Page 27 of Return of the Spider

When I opened my eyes again, I looked at the roughly northeast angle the footprints took toward the Bronco.Why that angle? Why not come from directly behind and then slide up the side for the shot?

I went back to the photographs and saw the reason plain as day.

“He was trying to stay in the side-view mirror’s blind spot,” I mumbled, feeling excited.

I put my forehead in my hands and looked down as if I were studying the crime scene map, but then I shut my eyes. Remembering that Abby said she’d seen the shadow along the left side of the car, I imagined the killer as if I were looking at him from above, watched him angling, cutting in for the close-range shot.

Something about his position at the shot bothered me, but I didn’t know what.

I decided to try to see the map from the killer’s point of view. He was stalking, moving quietly, very precise, very sure of his steps. He stepped by the back left window and then forward to the driver’s window. He raised the gun and pointed it at the window and the back of Conrad’s head.

Abby sees him at this point. She wants to scream but can’t.

Does he see her move?

No, he’s intent on his target.

I froze him there in my mind, a split second away from pulling the trigger. This time, I tried to spin my perspective around, to see the killer as Abby had seen him—she’d been uncertain she’d seen anything at first, distracted by Conrad’s attention, and then she became sure enough to try to scream when he appeared right outside the window and raised the gun in the moonlight.

Once more, I froze the shooter in dark silhouette, facing Abby, a moment before he shot. For some reason, this triggered an image in my mind: a police sketch artist’s drawing of a man positioned just like Conrad’s killer.

I opened my eyes, frowning, trying but failing to place the image. I set that aside and continued to plow through the reports, starting with the toxicology results. They revealed that Conrad had been drinking the night he died, although his blood alcohol level was fairly low.

I decided it didn’t really matter and reached the bottom of thestack, a ballistics report on the two large bullet fragments taken out of the ceiling of the Bronco, just above the window frame on the passenger side, behind Abby.

The fragments were identified as pieces of a 246-grain .44-caliber boattail bullet, lead core with a copper jacket.

A 246-grain boattail bullet?

Wouldn’t that be heavy enough to take down a charging bear?

If it was a .44 Magnum, yes. But it couldn’t have been a Magnum; if it were, the bullet pieces would have hit Abby more directly and with more force, killing her.

No, the gun that killed the lacrosse star was a straight .44-caliber pistol.

For some reason, the unusual caliber of the pistol struck me as a throwback. An older gun, certainly. We had reference books on firearms in the office. I went to one and searched through it for .44-caliber pistols.

It took a while, but I found several, including one called the Bulldog, produced by Charter Arms. That triggered a memory from my early doctoral research: a microfiche image of the front page of theNew York Daily Newsin early June 1977.

The headline:

Breslin to .44 Killer: Give Up! It’s Only Way Out

Sampson came back into the office. “I hate the dentist.”

“Everyone does,” I said, getting up.

“Yeah, but I have to go back to get a root canal.”

“Let’s go talk to Pittman. I think I got something.”

Detectives Diehl and Kurtz were at their desks working on reports. As I passed them, I said, “I found something on the Talbot case. You’re going to want to hear this.”

Both senior detectives got up and followed us into the chief’s office.

I knocked on the doorjamb. Pittman looked up, saw the four of us.

“Can it wait? I’m supposed to brief the media. Unless it’s something new about Talbot’s murder?”