The Amateur

Saturday morning brought another call from Gunderson.

"You'll never guess where the shooter was." he said without preamble.

"Where?"

"At the church! Murphy just called me, they've got guys swarming all over it, I can see them from here. He doesn't just shoot at churches, he shoots from churches!"

I told him I had an idea about why nobody heard the shots. I also said I thought we might have a chance at finding his next target by continuing our computer search. He agreed to come over after the man arrived to replace the window.

That afternoon, we were back in front of the computer.

"So how does this special cartridge work?" he asked.

"Nobody knows if they ever really existed." I said. "The idea was to build a cartridge with a piston in it, so the powder ignites, and shoves the piston a couple inches forward, but the gas never escapes the cartridge, so no bang. The piston pushes the bullet."

"That doesn't sound like the bullet would be going very fast," he said.

"It's subsonic, so there's no sonic boom, but it is traveling as fast as it would out of a pistol with a 2 inch barrel, maybe faster."

"Where would someone get cartridges like that?" He sounded skeptical, but not unconvinced.

"That's the problem, they may not exist. The rumor was they were made for KGB assassins, but no one has ever seen one."

"Sounds like a long shot." he said. "No pun. Why not just use a silencer?"

"Silencers only work in the movies." I said. "You can use one, but you still get quite a bang. People would notice."