By Det. Chuck Nall

As in any enterprise, certain axioms hold true, regardless of changing times and evolving cultures. One of those succinctly profound statements of elemental wisdom provides that one never knows what they will find, until they look. One autumn evening some 25 years ago found me working nightwatch in my agency’s Detective Bureau Task Force. Evening watch was a dynamic mixture of mundane investigative footwork, occasional forays of surveillance, brief periods of excitement, and the fundamental tedium of processing crime scenes for evidence.
Patrol units were handling a routine call in an older neighborhood, where an elderly woman had returned home from a hospital stay to find her home had been burgled during her absence. I radioed dispatch, and responded to assist Patrol in their endeavors, more out of courtesy to the senior victim than a desire to place another open, unsolved burglary on my already burgeoning caseload.
Arriving in front of the half century old home, I spoke briefly with Patrol Officers who had arrived shortly before me and began their report of loss from a typical 70-year-old woman, shaken and betrayed by her antagonist, who had long since escaped with a few pieces of costume jewelry, some cash, and the woman’s dignity.
In typical urban style, our vulgarian had shattered a slightly dusty pane with an implement of destruction, and made his unwelcome entrance into the neat, if spartanly decorated, and unoccupied home. Enjoying the poor taste that he was accustomed to, he ransacked her bedroom until he finally dislodged what few treasures she cherished. Mere trinkets to him, yet memory laden heirlooms to her, he pocketed the ill gotten booty. No doubt he meandered about the quaintly furnished home with mirthsome abandon, until his search yielded what few dollars she had placed safely away. Finally, I pictured our morally bereft offender, stumbling away from the old woman’s house, cursing his own luck in choosing such a poorly appointed residence for his nocturnal misadventures.
Examining the home for evidence and clues, I chose to limit the amount of fingerprint powder I dusted with for latent prints, careful not to add insult to injury by causing the old woman more hardship in cleaning up my print powder.
I gave my usual spiel about checking again later for missing items, and that some things just naturally are overlooked by their absence until needed. The old woman took on a pensive look, and then as if by cue, muttered something about her husband’s gun, not surprising, as most homes in the midwest held at least one rifle or shotgun. I first followed, and then gingerly lead the old woman up a short flight of stairs to the upper bedroom, where she opened the door to a closet and pointed inside to a darkened back corner.
Reaching inside, I felt around until I grasped the cool, octagon barrel of a long rifle resting in the corner, concealed by decades old pants and dresses, hung on well spaced wooden hangers in the slightly musty cloakroom. As I produced the prize, the old woman sighed, thankful to find it was still there, unsought, unfound, and unmolested by the intruder. In the dim light of a single bulb I examined what first appeared to be a plain l890 Winchester .22 pump repeater, just like the one I learned to shoot with on grandmother’s farm some 20 years before. A rifle nearly identical to my childhood memories, except for ordnance markings, and finely cut threads on the last inch or so of the muzzle.
Initially puzzled by this anomaly, before I could ask why such a rifle would have an apparatus like a silencer attached at any time, the old widow pointed once again to the closet, this time to the upper shelf, asking me to see if the “other part” was still up there. I peered up into the near darkness, and glimpsed a rolled up rag. Reaching up I took down the oiled rag and unwrapped an original Maxim silencer, properly marked, with a turn of the century patent date, and threads matching those on the Winchester’s muzzle.
I had seen silencers before, mostly in display cases, and training classes, but my experience with true early, antique Maxim cylinders was limited to say the least. Beautifully finished in a rich, deep, rust blue, without a hint of tool marks, it proclaimed it’s maker with pride and boldness on the side of the device for all to see. Now the question became simply, why?
The old woman smiled as she shared with me the story. Her late husband had been a guard at the local Prisoner of War camp just outside town during the Second World War. While there, he was issued that l890 Winchester pump with it’s attendant silencer for guard duty, perhaps in lieu of more effective arms, or as a simple expedient replacement when shipments of centerfire military arms were all destined for the war front in Europe or the Pacific.
Either way, at the end of the war, no one asked him for the return of the rifle, and he brought it home, unscrewed the Maxim cylinder, and placed both in the upstairs closet, awaiting another day and another time. Both had been saved by the ignorance of the burglar, who declined, or was too disappointed, to even search for such loot in the commoners’ cottage he had violated.
The silencer was clearly contraband, although the gun was not. The old woman had no idea about such things as tax stamps and federal NFA regulations. She was a humble, but honorable lady who sought only some degree of respect and independence in her life now, with her vulnerability rudely displayed to both herself and others. She asked for nothing when I explained that possession of an unregistered silencer was considered a federal offense, and was at least subject to summary seizure of the offending component.
There is another adage in every industry which extols one to do the right thing. I weighed the benefit of seizing the illegal silencer against the old woman’s memories, reminding myself that the Winchester and the Maxim could be stolen just as easily later by a more thorough thief, thought for a moment and made my decision. I did the right thing.