Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “You saw what they did to my car.”

  She moved her head. “You aren’t one to let a challenge go.”

  I worked the tombstone back into the crawl space. “That’s hardly fair. I’m gentle Robin, meek and mild.”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “I’ve heard of gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”

  “I thought it sounded familiar. On the other hand, on one occasion this gentle Jesus drove a bunch of money changers out of the temple with a whip.”

  She laughed.

  “I think of myself as gentle that way.”

  “Okay, you are gentle that way. But meek and mild?”

  I shrugged, following her up the wooden steps from the basement. Brooke pushed open the door at the top of the steps, then fell back against me with a sharp yelp. I wasn’t expecting it, and, but for a lucky grab at the rail, we might both have tumbled to the bottom of the steps.

  “Good grief,” I said, steadying her. “What’s got . . .” The door at the top of the steps was standing open; the back door of the house was just beyond it. A distorted mask of a face was pressed against one of the door’s glass panes, the mouth gaping. There were other faces beyond it, two of the teenagers we’d seen on the street, the redhead and the black guy, both of them grinning. The mask resolved into the face of the short, fat kid as he stepped back, his shoulders hitching up and down with laughter.

  “Very funny,” I called through the glass.

  Pushing past Brooke, I stepped into the kitchen, and the fat kid lunged at the door. I don’t think I flinched, but Brooke gave another squeal. “Let’s get away from this door.” I put a protective hand on her arm to guide her through the kitchen to the living room. I glanced back just before losing sight of the back door, but the boys were gone.

  “Our car’s parked in front of Bill Hill’s house,” Brooke said.

  “Let’s go back to Shorter’s bedroom a minute. Maybe they’ll wander off.”

  I planted myself squarely in front of the closet, trying to be open to anything that seemed out of place. I wished I’d made my own inventory when I was there before. What if I’d missed something?

  “Robin?”

  I held up a hand as I squatted in front of the closet to see under the hanging clothes. When I straightened, Brooke said, “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Did it work, going all mystical like that detective we used to binge-watch on TV?”

  “Monk?”

  “Monk.”

  “No. I guess I’m not obsessive-compulsive enough.”

  “Should we call your police friends?” Brooke asked. “Maybe they’d come back to give us an escort to your car.”

  “We can’t do that.” It was hard enough being a woman in a man’s world, which criminal defense work still largely was.

  “Why not?”

  “Call out the Y-chromosome cavalry every time we get a little spooked?” I led her to the front door and picked up Shorter’s ax handle from the corner. Resting it on my shoulder, I said, “Who needs ’em. Right?”

  She looked at the ax handle.

  “There’s a gun back in the spare bedroom if you don’t think this is enough.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Let’s go.”

  There was no sign of the teenagers in the front of Shorter’s house. I paused long enough to lock the dead bolt, then led the way down the erratically placed flagstones to the street. Shorter’s lawn needed mowing. Though the weeds just grew in patches, some of them came up to midcalf on me—one more thing to irritate the neighbors, no doubt.

  We saw the boys when we turned the corner. They were at my car, waiting for us, two of them sitting on the hood, the tall redhead leaning against it. His hoodie was up over his head now, and his bangs hung down over his eyes. Brooke and I stopped walking. Nobody said anything.

  I brought Shorter’s ax handle, which I’d been carrying discreetly against my right leg, back up to rest on my shoulder. The eyes of the pudgy kid on the hood of my car widened, and his gaze cut to the redhead.

  “I see you’ve got Mr. Shorter’s equalizer,” the redhead said in a nasal voice. His hoodie was unzipped far enough to show the skull on his black T-shirt. “That’s what he called it.”

  “What do they call you?” I asked him.

  His lip curled. “Larkin.”

  “Hi, Larkin. I’m Robin Starling. This is my friend Brooke. She’s a computer expert who has nothing to do with Bob Shorter and his troubles. Who are your friends?”

  The pudgy kid was named Nate. The black guy was Warren. I didn’t get any last names.

  “You must be pretty desperate to meet girls,” I said. “I have to tell you, though, this isn’t the best way to go about it.”

  “I know something you don’t,” Larkin said. He pushed back his hoodie and shook his head, tilting it back to peer at me under his bangs.

  “About meeting girls?”

  “About Bill Hill and how Mr. Shorter killed him.”

  “Ah. What’s that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  I did want to know, so I waited.

  “He did it, you know,” Larkin said. “That man is as guilty as sin.”

  “Shorter? That’s what the police say—the police, the neighbors, now you.”

  He leered at me from under his bangs, bobbing his chin.

  “That’s all you got?” I said. “Guilty as sin?”

  His head stopped moving. “No, it’s not all I’ve got. I got proof.”

  “Not just evidence but proof,” I said. “That’s good.”

  From the hood of my car, Warren said, “You think you’re smart.”

  “Well,” I told him modestly. My gaze went back to Larkin. “So what do you know that I don’t?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “You want to, evidently. Why else are you here?”

  “I’m gonna tell it to the police.”

  “Very good. You tell the police; they’ll pass it along to me before the trial starts. That’s the way it works. It’s too bad you missed them, actually. They were just here.”

  “The police?” Nate said. “Those guys were police?” He looked at Warren.

  “Told you,” Warren said.

  Larkin said, “They looked to me like they was working for you.”

  I shook my head, smiling at the thought of how very irritated Jordan and Hernandez would be to know that people had seen us together and formed the impression that they worked for me. “I wanted a look at the inside of Hill’s house,” I said. “They were here to make sure I didn’t walk off with the silverware.”

  That got me a short bray of laughter from Nate, and a little tension went out of my shoulders. This was going to turn out okay.

  Warren said to Brooke, “You’re about the best-looking redhead I ever seen, and I like redheads. Brooke, is it?”

  Okay, the tension was back. “Probably why you like to hang out with Larkin,” I said.

  Larkin’s face flushed, and Warren scowled. Way to de-escalate the situation, Robin.

  “It’s time to tell me what you know or get off my car,” I said, reaching into my purse with my left hand for the keys.

  They stared sullenly and didn’t move.

  “Tell you what,” I said and started toward my car, still talking. “I’ll give your names to the police, let them know you’ve got important information. They’ll find you, and you can tell them what you know.” I beeped the car unlocked, my hand still in the purse that hung from my left shoulder. Larkin had stepped back a pace, apparently unhindered by his unlaced high-top sneakers. I hesitated before stepping to my car door and putting myself between Larkin and his friends. As I reached for the door handle, Warren slipped off the car to put his arms around Brooke, and Larkin stepped toward me, his arm reaching.

  I reacted without thinking, bringing the ax handle down on Larkin’s reaching forearm. The swing was too short to have a lot of force in it, but the ax
handle caught his wrist, and he jerked his hand back. Nate had slid off the car next to me, and I brought the ax handle up to hit the inseam of his jeans. It wasn’t a clean blow, hitting his thigh on the way in, but he did hunch over and put a hand to the hood of my car. I stepped around him, shifting my grip on the ax handle, but Warren and Brooke were already apart, Warren clutching his neck.

  “She bit me,” he said. “The crazy bitch bit me.”

  Behind me, Larkin said, “You’re both crazy.” I spun toward him, but he was holding his wrist and keeping his distance.

  “You okay?” I said to Brooke.

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  “Get in on this side. I think you need to drive.” As she came around the car and got in, I stood protectively, the ax handle resting again on my shoulder. I handed her the keys, and she pulled the door shut. I walked around Nate, who was still hunched against my car.

  “If you guys are going to mess with grown women, you’re going to have to do something about your low pain thresholds,” I said. Warren was standing in my way. Probably I should have gone around him, but I wasn’t feeling accommodating. I lunged at him, causing him to step back into the shallow ditch that ran along the road in front of Bill Hill’s yard and sprawl on the weedy clay that had been the lawn. I stepped over the ditch, looming over him, and he scrabbled crablike away from me on his hands and feet.

  I stepped back across the ditch. Brooke already had the car going. I got in, and she pulled away while I was still shutting the door. She drove two blocks, turned the corner, stopped the car on the side of the road, and looked at me, her mouth twitching.

  “What?” I said.

  She started laughing, and I felt my own mouth twitching. “What?” I said again.

  “You,” she said. She wiped at the tears that were beginning to leak from the corners of her eyes. “You.” But she was laughing too hard to go on.

  Somehow the laughter was contagious. A burst of it escaped me with a sound midway between a snort and a honk.

  “You’ve got to be the scariest female they ever hope to meet,” Brooke said.

  I stopped laughing. “What about you? How did you manage to bite Warren’s neck when he’d grabbed you from behind?”

  That set her off into a fresh storm of laughter. She pounded the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “I’m a scary female, too,” she squeaked.

  That set me off again. The eyes of both of us were streaming before we got ourselves under control.

  “Do I need to drive?” I said, wiping my cheeks with the heels of my hands.

  She shook her head.

  “What did happen with Warren?”

  “You saw him grab me.”

  “Sure. That’s what started everything.”

  “It wasn’t anything dramatic. I turned against him, trying to get where I could push at him or knee him in the groin or something, but he was too strong and our feet weren’t right. I lost my balance, and my face came down on the top of his shoulder. I was still trying to push away from him, but his neck was right there, so I bit it. That’s when he let go.”

  I shook my head. “We are a crazy pair of females.”

  “Watch out, world,” she said. She put the car in gear again, and we started off.

  That was Monday. On Thursday, I received a letter from someone named John Hill, bar counsel for the Virginia State Bar, giving me thirty days to respond to the enclosed ethical complaint. There were two enclosures, actually. One was headed “Ethical Conduct Complaint” and began with Larkin Entwistle’s full name and contact information. His occupation was student; he was still at Armstrong High School.

  The next section, “Information about Attorney,” had my name, office address, and phone number, but little else. When had he hired me? N/A. What had he hired me to do for him? N/A. What was his fee arrangement with me? N/A. I turned over the page to see the section titled “Explanation of Your Complaint”:

  Ms. Robin Starling is representing the man accused of murdering Bill Hill, a disabled man in my neighborhood. She was in the neighborhood on March 26 of this year. I told her I had information about the case, that I had seen her client coming out of the murdered man’s house on the day he was supposed to have been killed. She told me not to tell anyone, and she threatened my friends and me with an ax handle. She said my whole family would be sorry if I went to the police, and that she personally would beat my brains out.

  The complaint ended with a “List of Documents Attached: Cell Phone Photograph.” It was a black-and-white print of a photograph that showed me standing with an ax handle raised over Warren, who was on the ground. The photograph was grainy and printed on copy paper like the rest of the complaint, but I was easily recognizable. I looked like a crazy woman.

  Mike McMillan wiggled his fingers at me as he passed by my office door on the way into Brooke’s office. A few minutes later, the two of them appeared in my doorway.

  “Paul’s going to meet us at the Marketplace,” Mike said. “You ready to go?”

  I was still holding the complaint, still thinking through its implications.

  “Something wrong?”

  I shrugged, tossed the papers onto my desk. Mike hesitated, but Brooke entered the office and picked them up. “It’s an ethical conduct complaint,” she told Mike. “A Larkin Entwistle filed it with the state bar.” To me she said, “Is this the same Larkin who . . .”

  I nodded. “Look at the picture.”

  She shuffled the pages. Mike stepped in to look at the document over her shoulder.

  “Why were you beating a small black boy with a stick?” he asked.

  “He wasn’t as small as he looks.”

  Brooke said, “Ironically, he’s the only one of the three she didn’t hit with the stick. He’s the one I bit in the neck.”

  “He’s probably five nine or ten,” I said. “About my weight.”

  “What do you mean, you bit him in the neck? What are you talking about? When did this happen?”

  “Monday afternoon,” Brooke said. “When I went with Robin to scope out the house of her latest murder victim. I told you about it.”

  “No, you didn’t. You didn’t say anything about biting someone in the neck.”

  “He’s not my murder victim,” I said. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “It’s kind of embarrassing,” Brooke said. “I mean, biting someone in the neck. Besides you, I mean.”

  “Whoa,” I said.

  Mike shook his head as if to rearrange his mental furniture. “Let me see the complaint.” He took the pages from Brooke and read the explanation, this time with Brooke looking over his shoulder. “How much of this is true?” he asked.

  “None of it,” I said, standing. “Well. I do represent the man accused of murdering Bill Hill. I was out there on Monday, and Larkin did tell me he knew something I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me what it was, though.”

  “And what about this picture?”

  “That’s what bothers me.” I got my purse. “I didn’t see anybody with a phone. Besides, when I was standing over Warren, the other two were behind me. The angle’s wrong.” I looked over Mike’s shoulder at the photograph, this time trying to picture the scene in three dimensions. “Melissa Stimmler,” I said. “The woman who lives next door to Bill Hill’s house. I bet this was taken through her picture window.”

  “Let’s go to lunch,” Brooke said. “All I had for breakfast was a cup of Greek yogurt.”

  We went to lunch, and we took the complaint with us. Paul read it as he slurped his smoothie. Theoretically, he was still trying to lose some weight, and every now and then he ate an inadequate lunch in service of the cause. I myself had a turkey and Swiss on whole wheat. It was a big sandwich, but I did forgo the chips.

  “So how much trouble is this?” Paul asked, looking concerned.

  “It’s trouble,” I conceded.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Respond to the complaint as requested.
Something about it bothers me, though. Larkin’s a seventeen-year-old kid. The average educational level of the adults in that neighborhood is maybe a year of community college and probably not even that. Read the first sentence: ‘Ms. Robin Starling is representing the man accused of murdering Bill Hill, a disabled man in my neighborhood.’ Larkin didn’t write that. I’ve met his mother, Jenn, and I don’t think she did, either. Nobody in that neighborhood is likely to think about going to the state bar with an ethics complaint anyway. Who are they going to call?”

  “The police?” Brooke suggested.

  I nodded. “And what are the police going to do?”

  Mike said, “Well, since Larkin had evidence in a murder case . . .”

  “Exactly. The police are going to take him to the office of the commonwealth’s attorney.”

  “You think Aubrey Biggs wrote this complaint?”

  “I do. His fingerprints are all over it.”

  “So he’s finally got you,” Paul said.

  “No,” I said. “He’s finally gotten as far as filing a complaint.”

  “And you think you can beat it,” Mike said.

  “Well. I hope I can beat it.”

  “It’s our word against theirs,” Brooke said.

  “Aubrey’s got the picture,” Paul said morosely. “That’s what makes this so damaging.”

  Mike said, “Biggs may not stop with the complaint. Why would he? If you’re threatening witnesses to keep Shorter from being convicted, you’re an accessory after the fact. Ten to one he’s going to charge you with a felony.”

  “Something to look forward to,” I said. I put the last bit of my turkey sandwich into my mouth.

  “At least it hasn’t affected your appetite,” Paul said.

  “Nothing affects her appetite,” Brooke said.

  I stopped chewing, feeling suddenly like a pig at the trough.

  Paul said to Mike, “Would it hurt your feelings if I canceled out on our trip?”

  I swallowed. “What trip?”

  Paul rolled his eyes.

  “Boston, remember?” Brooke prompted me.