Killer's Choice

'Yes, sir.'

'How can I help?' Boone wanted to know.

'I'd like to talk to you, Mr Boone. Can I see you sometime this afternoon?'

'Yes. Just a moment, let me check my appointments.' There was a pause on the line. 'Three o'clock all right?'

'Fine.'

'I can squeeze you in, I think. I don't mean to sound rude, Mr Kling, but I've got a session scheduled for three-thirty.'

'Not at all,' Kling said. 'I'll be there on the button.'

'Fine. Look forward to seeing you,' and Boone hung up.

Kling held the dead phone just a moment, and then he replaced it on its cradle. He looked at his watch, walked over to where Meyer Meyer was typing at the next desk and said, 'Come on, coolie. It's lunch time.'

'Already?' Meyer asked, looking up at the wall clock. 'My God!' he complained. 'All we ever do around here is fress. Fress, fress, fress.'

But he put on his jacket, and at the greasy spoon in one of the sidestreets near the squad, he ate Kling clear under the table—which was no small feat.

Peter Kronig was, like Cotton Hawes, a transfer. Unlike Hawes, he was not a transfer from one precinct to another. He had once been a police photographer but he had been transferred to the Police Laboratory to study under Lieutenant Sam Grossman who was his immediate superior and who probably ran the best damn lab in the United States. Actually, Kronig had worked pretty closely with the lab even when he'd been a photographer. It was, in fact, his deep interest in laboratory work which had accounted for the transfer. Lab technicians were difficult enough to come by, God knew, and when Grossman saw a man with real interest, he grabbed him—but fast.

Kronig had been grabbed, and he was learning that there was a good deal more to scientific detection than the mere developing of negatives or emulsification of prints. In the orderly white room which stretched for almost the entire first floor of the headquarters building on High Street downtown, he was learning that scientific detection meant dealing with detectives who were interested in homicide. He did not mind dealing with Steve Carella so much. Carella was a cop whom he'd seen around when he was still shooting stiffs. Carella was always good for a laugh, and Carella also happened to be a good cop who asked pertinent questions and who didn't let very much of importance get by him. But this fellow Hawes—Cotton Hawes, Jesus!—was showing every indication of being a difficult fellow to keep up with. Kronig did not like to run intellectual races. Hawes was as sharp as a plate glass splinter, and as cold as a plate of spumoni. It was the coldness that got Kronig. Even wearing his Detective's 3rd Grade shield, he'd have hated to meet Hawes in a dark alley.

'We can, as you know, determine the make of an unknown firearm as long as we have the bullet which was fired from it,' he said.

'That's why we're here,' Hawes said dryly.

'Yes,' Kronig said. 'Well, we examine the grooves on the bullet, the right- or left-hand direction of the grooves, their number, their width, and degree of twist of the spiral. That's what we do.'

'What about the gun that murdered Anne Boone?' Hawes asked.

'Yes. I was getting to that.'

'When?' Hawes asked. Carella glanced at him, but Hawes did not glance back.

'A land,' Kronig Went on, slightly ruffled, 'is the smooth surface between the spiral grooves in the pistol barrel. To make things simpler, most pistol barrels have an even number of grooves. For example, there are only eight automatics…'

'Eight automatics,' Hawes concluded, 'which have five lands. What about the murder weapon?'

'I was getting to that,' Kronig said. 'Most pistols in the .25 calibre group have six lands. If we have two pistols with the same number of lands, we can further differentiate between them by the direction of twist. To the left or to the right, do you understand?'

'It's perfectly clear,' Hawes said.

'Hardly any automatics have a left twist,' Kronig said.

'There are a few,' Hawes answered. 'Spanish .25s and .32s have a left twist.'

'Yes. Yes. And the Bayard and Colt .25 have a left twist.'

'Why are you hitting .25s so hard?' Carella asked.

'Because the sample bullet we examined had six lands. The twist was sixteen inches left. The groove diameter was .251 inches.'

'Get to it,' Hawes said.

'Well,' Kronig said, sighing, 'we went to our charts. We looked up grooves, direction of twist, twist in inches, groove diameter, and we came up with the make and calibre of the gun that fired that bullet.'

'Which was?'

'A Colt .25 automatic.'

'Fill us in, Pete,' Carella said.

'Not much to tell. You know .25s. A small gun. Weighs thirteen ounces and has an overall length of four and a half inches. The barrel length is two inches. Magazine capacity, six cartridges. You find them in either blued or nickelled finishes. They've got pearl, ivory, or walnut stocks. They shoot like bastards, and they can kill as dead as a .45.'

'A small gun,' Carella said.

'And a light one,' Hawes added. 'Light enough for a man to keep in his side pocket. Light enough for a woman to carry in her purse.'

'Not a woman's gun especially, is it, Pete?' Carella asked.

'Not necessarily, Steve,' Kronig said. 'It could be, but not necessarily. I'd say it's six of one and a half-dozen of the other. Not like a .45. You know, not many women will lug a .45.'

'Either a man or a woman,' Carella said dismally.

'Mmm,' Kronig said, nodding. He grinned at Carella and added, 'We've certainly narrowed it down for you, huh?'

In the street outside the headquarters building, Carella said, 'Deal much with the lab before, Hawes?'

'A little,' Hawes said.

'What was it? Didn't you take to Pete?'

'He was fine. Why?'

'You seemed P.O.'d about something.'

'Only his deadly lecture on elementary ballistics,' Hawes said.

'That's his job.'

'His job was to tell us what make and calibre gun killed Anne Boone. I'm not interested in the processes which lead to his conclusions. Our job is to get a murderer, not listen to a glorified report on laboratory technique.'

'It doesn't hurt to know these things,' Carella said.

'Why? Do you plan on becoming a lab cop?'

'Nope. But if you can appreciate another man's job, you won't ask the impossible of him.'

'That's a generous attitude,' Hawes said. 'I like to do things fast.'

'Sometimes you can't handle homicides fast. We now know that a .25 was used. That's not such a popular calibre. The thieves we deal with seem to favour .32s and .38s. Was it that way at the 30th?'

'Just about.'

'So we've got something to look for in the M.O. file. Maybe Pete gave you a lecture, but I didn't mind it. I sort of enjoyed it.'

'To each his own,' Hawes said flatly.

'Sure. You handle many homicide cases before your transfer, Hawes?'

'Not many.'

'Not many?'

'We didn't have many homicides at the 30th.'

'No?'

'No.'

'How many?'

'What are you getting at, Carella?'

'I'm just curious.'

'I'm 'way ahead of you.'

'Are you?'

'Yes. You know damn well what kind of a precinct the 30th was. Rich people. Big, fancy apartment houses with doormen. Burglary was our most frequent crime. And street stickups. And attempted and realized suicides. And some high-class prostitution. But not many homicides.'

'How many?'

'I won't count the ones where a burglar panicked and killed, and where we grabbed him almost at the scene. I'll only count the real homicides. Where we had to work.'

'Sure,' Carella said. 'How many?'

'Six.'

'A week?'

'No.'

'What then? A month?'

'I worked out of the 30th squad for four years. We had six homicides in all that time.'