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“Which thing did you tell him?”
“I told him that the slug found in the wall was fired from the .38 in the plastic bag. That pleased him.”
“And what was the thing you didn’t tell him?”
“That the .38 in his plastic bag also fired the two slugs that our ME dug out of Annetta Charles’s head.”
Stone was stunned. “Holy shit.”
“Well, yeah. When we ran the ballistics test, an alarm bell in our system went off, telling us that the weapon had been used in a previous crime.”
“But you didn’t tell the East Hampton cop that?”
“Manhattan is not his jurisdiction, and Annetta is not his case. I figured he didn’t need to know. I mean, he didn’t even notice that three slugs had been fired from the gun. They dug one out of the woodwork in the Further Lane house, and that’s what we tested.”
“How could they miss the other two empty casings in the cylinder?”
“Go figure. Dinner tonight? Clarke’s at seven?”
“Yeah.” They both hung up.
FORTY
Late in the day, Stone got a call. “Stone Barrington.”
“Mr. Barrington, is it?”
“How’d you guess?”
“Well...”
“Is this Sergeant Powell from East Hampton?”
“Yes, it is. I’m surprised that you answered your own phone.”
“My secretary is in East Hampton for a few days.”
“Oh. And I thought you were just good friends.”
“That, too. What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“I wonder if I could ask your assistance?”
“In what?”
“In retrieving our pistol from the NYPD.”
“Yourpistol? How is it yours?”
“It was used in a crime in our jurisdiction.”
“No, it was not. It wasfiredin your jurisdiction, and theperson doing the firing is dead. And Ms. Robertson is not a criminal.”
“I’m sorry, I misspoke.”
“Did you send the pistol to the NYPD?”
“I hand delivered it,” Powell said, “along with a written request for a ballistics report.”
