Chapter 83 - The Shell Casing at Mile Marker 14
By ten in the morning, St. Jude’s Road looked like a staging ground for a military operation. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered between the hemlocks, snapping in a rising north wind that brought with it the scent of impending snow. Two forensic vans were parked diagonally across the churchyard, their generators humming as technicians combed through the dense brush where the muzzle flash had erupted.
Detective Vance walked back down the embankment, his heavy trench coat stained with mud at the knees. In his gloved right hand, he carried a clear plastic evidence sleeve containing a long, brass shell casing.
"Thirty-ought-six," Vance said, holding it up so the weak sunlight caught the stamped head. "Weatherby Magnum. Not the kind of deer rifle the locals carry around here. This was hand-loaded, specialized brass. Expensive."
"Did they find tire tracks?" Caleb asked. He was leaning against the fender of his service truck, wiping grease and dried mud from his knuckles with a shop rag. He hadn't left our side since the shooting, his watchful eyes sweeping the tree line every few seconds like a seasoned sentry.
"Good ones," Vance nodded grimly. "Dual rear wheels, severe tread wear on the left inner tire. An old International Harvester or a Ford from the late seventies. It cut straight through the deer trails toward the abandoned gravel quarry at Mile Marker 14, then vanished onto the state highway. But that’s not what’s bothering me."
Vance turned toward the back of the ambulance where Evelyn sat wrapped in an orange shock blanket. A paramedic was dabbing antiseptic onto the cut on her cheek, but the matriarch’s eyes were fixed on the middle distance, unresponsive to the medical personnel hovering around her.
"What is it, Detective?" I asked, keeping my body between Evelyn and Lily, who was now clutching a warm thermos of cocoa the paramedic had given her.
"The vantage point," Vance said quietly, lowering his voice so only Caleb and I could hear. "The shooter wasn't aiming for the state attorney. He had a clear shot at the prosecutor’s chest through the open driver’s window. He wasn't aiming for you, either, Nora. The trajectory of that round went straight through the passenger-side headrest of Evelyn’s town car. If she hadn't turned her head to look at that Canadian dossier at that exact second, the round would have caught her between the eyes."
Chills raced down my arms. "Someone wanted Evelyn dead before she could speak."
"Worse than that," Vance said, tapping the plastic bag. "The casing wasn't ejected cleanly. It was wiped down, but the extractor left a specific tool mark on the rim. My ballistic guy ran the profile against the state registry before we even finished bagging it. That rifle belonged to an estate inventory filed in the Essex County probate court back in November 1984."
My breath hitched. "The Van Der Bilt estate."
"Specifically," Vance added, his voice dropping into a razor-thin whisper, "the personal sporting collection of your father, Arthur Van Der Bilt. A collection that was supposedly sold at private auction after his death to settle the debts on Oak Ridge."
"It was never sold," I murmured, the memory of an old, cedar-lined gun cabinet in the attic of Oak Ridge flashing vividly in my mind. "Melissa told everyone the guns were stolen during the probate inventory. She claimed someone broke into the carriage house and cleaned it out before the appraisers arrived."
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"Then whoever pulled that trigger didn't just come out of the woods to protect a random secret," Vance concluded, staring hard at Evelyn. "The shooter has keys to your family's oldest closets."
***
