Trial by Ambush (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  I stood up. “When were the prints in the apartment made?”

  Golden shrugged.

  “Could you say the prints were made the previous evening?” I asked.

  “There’s no way to tell when they were made,” he rumbled.

  “For all you know, each of the prints you found could have been there a week. Or longer.”

  His big head nodded. “For all I know,” he said.

  “Did you find anybody else’s prints?”

  “The decedent’s, Wendy Walters’. Yours.”

  “My prints were in the apartment?”

  “The second, third, and fourth fingers of your right hand.”

  “No further questions.”

  The judge said, “Ms. Starling.” He hesitated, then shook his head.

  I sat down just as a small man in a hounds-tooth sports jacket entered the courtroom. Maxwell introduced him as Dr. Harold Pavlicek. The judge swore him in, and Maxwell had the doctor identify himself for the record. Pavlicek was a board-certified pathologist who had gone to the Medical College of Virginia right there in Richmond before going to Orlando, Florida, for a five-year residency. He estimated that he had performed something over a thousand autopsies.

  “Did you have cause to examine one Wendy Walters on the day of August 13th?”

  “I did. As the result of a phone call, I arrived at an apartment in the 1900 block of Main Street shortly before two o’clock p.m.”

  “And what did you find there?”

  “A young Caucasian female, about thirty-years of age, deceased.”

  “Where was the body exactly?”

  “Lying in the supine position on a sofa in the front room of the apartment.”

  “This was Wendy Walters?”

  “That is my understanding. Wendy Walters was the name on her driver’s license.”

  “What was the condition of the body?”

  “She had been dead for some time, I would say some twelve or fourteen hours. There was a ligature about her neck…”

  “A what?”

  “A cord of some kind. Her face was congested. There were abrasions on the neck and contusions of the underlying tissues. A ligature mark.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “Occlusion of the vessels supplying blood and oxygen to the brain.”

  Maxwell hesitated.

  “Constriction of the neck by ligature,” the doctor added helpfully.

  “Was she raped?”

  “In cases of strangulation — most cases involve women — rape always has to be ruled out. But in this case, I would say she was not raped.”

  “She had not had intercourse recently?”

  The doctor’s smile was thin. “I didn’t say that. There were no abrasions or contusions of the thighs and external genitalia. Their absence would be unusual if rape were the case.”

  “But she had engaged in intercourse recently.”

  “She wasn’t raped.”

  “She’d had consensual intercourse,” Maxwell said, a hint of exasperation creeping into his tone.

  “In my opinion.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There were traces of semen still in the vagina.”

  I felt my lip curl. I glanced at John, whose gaze was focused on the doctor. I was glad to see his face reddening, though. He had some shame.

  “Did you conduct any tests on the semen you found?” Maxwell asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you conduct a DNA test?”

  “Yes. The results of that test became available just this morning. The DNA of the semen was a match to the blood sample provided to me.”

  Maxwell looked at the judge. “Your honor, I’ll wait to establish the chain of custody, if that’s all right.”

  He got a nod, which meant he wouldn’t have to stop and deal with the source of the blood sample right then.

  “Dr. Pavlicek. You said that death had occurred twelve to fourteen hours prior to your examination. That was at roughly two o’clock in the afternoon?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So the time of death…”

  “Would have been some time between midnight and two o’clock that morning.”

  “How did you establish the time of death?”

  “Ah. Yes.” Dr. Pavlicek pulled some stapled pages from the inside pocket of his jacket and unfolded them.

  “Is that the autopsy report?” I said.

  The doctor looked up, blinking. John slid our copy across the table to me.

  “Is that a copy of the autopsy report?” Maxwell asked the witness.

  “Yes. Yes, this is the report of my postmortem examination.” Dr. Pavlicek cleared his throat and turned a couple of pages, his eyes scanning. “Ah. Rigor mortis was fully developed; postmortem lividity was fully established and fixed.” He glanced up. “Both conditions together suggest that death had occurred at least ten to twelve hours previously. At 2:25 the temperature of the body was 79.5 degrees. Given the temperature of the room where the body was found — it was 72 degrees, air-conditioned — I would expect it to have lost 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit for each hour after death. Since normal rectal temperature is between ninety-nine and one hundred degrees…”

  There was more, including something about finding Wendy’s last meal in her large intestine. It was more than I wanted to know. When I thought of her, images of her in my office, crossing and uncrossing her legs, were mixed with images of her in a basketball uniform. She’d been a great point guard, with hands so fast she could steal the ball and be halfway down the court before any of us realized what was happening.

  “Do you have any questions, Ms. Starling?” the judge asked.

  I started, then glanced around, unsure how long I had been zoned out.

  “No questions,” I said.

  Chapter 37

  Maxwell called James Jordan back to the stand. When it was my turn to have a crack at him, I stood, aware of John looking up at me. “Mr. Jordan, Mr. Golden testified that it is impossible to tell from the physical evidence when the fingerprints found in Wendy’s apartment were made. Do you agree with that testimony?”

  “I would, but your client has admitted to being in the apartment that night.”

  “He said that he took her home.”

  “And went into the apartment.”

  “So the presence of his fingerprints is consistent with his statement.”

  “Yes.”

  “And his statement also provides us with an entirely innocent explanation of his presence in the apartment.”

  Jordan didn’t answer, but then, I hadn’t really asked a question. I felt an interior nudge, the beginnings of an idea.

  “What kind of lock is on the outside door of the decedent’s apartment?” I asked.

  “A double-keyed deadbolt.”

  “Is that a lock that requires a key to lock or unlock it, even from the inside?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So if the door was locked after Mr. Parker left the apartment, that would have to have been done with a key.”

  “That’s right,” Jordan said.

  “How do you know that Wendy Walters didn’t let him out herself and lock up behind him?”

  “If she were alive, of course, she could have done that. She wouldn’t have needed to, though. Mr. Parker had a key. We found it on the dresser inside his apartment.”

  “If she had given him a key…”

  “We don’t think she gave him the key.”

  “That sounds like an opinion. Does your expertise extend to determining when and how the key to a young woman’s apartment might come into a man’s possession?”

  “There was a small nail in the molding of the door at the top of the stairs that led down to the outside door. There was no key on it. Our theory is that the killer took the key on his way out of the apartment.”

  “So now your expertise extends to the purpose and habitual use of small nails in door moldings,” I said.

 
The judge interrupted me. “You’ve made your point, Ms. Starling. We’ll strike the opinion testimony from the record.”

  “Thank you, your honor.” To Jordan I said, “I gather from your testimony that you searched Mr. Parker’s apartment.”

  “We did.”

  “Did you find evidence that anyone was living with Mr. Parker? A second toothbrush, some clothes, anything like that?”

  Jordan shifted in his chair, glancing at Maxwell. “We did.”

  “What did you find, specifically?”

  “A toothbrush. Some clothes.”

  “How did you know the clothes didn’t belong to Mr. Parker himself?”

  “The clothes included a pair of women’s jeans, a few blouses, a bra, and a couple of pairs of panties.”

  “I take it that Mr. Parker is not a cross-dresser?” Beside me, I heard a small grunt of annoyance.

  “Frankly, the possibility didn’t occur to us. We also found some cosmetics and a box of tampons under the sink.”

  “So a woman was living with Mr. Parker, or at least spending the night occasionally. Was it Wendy Walters?”

  “We don’t think so.”

  “Why not? Was there a name sewed into the underwear?” I have a weakness for sarcasm. In court, it’s gotten me into trouble more than once.

  “Mr. Parker said that she visited him for the first time on August twelfth,” Jordan said.

  “He also told you he didn’t kill Wendy Walters,” I said. “And yet, here we are.”

  He turned his hands palms up. “Here we are,” he said.

  “Did you find Ms. Walters fingerprints in John Parker’s apartment?”

  “Yes. On an interior doorknob and on the coffee table, I believe.”

  “Ah.”

  “Not the volume of prints we would have expected if she were living there.”

  “But some woman was a regular guest. She must have left prints.”

  “There were lots of prints we didn’t identify.”

  “John Parker’s prints?”

  “I would assume so. We didn’t make the comparisons.”

  “My prints?”

  He was silent for several seconds. “I don’t know.”

  “So far as you know then, all the prints in that apartment that didn’t belong to Wendy Walters were John Parker’s.”

  “So far as we know.”

  “But the clothes and cosmetics and so on suggest that John Parker had a girlfriend.”

  “Yes.”

  “And his statement indicates that it wasn’t Wendy Walters.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So,” I said, “in injecting his DNA sample into Ms. Walters, Mr. Parker was cheating on a girlfriend.” I turned to look at the culprit. John’s flushed face seemed to have turned to wood, but I didn’t let it worry me. I was on a roll.

  “Mr. Jordan,” I said. “Let me propound to you a hypothetical. Let us say that John Parker was cheating on his girlfriend, and his girlfriend was aware of it. She followed John and Wendy to Ms. Walters’s apartment on the night of her death and sat outside, watching their shadows on the window blinds. As she sat there, she found herself getting angrier and angrier. When she saw her two-timing boyfriend leave—” I smiled at the two-timing boyfriend in question. “—she knocked on the door and convinced Wendy Walters to let her in. Once inside, Mr. Parker’s girlfriend strangled Ms. Walters and arranged her on the couch. Then she left, taking the key from the small nail at the top of the stairs and locking up after herself.”

  I had everyone’s attention. They were all staring at me as if I were deranged.

  I asked, “Is there anything in the physical evidence that would rule out such a possibility?”

  “Your client was the one who had the key,” Jordan said.

  “Of course he had a key!” I said loudly. “He was sleeping with her!”

  Everyone in the courtroom seemed to have gone into shock.

  In a lower voice, I said, “You don’t have any basis at all for assuming the key you found in his apartment was the one that came from that nail at the top of the stairs. Do you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Do you, Mr. Jordan?”

  “We haven’t found another key.”

  “Suppose you found another woman’s fingerprints inside Wendy Walters’s apartment. Suppose that woman was the girlfriend whose clothing you found in John Parker’s apartment. Suppose it turned out that the girlfriend also has a key to Wendy Walters’ apartment.”

  Jordan smiled, a little weakly. “That’s a lot of supposes,” he said.

  “There’s nothing in the physical evidence to contradict it. Is there?”

  “We don’t know of another woman’s prints inside the Walters apartment.”

  “Weren’t you in the courtroom when Mr. Golden testified?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Golden testified that he found prints of the second, third, and fourth fingers of my right hand. Didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was in the apartment when you got there. You took my prints to rule them out, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet according to your testimony, you didn’t compare my prints to the prints you found in John Parker’s apartment. Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Suppose they matched,” I said. “Suppose it turned out that there was a key, a key to Wendy Walter’s apartment, in my possession.” The skirt of my dress had pockets, and in one of them I had the key I had taken from the pants of Armando Gutierrez. I didn’t know what it was a key to, but I took it out and laid it on the rail by the witness stand. James Jordan looked at it. The judge looked at it. Then both of them raised their gazes to look at me.

  “No further questions,” I said, and I sat down.

  The silence in the courtroom went on for longer than I would have thought possible. Finally, the judge said, “Do you mean to tell me…” He held up a hand, forestalling any answer. “Never mind. I don’t want to hear it.” He continued to stare at me for a long moment. Finally, he turned his gaze to Maxwell. “Do you have any more questions for this witness?”

  Maxwell’s eyes cut to me. “No, your honor.”

  “Anything else? Any more witnesses?”

  Maxwell shook his head. “The prosecution rests.”

  “Are you going to put on a defense?” the judge asked me. “I don’t recommend it.”

  “I guess I’m done, then.”

  “I’m going to take a fifteen minute recess.” He picked up his gavel and let it fall. Then he was up and out of the courtroom.

  “What was all that about?” John said, so softly that his voice was barely audible even in the silenced courtroom.

  Brooke touched my shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “Representing a client.” Greater love has no one than this, I thought.

  John said, “I’m not sure this was the place for that bombshell. You won’t be able to pull the same stunt in the main trial.”

  “One thing at a time,” I said. “And, anyway, I’m going to be a witness. I won’t be your attorney in the main trial.” I looked up at Jordan, who was standing in front of my table.

  “Where did you get the key?” Jordan asked me.

  “Does it matter?”

  “We know the killer had one, because he was able to lock up after himself. Or herself.”

  “It’s beginning to look as if there were keys floating all over the place, doesn’t it?”

  Jordan nodded. “There’s still an arrest warrant outstanding on you,” he said.

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “Just don’t plan on going anywhere when this trial’s over.”

  He went to the other table.

  “Now you’ve done it,” John said. “Both of us are going to jail.”

  “I have a key, and arguably I had a motive. You had a key, and arguably you had a motive. I don’t think they can make this stick against either one of us, unless they c
an tie that telephone cord to someone.”

  “So to speak,” John said.

  Brooke said, “It sounds like they’re about to arrest you for assaulting Martin Nolen. Me, too, I guess.”

  “Yes. You probably ought to get out of here.”

  She didn’t though. The three of us sat waiting for the judge. At the prosecution’s table Maxwell and Jordan were whispering together, but about what I couldn’t speculate. I was about to be arrested, fingerprinted, and photographed, and, though I had done it to myself, I didn’t like it.

  I stood abruptly. “I’m going to the restroom.”

  John looked alarmed. “What? Now?”

  “When a girl’s got to go,” I said.

  “I’ll go with you.” Brooke picked up her purse. I hesitated a moment, then nodded.

  As we walked past the prosecutor’s table, Jordan made eye contact and raised his eyebrows.

  “Restroom,” I said, and we went out.

  The door to the stairs was right outside the courtroom. As we went by it, I glanced back over my shoulder, but Jordan was standing in the courtroom doorway, watching us.

  The women’s room was at the other end of the floor, past the elevators. We went in, and Brooke took the first stall. I went over to the windows and looked north to the parking lot where Brooke and I had left my car.

  We were just on the second floor, but the tinted windows didn’t open. There was no escape that way.

  A toilet flushed, and Brooke came out of the stall. “What are you doing?”

  “Thinking.”

  “You don’t need to go?”

  “Not really. I’m just antsy. I’m not looking forward to spending the rest of the day in jail.”

  “Me either.”

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I dunno.”

  “I don’t know either.”

  When we came out of the restroom, we could see Jordan at the other end of the hall, now standing in front of the clerk’s office. He nodded at us.

  “He’s thinking we might cut and run,” I said softly to Brooke.

  There was another stairway at this end of the floor, across from the women’s room. I was surprised Jordan hadn’t positioned himself in front of it. Actually, I was just as surprised at myself for walking past it. I didn’t know whether I’d be arrested immediately on Nolen’s warrant or whether Jordan would wait to swear out a new warrant for Wendy Walters’ murder. It was possible, of course, that I wouldn’t be arrested at all, but I wasn’t counting on it.