“Why?” Piki asked, looking confused.
“The shell casings. If the killer discarded the gun, he probably tossed the casings. Get a move on.”
Koa, now infected with Piki’s enthusiasm, walked downstairs to Cap’s laboratory. Sixty-year-old Cap Roberts was a serious scientist with a wide knowledge of forensic procedures dealing with everything from fingerprints to guns. At six-foot-six, he’d been a star on the UH Rainbow Warriors basketball team and could still handle a basketball like a Globetrotter. He now spent much of his free time teaching the game to Hilo high school students, both men and women.
Cap had just subjected the gun to a powerful magnetic field and sprayed the area where the serial number had been obliterated with tiny magnetic particles suspended in oil. “I typically use the magnaflux test first because it’s non-destructive, but it doesn’t work a lot of the time,” Cap explained. He subjected the gun to high-frequency vibrations, hoping the magnetic particles would line up with the compressed metal beneath the serial numbers stamped into the gun. Unfortunately, the test failed to produce a readable serial number.
Cap removed the gun from the vibrator and cleaned away the oil. “There’s one thing I can tell you. It’s a military weapon.”
“How can you tell without the serial number?” Koa asked.
Cap flipped the weapon over and pointed to the markings on the slide: U.S. 9mm M9A1 Beretta U.S.A. “It’s definitely a military weapon.”
“What’s next?” Koa asked.
“I’m going to use hydrochloric acid to see if I can raise the serial number.”
“Good. Let me know if you get anything. Also, test fire the weapon and do a comparison with the slug the Honolulu ME took out of Witherspoon’s body.”
“You think I wasn’t going to do that?”
“Sorry, Cap. Just being anal.”
Back in his office, Koa put the pieces together. A military weapon—most likely stolen from an Army storage facility. Hawai‘i hosted several military reservations, but none closer than the U.S. Army Pōhakuloa Training Area. Koa figured his friend Jerry Zeigler, the commander of the military police detachment at Pōhakuloa, would know if weapons had gone AWOL.
Koa had worked often with the ferret-faced military police first lieutenant during previous cases and joint Army-county disaster recovery operations. Although Jerry was a good deal younger, they had a lot in common, including their humble beginnings and their love of sports—heihei wa‘a, outrigger canoe racing, for Koa; and ice hockey for Jerry, who grew up in rural South Dakota. Ice hockey had left its mark on Zeigler, giving his crooked nose a distinctive left twist after several unsuccessful repair jobs.
“Hello, Jerry, how’s life in the saddle?” The Pōhakuloa Training Area, the largest U.S. military installation in the Pacific, occupied 109,000 acres in the mile-high saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the two 14,000-foot mountains that made up the bulk of the island.
“Fine,” Zeigler responded, “but somehow I’m guessing you’re about to make it worse.”
“You missing any guns?”
Zeigler hesitated, and Koa sensed he’d hit a nerve.
“Why do you ask?”
“We just found a U.S. Army Beretta M9A1 in a trash bin out at Hilo airport. Any chance you’re missing one?”
“You got a serial number?”
“Not yet. Cap Roberts in technical support is working on it.”
Another long pause followed before Zeigler said, “We need to meet. I can’t talk about this over the phone.”
Zeigler’s response puzzled Koa, but he agreed to meet at the Pōhakuloa compound. Koa drove up the Saddle Road until the dense vegetation gave way to a mile-high plateau where ancient lava flows from Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa overlapped each other. Zeigler had a pass ready for him at the gate to the military compound, and the MP officer, dressed in desert camos, greeted him at the door to the military police building. He took Koa to a conference room with audiovisual equipment already set up.
“Sorry to make you come out here,” Zeigler apologized, “but what I’m about to tell you is classified. I have authority to share with local law enforcement, but I’ve got to ask you to maintain confidentiality. Okay?”
“I’m okay with confidentiality. What’ve you got?”
“The Army suffered a series of small-scale weapons thefts—a few guns here and a few there—but it adds up and it appears to be coordinated.”
“You’ve had thefts here at Pōhakuloa?” Koa asked.
“Yeah. Here, Fort Sill, Fort Benning, and a half-dozen other installations, but let me give you some background.”
“Okay,” Koa agreed.
“The inspector general first discovered a series of thefts from Bagram military base in Afghanistan. The CID guys investigated and isolated the thefts to a group of potential culprits but couldn’t make the case. All were quartermaster types, and all were reassigned to different bases. That was supposed to be the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“Nope. Isolated thefts started popping up, and when the CID boys reviewed the records, they discovered a connection. Each of the new thefts occurred in a supply depot where one of the suspected guys from Afghanistan got reassigned.”
“And you’ve got one of the culprits here?”
“Supply Sergeant Ralph Leffler.”
Koa’s cell phone rang, and he answered Cap Roberts’s call. “I’ve got plain news, good news, and bad news,” Cap began.
“Give me the news.”
“It’s the Witherspoon murder weapon. A solid ballistics match.”
Koa had a sinking feeling. “And the bad news is no serial number?”
“Correct. I couldn’t raise the whole number, but I did get four digits. That’s the good news.”
“Read ’em off.”
Koa jotted them down as Cap spoke. “Eight, four, nine, zero, in that order. Those numbers are in the middle of the sequence—not the first number and not the last.”
“Thanks, Cap. I guess that makes you a partial genius.”
“Aren’t you the clown.”
After ringing off, Koa turned to face Zeigler. “The M9A1 was used in a recent homicide. We’ve got a partial serial number.” He passed the note with the numbers to Zeigler, who compared it to the serial numbers on the missing handguns.
“Got it. These numbers match one of our stolen guns. What are the odds of a four-number match?”
Koa struggled to recall his college statistics course. “I think it’s one in ten thousand, but the fact the gun was stolen here and found here must up the odds.”
“Okay. But doesn’t finding it in an airport trash bin suggest it was dumped by someone leaving the island who couldn’t risk walking it through TSA security? That wouldn’t be Leffler’s because he’s still here,” Zeigler questioned.
“Good point, but the killer acts like a pro. A pro would most likely get a gun locally, and a pro leaving the island wouldn’t dump the gun at the airport, not with a thousand other places to lose it. On the other hand, a pro might dump it at the airport to mislead us into thinking he’s left the island.”