Page 108 of The 1 Lawyer

I considered making another spectacle, shouting that the discovery of the shoe was meaningless because only a fool would keep such damning evidence of guilt. But the futility of the argument—and the judge’s threat—kept me in my seat. Facts are facts. It was indisputable: Iris’s blood was on the sole of my shoe, the one found in a trash bag inside my bedroom closet.

Someone hated me so much that he or she had set out to destroy me. Who was it?

CHAPTER 85

WHEN JENNY finally made it to the courthouse on Tuesday afternoon, the courtroom was empty. Morning proceedings had ended, and they had recessed for lunch.

She checked the tracking app on her phone, but Stafford Lee had apparently turned his off; the screen read No location found.

So she hunted down Charlene, the bailiff, who was eating a tuna sandwich in the clerk’s office. Charlene always kept track of Stafford Lee’s whereabouts when he was trying a case, but now she said, “I don’t know where he goes at noon, Jenny. He’s not my job. I’m only responsible for criminal defendants who are in the custody of the county jail.”

Jenny turned on her heel and started looking for Mason, but she couldn’t find him in any of the courtrooms. She went to Stafford Lee’s office, but the place was empty and dark. She turned on the light in the conference room and scanned the murder walls. She stopped in front of a collection of autopsy photographs and peeled one away.

Back in her car, she drove to Red’s Shooting Range. Red Thompson, the proprietor, sat behind the counter in a webbed folding picnic chair, thumbing through a firearms catalog. He looked up when she walked through the door.

“Well, look who’s come to see me! How are you getting along, Miss Jenny?”

She returned his smile. “Doing all right,” she said. Red had been a close friend of her late father. Her dad had started bringing her out to Red’s range when she was just a kid; he’d taught her to shoot when she was in middle school. She had known Red for so long, she could even remember when his hair was fire-engine red. It had faded over the years to a rosy blond.

“Look at you, girl, just as pretty as a movie star. Surely you’re not still single. You ever find a guy, get remarried?”

She dodged the question. “I don’t have any time for husband-hunting, Red.”

Red shot her a wink. “You’ll change your tune when the right guy comes along. So, you out here for some target practice? Don’t want you getting rusty.”

“No, not today.”

“You still carrying your Glock?”

“Yeah.”

“You ready for an upgrade? I just got the newest Glock, the Gen Five. They keep getting better. Everyone who’s tried it says the accuracy is unbeatable. You could check it out.”

“No, thanks, Red, maybe another time. I’m here to ask you about shotgun evidence. You’re my number one adviser, lots smarter than those guys at the crime lab.”

He snorted. “Them pencil necks? Shoot, not much competition there.”

Jenny reached into her bag and pulled out the autopsy photograph she’d removed from Stafford Lee’s office. “Okay, Red. I want you to take a look at this photo. It’s a close-up of the chest wound, see? She was shot with a shotgun in a murder-suicide.”

Red rose from the picnic chair and stood on the opposite side of the counter. He grimaced when he glanced at the image showing the gunshot wound in Carrie Ann Penney’s chest. “That poor lady. Who is she? Anyone we know?”

Jenny didn’t answer directly. After a moment, she said, “Yeah, I knew her. It’s not a new case, but I’ve been reviewing it, and I have some questions. Judging from the shotgun wound you see on the victim’s chest, can you determine the distance between the gun and the victim when the shot was fired?”

“Sure. See there, those little burned pieces, powder and stippling? They can’t travel very far. So the barrel of the shotgun had to be pretty dang close, within about two feet of that woman when it was fired.”

“Two feet, you think? That’s your best guess?”

“Yeah, from this picture. But if you’ve got the shotgun, you don’t have to guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that if they found the gun at the scene and impounded it, you can get a definite answer on distance. A shotgun fires multiple pellets that simultaneously spread out in a wider pattern until they hit the target. So you test-fire it from different distances and angles until you find the range that made the pattern left on this woman’s chest. You can figure out distance that way, and it’s pretty darn accurate.”

Jenny pulled the firearms report from the murder-suicide case out of her bag. She skimmed it and said, “The police took custody of the shotgun found at the scene. But they didn’t do any distance testing. The report doesn’t specify whether any firearm tests were done.”

“Yeah, they don’t do distance testing at the sheriff’s department or the PD. They’d have to send it off to the State Highway Patrol headquarters and make a special request.”

The close-up photo of Carrie Ann’s chest lay on the countertop. Jenny examined the stippling, the powder marks, tried to determine the pattern the projectiles had left behind. While she studied it, Red stepped over to a gun rack behind the counter and said, “You want to go out on the range and try it, see what I’m talking about?”

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