Gone Ballistic (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “Is that. . . ,” Brooke began.

  “Don’t talk. Not here.”

  Brooke bumped into Rodney as she went through the door, and I ran into her back.

  “Whoa,” Rodney said, retreating. “Excuse me.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I told Rodney.

  “I got that date you asked for. Thanksgiving Day year before last. November 24.”

  “Thanks.”

  As we entered the reception area, Carly said brightly, “Hey, girls. Any new surprises this. . .” She trailed off. “There are, aren’t there?”

  My mouth twitched. “Aren’t there always? Listen, could you do me a favor while I’m gone? Someone’s been going in and out of my office like it was his own. Could you have the lock on the door rekeyed?”

  “I guess so. Sure. Is anything wrong?”

  “Not yet. I’m inches away from catastrophe, but I haven't gone over, not yet.”

  “She’s a bit on edge,” Brooke said.

  “How do you know it’s not Carly going in and out of your office?” Brooke said as we speed-walked down the sidewalk toward our parking garage. “She has a master key.”

  “It has to be someone with a connection to Chris Woodruff, but you’re right. If it’s Carly, rekeying the locks won’t help.”

  “Carly could have gotten your keys out of your office while we were at lunch Tuesday, then pretended to find them in the kitchen.”

  “That would have allowed her to copy the key to my house, too,” I conceded. “I can’t see Carly as the sinister character you’re suggesting, though. You don’t know of any connection to the Woodruff family, do you?”

  “No.”

  We concentrated on breathing until we got to the parking garage. “It’s an idea, though,” I said as we huffed our way up the stairs. “I may have Rodney. . .check out the owner of. . .the Executive Suites. . .maybe the whole list of tenants.”

  “That’s going to run into. . .some bucks,” Brooke said.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  We reached the level where we’d parked our cars. “Can we take your car?” I said. “I’ve got to wheedle Paul.”

  “Sure.”

  We went to her CR-V. As she wound down out of the garage, I punched Paul’s name on my speed dial, and his face filled the screen.

  “Hey, Paul,” I said when he answered. “Brooke and I are on our way to Regency Square. Can you meet us for an early lunch?”

  “It’s ten o’clock.”

  “It’s kind of an emergency. I’ll explain it when I see you, but I’m hoping you can leave right now.”

  “Just a minute.” I heard him talking to someone, then he came back. “Can do,” he said.

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  “Better give me thirty.”

  “Good man.”

  I punched off, and Brooke said, “So what’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to dump the gun.”

  She shot me a glance, opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. She merged the car onto the Downtown Expressway and accelerated. I waited. Finally, she said, “Isn’t that tampering with evidence?”

  “I’m not thinking of it that way.”

  “How would the D.A. think of it?”

  “As tampering with evidence. Hear me out, though. Suppose I call the police and tell them I now have the murder weapon, assuming that’s what this is. What are they going to think?”

  “That you had it all along.”

  “That I had it all along, and that I got it from my client. It smears me, and it smears Willow Woodruff, probably in a way that’s going to be admissible in court. It isn’t fair to either of us. And it seems to me that all this gun-shuffling has been orchestrated for just that effect.”

  Brooke nodded. “Why the rush, though? We went tearing out of the office like our pants were on fire.”

  “The gun was in my desk because somebody planted it. This somebody has tipped the police before. For all we know, the police are back in my office right now.”

  Brooke whistled. As she maneuvered into the lane that would put us on I-64, she said, “You could plant the gun on someone yourself. Peyton Shilling is the obvious candidate.”

  “I thought of that, but that would be just as unfair as what this unknown tipster is doing to me and Willow Woodruff. Peyton’s a home wrecker and a nasty piece of work, but I don’t have any particular reason to believe that she killed Chris Woodruff.”

  “Motive,” Brooke said. “A woman scorned.”

  “I’ll use that if I need to, believe me, but hanging the murder weapon around her neck is a different proposition altogether. If this is the murder weapon, the police need to have it, but they need to get it in a way that’s entirely neutral.”

  “If it is the murder weapon and it’s registered to Willow, the police may arrest her as soon as they get it.”

  I nodded. “I know. I wish it could be helped.”

  “So what’s Paul for?”

  “To call in another anonymous tip.”

  “Why call it in? Why not just dump the gun and be done with it?”

  “That would be a crime,” I said. “Chris Woodruff has been murdered, and the police need the murder weapon.”

  “Isn’t what you’re doing a crime, too?”

  “Maybe. Yes. I can’t think of any other way to handle it that’s fair.”

  “Maybe it’s like that tree that falls in the woods.” She glanced at me. “If there’s no one to witness it, is it still a crime?”

  I smiled, my eyes on the road as the broken lines on the pavement slipped by us. “Brooke Marshall, you’re a philosopher after my own heart.”

  Regency Square Mall was in sight when I had Brooke turn into the parking lot of a Long John Silver, home of fast-food seafood, most of it fried. There were no other cars in the lot, and there was a dumpster in back of the restaurant, both of which seemed promising. When Brooke stopped the car beside the dumpster, though, I could see across some curbing to two other restaurants and a motel and could see cars going by on both Parham and Eastridge Roads. We were in eyeshot of a lot of people. How many of them might remember a tall blonde get out of a car in an empty parking lot and throw something in a dumpster? My eyes cut toward Brooke, who was less tall. . .but probably just as striking with her clear, freckleless skin and thick red hair.

  “What?” she said. “I don’t like it when you look at me that way.”

  “I’m just wondering which of us would be less noticeable getting out of the car to open the dumpster and toss something in.” Paul, I thought, would be less noticeable than either of us. We could drop him off and let him walk half-a-block or so until he found an inconspicuous place to slip the gun out of his pocket and into a dumpster or a trashcan or a bush. Then we could swing around and pick him up.

  “If that door on the side of the dumpster was open, we could toss it in without either of us getting out of the car. All we’d have to worry about then is someone remembering the license plate.”

  “It’s not open.”

  “Well if you’re going to nitpick. . .”

  I pointed. “See that station on the other side of Eastridge? Let’s go get some gas.”

  As Brooke drove us over there, I looked around in her car for some trash to wrap the gun in. There wasn’t anything. “You’re a neat freak, you know it?”

  “You say that like neatness is a bad thing.”

  “Just inconvenient to me personally,” I said. “At least at the moment. Never mind. There’re paper towel dispensers on the posts.”

  Brooke stopped at a pump and we got out. As she looked at the pump. I pulled out a couple of blue paper towels.

  “You can’t actually get gas, you know,” I said. “There can’t be any record of our being here.” I walked back around the car and leaned in to get the handgun out of my purse, using the paper towels both to avoid leaving prints and to hide the gun from any casual observers. As I walked back toward the pump and the trashcan beside it, I wiped my hands on th
e bundle of paper towels. I dropped the bundle into the trash.

  Brooke was already back behind the wheel. I walked back around the car and got in.

  “Does it look suspicious that we pulled up and pulled away again without pumping gas?” she asked as I pulled the door shut.

  “Probably. Hopefully not suspicious enough that anyone will remember it a couple of hours from now. The main thing is that no one can describe us to the police.” In the side mirror I saw a white pickup pull up to the pump we had just vacated. Then Brooke turned onto Eastridge, and we were away clean. I hoped.

  Paul beat us to the food court. When we walked in, he was seated at a table, sipping a drink through a straw. He was wearing khakis and a polo shirt with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond logo embroidered on the left breast. The time was not yet eleven on a Friday morning. Only half the vendors were open, and only Paul’s table and a couple of others were occupied.

  “Don’t make eye-contact,” I murmured to Brooke. “Just walk past him into the mall.”

  Paul opened his mouth to say something as we neared his table, but he closed it again and picked up his drink for another sip as we walked by. Good boy.

  Brooke and I turned the corner and walked down the mall a few storefronts, then sat on a bench in the middle of the mall. After a few minutes, Paul appeared. He sat at another bench that had its back to ours, still not looking at us, and said to no one in particular, “Does someone want to tell me what this is about?”

  “I need you to make an anonymous call to the D.A.’s office.”

  After a few moments’ reflection, he said, “I assume you want it made from the pay phone near the food court.”

  “Yes. I awant it tied to the previous tip, and that one came from here.”

  “You got a phone number?”

  “Brooke’s looking it up.”

  Brooke glanced at me, then got out her phone to do it.

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  I reached for my purse, realized I didn’t have what I needed. “Got a pen?” I said.

  He had one clipped in the placket of his shirt. He pulled it out and handed it to me over his shoulder.

  “Anything to write on?”

  He rolled his eyes, then got out his wallet and extracted a receipt folded multiple times. He held that over his shoulder, too, and I took it. I looked around for a hard surface to write on before deciding I’d have to make do with the arm of the bench. Brooke held out her phone, which displayed “Biggs A” over the address of the Commonwealth’s Attorney on East Broad Street and a phone number. I copied the phone number onto the back of the receipt, then after a little thought composed the message that would let Aubrey know a semiautomatic pistol was in one of the trash cans at the Valero station near Parham and Eastridge.

  I looked at Brooke, who was watching me write. In a low voice, I said, “You don’t remember the number of the pump where we dumped the gun, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, why make it easy for them?” I made an edit, then handed the note over my shoulder to Paul. For a while he continued to sit, an elbow on the back of his bench, gazing abstractedly down the mall.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He exhaled audibly. “Someday you’re going to get me into doo-doo so deep you’re not going to be able to get me out of it, aren’t you?”

  “We can hope not.”

  “That makes me feel a lot better.” He sighed again and stood up.

  “Don’t come back here when you’re done,” I said. “Meet us at Fuddruckers. My treat.”

  Chapter 6

  When I got to the Ironfronts on Monday morning, I had a new key waiting for me. I said hi to Carly, and as she answered, she slapped a lone key on the counter and slid it toward me.

  I picked it up. “Thanks, Carly.” I’d had my own locks changed Friday afternoon after the lunch at Fuddruckers. Paul had to get back to work, but Dr. McDermott helped me take off the doorknobs and door levers, five in all, then he had stayed in the house while Deacon and I took them to a locksmith. It would have made sense to leave Deacon with Dr. McDermott, but Deacon had been getting territorial about my house, at least where Paul was concerned, and I didn’t want to risk Dr. McDermott getting his pants leg torn off.

  The afternoon had become unusually warm for April, and, when I got to the locksmith, I hesitated about leaving Deacon in the car. It would be nice if I’d brought a leash.

  “You stay close,” I told Deacon.

  He came to his feet on the car seat, his tail smacking the dash, and I gave him a crooked smile. “Stay close,” I said again and opened the door, holding up a hand to keep him from going out over top of me. “Okay,” I said when I was out.

  Deacon jumped to my seat and from there to the ground.

  “Heel,” I said. It wasn’t a command I used with him very often. In our neighborhood, the looser “stay close” worked well enough. I was pleasantly surprised that he stayed right beside me as I pulled open the door of the locksmith, and he crowded against my leg as we went through.

  “That dog’s not on a leash,” the guy at the counter said.

  “Do you allow dogs in here if they’re on a leash?”

  “I don’t guess we have a policy at all, actually.”

  “Good,” I said. I put my sack of doorknobs on the counter. “I need to get these rekeyed.”

  He peered into the sack. “You have the keys for them? Save us having to pick the locks.”

  I got out my keys and took two of them off the ring.

  “You want two different keys still, or do you want them all the same?”

  “Can you do them all the same?”

  “Sure.”

  “That would be better.”

  “Hey, Jim,” the guy called. “We got work.”

  An older man, close to fifty, came out of the back. There was a stool on my side of the counter, so I sat on it. Deacon, after giving the place a quick once-over, lay at my feet. It took Jim and the guy at the counter about thirty minutes to change out the locks and cost me just over forty dollars.

  “Thanks,” I said as I paid. “If I had known it was this cheap and easy, I’d have been getting my locks changed every month or two.”

  “Feel free to come back,” said the guy at the counter.

  “That’s a good dog you got there,” Jim said.

  “Thanks. I think so, too.”

  “Well behaved.”

  I shrugged and smiled. Though I appreciated the compliment, well behaved was a bit hit or miss with Deacon.

  When we got back home with the sack of doorknobs, Dr. McDermott had fallen asleep in my recliner. Deacon stopped short when he became aware of him and looked back at me.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  At the sound of my voice, Dr. McDermott started awake and shook his head. “I think I dozed off. Hey, big guy.” He dropped a hand over the arm of the chair, and Deacon wiggled over and licked it.

  “I was a little worried about how he’d react to finding someone in our house,” I said.

  “Deacon and I go way back.” Almost as far back as Deacon himself did, though that had only been about six months. “And, after all, I let him into my house.”

  “Maybe he feels a certain reciprocal obligation,” I said.

  “I wonder how he’d react to finding you in my house,” Dr. McDermott said. “We’ll have to try it sometime.”

  I couldn’t imagine Deacon challenging me, but it was something to think about. That evening, he and I ran together. On Saturday we took another run and did some yard work together. I called Willow Woodruff in the afternoon just to see how she and Caden were enjoying the warm spring weather.

  “Fine. We went to Bryan Park. The azaleas are in bloom, and it’s beautiful.”

  I hadn’t ever been to Bryan Park when the azaleas were in bloom. Paul and I needed to go sometime.

  “He asked about his daddy,” Willow said.

  “What did you tell him?”<
br />
  “That his daddy was in heaven looking down on us.” There was a catch in her voice. “I hope it’s true. That he’s in heaven, I mean.”

  “Me, too.” Both that there was a divine dance to enter into and that, whatever his failings, Chris had reconciled finally with the dancers. “The police haven’t bothered you?”

  “No. Maybe they’re going to leave us alone now.”

  I was torn between the need to prepare her for what was surely coming and the desire to protect whatever weekend she had left from fear and worry. “I hope so,” I said.

  That night Deacon and I met Paul at Dogwood Dell’s amphitheater for an evening concert given by an R&B group called the Faculty Lounge Lizards. Dogwood Dell was a public park, and I got out my leash for the occasion. There were a lot of people there for the concert, even a few families with kids, and maybe a dozen dogs. I didn’t figure all of them wanted to meet Deacon.

  On Sunday Paul came over to my place for a long walk.

  Though I felt like we’d given Deacon a lot of quality time over the weekend, he was a dog, and for dogs it’s never enough. On Monday, he gave me about fifteen minutes with my morning cup of coffee, then used his head to push one of my legs off the couch. When I put it back on the couch; he pushed my foot to the floor again. I gave up and stood to go get my running shoes, and he danced around me. Having a dog made it a lot easier to stay active, I reflected. It made it impossible, really, not to.

  I used the new key Carly had given me to unlock my office door, went to my desk, and opened the side drawer to put my purse in it. No gun, just an empty drawer. I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

  “This is for you, too,” Carly said from the doorway. I could hardly see her behind the spray of roses she was holding.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  She set the roses on the desk, and I bent over them to smell the delicate fragrance.

  “Paul?” I said. We had had a wonderful weekend, I thought.

  “Better read the card.”