Juggling Evidence (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “Sure, why not?”

  She sat up straighter. “You’re not saying the police are tapping our phone?”

  “I hope not, but they may be tapping his. It doesn’t matter. Ask Matt to pick you up here tomorrow. Wear the dark make-up, put your hair in a braid, and get him to take you by Melissa’s apartment. You spend about fifteen minutes there…”

  “Doing what?”

  I sat down on the floor and pulled my feet in, my knees wide, feeling the stretch in my groin. “It doesn’t matter. Use your imagination.”

  “Fifteen minutes isn’t really time enough for…”

  “No it’s not,” I said, cutting her off. “Better stifle your imagination. Just plan to talk.”

  She giggled, turning slightly pink.

  “Then get him to take you to the bus station. Buy a ticket to Arlington.”

  “And get on the bus?”

  I stood and bent over my feet, feeling the stretch in my hips. I said, “I don’t think it will get that far, but if it does, yes, get on the bus and go to Arlington. Spend the night, and if nothing happens, come back the next day.”

  “What do you think will happen?”

  “I think the police will pick you up and ask you questions about the murder of Derek Nolan.”

  “What do I tell them?”

  “That you don’t know anything about the murder of Derek Nolan.”

  “Do I tell them my name?”

  “Yes. Insist you’re Brooke Marshall. That’s important. You don’t want to lie to the police in a murder investigation. But you won’t be carrying any identification, just a purse and some cash. Leave your driver’s license and credit cards here in your sock drawer.” I mopped sweat from my face with a forearm. “Are you okay with that?”

  “You’re giving me a recipe for getting arrested. Of course I’m not okay with it.”

  “You won’t be doing anything illegal, just hanging out with Matt Nolan and going to Arlington.”

  “I don’t see the point.”

  “Melissa saw the murderer. Because she’s not available, the prosecution is having to rely on secondary evidence, but as an eyewitness she’s the key to the whole thing. If she turns up, she knocks the prosecution’s case into a cocked hat.”

  “Or seals the case against Steve Bruno,” Brooke said.

  “Or seals the case against Steve Bruno,” I conceded. “The point is, if she turns up, it changes everything.”

  “But she won’t show up,” Brooke said. “It’ll just be me.”

  “We’re the only ones who know that.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Temporarily may be good enough,” I said.

  Chapter 27

  Jordan was waiting for me outside the door of the courtroom the next morning. “Hi, Robin,” he said.

  “You seem to have slept well after an afternoon of grueling cross-examination.”

  “As well as can be expected. Look, I know you had an interest in Mark Walker.”

  “I saved his life.”

  “Yes. Well, no. Not really.” His mouth stretched in a grimace of pain. “He died last night at MCV.”

  “He died,” I repeated, my morning energy leaking out of me like air from a deflating balloon.

  “I’m sorry,” Jordan said.

  “Did he ever regain consciousness? Ever say anything?”

  Jordan shook his head.

  I took a breath, squaring my shoulders. I had a trial to do.

  “I suppose you realize by now that Biggs is laying for you,” Jordan said.

  I nodded. “On the plus side, he’s showing me a lot more of his case that I expected to see in a preliminary hearing.”

  “On the minus side, it looks to me like he’s got you,” Jordan said. Behind me in the elevator lobby, one of the elevators dinged, and Jordan’s gaze drifted over my shoulder. “Watch yourself,” he said softly, and he strode past me toward the elevators.

  “Mr. Biggs,” he said, “I’ve got something for you.”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed through the doors into the courtroom. With friends like Jordan, I’d need to be careful.

  My clients were already there. They looked up at me as I pushed through the rail, then looked away again without speaking. Matt wasn’t in the gallery. My father was, though, sitting on the aisle in the third row. We made eye contact, and he gave me an apologetic smile. I gave him a half-smile in return, remembering the German shepherd he had saved by opening its trachea, remembering the night I had tried to save Mark Walker.

  I hesitated, shrugged, then turned away and sat, taking the case folders from my briefcase and laying them on the desk. “Good morning,” I said brightly to my clients.

  “Hello,” Lynn said. Bruno only nodded. This was the day, I thought, that the prosecution would go to work on him.

  Biggs first witness was a tall, long-faced man who looked a bit like Gregory Peck, but turned out to be a private detective named Mitchell Arnold.

  “Did you know the decedent, Derek Nolan, during his lifetime?” Biggs asked him.

  “I did. He hired me to watch his wife.”

  “When was this?”

  “Middle of September. September 16.”

  I glanced at my clients. Lynn seemed to be sitting unusually still, which suggested, possibly, that this was the first she knew of Mitchell Arnold.

  “What did you do?” Biggs asked him.

  “I watched the house from my parked car and followed her when she left it.”

  “And did she leave it?”

  “Oh, yes. I followed her around for eight days. During that time she went to the grocery store twice, got her hair cut once, got her nails done, and met multiple times with a man named Steve Bruno.”

  Biggs looked at Bruno. “The defendant in this case?”

  “You betcha.”

  That seemed to irritate even Biggs. “How often?” he asked crisply.

  “Every one of those eight days.”

  “Where?”

  “Lots of places. They had lunch at a hamburger place on Tenth Street and breakfast at the Berkeley Hotel. On two occasions, she went into the Berkeley in early afternoon—both times between one-thirty and two o’clock—and didn’t come out until after four. They met once at a bookstore, he came to the house. I got lots of pictures.”

  “Did you report all this to your client, Derek Nolan?”

  “I did.”

  “And show him your photographs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the news or the photographs seem to upset him?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. If he expressed any emotion at all, I’d say it was triumph.”

  Biggs gaze slid to the defense table, then went back to the witness stand. “Do you have the photographs with you?”

  “Sure. They’re in my briefcase. Can I get them?”

  Biggs looked at the judge, and Cochran nodded. We watched Arnold step down from the witness stand, push through the rail into the gallery of the courtroom, bend over his briefcase, and return, carrying a manila folder. Back on the stand, he opened it and extracted two eight-by-ten photographs. “This one here shows them standing together in a bookstore in Shockoe Slip.” He passed it to Biggs, who carried it to me and then to the judge. “This one was taken at the house.” He handed it to Biggs, who glanced at it.

  “Derek Nolan’s own house?” he asked.

  “The house where Derek and Lynn Nolan lived together.”

  Biggs brought me the photograph. The resolution wasn’t the best: It looked as if it was taken with a telephoto lens at early twilight. The figures were recognizable, though. Lynn and Bruno were standing at the rail of a balcony, him wearing a jacket, her wearing a sweater. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and his arm was around her. A stemmed glass half-filled with a dark liquid was on the rail.

  Biggs carried the photograph to the judge, who looked at it and nodded.

  “Your honor, I’d like to have these admitted into e
vidence.”

  “Any objection?” Cochran asked me.

  Lynn and Bruno looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t have any grounds for an objection. “No, your honor,” I said.

  “They’re admitted. What numbers are we up to?” Cochran asked his court reporter.

  The court reporter told him and marked the exhibits.

  “I want to ask you a question or two about this picture taken at the house,” Biggs said. “Was Derek Nolan at home on that occasion?”

  “He wasn’t. When I showed him the first of my photographs, one at a diner and a couple at the hotel, he told me he was going to a convention in D.C.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He wanted to give his wife and her boyfriend lots of rope to hang themselves with.” Arnold grinned. “He said he wanted me to supply the rope.”

  Biggs went to the exhibit table and picked up the cell phone Derek Nolan had been clutching when we found him. He handed it to the witness.

  “Have you ever seen this phone before?”

  “It looks like one I gave Mr. Nolan. When they were having lunch at Tony’s, the hamburger place on Tenth, Mr. Bruno hung his jacket on a coat tree near their booth. This was in the pocket.”

  “You took it?”

  “I did.”

  “And gave it to Mr. Nolan?”

  Arnold nodded. “It was how we identified the boyfriend.”

  “You traced the number?”

  “Well, yes, but it was even easier than that. You just turn it on, and the name shows for a second. Steve Bruno.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Arnold. Your witness.”

  I went to the podium. “So it’s your testimony that you spied on Lynn Nolan for eight days.”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “And that you stole Mr. Bruno’s cell phone?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t say I stole it.”

  “You took it without his knowledge or consent with the intent to deprive him of possession indefinitely?”

  He looked momentarily uncomfortable. “I guess you could put it that way.”

  “Putting it that way, you committed common law larceny. Did the district attorney or anyone in his office promise you immunity from prosecution?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “But that was the understanding?”

  He glanced at Biggs, but only for an instant. “Nobody ever said anything about prosecuting me.”

  There was no point in pressing it further. He had admitted to larceny, a crime of dishonesty, which might be used to weaken his credibility as a witness when the case got to a jury. Here at the preliminary hearing, though, the credibility of witnesses wasn’t an issue. “No further questions,” I said.

  “Call Stephanie Hoard.”

  That surprised me. Biggs had already connected Lynn to Steve Bruno in a way that suggested a motive for murder. What more did he want?

  Stephanie Hoard came forward, wearing blue chinos and a polo shirt and looking much as she had that night at the Berkeley Hotel. After she was sworn, she stepped up into the witness box and sat down.

  “What is your name?” Biggs asked her.

  She told him.

  “Your occupation?”

  “I’ve been an officer with the Richmond Police Department for nine years.”

  “What were you doing the night of October twenty-third?”

  “I was at the Berkeley Hotel to keep an eye on Lynn Nolan.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “I was in charge of a team of four.” She named the other members of her team.

  “Did you see Lynn Nolan enter the hotel?”

  “Yes. We had about thirty minutes notice that she would be going there, and we were in place when she arrived. She checked in and went up to her room on the third floor.”

  “Did she stay there?”

  “We don’t think so. As a result of what a member of my team told me, I focused my attention on a room on the fourth floor of the hotel.”

  “Who was registered in that room?”

  “Steven Bruno.”

  “Did you know anything about Mr. Bruno at that point?”

  “I did not.”

  “Why were you focusing on his room?”

  “It was my impression that Lynn Nolan was inside.”

  I stood up. “I’m concerned that hearsay evidence is sneaking in by the back door here. Did Ms. Hoard herself see Lynn Nolan enter the room of Mr. Bruno?”

  The judge looked at her, his eyebrows raised.

  “I did not,” she said. “I’m telling you the belief I was acting on when I finally entered Mr. Bruno’s room with one of my men.”

  Biggs said, “She’s not introducing an out-of-court statement to prove a fact, your honor, but merely to indicate what motivated her. As we’ll discover in a moment, her belief may have been erroneous.”

  “In that case,” I said, “I object to the introduction of the witness’s beliefs into evidence. The defendants are not bound by something that was going on in her head.”

  “Sustained.”

  Biggs stood looking at me as he thought. “Your honor, I would like to withdraw this witness temporarily to ask a question or two of another witness.”

  “Any objection?” Cochran asked me.

  Biggs said, “She’s the one who’s objecting to hearsay. We have in court the witness who has personal knowledge of the facts at issue.”

  I hesitated, then nodded. “Okay,” I said.

  “Very well,” Cochran said, “call your witness.”

  The man who came forward was Adam King. He’d been the one who went up in the elevator with Stephanie Hoard and Bruno and me. After he had identified himself and said he was in the Berkeley Hotel on the night in question, Biggs asked him whether he was watching the door of Lynn Nolan’s room.

  “I was.”

  “Did she leave it?”

  “Yes. She went down the hall to the elevator and took it to the fourth floor.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I got on the elevator with her.”

  I glanced at Lynn. It was hard to keep from rolling my eyes at her naivety.

  “Where did she go when she got off the elevator?”

  “Room 437.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I stayed in the corridor outside the room until we could get a man positioned in the room across the hall.”

  “Did Lynn Nolan leave Room 437 during that time?”

  “She did not.”

  Biggs looked at the judge. “I’m ready to recall Stephanie Hoard.”

  “I’d like to ask a few questions on cross-examination,” I said.

  The judge nodded, and Biggs went back to his table.

  “Did you subsequently enter Room 437?” I asked Adam King.

  “I did.”

  “Was Ms. Nolan there?”

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Had she left the room in the interim?”

  Biggs stood. “It seems to be Ms. Starling who is asking for hearsay evidence now,” he said.

  “If Mr. King has no personal knowledge of the answer to my question, he can tell us that,” I said.

  “All right,” Cochran said. To the witness he said, “Just tell us what you know of your own personal knowledge, not what was told to you by others. Did you see Ms. Nolan leave Room 437?”

  “No, I didn’t,” King said.

  “No further questions,” I said.

  Biggs stood at his table, short and curly headed. “With the court’s indulgence, I will call one more witness before recalling Stephanie Hoard to the stand.”

  “Very well.”

  He called the man who had been stationed in the room across from Bruno’s. His name was Jack Barnes. He said that he had taken a card-key from Stephanie Hoard, gone to the fourth floor and entered Room 438, directly across the hall from Room 437. Adam King was in the hallway in front of Room 438 when he got there.

  “What did you do while you occupied that room?
” Biggs asked him.

  “I stood at the peephole, looking out.”

  “Could you see the door of Room 437?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you see people in the hallway well enough to recognize them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Lynn Nolan leave that room while you were watching it?”

  “Not through the door,” Barnes said.

  “Thank you. That’s all,” Biggs said.

  I got up to cross-examine, but decided against it. Biggs had made my point for me, that Lynn Nolan could not possibly have been in that hotel room, and it bothered me. “No questions,” I said. I sat, beginning to feel the looming mass of approaching disaster.

  Stephanie Hoard returned to the witness stand.

  Biggs said, “Did you enter Room 437 after Jack Barnes took his place in the room across from it and before he left it?”

  “I did.”

  “Was Lynn Nolan in that room?”

  “She was not.”

  “Who was?”

  “The defendant Steve Bruno and the woman now acting as his attorney, Robin Starling.”

  Cochran’s gaze swung to me. Biggs motive was suddenly clear.

  “No further questions,” Biggs said.

  “Ms. Starling?” Cochran said.

  “No questions.”

  “No questions at all?” Biggs said.

  I smiled at him, though I felt hollow. “None at all,” I said.

  “This isn’t the end of this,” Biggs said. “I intend to bring this matter before the Disciplinary Board.”

  “This isn’t the place to broadcast your intentions,” I said.

  “We may end by charging you as an accessory after the fact.”

  “Your honor,” I said. “Please tell Mr. Biggs to shut his stupid mouth.”

  “Ms. Starling!” the judge snapped. “Mr. Biggs,” he said with equal force. “You will address your remarks to the court and not to each other. You will behave yourselves with decorum. And you will stay on point. One more exchange like this one, and I will find you both in contempt.”

  Aubrey Biggs was getting red in the face, and I found myself hoping for a rupture of the vein that was suddenly visible in his forehead.

  “Yes, your honor,” I said, turning to the judge. “I’m sorry.”

  When Biggs didn’t say anything, Cochran said, “Mr. Biggs? Do I make myself clear?”