CSI09 - In Extremis, page 11
part #9 of Crime Scene Investigation Series
which means we can’t reconstruct the shooting,” Catherine went on. “So you’d recommend we reprioritize our resources, put the Toledano shooting on the back burner, and focus our efforts on the trajectory-distance determinations at the campsite? Grissom asked. Catherine hesitated, and then said firmly: “Yes, I would.” “And I agree,” Brass added. Grissom turned and stared curiously at the still-gloomy LVPD captain. “Really? Since when?” “A hunter or a poacher or an assassin aims at a deer, kills it, and with the same bullet manages to hit and kill a local mob boss a guy who has a whole lot more enemies than friends, and who happens to be wandering around a mountaintop, in the middle of the night, with a nightscoped and silenced rifle,” Brass replied. “I told you earlier that the chances of something like that actually happening in real life seemed extremely unlikely, to put it mildly.” “Yes, you did,” Grissom said. “Well, I haven’t changed my opinion on that,” Brass said. “But the problem is, the odds of an assassin waiting around for a jumpy little deer to put itself in the line of fire of his target just so he can make the hit look accidental, have to be astronomical, mostly because it doesn’t even begin to make sense. What kind of idiot would even think about trying to make something like that work?” “No shooter I’ve ever heard of,” Catherine agreed, “and God knows we’ve run across some really dumb ones.” Grissom nodded silently in agreement. “And we know the bullet that killed Toledano hit a deer first, and that deer was lying right in the line of fire, relative to that casing location, so what can I say?” Brass shrugged. “Given all that, it seems to me a hunting accident makes a whole lot more sense than some kind of miracle-working assassin.” “What are you doing, Jim?” Grissom asked. “Standing up for the evidence now, instead of your cop gut?” “I’m listening to what the evidence is telling me,” Brass grudgingly replied. “You have a problem with that?” “Yes, I do,” Grissom said evenly, “because my forensic gut is telling me that there’s something very wrong going on around here.”10
VIKTOR MIALKOVSKY WATCHED THE WATER pour off the narrow overhead ledge a few inches in front of his eyes with a sense of vague curiosity that might have led a casual observer to think he didn’t care how long it would take for the rain to stop which wasn’t true at all. He certainly did care, for reasons that had everything to do with the dwindling number of hours before daybreak, when his chances of being observed during his escape down the mountain would increase dramatically. But the weather was something a man like Mialkovsky had long ago learned to accept for what it was: an independent variable that he could do little or nothing to change. What he could change, however, was his capacity to adapt his surroundings to maximize his chances of success. In this particular case, change had necessitated two separate trips in the raging downpour to retrieve the portion of equipment and supplies he’d earlier deemed expendable to his escape. Forced to rely on his own biological night vision, such as it was, to negotiate the rugged pathway back to his cache points, Mialkovsky had gotten lost twice, and had to resort to his compass and the distant and barely visible glow of the Las Vegas lights to realign himself. But that had turned out to be a good thing, because in working his way back to his ledge hideout, he’d located a small cave that had obviously once served as a den for a presumably very small bear. The width ranged from three to five feet, the height barely two at the entrance, but rising up to as much as six at the visibly clawed out hollow in the back that was a good twelve feet from the entrance. All told, the irregular doglegged space really more an expansive crevice created by some long-ago landslide of granite slabs and boulders than an actual cave served the hunter-killer’s needs perfectly. It allowed him to strip down in the chilled night air, dry off, change into his one set of dry clothes, and then build a small fire with a handful of the Special Ops fuel sticks that produced a maximum of heat with a minimum of CO2 discharge
which, in turn, allowed him to prepare a perfectly satisfying meal with the packs of freeze-dried trail food he’d brought along in his supply kit. An hour later, he was back into his somewhat drier desert-camouflage Ghillie suit with a full stomach and all of his gear and supplies repacked for a hasty recaching and escape stretched out across the irregular crevice floor on some moderately comfortable pine branches, watching for approaching lights, and waiting for the rain to stop so he could begin his descent. All things considered, Mialkovsky was reasonably satisfied with his situation. The only thing that bothered him was a lack of answers to some very basic questions, such as: Who was the Hispanic male who had shown up at his scene at such a goddamned inopportune moment? What was that unknown element doing on this mountaintop with an old Vietnam Warera nightscope? When would the storm break? Where would the helicopters go when it did? Why had the cops at the campsite opened up on the Hispanic with such a massive barrage of gunfire? Finally, how would the investigation of that crime scene impact the evaluation of his own carefully rigged scene? But the thing that Mialkovsky wanted to know more than anything else was what Gil Grissom and his team were up to, right now, with God-only-knew what collected evidence, down at the LVPD crime lab.11
FIREARMS EXAMINER BOBBY DAWSON and DNA expert Wendy Simms both looked up when Gil Grissom walked purposefully into the traditionally misnamed ballistics comparison lab. “Hi, boss,” Bobby said, pulling his stool aside from the comparison scope so that Grissom could get a good view of the evidence. Two expended brass cartridge cases were brightly visible under the reflecting lights of the dual stage mounts. “I was just getting ready to set the bullet from the Toledano shooting up on the scope. Sorry it’s taking so long, but we had to be real careful in peeling back those mushroomed edges to get at the tissue; and I wanted to do that first, with Wendy here, so that she could get working on the ID.” “Which is great,” the DNA technician said, “because it gave me plenty of time to set up some other tests while the MALDI was warming up.” “Yes, David told me about your results,” Grissom said. “He did?” A brief look of disappointment flashed across Wendy’s pretty face as she glanced over Grissom’s shoulder and saw Hodges at his workstation, grinning. “Yes, and I want you to know that I really appreciate your effort in getting the results out so quickly,” Grissom said, oblivious to the young tech’s brief emotional response. “You may have enabled us to reprioritize our resources over to another case that’s turning out to be far more consequential.” “Oh, well, uh
good, I’m glad I was able to help.” “You’ll help us a lot more if you can take a quick look at all of those grid trace evidence samples and blood swabs Catherine collected from the cab and bed of the pickup,” Grissom added. “I’m specifically interested in knowing if there’s even the slightest trace of cocaine anywhere in or on that truck
and if there’s any other blood in the truck that didn’t come from our dead subject.” “Sure, of course,” Wendy said, managing a reasonable facsimile of a cheerful smile. “I’ll get right on it.” She hurried out the door of the ballistics room in the direction of her DNA lab, pausing only briefly to give Hodges a dirty look. Bobby Dawson, a hardened veteran of the internecine relationships and conflicts that seemed to intermittently plague the LVPD crime lab, had grimly observed the entire Wendy-and-David scene without comment. “I’m about ready to compare the bullet from Toledano and the one I test-fired through the rifle found in that pickup,” he said calmly. “But before I do that, I want to tell you a few things about that cartridge case you found on the Sheep Range.” “Actually, you may want to put that Toledano bullet comparison off until sometime later,” Grissom suggested. “David said you’d already eliminated that casing as not coming from the rifle we found in the truck.” “Quite the town crier, isn’t he?” Bobby responded, rolling his eyes. He’d expected nothing less from the self-aggrandizing trace expert once he’d heard what happened with Wendy’s preliminary analysis results; but then, too, he was far less interested in sucking up to Grissom than either of the two younger lab techs. “I’m sure he was just trying to be efficient, on behalf of the lab in general,” Grissom offered, finally picking up on the not-so-subtle undertones. “Don’t doubt it for a minute,” Bobby said, smiling and shrugging his shoulders agreeably. “But did he tell you what I discovered about that particular cartridge?” “Uh, no, actually, he didn’t.” “It may not mean much,” Bobby went on, maintaining a professionally calm voice, “but the fact that a three-oh-eight Winchester cartridge is almost identical to a seven-point-six-two-millimeter NATO round might have some bearing on this case.” “How is that?” Grissom asked, genuinely curious. “It’s actually a pretty old topic among firearms experts that rattles around the Internet on a pretty regular basis. The chambers of military rifles made for the NATO round are exactly one-point-six-four-five inches long, whereas the chambers of civilian rifles using the three-oh-eight Winchester round are one-point-six-three-two inches long.” “And this means something?” “It might in this case.” Bobby said. “We’re only talking about a difference of thirteen-thousandths of an inch. But if you were to fire a three-oh-eight Winchester round especially one that had been reloaded with a different grade of gunpowder than normal in a rifle chambered for the slightly longer seven-point-six-two NATO round, you could easily get excessive stress on the civilian brass casing, which could result in early head separation of the bullet and some interesting deformation of the cartridge.” “And you saw all of that on the casing I found up on the mountain?” “That’s correct. The reloaded and thereby upgraded three-oh-eight cartridge you found was almost certainly fired through a seven-point-six-two military rifle. And based on the ejector marks, I’m guessing a specific military sniper rifle; I’ll know more about that after I do a little more research,” Bobby explained. “In general, that would be a foolish thing for an amateur reloader to do, depending upon the age and reliability of the rifle in question. But it might actually be a clever trick for a ballistics expert to play depending on what he or she wanted the bullet to do, of course.” “Are you suggesting a military sniper might have shot Toledano, accidentally or otherwise, on a federal wildlife refuge?” “I’m saying it’s an interesting although remote possibility,” Bobby said. “The Army testing range is right next door to the refuge, and it wouldn’t surprise me a whole lot if an exceptionally ballsy trainee or, who knows, maybe even an instructor happened to wander out to the Sheep Range in the middle of the night when no one was supposedly looking. It would be a nice place to practice your, uh, ambush techniques, shall we say? Get in a little illicit hunting on the side
maybe something extra to supplement the field MREs?” “But why go to the trouble of using a reloaded civilian round when ?” Grissom blinked in sudden understanding. “Ah.” “Getting caught shooting off base like that with an Army weapon would be a major no-no, regard-less of your intended target, even if informal permission had been given by your sergeant or commander,” Bobby said. “Probably find yourself walking guard duty on the Korean DMZ for the rest of your career, if there wasn’t a nice war zone available where you could be walking point. So, you really wouldn’t want to advertise your illicit activities out on the Sheep Range, whatever they might be, by using Army-issued ammo.” “No, I suppose not,” Grissom agreed. “But there could be another reason to use a specifically reloaded civilian round one that was very practical. The shooter might have wanted this bullet to act in a very specific manner,” Bobby said, tapping his gloved finger against the now-unmushroomed projectile lying in the wad of bloodied gauze on his microscope bench. “Go on.” “I can’t say for sure right at the moment, because I’m still collecting the comparison data, but I’m guessing this bullet is a Nosler Ballistic Tip. It’s specifically designed for deep penetration and maximum stopping power the kind of projectile you’d want to mount on a high-energy cartridge for serious big-game hunting, if you knew what you were doing. But that doesn’t make much sense in this case.” “Why not?” “Well, first of all, because a reloader who knew his stuff would never use a three-oh-eight high-energy cartridge to take down a little mule deer. It would be a complete overkill
and nothing a reloader would want to talk about with his buddies. And believe me, these reloaders like nothing better than to talk about what they did with one of their hot cartridges.” “So you’re not expecting this particular cartridge to be the topic of any fireside chats?” Grissom queried. “Absolutely not,” Bobby said firmly. “Either because the load didn’t work as planned, or because it did
That deer in the morgue? Doc Robbins showed me the wound on its neck, and photos of Toledano’s wound they took before the autopsy.” “And?” “If Toledano’s death was the result of a normal hunting accident that occurred at the relatively short-range distances you and Brass described in your report, this bullet” Bobby pointed at the peeled-open rifle bullet resting in a bed of bloody gauze next to his comparison scope “should have either taken the guy’s head off or, at the very least, done a whole lot more damage than I saw in those photos. Something slowed this bullet down and caused it to tumble; but it wasn’t Toledano’s vest, and I really doubt it was just the throat of that deer
unless this bullet was really going slow to begin with.” “So what are you suggesting?” “Maybe another silencer,” Bobby replied. “But I’m not talking about a half-baked rig put together by some wannabe gunsmith like a suppressor that starts coming apart internally after the first shot, like the one Toledano had mounted on his rifle.” “Enrico Toledano was using a cheap silencer on his rifle? Why would he want to do something like that?” “Probably didn’t know enough about suppressors to realize the one he had was a piece of crap; or, at least, that would be my guess. Do you really want to let a firearms guy start talking about one of his favorite topics?” “I’ll take my chances,” Grissom said. “Go on.” “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Bobby said mischievously. “Okay. First of all, the suppressor on Toledano’s rifle was only attached to the barrel at one point by a little bit of threading at the end of the muzzle. Any professionally made suppressor is attached to the rifle barrel at two points. The usual method is to slip the suppressor down the barrel with some kind of snug O-ring mechanism, and then screw it into place at the end of the barrel. That gives you stable alignment all along the bullet path.” “Okay
,” Grissom said. “And there’s another thing about Toledano’s suppressor system that tells me his manufacturers or suppliers didn’t know what they were doing,” Bobby went on. “The threading on the end of his rifle barrel was machined in the wrong direction.” “Are you serious?” “Very much so,” Bobby said, nodding solemnly. “When the spinning bullet leaves the rifle barrel and enters the suppressor baffling, its mass and rotation put a certain degree of torque on the suppressor only a little bit if the suppressor is properly aligned, but a great deal if it’s not. That is critical for one simple reason: if the muzzle threading is machined in a direction opposite to the spin of the bullet, the torque will tighten the suppressor onto the rifle barrel. But if the threading is machined in the same direction as the bullet spin, each successive shot loosens the suppressor.” “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.” “No, it’s not,” Bobby said, “especially if the suppressor starts wobbling out of alignment just as the next shot is fired. That’s how you get yourself a faceful of shrapnel. But that wouldn’t have happened in Toledano’s case, because his piece-of-shit suppressor would have come apart internally long before it fell off the end of his rifle.” “So where does this leave us?” Grissom asked, truly curious now. “I think it’s important to note that this bullet, the one that killed Toledano” he pointed again at the bullet wrapped in the bloodied gauze “has no visible damage that you’d expect to see from anything unsymmetrical or poorly aligned. If that bullet was slowed down by a suppressor, it had to have been one that was very carefully machined and crafted; like the ones the Navy SEALS or DELTA teams use.” “So we’re back to a military shooter again somebody from the Army test range wandering into the refuge, and not wanting to get caught by a trophy-hunting poacher?” “Hey, I couldn’t even begin to answer that one,” Bobby said, opening his gloved hands out in mock surrender. “But I’ll tell you what: from a ballistics and a hunting point of view, I think this whole ‘accidental-shooting’ theory is garbage. I don’t necessarily know why, or how, but it is.” “Would you be able to tell if this bullet went through a sound suppressor before it hit the deer and Toledano?” “I don’t know,” Bobby admitted truthfully. “I’d need to put some serious time in with the SEM to determine something like that.” “So, basically, you’d like to do more work on the Toledano shooting
is that what I’m hearing?” “Yes, sir, it is,” Bobby said, nodding. Grissom sighed. “This really doesn’t help in the sense of reprioritizing our resources.” “No, I suppose not.” “What about all those bullet and casing matches we’re going to need in order to reconstruct the truck shooting?” “Well, all of the shooters are pretty much in agreement as to which weapon each of them used, and the number of rounds they fired. So, presumably, the purpose of the reconstruction will be to determine their relative positions and the timing of the shots. That being the case, tentative breech and firing pin impression IDs made by just one examiner will probably tell you all you need to know at the onset; and two of us can always get together to resolve any questioned IDs. I know Catherine’s heading this way with all of the casing and hull evidence. She and I and maybe Nick, too, if he’s free could whip those tentatives out pretty quickly if we’re left alone for a while.” “I’ll see what I can do,” Grissom promised, looking distracted again as he headed out the door.
