One Shot Read Online Free PDF Page A

than a total certainty, and he gave up early and blamed the cops. At least that was how it seemed to Emerson.
    'I need seriously good news,' Rodin said. 'The whole city is freaking out.' "We know exactly how it went down,' Emerson told him. 'We can trace it every step of the way.'
    'You know who it was?' Rodin asked.
    'Not yet. Right now he's still John Doe.'
    'So walk me through it.' "We've got monochrome security videotape of a light coloured minivan entering the garage eleven minutes before the event. Can't see the plates for mud and dirt, and the camera angle isn't great. But it's probably a Dodge Caravan, not new, with aftermarket tinted windows. And we're also looking through old tapes right now because it's clear he entered the garage at some previous time and illegally blocked off a particular space with a traffic cone stolen earlier from a city construction site.' 'Can we prove stolen?'
     
    'OK, obtained,' Emerson said.
    'Maybe he works for the city construction department.'
    'Maybe.'
    'You think the cone came from the work on First Street?'
    'There's construction all over town.'
    'First Street would be closest.'
    'I don't really care where the cone came from.'
    Rodin nodded. 'So, he reserved himself a parking space?'
    Emerson nodded in turn. 'Right where the new construction starts. Therefore the cone would have looked plausible. We have a witness who saw it in place at least an hour before. And the cone has fingerprints on it. Lots of them. The right thumb and index finger match prints on a quarter we took out of the parking meter.' 'He paid to park?'
    'Evidently.'
    Rodin paused.
    "Won't stand up,' he said. 'Defence will claim he could have placed the cone for an innocent reason. You know, selfish, but innocent. And the quarter could have been in the meter for days.' Emerson smiled. Cops think like cops, and lawyers think like lawyers.
    'There's more,' he said. 'He parked, and then he walked through the new construction. At various points he left trace evidence behind, from his shoes and his clothing. And he'll have picked trace evidence up, in the form of cement dust, mostly. Probably a lot of it.' Rodin shook his head. 'Ties him to the scene sometime during the last two weeks. That's all. Not specific enough.'
    We've got a three-way lock on his weapon,' Emerson said.
    That got Rodin's attention.
    'He missed with one shot,' Emerson said. 'It went into the pool. And you know what? That's exactly how ballistics labs test-fire a gun.
    They fire into a long tank of water. The water slows and stops the bullet with absolutely no damage at all. So we've got a pristine bullet with all the lands and grooves we need to tie it to an individual rifle.' 'Can you find the individual rifle?'
    'We've got varnish scrapings from where he steadied it on the wall.'
     
    'That's good.'
    'You bet it is. We find the rifle and we'll match the varnish and the scratches. It's as good as DNA.'
    'Are you going to find the rifle?'
    'We found a shell case. It's got tool marks on it from the ejector mechanism.
    So we've got a bullet and a case. Together they tie the weapon to the crime.
    The scratches tie the weapon to the garage location.
    The garage location ties the crime to the guy who left the trace evidence behind.' Rodin said nothing.
    Emerson knew he was thinking about the trial.
    Technical evidence was sometimes a hard sell. It lacked a human dimension. 'The shell case has got fingerprints on it,' he said. 'From when he loaded the magazine.
    Same thumb and index finger as on the quarter in the parking meter and on the traffic cone. So we can tie the crime to the gun, and the gun to the ammo, and the ammo to the guy who used it. See? It all connects. The guy, the gun, the crime. It's a total slam dunk.' 'The videotape shows the minivan leaving?'
    'Ninety seconds after the first 911 call came in.'
     
    'Who is he?' "We'll know just as soon as the fingerprint databases get back to us.'
    'If he's in the databases.'
    'I think he was a