Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  I stopped.

  “The police was waiting for him when he drove in about half an hour ago.”

  “They arrested him?”

  She was too far away for me to be sure, but she appeared to be grinning like a maniac. I started toward her, and she watched me come.

  I stopped when I got to her lawn. She was indeed grinning like a maniac.

  “I’m Robin Starling,” I said.

  “A friend of Mr. Shorter’s?”

  “No.”

  “No,” she repeated. “Bob Shorter don’t got no friends.”

  “He does seem singularly unlikable. I just met him this afternoon.”

  “So what you want with him?” She was staying on her porch, arms crossed. I took a step closer.

  “To talk to him. He thought the police might arrest him. I wanted to talk about why.”

  “Huh. Why the police might arrest him is he killed poor Mr. Hill.”

  “You think he did kill him?”

  She sniffed. “You’re a lawyer, ain’t cha?”

  “Well,” I said vaguely. In some places, lawyers were less well regarded than politicians and sex offenders.

  “You don’t want to go taking Bob Shorter’s case. He’s guilty, just as guilty as sin. He killed poor old Bill, sure as I’m standing here.”

  “You are standing there,” I acknowledged.

  “And he killed Bill Hill.”

  “Why would he do that? Do you know?”

  “Because he’s evil. That Bob Shorter would kill a man just for the pleasure of watching him die.”

  “Has he ever killed a man before?”

  She pressed her lips together, which I took as a no.

  “What makes him evil?” I asked.

  “What makes any man evil? The blackness of his soul, damn it to hell.”

  “What’s he done, though? How has the evil manifested itself?” I was trying to sound less like a lawyer, more blue-collar. You could see how that was working out.

  “What hasn’t he done?” the woman retorted.

  I waited. When she didn’t say anything, I said, “You can’t actually see the color of his soul.”

  “Oh, can’t I?” She smirked with the satisfaction of having delivered the perfect refutation.

  “Well, his soul doesn’t have to be black, does it? It could be puke green and covered with pimples and sores. The point you’re making is he’s a bad man.”

  “Yes, he is. That’s my point exactly.”

  “He’s a bad man who’s done bad things,” I prompted.

  “Oh, yes. Bad things.”

  “What’s your name, anyway?” I’d been moving closer as we talked. Now I put a foot on the step leading up to her porch and held out a hand. She didn’t take it—her arms remained folded across her chest—but she did tell me her name.

  “Jenn. Jenn Entwistle.”

  “Glad to meet you, Jenn. You know about some of these bad things he’s done. I don’t, but I’d like to.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “And how long you say you known him?”

  “A couple of hours. He did make my receptionist cry, but that’s all I know about so far.”

  “You know he killed Bill Hill.”

  “Well, no. What I know is that the police have charged him with killing Bill Hill.”

  “And why would they charge him if he ain’t done it?” Her tone was richly patronizing. “You tell me that, Ms. Lawyer.”

  “Because there’s evidence that points to him,” I suggested.

  “Exactly.”

  “But maybe there’s another explanation for the evidence that seems to point to him.”

  “What kind of explanation?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen the evidence yet.”

  “Yet? You gonna to take his case, then?”

  “I guess I already have.”

  “You gonna to help that monster get away with murder.”

  “No, I hope not. If he committed murder, I wouldn’t want him to get away with it.” My expression was as mild as I could make it as I met her glare.

  “So what you gonna do?”

  “Examine the evidence to see if there might be an innocent explanation. Make the prosecution prove its case.”

  She blew me a raspberry. “Ain’t nothing innocent about Bob Shorter.”

  “Probably not.”

  “So why’re you helping him?”

  “I don’t like him. He may be a monster just like you say he is, but there are a lot of monsters out there. All of them can’t have killed Bill Hill.”

  “I can’t believe it. You’re unbelievable.”

  “He’s entitled to his day in court like any of us would be.”

  “You’re a monster yourself, ain’t ya? All you lawyers.”

  I tried a smile on her. “I like to think not.”

  She lifted her chin. “I don’t have nothing more to say to you.” She turned and jerked open her door. After she went in, she slammed it behind her. So much for the power of a smile.

  Bill Hill had lived around the corner in a split-level house that probably dated from the 1950s. It was part brick, but the eaves and the second-floor siding were badly in need of a good paint job. I let myself into the backyard through the gate in a wobbly chain-link fence. Bill had a small patio outside his back door, a square of cement with a single lawn chair sitting on it, one of the chair’s crisscrossing straps broken and hanging down. The yard in back was like the front, with more clover and henbit than fescue. Against the house to one side of the patio was a big, rust-spotted tank for heating oil.

  The back door, though it may not have been locked when the police came, was locked now. Peering through the glass, I could see a bit of the kitchen with a small table against one wall and two chairs. I hoped he had occasionally had a visitor to occupy one of them. I checked under the fraying rope doormat for a house key, then on the sill of the nearest window. No luck. If I wanted to take a look through Hill’s house, I was going to have to be more creative.

  The fabric of the lawn chair stretched and popped as I took a seat to consider my options. Neither Bill nor his neighbors had a privacy fence, and the backyards were separated only by waist-high chain-link fences. The house next door to Bill’s was on the corner, and I could see directly across its backyard to the front of Shorter’s house. Bill’s chair faced Shorter’s house, in fact, as if to allow him to watch Shorter come and go on his twice-daily walks. It was not a prosperous neighborhood, but I liked its openness. People could know their neighbors here. They could have a sense of community.

  A curtain moved in a window of the house next door. I watched it out of the corner of my eye, but it didn’t move again. Judging by the size and placement of the window, I thought it might be the window over the kitchen sink.

  I got up and went back around Hill’s house, letting myself through the gate again. There were a few scraggly bushes along the house’s foundation, looking as forlorn and neglected as the house itself. Just to be thorough, I tried the front door, but it was locked tight.

  Next door to Bill’s, where I’d seen the curtain move, I stepped up onto the front stoop and rang the bell. Chimes sounded, but no one came to the door.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Silence.

  “My name is Robin Starling. Your neighbor Jenn suggested I might talk to you.” Okay, so Jenn had done nothing of the sort. Desperate times call for lying like a son of a gun. “I was hoping to get some information about your neighborhood.”

  I had started to turn away when the dead bolt clicked back. The door opened, and the pale face of a woman with pale hair appeared in the narrow opening. She looked up at me with the anxious expression of someone who feared unpleasantness.

  “Hi,” I said. “Thanks for opening the door.”

  “Jenn didn’t send you,” she said in a voice so soft I had to lean in to hear her.

  I dropped my gaze, doing what I could to look abashed. “Well, no. She did spend some time talking to me
. I was hoping you would, too.” I refrained from putting my hands behind my back and digging my toe into her welcome mat. I do have some shame.

  “What do you want to talk about?” she said, again almost in a whisper.

  Lowering my own voice, I said, “For starters, I understand your next-door neighbor died recently.”

  She shook her head in a quick, birdlike gesture. “He didn’t die. He was killed.”

  “By a man named Bob Shorter?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “Why would he do it? Do you have any idea?”

  “Maybe for the fun of it?”

  “That makes Shorter out to be pure evil. Is he really as bad as that?”

  She seemed to study me.

  “I’ve met the man, so I can readily believe he is.” I smiled. “I would be interested in supporting evidence.”

  “Jenn said you’re going to try to get him off.”

  Jenn had been busy. “It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.”

  “Is that a quote from someone?”

  “It sounds like it, doesn’t it? I’m pretty sure it’s not Shakespeare, but that’s about all I can tell you.”

  She took a breath, steeling herself. She stepped back and pulled the door wider. “Come in.”

  We sat in her living room in facing chairs. Her hands were clasped in her lap.

  “My name is Robin Starling,” I said.

  “So you said.”

  I waited.

  “Melissa,” she said finally.

  “Melissa . . .”

  “Stimmler.” Her eyes were the color of the sky.

  “Melissa Stimmler. Do you know anything about what happened next door?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you ever see Bob Shorter entering or leaving Bill Hill’s house?” I asked. “I mean, in the last week or so.”

  “No. Never.”

  “Did you see anyone else entering or leaving?”

  “Just Bill. Bill doesn’t have many visitors.”

  “But he has had some?”

  “Not recently.”

  I nodded. My list of alternative suspects remained a blank page. “Did Bob Shorter hate Mr. Hill, as far as you know?” I asked.

  “He hates everybody.”

  Specifics regarding Bob Shorter were hard to come by. “Did Mr. Hill hate Bob Shorter?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Lots of reasons,” she said.

  “For instance . . .”

  “You said it yourself.”

  “I did?”

  “Mr. Shorter is evil. He’s an evil, evil man.”

  “That sounds like a story.” I sat back in my chair and smiled encouragingly, but she didn’t say anything more on the subject of Mr. Shorter’s evil nature. I tried leaning forward. “What’s he done?” I whispered conspiratorially.

  “He killed Bill Hill.” Her blue eyes brimmed with tears. “Poor ol’ Bill,” she said. A tear spilled from her lower lid and slid down her cheek.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “May I leave you a business card? Maybe if you think of something . . .” I put it on the end table by her chair. I was at the door when she said something, and I turned back.

  “Don’t help him,” she said. “Don’t help him get away with it.”

  “We can’t be completely sure he did it, can we?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “How can you be? Did you see something? Hear something?”

  “I’m just sure. We all are,” she said.

  Chapter 3

  Paul Soldano’s car was parked on the curb in front of my house, I noticed it as I crossed my street to the alley that led to my driveway. I parked my car in the garage and walked through the house to the front door.

  Paul was sitting on the front steps with my dog, a chocolate Labrador retriever. As I pulled the door open, Deeks spun out from under Paul’s arm so fast that he nearly turned himself inside out. Paul got up more slowly. He was shorter than I was and more squarely built. Okay, he was chubby, a teddy bear of a man who I think would have been content to have me drag him around by one arm everywhere I went.

  “Back from your trip early?” I said, stepping onto the front porch and scratching the top of Deeks’s head. Paul was a bank examiner, and he was on the road more weeks than not, visiting banks in Hampton Roads or Fredericksburg or even Grundy, a little town of one thousand or so in the southwest corner of the state.

  “I didn’t go anywhere. I’m in town this week, remember?”

  I hadn’t remembered. Feeling a pang of guilt for not keeping better track of him, I kissed him on the mouth. Deeks head-butted my thigh to regain my attention, and I broke the kiss just as Paul seemed to be getting into it.

  “I thought I’d surprise you,” he said, giving Deeks a look as Deeks stuck his nose between my legs just above my knees for some serious head scratching.

  “With dinner? You brought food?” Deeks’s tail was going ninety-to-nothing as I scratched. I bent over him to rub his sides.

  “Well, no,” Paul said. “The surprise is that you have a dinner guest—me. I thought you might have the food.”

  I looked up at him, still scratching Deeks. “Salad, some deli meat, a balsamic vinaigrette,” I said.

  “And beer. Remember? I brought over that case of Löwenbräu.”

  “Very considerate.” I myself didn’t drink beer, but it did give me something to offer my teddy-bear boyfriend when he came over. I straightened. “Well, come in. It’s getting chilly out here. I thought you knew where my spare key was.”

  “I do know where your spare key is. In fact, I let myself in before I went over to get Deacon.”

  When I was at work, my dog stayed across the street with a retired physician named Dr. McDermott. I liked to think it gave them both some welcome companionship. “I can see you got Deacon,” I said. “Why didn’t the two of you go in?”

  “He wouldn’t let me go in.”

  I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “What do you mean, he wouldn’t let you go in?”

  “Actually, it would be more accurate to say he wouldn’t let me stay in. I went over and visited with Dr. McDermott, and when I left Deacon was perfectly happy to go with me. He ran here and there as we crossed the street, kept circling back to give my hand a lick—it was like I was his best friend. I opened the door to your house, and he bounded past me, streaked into the kitchen and then back into the bedroom looking for you. I was still in the entrance hall when he realized you weren’t home and came back to eject me from the house.”

  “He’s a dog. How did he eject you?”

  “He growled at me.”

  “Ooh. He growled at you.”

  “I’m serious. He came toward me with his head down and his tail down, a big rumble deep in his throat. I tried to walk past him, and he lunged at me.”

  “Lunged at you? Deeks?”

  “And he was snarling. I took a step back, and he took a step forward. I talked to him, called him by name, tried to walk past him again, but it was a no go. Finally, I just went back outside to wait for you. Deacon came with me, and as soon as the door closed behind us, it was like a switch flipped. He was my best friend again.”

  I bent over Deeks to hold his head and look him in the face. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked him. “You know Paul is our friend.”

  Paul said, “We’re buddies. He likes me. But he knows I’m not supposed to be in this house when you’re not home.”

  “Let’s see if he’ll let you in now.”

  I pushed open the door, and, as Paul started through it, Deeks shot between him and the door frame, almost knocking him off balance. When Deeks turned, though, his tail was wagging.

  “I think you’re making it all up,” I said.

  “I thought he was supposed to wait
to go through the door last,” Paul said. “Remind him he’s not the alpha dog, but the bottom dog in the pack.”

  “We’re still working on it.”

  Deeks licked Paul’s hand as I closed the door behind us.

  “I can’t tell you’re working on it,” Paul said, bending to scratch Deeks just above his tail.

  “It’s a subtle owner-dog thing.”

  “Maybe if you weren’t so subtle about it, he wouldn’t think he’s in charge when you’re not home.”

  As we ate, I told Paul about my new case.

  “So on the plus side, you’ve got thirty thousand dollars in the bank,” he said.

  “An additional thirty thousand dollars. I had some in there already, maybe fifteen hundred dollars or so.”

  “I stand corrected. On the minus side, you’re representing a man who seems to be the devil incarnate.”

  “According to his neighbors.”

  “All his neighbors, evidently.”

  “Yeah, it gives me a bad feeling. If I had it to do over, I might just shove his check up one of his nostrils with a sharp pencil.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “You sound more vicious than Deeks.”

  Deeks raised his head, and his tail thumped the floor.

  “Maybe this new client of yours is a nice guy—he’s just misunderstood,” Paul said.

  I shook my head. “He made Carly cry, or brought her close to it. And Deeks isn’t vicious.”

  On hearing his name again, Deeks got up and came over to put his head on my thigh. His eyes rolled up to take in my face.

  “Ever hopeful,” I said, stroking his head.

  “There’s another reason to think your client’s guilty,” Paul said. “Why else would he pay out thirty thousand dollars before he’d even been arrested? He knows the blood on that clothing is the victim’s, and there’s only one way he could know that.”

  “He just knows it’s not his blood, and if he didn’t get the blood on those clothes . . .”

  “He admits the clothes are his, right?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And you know he’s a bad person. His neighbors think he’s evil, and he makes receptionists cry.”

  I moved my head in a gesture that was not quite a nod. “Yeah,” I said.

  “So you’ve got to face the very real possibility that he’s guilty as charged. Which means you’re going to be working hard to keep a murderer out of prison.”