Gone Ballistic (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “What? What for?” I turned the car down Cary Street in the general direction of my office.

  “They wanted to talk about your morning package, and they didn’t seem to like it that you weren’t here.”

  “How do you know what they wanted? They didn’t just ask for me and leave?”

  “No. They questioned both Carly and me.”

  “And they asked about my package specifically? They knew what was in it?”

  “They knew.”

  “So what did you tell them?”

  “What could I tell them? I’m not in charge of your mail.”

  “What did Carly tell them?”

  “That there might have been a priority-mail box in your mail, but there were a lot of packages today.”

  I had friends, I’ll say that. “I guess that was all she knew,” I said.

  “Well.”

  “What do you mean, well?” It didn’t matter, of course. I’d just been telling Jordan all about the gun I’d gotten in the mail.

  “She heard us talking about it on the way out to lunch, evidently, and later on she button-holed me about it, and, well. . .”

  “Back to well,” I said, turning into my parking garage.

  “Sorry. I was just thinking about it as a novelty, not something that was going to involve the police and all. Why are the police involved, anyway?”

  “It’s possible that someone was shot with that gun last week. Did you give it to them?”

  “No, of course not. Carly wouldn’t even let them in your office. What do you mean someone was shot with it? Who?”

  I waited until I got to the office to fill them in, Brooke and Carly and Rodney, keeping the story general enough to avoid any details that weren’t public knowledge. I warned them about lying to the police or even withholding information. “I don’t want to have to defend you on charges of obstruction of justice.”

  Carly’s eyes had widened alarmingly. “But you would, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “Defend us?”

  “Of course, she would,” Brooke said. “The reason she wouldn’t want to is she doesn’t feel like she could charge us for it.”

  “I’m thinking that with a little effort, she could put aside those feelings,” Rodney said, and I shot my index finger at him.

  “So let’s be careful out there,” I said.

  When Dr. McDermott answered the door in response to my ring, my dog Deeks went streaking past me to do a tight figure-8 on the lawn, his paws throwing up grass clippings as he made the far turn. He came blistering back toward me and dropped into a sit, panting, his tongue lolling and his tail sweeping the front stoop.

  “Hey, Deeks,” I said, patting his head. “Hey, old buddy.”

  “You’re the only one who calls him that, you know,” Dr. McDermott said. “I have to admit that Deacon was a pretty big name when he was a little squirt, but he was sixty-four pounds this morning, and he’ll be getting bigger.”

  Deeks was a labrador retriever whose paws still looked too big for his body. There was little doubt he’d be getting bigger.

  “Of course he’s your dog,” Dr. McDermott said. “We can all call him Deeks if that’s his name.”

  “He seems to do all right with both names. How did you weigh him?”

  “I weighed myself, then picked him up and stepped back on the scale.”

  I was impressed. Sixty-four pounds was a lot of dog. “I won’t ask you the combined weight,” I said.

  He smiled. “I’m an old man. We love to talk about our vital statistics. The combined weight was 238. You can do the math.”

  “Sound like you’re a lean hundred and seventy-four pounds.”

  “It does sound like that, doesn’t it?” He turned sideways to me, pulling in his gut and patting it. Deeks was standing now, his snout jammed between my knees as I scratched vigorously behind his ears. He fanned the air with the strong, otter-like tail that had cleared my coffee table more than once.

  “How was work?” Dr. McDermott asked.

  “Same-old-same-old. Problems with the police.” I thumped Deeks’s side a few times and straightened.

  “Want to talk about them?”

  I shook my head, smiling. “Not really. I want to take a run before dinner, clear my head.”

  “You and Deacon have fun.”

  “We always do.”

  When we got back from our three-miler, Brooke Marshall was parked by the curb in front of my house. Deeks streaked ahead of me, and Brooke got out hastily so he wouldn't jump up on her car door and scratch the paint again. There were already a couple of scratch marks on the door left by his hard toenails when he’d jumped up on previous occasions to peer in at her. Deeks spun in front of her, about to turn himself inside out in his excitement to see her.

  “Hey Deacon,” she said reaching into the swirling fur in an attempt to lay a hand on his head. “Hey Deacon, old boy.” When he had calmed down enough to accept her ministrations, she scratched his neck and head.

  “Does he look more like a Deacon to you, or a Deeks?” I asked.

  “He’s growing into Deacon.”

  “That’s what Dr. McDermott said. Deacon!”

  He turned to look at me.

  “Come, Deacon.”

  He came to me and sat, looking up expectantly.

  “In some ways he’s very well trained,” Brooke said as I scratched his chin.

  “And in some ways not?”

  “Well, I do have to be careful about him jumping on my car door.”

  “I wish you’d let me get that fixed.”

  “Someday maybe. Let’s get Deacon through his puppy phase.” She reopened the car door and got out her purse and two plastic sacks of sandwiches and chips from Subway.

  “You brought dinner.”

  “A couple of turkey subs. If you’ve got a bottle of white wine, we’re in business.”

  “We’re in business,” I said. As we walked up the sidewalk, Deeks—Deacon—bounced beside her, his nose bumping the Subway sacks that dangled from her hand.

  When we got to my door, I slipped the string with the house key from around my neck. “I forgot to ask. Did you recognize any of the cops who came by?”

  “One of them. I’m pretty sure it was your friend Tom McClane.” She went by me, and I closed the door behind us. McClane was in homicide, which meant the police were in my office in connection with someone’s death, almost certainly Woodruff’s. He was my friend in the sense that he had once hit on me.

  “Short, deep-chested guy with a salt-and-pepper flat top?”

  “That was him. I hadn’t seen the other one before—skinny, blond-haired guy who looked about forty.”

  “That would be Matt Tarrant, McClane’s partner. After we eat, I want to get a pad of paper and get down the exact questions they asked you, as close as you can remember them.”

  “Oh, I wrote them down.” She put the Subway sack on the kitchen table and unzipped her purse to pull out a small pad of paper. “But first, I want to hear more details about this murder. You just showed up at the house, and the widow hired you?”

  “Well, no. No client yet, just a murder weapon burning a hole in my desk drawer.” I got out stemware and a bottle of Riesling that had been chilling in the fridge. “If it is the murder weapon. So what did McClane ask you specifically?”

  She looked at her notepad. “Isn’t it true that your friend Robin got a pistol in the mail today, a Smith & Wesson M&P Bodyguard .380 semiautomatic,” she read.

  That was pretty specific. “And you told him. . .”

  “That I wasn’t your secretary, and I didn’t open your mail.”

  “He might take that to mean you didn’t know if I got a gun in the mail. If he can later prove you did. . .”

  “I can’t be responsible for what he understood. I was careful about what I said, and I made notes. Contemporaneous documentation, isn’t it? I haven’t spent the last year getting dragged into your cases for nothing.”

  I started to object to th
e accusation that I had dragged her into my cases, but immediately thought of several instances where I had done just that.

  As she unwrapped her sandwich, Brooke said, “I’m surprised they didn’t have a search warrant.”

  “That’s significant, I think. Of course, searching an attorney’s office can involve some technical difficulties. More likely, though, is they suspected I’d gotten a gun in the mail, but they didn’t have probable cause.” I took a bite of my turkey sandwich on 9-grain honey oat.

  “And that would mean. . .what?” Brooke said.

  “Most likely that the source of their information was an anonymous tip.”

  “So they got a phone call.”

  Deeks was sitting at attention, his eyes on a bit of sandwich wrapper that protruded over the edge of the table. Globs of drool were collecting at the corners of his mouth. Usually, I made him wait until I’d eaten before I fed him—it showed him where he ranked in the pack—but I wasn’t as consistent as I should be. I went to the cabinet and scooped a cup of kibble into his bowl.

  “Probably it was a phone call,” I said. “A letter would have had to have been sent to the police at the same time as the package to me, though I guess that’s possible, too.”

  “In either case, somebody sent you the gun, then tipped the police you had it. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe just to make trouble for me. Or maybe this someone is involved with Woodruff’s murder and is trying to scramble the evidence.”

  “Woodruff is the man who was murdered.”

  “Yes, with his own pistol, if what I’ve got is the murder weapon.”

  “This someone must know about your history with the D.A.”

  “Yeah.” Aubrey Biggs was not my biggest fan. Actually, Aubrey was pretty convinced I was a crooked shyster. “Certainly he’s never going to believe any story I tell about how a murder weapon just showed up in my mail.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Get the gun out of my possession just as soon as I can. I’ve already called Jordan and told him about it.”

  We were halfway through our sandwiches when Brooke said, “So who do you think called in the tip? You do agree it has to be the same person who sent you the pistol, don’t you?”

  I swallowed and took a sip of wine. “I think so. The other possibility is that somebody who knew I got one in the mail decided to try to stir something up.”

  “That would make it somebody in the Executive Suites, and the only ones who knew about it. . .”

  “I’m not willing to go there. It could have been someone who knows the sender, was aware of what he or she was doing.”

  “Well that means it could have been anybody.”

  “That’s right. We really don’t know enough to narrow it down.”

  We finished our sandwiches. I poured us each another glass of wine to take into the living room. Deeks, who had lain at my feet after he finished his dinner, got up when I did.

  “Hey, Deacon,” I said, deliberately using his full name. “I’m sorry, buddy. I didn’t save you anything.”

  He wagged his tail, looking back and forth between us.

  “I saved him a piece of turkey,” Brooke said. Deeks went immediately and took it from her. He glanced at me, then followed Brooke into the living room.

  “You’re trying to replace me in his affections,” I said, trailing after them.

  “All I have to do is treat him a little better than you do.”

  “It was you who called the police, wasn’t it? You’re trying to get rid of me so you can take my place.”

  “I’d take Deacon and Paul. I don’t know what I’d do with your law practice.”

  “What about Mike? What would you do with him?”

  She sat on the sofa and curled her legs under her. “I don’t know. I might keep him, too,” she said.

  That night Paul called me. I knew who it was before I answered, because the ringtone I’d assigned to him was Bread’s “Baby, I’m-A Want You.”

  “Hello, boo thang,” I said. My boo thang was what Brooke called him, I think to annoy me, but I’d picked it up. “You’re calling late.”

  “Are you in bed?”

  “About to be.” I rinsed the toothbrush I’d just finished using and put it in the drawer.

  “I just got off the phone with Mike. He tells me we have competition.”

  “Ha,” I said, walking through the house to check the locks, my dog trailing along behind me.

  “You didn’t have lunch today with a man named Carter Fox?”

  “Not really. It would be more accurate to say Brooke and I walked to and fro with him.”

  “What does ‘fro’ mean, anyway?”

  “From? I don’t know. I’ve only ever heard it in that one phrase.”

  “What I heard is that this Carter Fox is a great admirer of all things Robin.”

  “And all things Brooke. All things female, I suspect.” I shucked out of my gym shorts and got into bed, and Deacon—if that was going to be his name now—hopped up beside me.

  “So we don’t have anything to worry about, Mike and I.”

  “Well,” I said.

  “Well?”

  “You’ve never been quite so impressed by the muscle tone in my buttocks. At least you’ve never told me you were.”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding. I didn’t let him touch my butt. Really, he’s an annoying man who rented an office in the Executive Suites. There’s nothing at all attractive about him.”

  “You’re talking to a two-hundred pound man who’s five feet, six inches tall.”

  “That’s right. I’m talking to my teddy-bear boyfriend,” I said, snuggling deeper in the covers.

  “You’re darn tootin’.”

  “I am darn tootin’,” I said.

  We talked for probably another twenty or thirty minutes until I was sleepy enough that I kept losing the thread of the conversation. Finally, Paul said, “Robin?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Go to sleep now. Good night.”

  “Good night, Pooky,” I said comfortably.

  “Good night, Garfield.”

  I clicked off and stretched catlike to put my phone on the nightstand.

  It was nine o’clock when I got to work the next morning, about standard for me since Deacon came into my life. Willow Woodruff was in the waiting area. She stood as I pushed through the glass doors into the Executive Suites.

  “Where’s Caden?” I said, glancing around for him.

  “I left him with a neighbor. It’s an imposition—he was screaming when I left—so I don’t have long.”

  “Come on back.”

  Once we’d settled in my office, I said, “You’re not working this week, I take it..”

  “No. Husband died Friday, I thought I’d take the week off. I want to hire you to represent me in this.”

  “This what? Have the police charged you?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet, but in the meantime there’s the insurance.” She handed me some papers. “Six hundred thousand in total.”

  What she had handed me was a policy from Northwestern Mutual and one from Ameritas.

  “I think the insurance companies are stalling me,” she said.

  “It’s only been a week.”

  “I’m thinking about Caden. Somebody’s got to look after his interests if something happens to me. Something legal, I mean.”

  I was looking at the policies. There was no secondary beneficiary for either one, just Willow Wendell Woodruff as primary. “Who owns your house?” I said.

  “Why? Is that important?”

  “I’m thinking about getting you out on bail if you’re arrested. I don’t want you to be separated from Caden any longer than necessary.”

  “Well, well,” a voice said from the doorway. “The plot thickens.” It was Detective Tom McClane. He’d grown a goatee since I’d seen him last. In contrast to his steel gray hair, it was pure white.

  “Hell
o, McClane.”

  “I figured Willow Woodruff was your connection to this case.”

  “What can I do for you? Or did you just drop by to eavesdrop on an attorney-client conference?”

  “I came to pick up a murder weapon. I think you know that.”

  “What makes you think the weapon I have is the murder weapon? Your anonymous tip?”

  “What do you know about that?”

  “You knew I had a gun, but didn’t have enough for a search warrant. That says anonymous tip to me.”

  “Pretty smart. Too smart by half. As soon as you found out I was here demanding to see this gun, you called Jordan to tell him you had it. You wanted us to believe you were just being a good citizen, but really you were just trying to cover your. . .” He glanced at Willow. “. . .cover your backside.”

  “So you’re back with a warrant?”

  “Just let me have the gun, Starling.”

  I took a breath, nodded. “All right.” I pulled out the second drawer on the right hand side of my desk. There was no gun.

  I pushed the drawer back in and pulled out the top drawer, pushed that one in and pulled out the bottom drawer. Then I started pulling out drawers on the other side.

  “This isn’t a game, you know,” McClane said. Willow Woodruff had stood, her dark hair spilling over one eye, and she stared in what appeared to be horrified fascination. I turned in my chair, my gaze moving from my one set of bookshelves to my credenza, back to my desk.

  “So what are you telling me?” McClane asked me. “That you had the gun, but now you’ve lost it?”

  I pulled out the second drawer on the right-hand side again. “It came in the mail yesterday. I put it right here. I haven’t opened the drawer since right after lunch yesterday.”

  McClane moved to where he could look down into the drawer, but there wasn’t anything in it at all. Sometimes I kept my purse there, but this morning I’d come in with Willow and just dropped it on the floor up against my credenza.

  “Just a minute,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I turned back in the doorway. To Willow I said, “Don’t talk to him. Don’t say anything. If he asks you what time it is, you’re a deaf-mute.”

  She nodded, her visible eye open wide. I assume the eye hidden by her fall of hair was open wide, too, but I’m reporting what I saw.