Chapter 5

Here is the deal Seth. I found a 9 mm in your room at your dad's house. We also found one at your girlfriends house. It really isn't much of a gun. Of course it don't take much of a gun at close range. Now we got a shell casing from the scene and also the slug in Burt. We can't do a ballistic check on the slug here. That went to the state crime lab last night. But what we can do is an extractor mark comparison. It is almost as good as the expert's testimony. So we are going to do one of those on both pistols.

"Now Wilson the lab geek has a toy called a comparison microscope. He can look at a picture of the casing from the crime scene and ones from the two guns. Wilson can't put either of you in prison for life cause he is not a court certified expert, but he is good enough for me to be sure it was one of you."

"So here is your only chance to help yourself. If you tell your story before he makes that comparison, you got a shot to help yourself. If he says one of those two samples are a match. We just toss one of you in a cell and forget you while we wait for the ballistics match from the State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab. At that time one you is a cooked bird."

"So Seth is there anything you want to tell me?" I asked.

"Louise told me that Bert was a mean son of a bitch. He hit her and the kids plenty of times. I went to talk to him at his shop, but he was out by the highway just sitting there waiting for a call. I went up to talk to him and he grabbed me through the open window and we struggled the gun just went off," Seth said.

Since I had the recorder running I had captured it all. "So why did you go to talk to him?" I asked. "What did you expect to get from it?"

"I told him I loved Louise and she loved me. I wanted him to give her a divorce," Seth explained.

"Why did you feel like you needed a gun?" I asked.

"Louise told me how violent he could be. I just wanted to scare him with it, if he came at me. When he grabbed me through the window it just went off," he said.

"Now I want you to remember this is your last chance to help yourself. Did Louise Mathews suggest you carry a weapon with you to talk to her husband?" I asked.

"No she didn't. She just said I should be very careful. That Burt would probably get violent. So I was expecting it, but once he saw the gun I didn't think he would jump me. I guess he was just crazy jealous," Seth explained.

I had seen Louise Matthews and I couldn't see what would make men want to fight and die for her. There was just no accounting for men, I supposed.

"Okay Seth, you can go back to your cell," I explained.

"Well?" Eddie Simpson said in my office three hours later. "You should be proud. You closed a cold homicide case four days after taking it over. I always knew you understood the criminal mind. You think just like them," he said but it somehow didn't come out a compliment.

"So tell me how you let that idiot keep his job. The connection was so obvious once I looked past that random bullshit," I explained.

"He kept his job because he was like family or something," Eddie said. "You have no idea how much I hated the politics of this department. It's a good thing you are a Libertarian they don't have a machine yet," he said.

"Eddie, you were right to want to go back to the Detective job. You were a lousy politician," I said.

"Yeah I know," he said. "Anyway let's go to the cop out tonight to celebrate."

"Come to the Englishman's pub, and I'll buy you a beer," I said.

"I haven't been there yet. I've been meaning to try it, so you have a deal. I warn you I am going to bring friends," he said.

"As long as they are cops I'll pay," I said. "Just no friend of friends just to get a free beer. Eddie be sure you invite Osborn. She is going to be a hell of a detective after she spends a year or two on the road."

"Yeah but the lure of more money and big city lights will take her away, I'm afraid." he said.

"Yeah, that might be the case," I said. Wait till it happens, I told myself. "Before that happens she might find a man, and not want to leave no matter what the drawing card."

It was afternoon of the same day when I opened the second most recent case of homicide. A 68 year old man with dementia. It could have been suicide, but the medical examiner called it a case of death by unexplained cause.

Our County was so small we had no medical examiner. The autopsy was done at the University Hospital at Abbottsville. Like it or not we were already in bed with the University Forensic Departments. The pathologist's office, within the medical school, was one of them.

"You have an appointment with Dr. Elliot at 3 PM," West said.

"Thanks Mrs. West, if I leave now I can just make it. Do we have a map of the campus?" I asked.

"To be honest I have no idea. No one has ever visited down there that I know about," Mrs. West said.

"Well find out if Simpson is free and that Deputy Osborn. If either or both can make the trip that would be nice," I explained. "Also see if it is possible to drop into visit their forensic labs while we are there. It couldn't hurt to meet some new people."

"No indeed Sheriff, it certainly couldn't hurt," she said.