The Chicago Police Scientific Investigation Division laboratory is where Father Stefan Wycazik privately examines the physical evidence from the Uptown sandwich-shop shootout, especially the bullets removed from Winton Tolk. The visit turns a routine police facility into a place where ordinary forensic findings sharpen, rather than settle, a mystery: the ammunition appears reliable, yet the bullets’ condition seems unexpectedly compatible with Tolk’s survival.

Setting and Access

On Christmas Day in Chicago, Father Stefan Wycazik drives from University Hospital across town to the police laboratory. Municipal workers are still clearing the previous night’s snowfall, and the handful of people on duty reflects the holiday. The laboratory occupies an aging government building; its high ceilings and tiled floors send footsteps echoing through rooms that feel deserted, like an elaborate tomb buried beneath the desert. The setting is not merely a backdrop for technical inspection. Its emptiness and reverberation give the priest’s private inquiry a hushed, secluded quality.

The laboratory would not ordinarily share case information with someone outside the police and judicial systems. Father Stefan Wycazik gets access through personal connections: many Chicago police officers are Catholic, and he has asked friends on the force to make petitions on his behalf and smooth his way at the Scientific Investigation Division. The exception is practical and informal, not an open invitation to outside scrutiny. His presence therefore depends on trust and personal influence, while the investigation itself remains discreet.

The Priest and the Laboratory Examination

Dr. Murphy Aimes receives Father Stefan Wycazik after they have spoken by telephone. They sit on stools at a laboratory bench beneath a tall, opaque window streaked with pigeon droppings. On the marble surface, Dr. Aimes has arranged a file folder and several objects for inspection. The contrast between the official case materials and the priest’s undisclosed purpose defines the encounter: the evidence is openly laid out, but the reason for his interest is withheld.

Dr. Aimes explains that he would not compromise case information if the shootout could lead to a trial. With both perpetrators dead, however, he sees no defendant whose trial might be affected. Father Stefan Wycazik thanks him, but does not explain what he hopes to establish. He says that priests, like physicians and attorneys, sometimes have to keep confidences, and promises to explain if he is ever free to do so. The answer preserves his access while making clear that the examination serves a question he cannot yet share, even with the cooperative specialist.

Bullets, Cartridges, and Findings

The first objects examined are two gray lead bullets removed from Winton Tolk by the surgeon. Dr. Aimes has weighed them, and their weight is consistent with .38-caliber slugs. They are badly misshapen, suggesting that they struck bone, but neither has fragmented. Dr. Aimes finds that lack of fragmentation surprising: given the bullets’ deformation, he might have expected them to break apart, at least somewhat. Their intact condition is a specific anomaly within an otherwise ordinary forensic examination.

To investigate the ammunition itself, Dr. Aimes opens an envelope containing cartridges left over from the dead gunman’s .38 Chiefs Special. He returns about twenty minutes later with a white enamel tray and two cartridges disassembled for inspection. He points out the case heads and primers, the flashholes leading to the powder compartments, and the lead semiwadcutter bullets with copper gaschecks crimped to their bases. Grease fills the bullets’ small cannelures. He finds no manufacturing fault in these components and no defect in either cartridge.

The gray, flaky material in each powder compartment is nitrocellulose, a highly combustible propellant. Dr. Aimes explains that the primer’s spark reaches it through the flashhole, igniting it to propel the bullet. The quantity is sufficient, and the second cartridge likewise shows nothing wrong. He identifies the rounds as well-made, reliable Remington ammunition. The inspection thus narrows the puzzle without resolving it: the bullets are distorted but intact, and the cartridges that fired them appear sound.

Narrative Significance

The laboratory’s procedures give Father Stefan Wycazik concrete evidence rather than a ready explanation. Weight, impact damage, fragmentation, powder, and cartridge construction are examined in sequence; each finding is specific, testable, and unexceptional on its own, except for the bullets’ failure to fragment despite their deformation. Dr. Aimes interprets Winton Tolk’s survival as extraordinary good fortune, but the priest has come with a private purpose and does not accept the conversation as the end of the matter.

The scene also sets limits on what forensic expertise can establish. The examination can rule out an obvious ammunition defect and describe what happened to the bullets, but it cannot disclose the question Father Stefan Wycazik is pursuing or explain why these objects matter to him. The laboratory makes evidence visible while leaving motive—and the larger significance of Winton Tolk’s survival—outside the frame. Its role in the story is therefore both investigative and structural: ordinary scientific method provides a firm surface against which the still-unanswered anomaly becomes more distinct.