Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2005

He dusted the magazine, then carefully flicked out the rounds and dusted them, finding several good partials, which he lifted with plastic tape.

“Our gunman was arrested four times,” Snowood said. “Three juvie arrests for shoplifting and simple battery. One adult arrest for simple battery.”

“Damn,” the technician said, as he struggled to pull back the slide to double check that no round was in the chamber. Making sure the weapon was empty, he pointed it at the top of the row of windows at the far end of the room and pulled the trigger.

“Well, this confirms it,” he told Jodie, as he sniffed the barrel of Clay’s Smith & Wesson and shook his head. “Got ten rounds here. We only found two casings at the scene. Both from Willard’s gun.”

Jodie nodded and closed her eyes. John Clay hadn’t fired his gun at all. Beau looked over at Willard who was sweating again. Big time.

“Safety’s off and it won’t fire.” The tech shrugged at Jodie. “Gun’s malfunctioning.”

Willard came over slowly. “Does this mean it’s bad for me?”

Jodie shook her head as Snowood said, “Hell no. It’s a real gun, and we got enough witnesses said he pointed it at you.”

Willard didn’t seem convinced, probably because it came from a man who looked like a refugee from Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles.

Jodie sat up and told Willard, “We have five eyewitnesses inside the drugstore saw him beat up the old woman. Three of them watched him go out the front door and point his gun at you; all swear y’all exchanged gunshots. And our sixth eyewitness, from the street, also saw Clay point his gun at you before you fired, and he’s a bank president.”

Willard wiped the sweat from his face. Jodie opened her hands, palms up, and recited the law verbatim. “R.S. 14:20. A homicide is justifiable when committed in self-defense by one who reasonably believes he is in imminent danger of losing his life or receiving great bodily harm and the killing is necessary to save himself from that danger.”

“Sounds like a good shootin’ to me,” Snowood said.

“It’s a good shooting,” Jodie confirmed.

Willard turned to Beau, who nodded and told him, “Relax. I’m serious.”

Beau leaned his hands on his desk and looked down at the weapons. He went to brush the silver paper clip away from Clay’s Smith & Wesson, but it was stuck. He tried pulling it off and it took a real yank to get it off.

“Glue?” Snowood said.

Beau shook his head and put the paper clip next to the Smith & Wesson, which sucked the paper clip to it like a magnet.

Jodie leaned forward. “Maybe the paper clip is magnetized.” Beau tried it with Willard’s weapon and his stapler but the clip didn’t stick to them. He pulled out his stainless steel Parker ballpoint and put it near the gun, and the pen rolled right to it.

“Damn,” Jodie said.

“The gun’s a friggin’ magnet,” Snowood declared. “Don’t that beat all.”

The technician took both weapons, bullets, and magazines down to the crime lab, and Snowood got up to take Willard home. Jodie reminded the rookie she’d see him in the morning at the Superintendent’s Hearing.

“Don’t worry,” she assured him, and started on her paperwork.

As Beau typed up a daily on what he’d learned from Barbara Clay, he told Jodie about the receipts and the burial policy and the short, unhappy marriage. Finishing the daily, he made two copies. One copy was for his records, the other he put in their lieutenant’s IN tray. He passed the original to Jodie.

Sitting back down, Beau closed his eyes and ran through it all again. He came up with the same conclusion he’d come up with as soon as the word magnet

came from Snowood’s mouth.

Jodie stood and pulled the sheet from her typewriter. “Gotta go,” she said. He remembered she had a preliminary hearing in criminal court at four P.M. He opened his mouth to tell her what he was thinking, but said nothing.

After she’d left the squad room, Beau went down to the crime lab. Firearms Examiner Peggy Ruffin had the Smith & Wesson completely disassembled and lying on an evidence table. Peggy wasn’t the friendliest cop, but she was the best firearms examiner in the city.

“The damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” she told Beau. He’d never seen her so animated. “This weapon is completely magnetized. You could pull the trigger all day and it wouldn’t fire.” She pointed at the firing pin. “It’s stuck to the side of the channel in the slide. Officer Willard is one lucky man.”

Beau felt his heart stammering as he turned to leave.

“Hell,” Peggy added, “if we could do this to every criminal’s gun, I’d be out of a job.”

Beau sat at the top of the stairs and watched the orange glow of the late afternoon sunlight fill the small backyard of Barbara Clay’s apartment house. A mockingbird bounced from the branch of a camellia bush and scooped an insect from the grass before flying away, a gray and white streak of feathers. He waited and the mockingbird returned to the bush and perched patiently until it spotted another bug and swooped down to get it.