An Insignificant Case

Chapter Forty-Eight

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

That afternoon, Charlie and Bridget were seated next to each other in their conference room sipping caffe lattes while they pored over the discovery that Thomas Grant had sent them.

“What do you think?” Charlie asked when they’d finished reading the police reports, autopsy reports, reports from the crime lab, and viewing the crime scene photographs.

“It’s the guns,” Bridget said. “All of those guns.”

“My thought exactly.”

“We’ll need an expert.”

“Great minds think alike.”

Bridget grinned. “You’re giving yourself way more credit than your IQ tests support.”

Charlie laughed. Then he got serious. “Who do we call?”

“I know just the man.”

Charlie’s navigation system told him to take a right turn into an industrial park that was a few blocks from the Columbia River. Then it told him that he was eight hundred feet from his destination. Charlie parked in front of an unremarkable concrete building, locked his car, and walked up a ramp to a walkway that passed in front of an export-import business and a construction firm and ended at Oregon Forensic Investigations.

Oregon Forensic Investigations was owned by Paul Baylor, who had a degree from Michigan State University in forensic science and criminal justice and had worked at the Oregon State Crime Lab for ten years before going out on his own. He had a reputation for integrity, which he’d gotten by telling defense attorneys the truth about the evidence in their cases when that was the last thing they wanted to hear. That reputation carried a lot of weight with the district attorneys’ offices in Oregon, and it was not unusual for a case to be dismissed when one of Baylor’s reports was presented to the prosecution as part of a discovery package.

The door to Oregon Forensic Investigations opened into a small anteroom furnished with two chairs that flanked a table covered with old copies of scientific journals. Across from the door was a desk that no one was sitting at. Behind the desk was a sliding glass window, and next to the desk was a door. Charlie opened the door and found himself in a long room cluttered with scientific paraphernalia.

“Mr. Baylor?” Charlie shouted. “I’m Charlie Webb. We had an appointment for three o’clock.”

He heard a gunshot coming from the back of the room. He called out again, and a slender, bookish African American wearing wire-rimmed glasses walked into view.

“Mr. Webb?” Paul Baylor asked.

“Hi. Are you Mr. Baylor?”

“I am, and it’s Paul. On the phone, you said that you had some questions about guns and a gunshot that had been made at a crime scene.”

Charlie nodded. Then he looked around at the surfaces on which he could spread out what he was carrying in his attaché case. It looked like every square foot of usable space was covered with test tubes, beakers, paperwork, and machines he could not identify.

“I have the crime scene photographs and reports in here. Is there someplace I can show them to you?”

Baylor smiled. “I apologize for the mess. I’ve got a lot of cases I’m juggling right now. Let’s go to my office.”

Baylor led the way to a corner of the large room, where an open door revealed a small, cramped office outfitted with an inexpensive desk, mismatched chairs, and a bookcase crammed full of books on forensic science, scientific journals, and case files.

Baylor’s desk was covered with stacks of paperwork, which he moved to one side. When Baylor was seated behind his desk and Charlie was seated across from him, Charlie took a stack of reports and photos from the attaché case and spread them out.

“I represent Alexis Chandler. Are you familiar with her case?”

“Just what I’ve seen on the news and read in the papers.”

“She’s got a lot of charges, but one accuses her of shooting Leon Golden.”

“The defendant in the sex trafficking case?”

“Yes. She claims that she was at his estate and she shot him in self-defense, after he took a shot at her. I’d like you to take a look at the reports and photos and let me know if you can tell me if there are facts that support her claim. I can get you into the crime scene if you need to see it to draw your conclusions.”

“What does Miss Chandler say happened at Golden’s place?”

Charlie told Baylor what Alexis had told him. Baylor read the reports and studied the crime scene photographs.

“Interesting,” Baylor said when he finished. “I will have to go to Golden’s estate.”