Free To Hatred Turned by Ken Englade Page A

and none are visualized at autopsy.”
    Gilliland described the path the bullet had taken: “After perforating the skin and subcutaneous tissue, the bullet perforated the skull and brain, lacerated the dura over the left anterior fossa and ricocheted to lodge beneath the dura of the left frontal lobe.” In layman’s language: big trouble. This wound, Gilliland concluded, had been lethal.
    The second gunshot wound was of lesser import. “Internal examination [of that wound] reveals diffuse right subscapular [ sic ] hemorrhage,” she dictated.
    While contributing to her death, Gilliland concluded, that wound was not as serious as the one in the back of the victim’s skull.
    But there was something else that played a major role in the woman’s murder: the strangulation attempt. In the pathologist’s opinion, that also caused “an additional lethal injury.” If Rozanne had not been so effectively shot in the back of the head, Gilliland noted, the strangulation could have killed her.
    Gilliland’s report, while it had the appearance of an unchallengeable scientific document that left little room for interpretation or dispute, would be highly contested years later and the pathologist’s conclusions would be roundly criticized. Making the document and its conclusions particularly vulnerable was a single sentence Gilliland added, seemingly as an afterthought. In a section of the report labeled “toxicology” was a single sentence that read: “No antemortem blood available.”
    The report, and especially that sentence, would come back to haunt the pathologist. In spades.
    At about the same time Gilliland was performing the autopsy, McGowan was gathering the facts as he knew them. They were pitifully few. The main clues were the bullets and shell casings, which told crime-lab experts that the weapon was a .25 caliber pistol and that the ammunition used in the shooting was of recent manufacture.
    Even as the detective waited to interview Gailiunas, Larry, and Joy, his instincts told him that their alibis were going to check out perfectly. But just to make sure they were not playing games with him, he planned to ask each of the three to volunteer for a polygraph, commonly known as a lie-detector test.
    At that stage of the investigation, McGowan had a distinct advantage: He knew more about the principals than they knew about him. Gailiunas and the Aylors were ignorant of the fact that McGowan had a reputation as a tenacious and determined investigator, a Texas version of a Canadian Mountie who never gave up until his quarry was in jail. To use a local analogy, the detective was like one of the snapping turtles that inhabit Texas creeks and rivers: Once he wrapped his jaws around a case, it would take considerably more than a clap of thunder to make him let go. He also had a special way with suspects, a sort of salesman’s touch that made people instinctively like him and want to share their secrets with him. Whenever the situation called for a good-cop/bad-cop ploy, McGowan invariably filled the good-cop role.
    Coming across as a friend in need, McGowan frequently was able to get suspects to open up and tell him things they would never confide to any other officer. And if his charm failed to work with a suspect, he could fall back on a sharp intellect that was hidden by his deceptively easygoing demeanor. Many a crook and overanxious defense attorney made the erroneous assumption that the detective’s mind was as slow as his speech. Still, McGowan’s experience was limited. Richardson had rarely experienced a crime involving a cold-blooded killer striking for no apparent motive.
    But, being a methodical man, McGowan had a simple modus operandi. Whenever he investigated a violent crime, especially a homicide, he looked for three things: motive, method, and opportunity. Leaning back in his chair and plunking his boots on the desktop, McGowan considered what he had to work with.
    He could put “motive” on the back