Guilty Until Proven Innocent

"I was happy with Judy. The only way out was for me to divorce him."

"Did he know?"

"He suspected. That's why he didn't agree to the divorce at first. His lawyer said he'd make Judy testify at the trial and I wouldn't get anything. My lawyer said if that happened, the judge would figure the marriage was over, that both of us were at fault, and split all the jointly owned assets equally. I had a lot of money in my personal savings account because of my real estate commissions, so he'd have lost all that. His lawyer apparently agreed, and recommended he not contest the divorce."

"Anything else I need to know?"

Melissa shook her head.

"No, that's everything except that I didn't kill Judy, no matter what your evidence says."

I booked Melissa and turned her over to one of the female officers for processing, then went back to my office. With the bullet match and Judy's will, I had a good case against Melissa for first degree murder. I knew the DA would agree, but the bullet velocity and unburned gunpowder still nagged at me. They were loose ends that didn't make any sense, and I hate loose ends. I called the phone number Jason had given me. The man who picked up the phone said, "Mason Rutherford. How can I help you?"

I explained who I was and how I got his number, then told him my problem.

"Jason said if anybody would know, you would. How could a nine millimeter cartridge have low velocity and blow unburned gunpowder from the barrel?"

Mason didn't hesitate for even a second.

"It couldn't."

"You sound pretty confident about that."

"Well, I've fired a couple million rounds of factory ammo over the last twenty years and it's never happened to me. The only time I've ever seen it was with a handloaded cartridge. I burn up a couple thousand rounds a week practicing, and at the time I didn't have a sponsor, so I was reloading to save money. I'm still not sure what caused the light powder charge, but the recoil was really low and the sound was different. I don't know if there was unburned powder discharged from the muzzle or not, but the bullet hit the ground before it got to my target."

Mason paused for a moment, then said, "No, wait a minute. I have seen that once before and it was with factory ammo."

I asked how it had happened.

"It was another shooter at a range I use for practice. He had two pistols, a nine millimeter and a.40 caliber. Somehow he mixed up his ammo and loaded a nine millimeter round in the magazine for the.40. It fired, but the sound was more of just a pop. I ran over to stop him from firing again because I figured the bullet was still in the barrel and he'd have blown up the gun and probably his hand, but he couldn't. The pistol jammed. There wasn't enough chamber pressure to eject the fired case."

"That would mean low bullet velocity too then?"

"Really low because most of the gas pressure would have leaked out around the undersize bullet. It probably would also mean a lot of the powder didn't burn as well."

"I thought a pistol would only fire the cartridge it was designed for. How would a.40 fire a nine millimeter round?"

"It depends on the pistol. Some wouldn't because the nine mil round is smaller than the inside diameter of a.40 barrel. It would chamber, but just slide right on through the barrel. If the pistol has the right kind of extractor though, it could hold the cartridge centered well enough the firing pin would hit the primer and fire the round. I know a Glock would, because that's what the guy was shooting."

"Wouldn't an undersize bullet be pretty mangled by the time it exited the barrel?"

"Probably...well, there is a way if someone wanted to intentionally do it. At one time, some competitors were using paper patched, undersized bullets. It ups the velocity a little because the paper is in the rifling instead of the bullet jacket and the bullet trajectory is a little flatter. I tried it, but paper is abrasive and as many rounds as I use in practice, it was doing a job on my custom barrels. The right paper is also hard to find and expensive. It has to be mostly cotton based. It does work though, and depending on the thickness of the paper, the bullet wouldn't show any trace of rifling. I suppose you could wrap a nine millimeter round with paper to keep the bullet out of the.40 rifling."

I remembered the scrap of paper Jason had found under the body.

"What would happen to the paper once the round is fired?"

"Most likely it would be burned away by the burning gunpowder. Mine usually was. Once in a while, I'd find a small piece a few feet from the firing line, but usually, the paper just burned up."

I thanked Mason and said if I could ever help him, to give me a call, then looked at my white board again.

I couldn't see any way Melissa wasn't guilty, but I also didn't believe she was. If she'd killed Judy with her nine millimeter Glock, she'd likely have told me she didn't have it anymore. Perps always do that. They'll say they lost it or sold it to somebody and they never remember the name of the buyer. Instead she gave it to me and let me test fire it without a warrant.

When I told her it was her pistol that killed Judy and she could call a lawyer before answering any more questions, she hadn't batted an eye and said she didn't need one. Most guilty people immediately ask for a lawyer when they're arrested, and always do when they're confronted with evidence linking them with a crime.

She was also way too calm and collected when she told me about her relationship with Judy. That relationship gave me the answer to why Judy's doors hadn't been locked, the front door anyway. Unless she was just rock-dumb, Melissa had to know what she'd done and said was just more evidence against her. I had a lot of doubts she was that stupid. She seemed like a pretty intelligent woman to me.

Would she be intelligent enough to do what Mason said might be an explanation for the low bullet velocity and unburned powder? The little piece of paper seemed to confirm that scenario might be what happened. I didn't know, but if that's how it went down, there had to be another pistol involved. Melissa might have lied to me, or maybe there was a different explanation. I called the DA, explained the situation, and asked him to get a search warrant for Melissa's house and car. I then got Melissa out of holding and back into an interrogation room.

"Melissa, do you have another pistol somewhere? Remember, you can still ask for a lawyer before you answer that."

"No. All I've ever had is the one you say killed Judy. Why?"

"I have a reason, but we'll talk about that later. Where did you buy your pistol?"

"I didn't. Bryce bought both our pistols."

"Do you remember where he bought them?"

"I think it was at a place called Barney's Gun Shop out on West Division. That's the gun store where he used to spend so much time."

"Did he tell you what he did when he was there?"

"Just that he talked with the owner about guns for self-defense so he'd be sure to get the right one for me."

"And you haven't talked to him since the divorce?"

"No. My daughter has, but I haven't. He's called my cell phone a few times, but when I see his phone number, I don't answer."

"What would he be calling you about?"

"My daughter says he wants to get back together. I've told her I could never do that and to tell him I wasn't interested."

"Does your daughter know about you and Judy?"

"Yes. I didn't tell her, but she figured it out about a year before the divorce."

"What did she think about the relationship?"

"She didn't like it, but I think she's accepted it now."

"Do you think she told your ex?"

"I'm sure she did, or he wouldn't have brought it up during the divorce negotiations. She's always been really close to Bryce, a lot closer than she was to me."

I put Melissa back in holding, and then drove to Barney's Gun Shop. Barney turned out to be very helpful.

"It's been a long time, but I'll never forget Bryce. Spent hours and hours in my shop talking about calibers and magazine capacity and stopping power. Frankly, I got tired of his spouting off, and I was glad when he bought two pistols and stopped coming around. I think he was trying to impress everybody with what he said he knew about guns and self defense.

"Thought he knew everything even though he'd only read about it in magazines, and kept arguing with my other customers. I was in Iraq during Desert Storm, and all the hype about high power loads and big calibers is a bunch of bull shit. You hit a man anywhere with anything hotter than a pellet gun and he's gonna go down. Might not kill him, but he won't keep coming at you for more than a few seconds."

"What two pistols did he buy?"

"It'll take me a while to find the paperwork. Can I ask why you need to know? I always want to help the police, but I'm pretty protective about who my customer's are and what they buy."

"Let's just say he's a person of interest in a murder right now. I'll let you know if anything comes of it."

It took Barney half an hour, but he came back from his office with a loose leaf binder of copies of ATF forms.

"Looks like he bought two Glocks, a 26 and a 34."

"What calibers?"

"The 26 is a compact nine millimeter. The 34 is a full size.40 Smith and Wesson. You know, if he'd been anybody else, I wouldn't remember this, but I just did. He had a really odd request before he bought the pistols."

"Oh, how so?"

"Well, he wanted to try out both pistols on my range out back, but he wasn't interested in how accurate they were. He wanted to know how much they'd penetrate a person. I thought it was a dumb thing to do since that information is all over the gun publications, but he wanted to shoot both of them into gelatin blocks like they do in the magazine articles."

"Did you let him do it?"

"Yeah. He paid me to make a dozen blocks, and then he put six hardball rounds into them from each pistol. Cost him three hundred extra, and he wasn't really happy with the results because he didn't like the depth of penetration or the fact the bullets didn't break up. He took pictures of the blocks and then cut out the bullets and took them with him."

"He didn't happen to talk about reloading cartridges, did he?"

"Yeah, after he shot the blocks. He thought the normal hardball bullets didn't tear up the gelatin enough. I offered him hollow point rounds, but he knew it all and decided he needed hotter loads. He said that meant he'd have to load his own."

"Did he buy anything to let him do that?"

"Not that I remember, but I don't sell enough of it to compete with the big stores on price. He could have gotten it from a lot of different places, and probably cheaper than I can sell it."

I thanked Barney and went back to the station. I had some answers to questions I hadn't asked myself yet, but those answers were leading me to a different shooter even though most of the evidence said otherwise. I got Melissa out of holding again. She smiled when I sat down across from her in the interrogation room.

"I think you must like talking to me. This is the second time today."

I got that feeling again that I always have when interrogating women, but pushed it aside.

"Where does your daughter live?"

"Just across town, why?"

"Does your ex-husband ever come to visit her?"

"Yes, the last time was two weeks ago. I know because she called me to tell me she told him I didn't want to get back together and that he got mad about that. Why are you asking about my daughter and my ex-husband. Oh no...you don't think...she couldn't be involved."

"I don't know that she is. I'm just getting more information. Has he been to see her since?"

"No. She always calls me when he does. I think she'd like us to get back together again too. She hasn't called me since the last time."

"Where does your ex-husband live now?"

"My daughter says he moved to Atlanta and has a company there. It's some kind of school for those survival people. Bryce was just getting into that when I divorced him. He went to a school to learn about survival, and after that he had canned food stashed all over the house and a special duffel bag in his car with what he said we'd need when the economy collapsed."

I put Melissa back into holding and called Tim Riley, the DA. I wanted him to postpone Melissa's arraignment hearing until I could check on a few other things. When he heard my theory, he agreed.

I spent the next hour with Tim on the phone with the Atlanta PD. After that we waited. The waiting took until the next afternoon when my cell phone rang. It was Captain Edwards of the Atlanta PD.

"I found your guy. How do you want to play this? Should I bring him in?"

"No, not today. I'll be there by nine tomorrow morning. What I want him to think is that I need his help, so don't arrest him. Just say I know he's an expert in firearms and survival and I'm a cop from Nashville who needs his help."

The next morning, I was sitting with Bryce in an interrogation room in Atlanta. He didn't know it, but Tim and the Atlanta DA and police chief were watching and listening via the camera in the room. All I had was a theory, and I hoped Bryce was arrogant enough he'd do or say something that would give me a reason to have the Atlanta PD search his house and car.

"Mr. Grady, I'm Detective Mason from Nashville, Tennessee, and I have a few questions I need answered. According to the chief, you're the man who can answer them."

He smiled, but it was an arrogant smile.

"Always happy to help the police with my expertise. What do you want to know."

"Your ex-wife might have been involved in a murder and I wanted to see if you might clear up a few loose ends."

I swear he grinned at those words for half a second, but the grin quickly changed to a frown.

"You think I had something to do with it?"

"No, nothing like that. It's just that I think she might be involved somehow, but there are some things that don't make sense. How she might be involved is one of them."

"Who'd she kill, that bitch she was sleeping with?"

"Well, I don't yet know if they had any type of relationship or even knew each other, but the victim was a woman."

"Doesn't surprise me. Lesbos are like that. They're all lovey-dovey and kissing and licking each other's pussies one minute, and then they're fighting over who gets the last piece of chocolate. Stupid bitches."

"Your ex-wife was a lesbian?"

"Yeah. Hooked herself up with some blonde about a year before our divorce. She never told me, but our daughter did."

"Is that why you divorced her?"

"I didn't. She divorced me. Said she couldn't live with me anymore because I had a girlfriend. She had one too, but I guess that was all right. I was willing to stay married and let her do all the pussy licking she wanted, but she wanted out. Between her lawyer and mine, we came to an agreement that I could live with, so I didn't contest it."

"Well, that clears up a few things. Do you know if she kept up the relationship with this other woman?"

"Yeah, went to her house once or twice a week from what my daughter says."

I leafed through the papers in my folder.

"Ah...here it is. Your wife had a carry permit. What gun did she carry?"

"I bought her a Glock 26. That's all the gun most women can handle."

"That's a nine millimeter, right?"

"Yeah. The nine mil is a decent ladies caliber, not real great at stopping a man, but it'll do the job if you put at least three rounds center mass. I carry a.man's gun, a.40 Glock. More capacity than a 1911, higher muzzle velocity, and it's fairly light weight. Stopping power is pretty good with hard ball rounds. It's fantastic with the hollow-point loads I carry. I left it at home or I'd let you see it.

I smiled to myself. Bryce might be taking my bait.

"That's a coincidence. That's the same pistol I carry when on duty. It's a sweet pistol, isn't it? I wish the department would let us carry loads like yours though. I had to take down a perp last year before he got either me or my partner. Got him in the shoulder, but he didn't go down. I had to put one dead center in his chest before he did. What loads do you use? I'd like to try some of those."

Bryce smiled.

"You can't buy them. I load my own. It's a high pressure powder charge behind a special bullet with sections that open up on impact. Developed the load and bullet myself. One of mine would have put a hole in his shoulder you could put your fist through. He'd have gone down fast and he wouldn't have gotten up again."

"Do you suppose your ex-wife still has her pistol? My victim was killed with a nine millimeter."

"I'm sure she does. She carried it in her purse every day. Said she'd hoped she'd get to use it some day to see what it did to a man. I tried to tell her she didn't want to do that unless her life was in danger, but she kept going on and on about how she wondered how fast a man would go down and how much damage the bullets would do. Looks to me like she decided to see what it would do to a woman instead."

I made some notes on my note pad, then told Bryce I needed to use the bathroom but that I'd be right back.

Tim was smiling when I walked into the observation room.

"He's an egotistical asshole, isn't he?"

"Yeah, that's what I got from the gun store owner too. What do you think? I never told him his ex-wife committed the murder, only that she might be involved but I didn't know how. He assumed the victim was a woman before I said anything about that. He kept trying to convince me his ex was the shooter even though I never gave him any evidence she might have been.

"He admitted to having a.40 caliber, and he admitted to reloading his cartridges. I know he had six bullets from Melissa's pistol that were undamaged. He could have loaded one of those bullets wrapped in paper into another cartridge and fired it in his own pistol. The fired case wouldn't have been ejected because there wouldn't be enough chamber pressure to cycle the action. That's why our techs didn't find a spent case at the murder scene. According to my expert, there would have probably been some unburned powder too. It all fits."

Tim scratched his head.

"It's pretty sketchy. I'll concede he had the skills to do what you say, and maybe a motive if he wanted to get back together with his ex, but nothing puts him anywhere near the crime scene. I doubt a judge would issue a warrant."

"If we could put him in Nashville that day, would that help?"

"That might be enough. Can you do that?"

"If the chief here can get a look at his credit card transactions, I might."

Bryce seemed to be pretty sharp, but he screwed up big time when he used a credit card to come to Nashville. His credit card was used three times on the day of Judy's murder -- once to rent a red SUV at the Atlanta airport at seven thirty on the morning of the murder, once at a fast food place at about noon in Nashville, and once at a gas station only three blocks from Judy's house at one forty.

The Atlanta DA said that should be enough, and went to ask a judge for the warrant. I went back to Bryce, bought him a cup of coffee, and told him he'd answered all my questions about my case, but that I had a couple personal questions as well.

Using the reason that I was getting nervous about the economy and wanted to be prepared in case the worst happened, I asked him what I should be doing. It was like turning on a faucet and not being able to shut it off again. He launched into what must have amounted to a condensed version of his survival course. Bryce talked on and on about stocking food, bug-out bags, and how to prepare for personal defense. I listened and took notes until the chief opened the door two hours later and said he had a call for me from Nashville. Once we were back in the observation room, he grinned.