Free Political Suicide by Michael Palmer Page B

Jeannine and he have a fight. Colston overhears the squabble and confronts his wife about the affair. Tempers flare, and Jeannine Colston gets a gun and kills him.”
    “Does Colston even own a gun?” Devlin asked.
    Sarah had her sixty-plus-page report memorized. “If you turn to page thirty-five in your brief,” she said, “I have outlined our ballistics strategy.”
    The partners flipped to the page.
    “The bullets recovered from Colston’s body were fired from a .45 ACP,” Sarah said, summarizing the lengthy report. “Forensics showed the slugs had a six-groove left-hand twist rifling mark. The Colt company is the only major U.S. handgun manufacturer that consistently uses a left-hand twist. However, several foreign handgun manufacturers also use a left-hand twist, including Taurus. The Colstons happen to have a registered Taurus PT1911. Reasonable doubt. That’s our middle name, yes?”
    It was no surprise how quickly the police had produced the ballistic forensic details. The Colston case was high-profile and demanded speedy processing of the evidence. Maryland also had one of the most comprehensive ballistics fingerprinting systems in the world. In fact, all new firearms sales were required to provide a fired slug to the state police, who then logged that information into their database.
    Each year, Devlin and Rodgers sponsored a ballistics seminar for the firm. The comprehensive full-day session was one of the main reasons Sarah had signed on. Subsequently, several of her cases had hinged on ballistics evidence, and as a result, she had become something of an expert in the science. The inside of every gun barrel contained groove marks that helped a bullet spin and fly to where it was aimed. The “twist” referred to the inches of bore required for one complete rifling spiral.
    The ballistics database contained measurements and photographs of the number and depth of each groove and right or left twist direction, in addition to a host of other identifiers. Those data were then used to determine a possible gun manufacturer and make of the weapon that did the firing. To get an exact match required the recovery of the murder weapon and a comprehensive firing test conducted by a ballistics expert.
    “Did we test the Taurus?” Devlin asked.
    “I plan to contract a three-fire test with one of our forensics experts,” Sarah said. “I don’t expect a match, but you never know.”
    Devlin smiled. “You never know” was a favorite adage of his.
    The ballistics expert would fire Colston’s Taurus three times into a water tank. The technique would cradle the bullet and preserve the grooves.
    “Of course,” Heather said with a sly smile, “that doesn’t mean the Colstons’ couldn’t own another Taurus.”
    “Always possible,” Sarah replied, “and a seed of doubt I will be only too happy to plant. For now, all I’m going to show is that they owned a gun from the same manufacturer that is potentially the manufacturer of the weapon that killed Elias Colston. Maybe the Colstons didn’t register all their firearms. Maybe the congressman received a Taurus as a gift from a lobbyist who knew he liked the make. Remember, he was a military man—a marine. Maybe Jeannine used that unregistered gun to kill her husband and then she hid the weapon somewhere. Maybe —one of our favorite words.”
    The partners murmured their approval.
    Only Devlin looked concerned. “Well done, Sarah,” he said. “Now, there’s something else I want to discuss.”
    Uh-oh. Sarah tried not to read much into the change of topic, but that was like trying not to breathe. “Anything,” she said.
    “Succinctly put, I want to know if you think you should continue to head Gary McHugh’s defense team. As his counsel for a number of years, I could rearrange my schedule and take over. That’s an option we should discuss.”
    Sarah swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “Is it something I’ve done wrong?”
    Devlin cracked