Death on the D-List by Nancy Grace

Author:Nancy Grace
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2010-08-10T12:05:06.437000+00:00

Chapter 25

THERE’S A MATCH? OH, MAN . . . ARE YOU SURE? ”Before Kolker could answer, his partner, O’Brien, went on . . . “Does the press know? Now what do we do?”

“I know one thing: Before this gets out, I want to nail down every single detail, you know, dot the i’s and cross the t’s. I need to get it all figured out before we take it to the District Attorney’s Office. They leak like a sieve. It’ll go straight to the Post. Just like the Prentiss Love crime scene photos. Just like Snoop got the Leather Stockton shots of the body being wheeled out of the pool house. Somebody’s tipping them off.”

They didn’t want to talk about it at the office and had ended up back at the diner in their usual booth.

“Coffee, black?” Behind the counter and looking over a display of pies on a three-tiered plate underneath a glass cake cover, Shirley aimed the question in the general direction of Kolker’s booth.

“Make it two. Thanks.” Turning away from Shirley, he looked back at O’Brien.

“There’s no doubt about it. The medical examiner managed to fish one sliver of fragment out of Prentiss Love’s head, and bingo . . . it’s a match. He did a consult on Stockton. I’ve never seen anybody so fascinated with dead celebrities as that ME.”

“Same shooter?”

“Same shooter. No doubt about it. Kelley Trent over at Ballistics had it under the microscope for hours. He’s the best. I went over and watched him do it. Saw the markings myself. They definitely came from the same weapon. And whoever it is, he’s a decent shot. You know, even at close range, amateurs screw up.” Kolker kept his voice low even though no one was in the booth behind them.

“You know Trent’s thorough. Even tried to get prints off the one bullet from out in the Hamptons. No good. It was a long shot, but Trent tried. And the sliver from Love’s skull was barely big enough to analyze, much less get a print.”

“IBIS match?”

“Nope. Already sent it. Trent knows somebody. Got a rush. No match.”

“Well, did Trent keep it quiet?”

“Did he keep what quiet? We don’t have the murder weapon, so we didn’t have to do any shooting. Just looking under the microscope.”

To make a positive ballistics match to a specific gun, the tester takes the weapon in question, uses the same caliber as that in the murder, and fires the gun, usually into a tub of water with padding at the bottom. The high velocity of the bullet, hurtling down the gun chamber, causes distinct, identifiable tool markings on the bullet itself. Like a fingerprint, each gun leaves its own unique markings on the bullet. The inside of the barrel is made of metal, metal that cools after being heated in a molten state. Each gun has one-of-a-kind markings on the inner barrel left during the cooling process; hence, those unique markings appear on the bullet.

“I don’t mean the testing, and I know we don’t have the murder weapon .

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