“Well, this time they did, but it wasn’t their fault. The rifling didn’t match, that’s true, but there was a reason. See, the. 380 would have gotten grooved when it went down the barrel, just the way it was supposed to. But the. 32 would have been too small for the Walther’s barrel. It just slipped on through without getting grooved.”
Fukida leaned back and nodded. “You’ve really thought this through.”
John was transparently pleased at the closest thing to a compliment he’d gotten from his old superior. “Thanks, Teddy. It makes sense if you think about it. Doc here doesn’t think so, though.”
Gideon hadn’t realized his doubts were that apparent. John was getting to be as good as Julie at reading his face-a sobering thought. “No,” he said, “what you’re saying makes a whole lot of sense. I’m just wondering why the crime lab was so off-base. Why didn’t they come to the same conclusion?”
“Simple,” John said. “First of all, this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day of the week. Second, all they had to go on were the two bullets. They didn’t know about the cartridge case. It was never forwarded to Honolulu. And without that, there’s no way they’d come up with what really happened. I wouldn’t have, either.”
“We didn’t forward-?” Fukida leaned over, snatched the folder back from John, leafed furiously through the three pages, and threw it back down with a groan. “It’s true. They never got it. I can’t believe it.” He tore off his cap and tossed it onto the desk as well.
“Ah, these things happen,” John said kindly.
Gideon knew that they did indeed, and a great deal more often than most people realized. Some clerk or officer down the line, reasoning that Ballistics’ job was to examine bullets and weapons, had decided, probably without giving it any conscious thought, that cartridge cases, being neither bullets nor weapons, were not to be sent on to the ballistics lab. Many an otherwise solid prosecution had fallen apart as the result of similar innocent, reasonable errors of judgment and omission.
“Not on my watch, they don’t,” Fukida said grimly. He stood and went to the window. Leaning on the sill, he watched a white airliner lift off over the lava fields, wheel overhead, almost directly over the police station, and head for Honolulu. “You sure had it right, Johnny,” he said, shaking his head. “This whole thing has been a royal screw-up right from the get-go.”
“But it’s not like it’s your fault, Ted,” John said. “You weren’t even on the case.”
An awkward period of silence followed while Fukida continued to stare blindly out the window. “So,” he said quietly, “the hitmen were bullshit after all. So who killed Magnus?”
“Gotta be Torkel,” John said. “Why else would he run? Why else would he change his identity? Besides which, the gun was in his house.”
“It was Dagmar’s house, too,” Fukida said. “She must have known where the gun was. And anyway, couldn’t any of them-Axel, Inge, the whole bunch-have gotten to it if they wanted to?”
“Yeah, but ‘any of them’ didn’t secretly take off in the middle of the night and run for it. ‘Any of them’ didn’t change identities with his brother. That’s not something you do-give up your whole life, give up who you are-unless you’ve got a hell of a reason for it. Nah, Torkel’s our man.”
Gideon saw it that way, too. “And the others have been covering for him ever since-to protect him.” A moment later he added: “And their inheritances.”
“And themselves,” said Fukida. “If even half of this is true-”
“It’s true,” John said.
“-they committed a bookful of crimes. Add that to what they told me today-”
“Yeah, but I wonder if any of that’s true,” John muttered.
“Oh, yeah, some of it is, all right. They told me exactly what the accelerants were and where they were placed. It squared right down the line with the arson report.”
“And the garlic-chopper,” Gideon added. “That fits the facts, too. A lot of other things wouldn’t have.”
“Besides which, who could make up something like that?”
“It looks like the only thing that slipped their minds was who actually killed Magnus,” John said wryly.
“You don’t suppose it’s possible that they honestly didn’t know?” Gideon wondered aloud. “That Torkel hoodwinked them, too?” He looked at their expressions. “No, I guess not.”
“Get real,” John said.
“All right, then, isn’t it possible that Torkel and Dagmar together hoodwinked the rest of them? If the two of them came up with the hitmen story, then got on the phone to the nieces and nephews, how would any of them know any better?”
“Well, now, that’s possible,” John said.
“That old lady, she’s a piece of work,” Fukida said almost admiringly. “One way or another, she’s in it up to her hips. I think I’m gonna go have another talk with her tomorrow.”
“Teddy, I was planning to talk to her tomorrow morning, too,” John said. “Can I go with you? I know her pretty well. Maybe I could help.”
“I thought you weren’t going to-” Gideon began.
“That was then. This is now. I’m not crazy about being jerked around either.”
“Sure, you can come,” Fukida said. “That’d be good. You’re at the Outrigger? I’ll pick you up at a quarter to nine. I hope you weren’t thinking of coming, Gideon. I’d have to say no to that.”
“No, sir, count me out. I’m on vacation.”
Fukida laughed. “That’s right, screw everything up for everybody else, then opt out and say you’re on vacation. Very nice.”
“Always happy to be of help.”
Fukida played a quick rat-tat-tat on his thighs and reached for the phone. “Okey-doke, I’m gonna get a warrant.”
“What for?” John said. “You don’t need a warrant to talk to-”
“Not for Dagmar. A search warrant. For the Big House. I thought I’d see if that old Walther just might still be around.”
“You think they’d have kept it all these years?” Gideon asked doubtfully.
“Probably not, but it can’t hurt to look. I’m gonna send a couple of guys out right now.”
“Right now?” John said. “You can get a warrant just like that?”
“Watch me,” Fukida said and punched a button on his phone.
SEVENTEEN
“Don’t be greedy, Einar,” Dagmar said absently, watching the largest of the sea turtles nudge its fellows aside in pursuit of a fast-sinking gobbet of bran-raisin muffin. “You’ve had your share.”
As had they all. This was an unscheduled feeding, the result of an abundance of leftovers from the pastry basket she’d ordered when that horde of nephews and nieces had unexpectedly descended on her, exuding concern for her welfare and consideration for her feelings.
God damn them to hell.
For once, the lovely cove and her old friends the green turtles had failed to work their magic. Her mind, far from being calmed, strummed like tightened wire with what seemed like a hundred emotions: frustration, shame, disgust with her spineless, selfish family-so strikingly different from her own generation-anger at being exploited by them, anger at being a weak old woman…
At first, the meeting had gone as well as could have been expected. Of course, there had been the predictable eruptions from the weak ones-Hedwig and Axel-on hearing that she’d gone to Fukida. How could she have taken it upon herself to do such a thing? What would happen to them now? Would they all go to jail? What did this mean for their inheritances? Would everything now go to the Swedish Seamen’s Home?
But Felix, all puffed up with noisy self-importance like the lawyer he was, had overridden and pacified them. If they thought about it for a moment, they would see that Auntie Dagmar had done nothing so terrible. Statutes of limitation made it unlikely that the police would find it worth their while to reopen the investigation or begin a new one. As to the Swedish Seamen’s Home, there was little to fear, due to the delightful legal principle known as adverse possession: Once property had been held without challenge for a prescribed period of time, the courts would frown upon the bringing of new suits. And, as fortunately happened to be the case, that period of time was almost always considered to be… ten years. So in order to challenge the Torkelssons’ right to their land, the Seamen’s Home would have to prove-not merely assert-intent to defraud. That they might try to do so was of course possible, but given the passage of a decade, the imponderables of proving anything in court, and the enormous hassle and legal costs of mounting such a suit, Felix would be very surprised if it were to come to anything.