Trial by Ambush (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  Chapter 34

  Since we no longer had John’s credit card to pay for it, our hotel this time was a Budget 8. While Brooke got our stuff out of her car, I went in to register, signing the registration form as Loretta Stevens. Don’t ask me where that came from; I haven’t a clue. I paid with cash — I’d gotten it from the ATM at the food court — and, as an added precaution, I transposed two of the letters on my license plate.

  We each had a bed to ourselves, which made the hotel room seem empty after the night before. We watched TV, catching what might have been the funniest sitcom I’ve ever seen in my life. I laughed until my sides hurt. Either it was tension, or TV’s a lot better than it used to be. You choose.

  When the news came on, I noticed the pants I’d taken off the guy at Marty’s office and realized I’d never gone through the pockets.

  “Those are that guy’s pants,” I said.

  “Yeah. When I got your call, I packed them up along with everything else.”

  I got the pants and took them back to the bed. Brooke came over and sat on the end of the bed with her bare legs crossed.

  I fished out the wallet. The driver’s license had a picture that I wouldn’t have recognized, and the name was Armando Gutierrez. I looked at Brooke. “Did he look Hispanic to you?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t look like that picture, either.”

  “Nobody looks like their picture.”

  “I don’t think that’s him.”

  “Well, that’s not helpful.”

  In his right front pocket, Armando, or whatever his name was, had a pocketknife with a six-inch blade that unfolded to the touch of a button. In the pocket with it was a packet of Listerine strips, a little loose change, and a single key. In the other front pocket was a key ring with about a dozen keys on it.

  “It could be anybody’s pockets,” I said.

  “Not the knife.”

  “Okay, the knife’s a little much,” I agreed. My gaze went from the key ring to the single key. That was odd, too, I thought.

  Our wakeup call came at seven. Brooke took it, said thank you, and lay back down.

  “Did you just thank a recorded message?” I asked.

  “No, it was a live voice. This is Budget 8, remember.”

  So it was. After a moment, Brooke said, “No peep show this morning.”

  “No.”

  We lay there awhile. Brooked sighed. “He…”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Okay.” She sighed again, and I threw a pillow at her.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, swinging her legs out of bed. “You lie there and think about it. I’m going to take a shower.”

  She stayed in the bathroom fifteen minutes. My own shower took five. When I came out of the bathroom, I was surprised to find Brooke dressed and putting on her makeup.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her.

  “To watch you get John off on the murder charge.”

  “I’m not going to get John off.”

  “That’s not a very positive attitude. Why aren’t you going to get him off?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “Because you’re not good enough?”

  “Well, maybe not. I’ve never done any criminal work before. But Matlock couldn’t get John off today. It’s a preliminary hearing. The prosecution doesn’t have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. It just has to show probable cause.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’s no jury, either. The prosecution will put on as few witnesses as it can get away with and summarize as much as possible.”

  “So the judge is going to find John guilty.”

  “No. He’ll find probable cause to hold him for the main trial.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. I want to see it anyway.”

  “If the police are there to arrest me, they might pick you up, too.”

  “They might.”

  “That would be a bad thing,” I said.

  “Yes, it would.” But she went right ahead working on her face.

  I took a breath and sat on the bed, suddenly overwhelmed by the challenges before me. I had no idea what was going to happen in that courtroom or whether I would walk out of it a free woman. Idly, I pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. The Gideon Bible was blue, but otherwise identical to the maroon copy at the Marriott. I picked it up and crossed my legs. I didn’t know where to turn in the Bible for words of comfort and inspiration, so I just held it on my lap.

  “Dear God,” I thought. “Help me to help John Parker.” I took a breath. “Whatever it takes.” I sat for a while with my mind in idle. Greater love has no one than this. I didn’t love John Parker, had never loved him with that kind of love. Maybe I never could. It would be nice to know I was better than I sometimes suspected, though.

  Brooke had turned from the mirror and was watching me. “Are you all right?” she said.

  I shrugged, aware suddenly of tears welling in my eyes. I stood abruptly, returned the Bible to the drawer, and pushed it shut. “I feel like I’m playing for all the marbles,” I said.

  “I guess you are. All John’s marbles.”

  “It’s piling up on me, too. I’ve lost my home. Two people are dead. When I’m not too busy to think, I feel like a stranger to myself.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I nodded, smiled at her. “Me, too.”

  Chapter 35

  At the courthouse, we parked in the lot and walked around the courthouse to the main entrance, passing between the courthouse and John Marshall’s old house. A hot, summer wind whipped our hair and tugged at our skirts. By the time we made it up the stairs and through the glass doors, Brooke looked as though she’d been sitting under an industrial-strength hair dryer. My own hair was in a ponytail, which had protected it from most of the damage. As we joined the line to go through the metal detectors, I used my free hand to smooth the few stray strands of hair back from my face.

  In the mirrored elevator, Brooke pushed and patted her own mass of hair into place while the other six people watched her out of the corners of their eyes. We got out on the second floor. John was watching the elevator from a bench in the hall.

  When he saw us, he got up and handed me a folder.

  “What is it?”

  “The case file — police reports, medical examiner’s report, the rest of it.”

  “Have you looked through it?”

  He nodded.

  “Was strangulation the cause of death?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yes.” He sounded testy. In the ordinary course of events I would have gone through the file meticulously, but you do what you can do.

  “Look,” John said. “I know the judge is going to bind me over for trial. I just don’t want my bail revoked.”

  “Sure.”

  “He can do it in a murder case,” John said. “Revoke bail.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re prepared to handle it?”

  “You should have confidence in your legal counsel,” I said.

  James Jordan got off the elevator at 9:55. A young lawyer from the district attorney’s office was with him. I’d met the lawyer before. We’d once sat at the same table at a monthly lunch meeting of the Richmond Bar Association, but I couldn’t remember his name.

  They came over, and Jordan shook my hand. “Robin,” he said.

  The lawyer made a chopping motion with his head, the overhead fluorescents glinting in the round lenses of his glasses. “Ian Maxwell,” he said.

  “Are you out on bail, or have they not caught up with you yet?” Jordan asked me.

  I felt my mouth stretch, but I didn’t say anything. Ian didn’t react either, which told me he knew all about it already. We went into the clerk’s office together, and the clerk nodded us through to a small courtroom.

  The judge wasn’t at the bench, and the courtroom was empty. John and I sat at the counsel table furthest from the door, and Brooke sat behind us in one of only a dozen chairs provid
ed for spectators. Jordan and Ian Maxwell took the other table, Maxwell taking a folder out of his briefcase and squaring it neatly on the tabletop.

  A man with a moustache and thinning hair opened a door, looked at us, and disappeared again. A few moments later the judge came in. His name was Cochran. I didn’t know him, but he appeared to be only a couple of years older than I was. He had short, dark hair and a goatee that caused his chin to disappear against his black robe when he bent his head. “State versus John Parker,” he read.

  The red-haired man came in and took his place at the Stenotype.

  “Is the state ready?” the judge asked.

  Ian Maxwell stood up. “Ready.”

  “I don’t believe I know you, counselor.”

  “Ian Maxwell, your honor.”

  “Pleased to meet you. Is the defense ready?”

  I stood. “Ready. Robin Starling, your honor.”

  “Is the defendant present?”

  John stood up. “Present.”

  “Your name is John Wesley Parker?” the judge asked him.

  “Yes, your honor.”

  “You’re represented by Robin Starling? Do you understand that this is a preliminary hearing?”

  He was, and he did.

  “Has your lawyer explained to you the nature and purpose of a preliminary hearing?”

  She hadn’t, but it hadn’t been necessary. “Yes, she has,” John said.

  “You understand that you are accused of murdering Wendy Walters sometime late August 12 or early in the morning of August 13.”

  John nodded. “Yes.”

  “It is your right to make a statement relative to this accusation. Do you wish to make such a statement, understanding that you cannot be compelled to do so and that any statement you make may be used in evidence against you?”

  “No, your honor.”

  A uniformed police officer had come in and joined Jordan and Maxwell at their table. The judge said to Maxwell, “Call your witnesses.”

  Maxwell called the uniformed cop, a young man named Jason Booth. On the afternoon of August 13, Booth had gotten a call from the dispatcher at 12:25 and, as a result of that call, had gone with his partner to 1901-B Main Street, the apartment above Joe’s Diner.

  “And what did you find there?” Maxwell asked.

  “The door was locked. We watched a woman come down the stairs, and she let us in.”

  “Did she use a key?”

  “Yes. The lock was a double-keyed deadbolt. She used a key on a key ring.”

  “Who was the woman? Did you subsequently identify her?”

  “Yes, sir. It was Robin Starling. That woman there.” He pointed at me.

  The judge’s eyebrows rose. I ignored the frown he gave me.

  “What happened then?” Maxwell asked.

  “We followed her up the stairs.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “A dead woman, about age thirty. She was lying on the couch in the living room with a wire around her neck.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Just her underwear.”

  “A bra and panties?”

  “Yes.”

  Maxwell looked at me. “Your witness.”

  I didn’t stand up. “Describe the wire you found around her neck.”

  “It was telephone wire. Light gray.”

  “No further questions.”

  John’s eyes cut toward me. I ignored him, too.

  Jordan was next. The judge swore him in, and he sat down.

  “Were you at 1901-B Main Street on August 13th?”

  “I was.”

  “How did you come to be there?”

  “I went in response to a call from the dispatcher. My partner, Ray Hernandez, was with me.”

  “What did you find?”

  His description matched Booth’s, and he, too, identified me as the woman on the scene.

  “Just a minute,” the judge said, interrupting. “Do you intend to call Ms. Starling as a witness?”

  “Not at this time, your honor,” Maxwell said.

  The judge pursed his mouth. Since hearsay was inadmissible, even in a preliminary hearing, Jordan couldn’t testify to anything I’d told him. To the judge that might have looked like a problem, but, unfortunately, the prosecution didn’t need my testimony to implicate John.

  Judge Cochran said to me, “Ms. Starling, it seems clear to me that you will be called as a witness in the main trial.”

  I stood. “Yes, your honor.”

  He looked at John. “Between now and then, you’re going to have to find other counsel. You realize that, don’t you?”

  John stood up next to me. In my experience, judges can’t hear you unless you stand up. “I’m aware that it’s likely, your honor.”

  “I understand you’re a lawyer yourself. Is that correct?”

  “I’ve practiced law in Richmond for six years.”

  The judge looked as if he had more to say, but in the end he only nodded. “Proceed, counselor,” he said to Maxwell.

  “How long have you been with the police force, Mr. Jordan?”

  “Twenty-two years.”

  “You’re currently in the homicide division?”

  He was. He had investigated more than one hundred fifty homicides. He was familiar with crime scene investigations and had experience in fingerprinting and ballistics. The point of all this testimony was to qualify him as an expert, which meant that at some point Maxwell was going to ask him for an opinion.

  “Did you ever identify the decedent?” Maxwell asked.

  “We did. She is Wendy Walters, a thirty-one-year-old accountant with McCormack Labs.”

  “How did you come to make that identification?”

  “Counsel for the defense identified her.” It earned me another frown from the judge. “Also, there was a purse in the apartment with a wallet containing both a driver’s license and a credit card with a photograph on it. The pictures of Wendy Walters were that of the dead woman.”

  “Whose apartment was this where you found her?”

  “It was leased to Wendy Walters.”

  “So she was found in her own home.”

  I stood. “Is Mr. Maxwell relying on Officer Jordan’s status as an expert to draw this conclusion, or are we just stating the obvious?” I said.

  Maxwell withdrew the question, and I sat down. John leaned toward me. “Was there a point to that?”

  “Just letting them know I’m alive.”

  His eyes rolled briefly upward as he sat back.

  “Was the apartment dusted for fingerprints?” Maxwell asked.

  “It was.”

  “Whose did you find there?”

  I stood up again. “I’m concerned about Mr. Maxwell’s use of the passive voice in the previous question. He’s elicited the response that the apartment was dusted. Officer Jordan didn’t say he dusted it.”

  “I didn’t,” Jordan said. “Not personally.”

  “Impersonally?” I said. “I think it’s important that we establish the source of Mr. Jordan’s knowledge.”

  The judge looked at Maxwell, who nodded. If you’re not familiar with courtroom procedure, this kind of crap goes on all the time. You get used to it. The point is to make sure that any evidence presented has a factual basis.

  “Mr. Jordan?” Maxwell asked him.

  “A team of technicians working under my direction dusted the apartment for fingerprints. Together we compared the prints recovered to those of the defendant John Parker.”

  I stood up again. “What does he mean by ‘under his direction’? While the lab techs were dusting for prints, isn’t it a fact that Mr. Jordan was sitting at the kitchen table talking to me?”

  The judge looked at Jordan.

  “That’s true,” Jordan said. “What I meant was that they reported to me.”

  “And at some point,” I said, “they presented him with prints that they said came from the apartment. He doesn’t know where they came from of hi
s own knowledge. What he’s giving us implicitly are the hearsay statements made to him by these lab techs.”

  The judge said, “Mr. Maxwell?”

  Maxwell sighed. “If you’ll give me a fifteen minute recess, your honor, I can produce one of the technicians.”

  The judge nodded and, without speaking, stood and left the bench. Maxwell got on his cell phone, and we listened to him arrange for the lab tech to get over to the courtroom pronto.

  “I’m probably going to need the M.E., too,” he said, flipping through his papers. “Pavlicek signed the autopsy report. Can you get him here in thirty?”

  Sitting back with a sense of some satisfaction, I looked at John and raised my eyebrows.

  “You’ve got something in mind?” he said.

  “I’m making them prove their case.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “What?” I said.

  “Much ado about nothing.”

  Thank you, William Shakespeare. “Look,” I said. “It’s my job to get a look at as many of their witnesses as possible. If I’m not going to do that, we might as well waive the preliminary hearing altogether.”

  John nodded, his lips compressed, and looked away.

  Chapter 36

  The lab tech was a huge brute of a man in his mid-twenties. Now that I saw him, I remembered him from the crime scene. His face was square and angular, handsome on a gargantuan scale. He looked like a Redskins linebacker.

  “Your name?” Maxwell asked him, when he’d been sworn in and had taken his seat.

  “Danny Golden.” He had a deep baritone voice.

  “Did you have occasion to visit 1901-B Main Street on the day of August 13th?”

  He did, of course. Maxwell led him through the preliminaries. Golden had himself dusted for prints and recorded them. He had himself made the print comparisons, with James Jordan watching.

  “Did you take any prints from the Wendy Walters apartment that you subsequently identified as belonging to the defendant, John Parker?”

  “Yes,” Golden rumbled. “We found prints of all five fingers of Parker’s right hand and prints of his left thumb and middle finger.”

  Maxwell looked at me. “Your witness.”