Rita, The Computer Forensics Tech

Rita clicked a few keys and the picture changed.

"I backed up four hundred frames, that's about sixteen seconds, and started looking again, and this is what I found. Do you see it?"

I stared at the picture for almost a minute before I shook my head.

"No, it looks the same to me."

Rita used her mouse to move the pointer to a small patch just in front of where Mr. Anderson had fallen.

"See this little puff of dirt? I think that's where the first shot landed. Your shooter fired once and missed low, so he raised his aiming point and fired again. It was the second shot that killed your victim.

"There's something else too. Look at where the other people in the area are when that first shot hit the ground."

One would think that since I hadn't come up with a good motive for anyone to kill Mr. Anderson, I'd have been looking at other possibilities, but I'd never worked a case before where the victim wasn't the intended victim. There, in the direct line of fire from the clump of trees and bushes was a man on a horse and I knew from the other session with Rita that that man was Mr. Nelson. The little spray of dirt was just off to the right of both the rider and Mr. Anderson.

"You think the shooter was aiming for that man on the horse?"

Rita nodded.

"I think it's a possibility. If you watch the smoke, it's drifting off to the right pretty fast and that means there was a relatively stiff breeze blowing that day. I think it was that breeze that caused the shooter to miss the first shot.

"If you watch frame by frame from that point, you'll see that the man on the other side of your victim fired his rifle just before the victim was hit by the bullet. It looks to me like that scared the horse because the horse jumps off to the left then. If the shooter fired the bullet right at that time, he'd have missed the man on the horse and hit your victim."

I smiled at Rita.

"Rita, I owe you big time for this. I kept you over your regular shift again. I promise I'll make it up to you when this is all over. Thanks."

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The next morning I called Mr. Nelson and asked him if he'd had any problems with anybody recently. He didn't answer me at first, but when he did, I thought I had a new suspect.

"Detective, there was only one incident and it was in our group about a month ago. We had this guy who told another member he wanted to join. That member asked me, and I said to have him come to the monthly meeting so we could meet him.

"Well, this guy shows up in a Union Cavalry officer's uniform complete with a saber, a Colt Dragoon in a holster, one hell of a big knife on his belt, and a Sharps Carbine. I didn't think too much about it at the time. Some people get carried away with the hobby and I thought that's just what it was.

"I took him aside after the meeting and explained the national organization's rules for any reenactment group that is a member. I told him since there was only one officer in our group and that officer was me, he'd have to wear the standard Union Infantry uniform. I told him he couldn't wear a revolver because infantry troops didn't carry revolvers and that they carried a Springfield and not a Sharps, and no one in the group was allowed to carry a visible knife.

"He seemed a little upset by that, but said he still wanted to join. That weekend we were having a practice drill, so I had him fill out our standard membership form and gave him the manual of arms for the Springfield rifle and told him he could start by learning that and that I'd test him at the drill.

"Well, at the practice drill, he showed up dressed the same way and carrying the same weapons. We never wear our uniforms for a practice drill. They cost too much to risk tearing them or getting them filthy. When I told him he couldn't drill until he was dressed appropriately, he got mad. He said he'd studied the Civil War and knew more about it than I did. He claimed that all units had more than one officer and if I wouldn't allow him to be an officer it was because I didn't want him to show the group that he'd be a better officer than me.

"Well, that went on for another five minutes, five minutes of him telling me I didn't know what I was talking about and five minutes of me explaining to him he'd have to abide by the national organization's rules or he couldn't join. After that, he threw the pamphlet I'd given him on the manual of arms for the Springfield rifle at me and said he was an expert so he already knew his way around a rifle.

"The last straw was when he opened his cartridge box and showed me twenty rounds, complete with bullets, and challenged anyone in the group to a target match right there on our practice field. That's something we never allow, any live rounds at any drill, parade or anywhere else except a gun range.

"I finally told him we couldn't let him join and wished him well. He was still muttering to himself when he walked away, but right before he got into his truck, he yelled that we'd all be sorry we kicked him out.

"At the time, I just passed it off as bravado. You think maybe he killed Mr. Anderson to get back at us?"

In light of what I'd just heard, this guy went to the top of my list. He'd made a public threat against the group, but his real problem was with Mr. Nelson. I thought Rita might be right about Mr. Nelson being the real target, but I couldn't tell him that.

"I don't know yet, but if he made that threat, it's possible. Did you happen to get his name?"

Mr. Nelson said he still had the man's application but it was at home. He said he'd ask his wife to look in his papers and when she found it, he'd call me back.

It took Mr. Nelson all of ten minutes.

"Detective Mason, the man who made the threat was Randall Forbes. He listed his address as 223 East Chapin Road in Henderson. He didn't write down a phone number on his application."

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My inquiry to NCIC about Randall Forbes produced absolutely nothing. The Tennessee DMV had a license number with a name and address that matched what Mr. Nelson had given me, but that was all. Records didn't have a birth certificate or any other information about him either.

It was a little after ten when I pulled up at the small house about ten miles outside the city limits of Henderson. There was a name painted on the mailbox at the end of the drive and that name was Randall Forbes. I didn't get an answer when I knocked on the front door and was starting to knock again when I heard a gunshot from the back of the house.

Gunshots usually mean trouble, so I pulled my Sig from my belt and walked slowly around to the back of the house.

When I peered around the corner of the house, what I saw was a picnic table with a man sitting there and sighting down the barrel of a rifle. Hanging from his belt was a Bowie knife that looked about eighteen inches long. Now was not the time for polite introductions.

I yelled, "Police. Put down your weapon and put your hands in the air."

The man did as I asked so I kept him covered with my Sig and walked up behind him.

"Are you Randall Forbes?"

The man nodded.

"Yeah, that's me. What the hell's going on? Somebody call you on me? All I was doing was shooting my Sharps here. Done it a hundred times. Never bothered anybody before."

I didn't want to give him any indication about why I was really there, but I didn't trust him. I put the Sig back in my holster, but I didn't fasten the strap.

"You can put your hands down now. I'm Detective Mason of the Nashville Police Department. I'm investigating a death on a movie set about the Civil War. I was told you're somewhat of an expert on the Civil War and I thought maybe you could help me out. When I heard the gunshot...well, in Nashville gunshots are always a bad thing. I didn't know who you were or what you were doing and I didn't want to take the time to explain, not while you had a gun in your hands."

Mr. Forbes smiled.

"No problem. It must seem weird that I'm out here shooting this early, but I work third shift. I can't sleep when I get home, so about once a week, I do some target shooting. Built my own range for that. I have targets all the way out to five hundred yards. A Sharps can shoot that far. That's why a lot of Civil War snipers used a Sharps. I'm gonna get me a deer with my Sharps this season.

"I read about that guy getting killed on that movie set. My bet is one of those reenactors forgot he had a ball in one of his powder tubes and shot the guy. Wouldn't surprise me. From what I know of them, they talk a good game, but they're really just acting out what they think they'd have done back then. They don't really know like I do."

I shook my head.

"No, I know he wasn't shot by a rifle. The bullet the coroner recovered was a forty-four caliber bullet. My forensics guy said all the rifles used were bigger than that. He's not sure where a forty-four caliber bullet would have come from."

Randall grinned.

"He's not much of a gun guy then. All the revolvers used by both the Union and the Confederate armies were forty-four caliber. If the guy was killed with a forty-four, it had to come from one of those revolvers. Actually, they were pretty common back then. They were only issued to officers, but a lot of the infantry had them too. Some bought their own, other's took them off bodies on the battlefield. Six shots before reloading is a lot better than one when you're close to the enemy.

My phone buzzed then. The number was the number for the Crime Lab. I told Mr. Forbes I had to take the call because it was from my wife, and then walked away far enough he couldn't hear the conversation.

It was Christy and she'd found a partial print on one of the cartridge cases and an almost full print on the other. She'd sent both to NCIC and was waiting on an answer. She'd swabbed them for DNA but wouldn't know if she'd found any for another day or two.

When I went back to the picnic table, I shook my head.

"My wife couldn't find her glasses. That's all it was. I had to remind her that she always takes them off in the kitchen. She looked there and found them. Now, we were talking about Civil War revolvers."

Mr. Forbes grinned.

"Know what you mean about wives. I was married once. Got rid of her and got me a Colt Dragoon and a Remington New Army instead. A lot easier to live with.

"They're both reproductions because the originals cost too much and some of them aren't really safe to shoot. Don't let anybody tell you they weren't good sidearms though. Either one will put a man on the ground with one shot. Most of the gunfighters in the Old West learned how to shoot a revolver during the Civil War. That's probably what happened to the guy. Some officer wasn't watching where he was pointing his revolver and killed the guy."

Mr. Forbes was being very forthcoming with information, too forthcoming considering that I hadn't asked him a question yet. I was pretty sure he was following the strategy I'd seen too many times before. He was trying to fit the evidence he thought I had into a scenario that didn't involve him. It was also interesting that he used the word officer when giving me his opinion about what had happened. Not a minute before, he'd told me enlisted men carried revolvers too. What he was trying to do was point me in the direction of Mr. Nelson.

I was convinced Mr. Forbes was my shooter because of how much he wanted to talk and that slip about officers. I probably wasn't going to get much more out of him until I could get him in an interrogation room, but gut feeling isn't considered reasonable cause so I couldn't arrest him right then. I couldn't just leave though. I'd told him I had some questions for him and if I didn't ask any, he might figure out why I was really there.

"Well, that's information I didn't have before and it fits with the evidence I have, so I expect you might be right. I just figured that people who did reenactments would be more careful than that. I mean, when I was at the academy, they drilled us on gun safety every day.

Mr. Forbes sneered then.

"That's because you cops carry live ammo and you're always cocked and locked. One mistake and somebody gets hurt. Those play soldiers claim that they never carry live rounds so they're always safe. They're like little boys running around with cap guns. Well, the truth is, the only safe gun is a gun locked in a safe. Treat it any other way, and what happened to that guy is what happens.

"Somebody forgets he was target shooting the weekend before and didn't fire that last round. Then, he's out there playing soldier with what he thinks is an unloaded gun and when he fires that last load, somebody gets killed. What those guys need is somebody who understands what the guns of that time can really do to teach them what gun safety is all about.

"From what I've seen of them, they don't know much about Civil War battle tactics either. Hell, they stop shooting as soon as they get close enough to really see each other. When they're farther apart, they make this big show about aiming before they fire. It wasn't like that. There was so much smoke because of the black powder all they did was point their weapons in the general direction of the other army and pull the trigger. It was all about the number of minié balls going down range, not how accurate they were."

I asked if he'd watched a re-enactment and he nodded.

"Yeah, I went to one and thought I'd join up, but after I saw what they did, I decided they wouldn't listen to anything I had to say."

Those last statements only confirmed to me that I was probably looking my killer in the eyes. I thanked Mr. Forbes for the information and asked if I could get back to him if I had more questions. He said he'd be glad to help if he could. I left then, but as I was walking to my car, I wrote down the make, model, and license number of the truck parked in his drive. I was going to put a couple unmarked cars on his tail in hopes of getting his fingerprints off something he'd touched. If I was lucky, I'd get his DNA that way as well. I also wanted to make sure if Mr. Forbes decided to run, we'd know and could follow him.

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When I got back to the station, I walked down to see if Christy had gotten any results back on the prints. She grinned.

"Sure did. They had a match to one print and are about ninety-five percent sure about the partial. They belong to a man named Kendell Forest. I looked him up and he's not a nice guy. He has a Class C felony conviction in Kentucky for beating up his wife and was sentenced to five years in prison for it. He got out in two and is technically on parole, but he hasn't shown up to his meetings and there's a Kentucky warrant out for his arrest. I have his picture too.

"There's more. I know how important this case is, so I asked if we could just drive the DNA samples over to the TBI lab instead of sending them through the mail. I took them over myself and the lab said they knew I needed the results as fast as they could get them so they'd put them ahead of everything else they had. I should have any results by tonight."

The booking picture of Kendell Forest was Mr. Forbes just a few years younger. An hour later, I had three unmarked cars watching Mr. Forbe's house and ready to follow him wherever he went. They were also aware that he was a convicted felon and he was probably armed. They weren't to apprehend him. All they were to do was watch what he did and if he dropped anything along the way to collect it as evidence and bring it back to the station.

I also sent out a "be on the lookout" for his truck along with his booking picture with the same instructions -- don't stop, just observe and collect anything he might drop along the way.

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Sometimes, no matter how well you plan, things happen that you can't anticipate. Usually what happens screws up your plan. In this case it made things happen faster than I'd hoped.

A uniform from the Henderson PD was taking his lunch break at about 12:30. As he drove into the parking lot of a Denny's, he saw a pickup truck that matched the description I'd sent out with my BOLO. When he checked the license number it was the same as on the BOLO. He parked on the other side of the lot and went inside.

He saw Mr. Forbes sitting at a table by himself and it looked like he was almost done eating. When the waitress seated him and asked what he wanted to order, he said just a cup of coffee and then asked her if she cleared tables too.

She said she did, so he said, "That man in the blue shirt by himself? When he finishes, I want you to wait until he leaves the building and then get a box and a garbage bag. Put the garbage bag inside the box and then pick up everything on that table and put it in the garbage bag. It's important that you don't touch anything so use a napkin or a pair of gloves. Then close up the garbage bag and bring the box to me."

By 1:30, that box of plates, silverware, and even the ketchup and mustard containers were on Christy's table and she was dusting them for prints. Two hours later, she had four complete prints and was comparing them to the print card from NCIC and the prints she'd lifted from the cartridge cases. She called me once she'd matched two.

"Mack, the guy who made these prints is Kendell Forest and he's your shooter. I swabbed the fork and glass for DNA too, and I'm going to drive the swabs over to the TBI lab. They know it's coming and they're going to work on it all night. They said you should have results by about noon tomorrow.

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The outstanding Kentucky warrant was enough for me to detain Mr. Forbes until the DNA test proved he was Kendell Forest. The prints were enough for me to arrest him for the murder of Mr. Anderson. When I tracked down a judge, the prints were also enough for me to get a search warrant for his house and truck. I took two uniforms with me and arrested him and served the search warrant when he came out of his house at about ten that night to go to work.

I let Mr. Forbes sit in a jail cell all night so he could think. I was sure he'd try to come up with an explanation of why he wasn't Kendell Forest. I wanted him to come up with several explanations. He'd ultimately get them mixed up and trap himself.

I went back to the house to see what they were finding and it was better than I expected. They found the Ruger stashed in the back of a closet in the bedroom. It had a scope mounted on it and still had two cartridges in the rotary magazine. The bullets in those cartridges looked identical to the bullet from Mr. Anderson.

In the garage, they found a bullet mold and a lead pot along with a dozen of the same cast bullets on a bench on one wall. On another bench was a loading press with dies for forty-four magnum cartridges, more of the same bullets, and a supply of powder and primers.

The techs also found a laptop computer on the kitchen table. I figured that laptop might have some interesting stuff once Rita had gotten it open.

It was midnight when the techs finished the search and one before everything was logged into the evidence room. I stopped at a Burger King on my way home for the dinner I'd missed and the breakfast I figured I was going to miss.

I didn't miss breakfast though. I'd set my alarm for eight, but after years of waking up at six-thirty, my brain has it's own idea about what time I should wake up. I stopped by the same Burger King on my way to the station and was sitting at my desk at seven thirty after making sure that Jack had the Ruger and some of the loaded rounds as well as the empty cases from the set, and that Rita had the laptop.

At about nine, Jack called me and said he was positive the bullet that killed Mr. Edwards had been fired from the Ruger. He'd fired three of the rounds the techs found at Mr. Forbes' garage and they matched the bullet from Mr. Anderson. He'd also matched the microscopic impressions on the case head and primers of the two empty cartridges the techs found on the set to the bolt face and firing pin of the Ruger.