He looked up. "Poison ivy, sumac?"

"Ah, the poisonwood tree. Outside the window of the Kill Room. The bullet must've pa.s.sed through a leaf before it hit Moreno."

The tech also found a fiber, identical to those making up Moreno's s.h.i.+rt, and traces of blood, which matched the activist's blood in type.

Cooper said, "Aside from that and the ejecta, there's nothing else on the bullet."

Rhyme turned his new chair to face the evidence boards. "Ron, if you could update our opus with your fine Catholic school handwriting? I need to optic the big picture," he added, unable to resist a bit of jargon worthy of their leader in absentia, Captain Bill Myers.

CHAPTER 58.

Robert Moreno Homicide

Boldface indicates updated information Crime Scene 1. Suite 1200, South Cove Inn, New Providence Island, Bahamas (the "Kill Room").

May 9.

Victim 1: Robert Moreno. COD: Single gunshot wound to chest.

Supplemental information: Moreno, 38, U.S. citizen, expatriate, living in Venezuela. Vehemently anti-American. Nickname: "the Messenger of Truth." Determined that "disappear into thin air" and "blowing them up" NOT terrorism references.

Shoes contained fibers a.s.sociated with carpet in hotel corridor, dirt from hotel entryway, also crude oil.

Clothing contained traces of breakfast: pastry flakes, jam and bacon, also crude oil.

Spent three days in NYC, April 30May 2. Purpose? May 1, used Elite Limousine.

Driver Tash Farada (regular driver Vlad Nikolov was sick. Trying to locate).

Closed accounts at American Independent Bank and Trust, prob. other banks too.

Drove around city with interpreter Lydia Foster (killed by Unsub 516).

Reason for anti-U.S. feelings: best friend killed by U.S. troops in Panama invasion, 1989.

Moreno's last trip to U.S. Never would return.

Meeting in Wall Street. Purpose? Location? No record of terrorist investigations in area.

Met with unknown individuals at Russian, UAE (Dubai) charities and Brazilian consulate.

Met with Henry Cross, head of Cla.s.srooms for the Americas. Reported that Moreno met with other charities, but doesn't know which. Man following Moreno, white and "tough looking." Private jet tailing Moreno? Blue color. Checking for identification.

Victim 2: Eduardo de la Rua. COD: Loss of blood. Lacerations from flying gla.s.s from gunshot, measuring 34mm wide, 23cm long.

Supplemental information: Journalist, interviewing Moreno. Born Puerto Rico, living in Argentina.

Camera, tape recorder, gold pen, notebooks missing.

Shoes contained fibers a.s.sociated with carpet in hotel corridor, dirt from hotel entryway.

Clothing contained traces of breakfast: allspice and pepper sauce.

Victim 3: Simon Flores. COD: Loss of blood. Lacerations from flying gla.s.s from gunshot, measuring 34mm wide, 23cm long.

Supplemental information: Moreno's bodyguard. Brazilian national, living in Venezuela.

Rolex watch, Oakley sungla.s.ses missing.

Shoes contained fibers a.s.sociated with carpet in hotel corridor, dirt from hotel entryway, also crude oil.

Clothing contained traces of breakfast: pastry flakes, jam and bacon, also crude oil and cigarette ash.

Chronology of Moreno in Bahamas. May 7. Arrived Na.s.sau with Flores (guard).

May 8. Meeting out of hotel all day.

May 9. 9 a.m. Meeting two men about forming Local Empowerment Movement in Bahamas. 10:30 a.m. de la Rua arrives. At 11:15 a.m. Moreno shot.

Suspect 1: Shreve Metzger. Director, National Intelligence and Operations Service.

Mentally unstable? Anger issues.

Manipulated evidence to illegally authorize Special Task Order?

Divorced. Law degree, Yale.

Suspect 2: Unsub 516. Determined not to be sniper.

Possibly individual at South Cove Inn, May 8. Caucasian, male, mid 30s, short cut light brown hair, American accent, thin but athletic. Appears "military." Inquiring re: Moreno.

Could be sniper's partner or hired by Metzger independently for clean-up and to stop investigation.

Determined to be perpetrator of Lydia Foster and Annette Bodel homicides, and IED attack at Java Hut.

Amateur or professional chef or cook of some skill.