Val turned the car radio up as she drove towards the Lockland Landfill, hoping to catch the end of the show. She had been listening to Crime in the City. It was the radio counterpart to the cable television program of the same name. Howie told her about this series that portrayed true crime stories, and after listening once, she was addicted. Tonight’s case had her hooked.

The episode was going to reveal how the renowned criminal investigator Thomas Hayden challenged a pathologist’s findings about a murdered woman. She was becoming acquainted with Thomas Hayden through these broadcasts. Many high-profile cases had his name attached and he seemed to be a messiah to the criminally condemned. When compared to the other criminal investigators, he had almost a celebrity status.

In tonight’s case, Mr. Hayden said the manner of death was suicide, corroborating the husband’s defense strategy, when all of the evidence, including the pathology report, dictated that suicide was impossible. The husband said he heard a gunshot and when he walked into the bedroom, his wife lay dead with a self-inflicted wound to the stomach.

The only problem was that the firearm was a rifle. There was no way she could have reached the trigger for a self-inflicted wound. Plus, the entrance wound was in her back and the exit was the stomach. Not only that, there was confusion over powder burns and how close the gun was. It was suggested that she was shot from four to five feet away. There was no way that this was suicide. It was an open-and-shut case. The husband had been sitting in a jail cell for the last ten years when his case came up for an appeal.

Thomas Hayden, who had reviewed the case at the urging of the convicted husband’s brother, saw the error. The entrance wound was mistaken for the exit wound.

On her back was the characteristic circumferential marginal abrasion so typical of an entering bullet while her chest bore torn jagged edges of a much larger wound exemplifying the bullet’s exiting path. This finding needed interpretation and explanation because this case was indeed suicide, especially after Thomas reviewed the clothing the woman wore the night of her death.

The gun was held against the victim’s chest, and as the bullet entered it was impeded by the zipper of her sweater and the underwire of her bra. The bullet pushed the metal objects ahead, ripping the skin as the bullet entered. Furthermore, the victim was sitting against a wall and as the bullet exited through her back the bullet hit the strap of her bra, where the skin was crushed, leaving a well-defined wound. An examination of the clothing proved it. Photos of the wound on the victim’s back even showed the pattern of the sweater in her skin around the injury.