Page 73 of Under Fire
He glanced at what she was watching on her computer screen. “You’re still watching that video?”
“Yes. I’m convinced there’s something I’m missing.”
Locke took a sip of coffee as he watched with her. When they got to the part where Karl whipped his gun out of his crotch, he chuckled and said, “I don’t know of any man who could do that as quickly as Karl did. I will have to agree with Detective Tomlin’s thoughts on that. Obviously, he’s a man with a lot of practice in doing something similar.”
She glanced over her shoulder, grinned at him, and said, “You’re not slow on the draw either, Locke.”
“Yes, but as I said, I don’t know any man who could have done that as fast.”
She looked back at the screen as a thought entered her mind. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
She paused the video. “It wasn’t supposed to be that way.”
He looked confused. “What wasn’t supposed to be that way?”
“Karl being so quick on the draw. What if whoever planned this entire thing assumed Barcos would kill Karl instead of the other way around? By all means, it should have happened that way since Barcos pulled his gun first.”
Locked stared at her, as if he was trying to make sense of what she was saying. “Replay that part of the video again,” he said.
She did. Barcos had pulled out his gun first. “I’m going to zoom in on something I just noticed that I find rather interesting. Watch his fingers, Locke.”
***
Locke kept his gaze glued to the movement of Barcos’ fingers. “It’s like he’s trying to pull the trigger, but his finger won’t bend.”
“Looks like he has trigger finger.”
“What’s that?” Locke asked.
“It’s a condition that makes it hard for a person to bend and straighten his fingers at times. The medical term for it is stenosing tenosynovitis. We studied something about it at the academy. It’s not something that’s obvious unless you need to bend your fingers. He might not have been aware there was a problem.”
“How could he not know?”
“Barcos was fifty. He probably on occasion felt some stiffness in his fingers but chalked it up as a sign he was getting old and nothing more.”
“Until it counted and he couldn’t pull the trigger of his gun,” Locke said, thinking aloud.
“Yes, and I bet none of his men knew. As I said, he probably thought it wasn’t anything serious. My guess is that he never went to the doctor for it.”
“So there’s no medical records to back up what we’re assuming,” Locke said.
“Doesn’t matter. He still pulled out his gun first, and Karl acted in self-defense. That is clear. Just like it is clear to anyone who studies this video and zooms in on Barcos’ finger movement that he was having a hard time pulling the trigger.”
“What about the autopsy? Wouldn’t they have checked his fingers?” Locke asked.
“Yes, for gunpowder residue to determine if the weapon was fired, but not for any possible underlying medical condition, unless one is suspected. Now, to get back to my earlier hypothesis. What if the person who staged this entire thing expected Karl to die and not Barcos? As you noticed, by the movement of Barcos’ finger, he tried to move. Had he done so, he would have delivered the first shot.”
She rewound the video. “Now I want you to concentrate on Barcos’ facial expression at what I believed was the moment he realized that he couldn’t make his finger move to pull the trigger. He was angry at discovering he had been double-crossed, but in that instant, it intensified as fear mixed in. I want you to notice that.”
Locke noticed. No one would have if they didn’t have all the facts and knew what to look for. Had Barcos’ finger moved when it should have, it would have been Karl and not Barcos who died that night. Karl had been fast, but not fast enough.
“Who would want Karl dead?” Locke asked. The idea that the intended victim was Karl, not Barcos, was more than a game-changer. It was a quantum leap.
Hollis didn’t say anything for a minute, and then she said, “There might be someone else that we don’t know about, but the only person I can think of with that much hate for Karl is Nyla’s father.”
***
