Beth and I stood back and let him at it, both of us afraid to get too close in case he blew up.
After a good twenty minutes he raised his head and said, “I think we got ourselves a G forty-eight.”
“G forty-eight? Is that an exhibit or something?”
“Don’t be daft. I’m talking those little balls what falls out of the cage. G forty-eight. G forty-eight. And you know what that gives us?”
“What?” said Beth.
Skink let a huge smile crease his battered face. “Bingo, mates. Bingo.”
47
“THAT’S RIGHT,” said the police technician from the stand, adjusting her glasses as she reviewed her report. “I determined that the gun was two to four feet away from the victim when it was fired.” She took off her glasses and looked up at me. “But as I said in my direct testimony, that’s only a rough estimate.”
“Let’s be as precise as possible about this, Officer Cantwell,” I said. “You are estimating the distance from the victim to the end of the barrel, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“With the arm outstretched, the killer’s eyes would have been considerably farther away. As much as two feet, isn’t that right?”
“It’s hard to tell how the gun was held, but that is certainly possible.”
“So the killer, when he fired, could have been as much as six feet away from the victim?”
“Yes, or closer.”
“Six feet. That’s pretty far away with the light off, isn’t it?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained,” said the judge.
“But, Your Honor,” I said, “we have Mrs. Morgan’s testimony that the lights were out at some point before she saw Mr. Forrest on the steps.”
“Sustained.”
“And there is absolutely no evidence that the light was on at the time of the killing.”
“Argue what you want, Mr. Carl, at argument, but you haven’t laid a foundation to allow this witness to testify what can or can’t be seen in that room with the lights out. Continue, please.”
“Officer Cantwell, were you ever in that room with the lights out?”
“No.”
“With the lights on?”
“No.”
“You’ve never been in that room?”
“I am a lab technician, Mr. Carl. I work in a lab. I of course consult the photographs and the police reports, but my job is a scientific analysis of the evidence.”
“Then, Officer, let me ask you this. With any of your fancy lab equipment, your spectroscopes or infrared cameras, with your micron telescopes, with any of that stuff, is it possible for you to say whether the light was on or off at the time the shot was fired?”
“No.”
“Good enough. Let’s move on. Two to four feet from the end of the barrel to the victim, right?”
“That was my estimate.”
“And you made that determination from the gunpowder residue on the comforter, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Could you explain to the jury how the gunpowder residue ended up on the comforter?”
“A bullet is fired by the ignition of smokeless gunpowder, or nitrocellulose, in a cartridge. As the powder ignites, there is a violent expansion of gas, which propels the bullet through the barrel and then out into the world. In this case, through the comforter and into the heart of the victim. Under perfect circumstances all the gunpowder would be turned into the propelling gases during ignition, but as we all know, our world isn’t perfect. Along with the bullet, the expanding gases discharge unburned powder, partially burned powder, and completely burned powder, or soot. If the barrel of the gun is close enough to the target, then some or all of these are deposited on the target’s surface. An examination of the pattern of these discharges can allow for an approximation of distance.”
“Were all three types of powder found on the comforter?”
“No, not on the relevant portion. Generally, if a shot is fired within a foot, there is what is called both fouling and stippling. Fouling, which can be wiped away easily, occurs when the completely burned powder is found on the surface. Stippling occurs from the unburned and incompletely burned particles of gunpowder. These particles become embedded in the surface or bounce off and abrade the surface, and their effects are not easily wiped off. From beyond a foot the soot generally is dispersed into the air and so no soot deposit is made. From the distance of a foot to maybe three or four feet, there will be stippling without fouling. When we examined the comforter, we found embedded unburned and partially burned powder, which gave us our approximate distance.”
“How was this examination done?”
“Because of the color of the comforter, a dark blue, and the encrusted blood staining it, it was difficult to see the residue with the naked eye. We took an infrared photograph of the comforter, but that didn’t prove very helpful, which isn’t surprising, since infrared is better at revealing fouling than stippling. Then we made a search for nitrates using a Greiss test. We pressed a series of gelatin-coated photographic papers onto the comforter with a hot iron and then treated the papers to find the presence of nitrates, which would be found if there existed nitrocellulose on the comforter that had been incompletely burned. Nitrates were found in a wide, elliptical pattern, from which we concluded that the firing range was two to four feet.”
“All very technical, Officer Cantwell.”
“Most of our work is. That’s why we’re called technicians.”
“Now, you found these nitrates over a large part of the comforter.”
“Yes.”
“And what you found would qualify as stippling.”
“That’s right.”
“And this stippling would have been found not only over the comforter but also over the exposed surfaces of anything on the mattress.”
“I would assume so, yes.”
“Including the victim herself.”
“Yes.”
“And based on what you testified to earlier, this would have been clearly evident, as particles would be embedded in the skin or, in bouncing off, would have abraded the skin, isn’t that right?”
“That is what you would expect, but I didn’t examine the victim.”
“You examined her clothes, correct?”
“She was wearing a short nightshirt, a teddy, it’s sometimes called. We found blood and some nitrate residue around the bullet hole, what is known as bullet swipe.”
“But no stippling.”
“Yes, no stippling.”
“Now, let’s look at the autopsy report, shall we?”
“Objection. It is not her report.”
“The autopsy report was introduced through stipulation. I’m not asking her to lay a foundation, I’m asking her to use the information she has already provided to help us analyze the actual report.”
“Is this going somewhere, Counselor?”
“I hope so, Judge.”
“Let’s get there soon.”
“In the autopsy report Dr. Regent analyzed many of the organs of the victim in this case, including the skin, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“On the first paragraph on page four he mentions the bruise beneath her left eye, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“In the second paragraph he mentions the general condition of the skin other than the bruise, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“No other sign of insult to the skin, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, that is what he wrote.”
“Nothing about particles of gunpowder embedded in the skin, is there?”
“No.”
“And nothing about abrasions from particles bouncing off the skin, is there?”
“Not from what I can see.”
“So, in fact, in reading the autopsy, there is no evidence of stippling.”
“That’s right.”
“No evidence that her skin was in any way exposed to the nitrates released by the handgun.”
“Maybe not.”
“Now, here is my question, Officer Cantwell. Based on the test you performed with the photographic paper and the comforter, and based upon the absence of stippling on the victim’s clothes or skin, isn’t it quite possible that all the stippling occurred on the comforter only because her entire body, including her face, was covered by the comforter?”