Sure -
1) Where did she get a gun? Well, why not assume she owned one? It's truly not surprising that prosecutors of violent crimes decide to buy and keep a gun.
2) The whole hunting knife thing was a complete red herring - Agatha Christie has many of them in her murder mysteries too.
At the end of the previous year (as always at the end of the year), the janitor at Forrester's country club had to clean out the lockers. During his removal of articles from the lockers, he discovered a hunting knife. He left it at the desk or lost and found. The kind of hunting knife (the length of the blade, the number of inches it's serrated, etc.) matches what the forensics people say is the particular kind of weapon that killed Mrs. Forrester. And when the Assistant D.A. asks the janitor from which locker he had removed it, he says from locker #122, in fact Forrester's locker! The D.A. immediately orders Forrester's arrest.
But Close notes when reading the hundreds of pages of evidence the D.A. admits having, that they report only that they have a witness who saw this knife last year and will testify he took it from Forrester's locker: i) the D.A. doesn't have the knife itself (just a witness who saw it) so it can't be tested in any way for blood, fingerprints, etc, and ii) it happened last year.
She orders the investigator played by Robert Loggia to interview all current members about the knife - maybe they can contradict the janitor's testimony from his memory. Loggia does -but reports to her no one knew anything about a knife. She says "Well, interview all who WERE members at the end of last year, but are no longer members".
He's irritated, but says sure. During the trial, Loggia finds a former club member who apparently said to Loggia (we don't hear this conversation but it's implicit) "yeah, sure I know about that knife - it was mine. Want to see it?" He produces the knife to Loggia (who later brings it to court).
This former member says on the stand, "The janitor cleaned out my locker at the end of last year, and put my hunting knife with lost and found, where I picked it up. My locker was #222. I took it home and sure, I've been using my hunting knife since." Thus, the hunting knife is a bit more used and scratched now.
On being re-called as a witness, the janitor examines the knife and says
"Yeah, if this particular knife were new, it would match the one I saw and removed from the locker. And yes, it's possible that in the time since I cleaned out the lockers last year, I've confused #222 with #122. Gee, I could have sworn ... but maybe I was wrong. "
The knife Bridges had used - was never found by the police.
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mecahill
16 years ago
Thanks for the help. I still don't understand why anyone would keep a hunting knife in their locker at the country club.
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trpdean
16 years ago
My guess: he'd just bought it and forgotten he had it there until it was cleaned out of his locker. That happens very much with stuff of mine in lockers in the past - sometimes stuff sits for ages.
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