Free Double Tap by Steve Martini

her front porch. Apparently during the first two weeks after they installed it, Chapman got called away from work four times, three of ‘em to bail her gardener out of the back of a squad car where they had him cuffed and once to vouch for the hummingbird, which they were unable to catch. Finally she said screw it and turned the system off.”
    “You said there were cameras?”
    “Front one scanned the entry door and picked up nothing. One in the back somebody took the tape out of it. Could have been the killer. Could have been Chapman or somebody else. Nobody seems to know. All they know is that there was no tape in the recorder on the day of the murder.”
    “Great. A sixty-thousand-dollar security system whose only efficient application is to condition the owner not to turn it on.”
    “About the size of it,” says Harry.
    “Were there security stickers on the windows?” I ask.
    Harry looks at me with a blank expression.
    “You know, the little decals that say ‘This property is protected by Wile E. Coyote,’ whatever.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Better find out. They don’t usually put a system in unless they sticker the strategic openings. If that’s the case it’s bad for us.”
    What I am thinking is that the state’s going to say anybody who wasn’t familiar with the house wouldn’t take the chance that popping a screen and opening a downstairs window would set off the alarm and send a signal to some monitoring station somewhere.
    Harry makes a note. Who besides Chapman’s own bodyguard would know that the security system was seldom, if ever, on?
    “And of course the best candidate for the kind of shooting we’re talking about here is our own client,” says Harry.
    “You mean his military background?”
    “I wish that’s all it was. It turns out that among his other gifts, like jumping backwards out of handcuffs, is the fact that he qualified three years running for the U.S. Army Pistol Team,” says Harry.
    “Wonderful.”
    “Yeah, the cops went to great pains to provide us with all the details. Seems Ruiz and his teammates won two of the national shoots back at Fort Benning. Of course, this was a few years ago now, so he might be a little rusty.”
    “Great, we can put him on the stand and have him perform a shooting exhibition with the murder weapon for the jury. Keep our fingers crossed he misses. That should be persuasive. Next you’re going to tell me that the pistol of choice he fired during competition was the same one used to kill Chapman.”
    “Fortunately, no. It was, however, a forty-five auto, same caliber,” says Harry, “but it wasn’t an HK. It was the old Colt 1911 model.”
    “So if we draw a jury composed of gun nuts and armorers, we can make the point. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the military go to the nine millimeter for sidearms some years ago?”
    Harry nods. “Yeah, Beretta 92F is the piece they use now. But for some reason Ruiz and his team shot with the old Colt.”
    “And yet the gun used to kill Chapman, a forty-five auto, was issued to Ruiz and belonged to the military. See if you can find out why.”
    Harry makes a note.
    “How about the state’s theory of a love interest: murder by jealousy. Anything in their notes on that?”
    Harry shakes his head. “You have to figure they aren’t gonna put that in their notes. Theory of their case. If they have witnesses, you can be sure they’ll be well concealed on their list.”
    What Harry means is lost in a forest of other names.
    What is in the file is the lurid videotape showing Ruiz and Chapman on the couch in her office at Isotenics. While the production values, color, and lighting leave a little to be desired, the action—punctuated as it is by heavy breathing and some audible moans—leaves nothing to the imagination.
    “How would you read it?” Harry is talking about the tape. “You think she was the aggressor?”
    “If I had to call it on points, I’d say it was a draw.”
    Harry