A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

“No,” her father told her.  “A sober person would have shot Dale, wiped his fingerprints off the gun, left it at the scene, and found another place to spend the night.”

. . .

“The lab just confirmed it -- the bullet from Lightfoot’s bed was indeed fired from Dale’s gun,” Joe reported back the following afternoon.  What he didn’t tell her was how hard he had had to lean on Edward Padilla to rush the results.

“So, it is what we thought,” Lily murmured.  “But now the question is -- what does it do for our case?”

“I guess we’ll know that as soon as we know when it was fired.”

“No,” Lily told him.  “What we have to figure out is why was it fired.”

. . .

“What do you mean -- another bullet?” John Henry demanded, glaring at the hapless police detective standing in front of him.

“Joe Gideon took another bullet over to the lab for testing,” Randy Hitchens explained.  “Ballistics confirmed it came from Dale’s gun.”

“So they tested another bullet,” the prosecutor said irritably.  “So what does that have to do with anything?”

“There was only one bullet missing from Scott’s gun that morning,” Tom Lickliter reminded him.

John Henry frowned.  “So where did Gideon come up with this other bullet?”

“I don’t know,” Hitchens said.

“I think it’s obvious that they’ll want to claim it’s part of the crime scene and we missed it,” Tom said.

“Even if it is, what difference does it make?” John Henry asked.  “I mean, so there’s another bullet.  How can it hurt us?”

“A second bullet when we’re saying only one was fired?” Tom replied.  “It could compromise the whole case, couldn’t it?”

“Nonsense,” John Henry declared.  “There’s got to be a logical explanation for another bullet.  Where did they find it?”

“Gideon didn’t say,” Hitchens told him.  “He just took it in and asked the lab to see if it came from Dale’s gun.”

“All right then, can anyone prove when it was fired?”

“No,” the detective conceded.  “I don’t think the lab could say when it was fired.”

“Then who cares?” John Henry concluded.  “It has nothing to do with our case.  It could have come from anywhere.  They can argue a second bullet all they like, but the facts are the facts -- and the fact in this case is there was only one bullet missing from Scott’s gun that morning, right?”

“Right,” Hitchens said.

. . .

“Did you ever get that little itchy feeling at the back of your neck that tells you when you might be onto something?” Lily asked over dinner Tuesday evening.

“You mean regarding a case?” Carson replied between bites of one of Diana Hightower’s specialties -- five-cheese lasagna.

“Yes,” his daughter said.

“I seem to recall one or two such instances,” he conceded.  “Why?”

“Well, call me crazy, but I think I’m going to get an acquittal here.”

“You mean, on self-defense?”

“You bet,” she said.  “It may have been a long shot before, but it isn’t anymore.”

Carson raised his left eyebrow.  “The second bullet?”

“Yes, the second bullet.  I’ve been going over it and over it, and it doesn’t make any sense.  Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that it went down like you said -- there was a fight, Jason shot Dale, then took the gun into his box, and inadvertently shot off another round.”

“So?” her father queried.

“Well, that theory stands up in court only if John Henry claims that, after shooting off the second round, Jason gets out of his box, goes back to the body, finds another bullet, puts it into the magazine, and then goes and gets back into his box again.  Now, why on earth would he do that?”

“Drunks can do a lot of things that don’t make sense to the sober,” Carson told her.  “And you’re forgetting something rather important -- John Henry could also claim that you can’t prove when the second bullet was fired.”

“That’s not necessarily so, “ Dancer said softly.

Two pairs of eyes were suddenly fixed on him.  “What do you mean?” Lily asked.

“Your prosecutor can’t argue that the second bullet could have been fired years ago.”

“Why not?”

Dancer had been present in the gallery, seated in the first row, right behind Lily, throughout the trial.  “Because the murder weapon is a Sig Sauer P250, which is a fairly new model,” he replied.  “Didn’t come out until sometime last year, I think.  I doubt your police department has been using them for very long.”

The wheels, which had ground to a halt in Lily’s head, began to turn again.  “And there’s nothing to indicate that there was any history between Dale and Jason in the past year -- or even the past five years.  So that makes it just about certain that the second bullet was fired that night.”

“Which I think takes you right back to the second shot being accidental,” Carson reminded her.  “And you can certainly use it to bolster your case for mitigating circumstances.  If he was so drunk as to shoot off the second round in his box, how deliberate could the first shot have been?  It probably won’t get you as far as an outright acquittal, but it might get you down to manslaughter.”

Lily shrugged.  “Maybe,” she said.

“What?  You still want to go for self-defense?”

“I can’t help it.  In my gut, I think that’s exactly what it was.”

“I guess anything’s possible,” Carson conceded.  “But I’m not sure I see how you’re going to get there.”

“The drug connection was how I was going to make Dale the aggressor, and Jason being a witness to something he shouldn’t have been was how I was going to argue self-defense.”

Carson shrugged.  “Then you’re going to have to figure out how to put Morales on the stand and make him tell the truth,” he said.  “Even with all the good press your client’s getting with his escape gambit, the jury isn’t going to buy self-defense unless they can actually see how it went down.”

Lily sighed.  “I can have Joe talk to Morales again, but I’m not sure it will