Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Mike was attending a conference held by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives—NOSSCR for short—and Paul was going with him.

  “Brooke ought to be the one going with you,” Paul said. “And I hate to leave Robin right now.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

  Mike said, “Brooke’s name isn’t the one on the plane ticket. I think it’s you or nobody.”

  “Wow,” Paul said. “And I’m better than nobody.”

  “Marginally,” Mike said. “I would rather have Brooke, but when we planned this thing, she was just that beauty with the flame-colored hair who hung out with Robin.”

  Brooke’s face flushed, but she looked pleased, I thought. Ol’ Mike had just done himself some good.

  Chapter 9

  My visits to Shorter’s neighborhood seemed to do me more harm than good, but I didn’t have a lot of choice but to keep making them. Two o’clock found me on Melissa Stimmler’s front stoop with my finger on the doorbell. I rang, and I waited. I rang again and waited some more. I sighed.

  “Hey, Melissa, it’s me again. Robin Starling, the lawyer everyone loves to hate.”

  No response. I rested my forehead against the door, operating on some vague notion that sound travels better through a solid than through air. “I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against. Remember?”

  In my defense, it had worked before. I turned away and sat on the top of her three steps, my forearms on my knees, to survey the neighborhood. My VW Beetle was parked on the road in front of Bill Hill’s house next door, but, if it had attracted attention, it had not yet drawn anyone out of doors. The last thing I wanted was to get Melissa in trouble with her neighbors by advertising my presence at her house, but she wouldn’t open her door to me, so here I sat on her front step in front of God and everyone. Of course, God knew where I was anyway, presumably.

  Maybe five minutes had passed before I heard a sound behind me. I looked over my shoulder. The door was open a crack, the pale oval of a face visible in the shadows beyond the glint of the chain. I didn’t get up.

  “Hi, Melissa.”

  “Go away.”

  “I’m not the scary person everyone seems to think I am,” I said. “Why can’t we talk?”

  “I saw what you did to those boys.”

  “I know. I got the picture.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, which I took as confirmation that she had been the one to take the photograph.

  “Did you see the whole confrontation, or just the end of it?” I asked. “I didn’t start it. They were sitting on my car waiting for us, three teenage boys against two women. One of them grabbed my friend from behind. Another was trying to grab me. Did you see all that?”

  I thought she wasn’t going to answer, and when she did, she spoke so softly that I almost couldn’t make it out.

  “I saw,” she said.

  I waited.

  “You had his stick. Mr. Shorter’s.”

  “Yes. The boys had been leering at us through the windows of his house. I was hoping the sight of the stick would get them to leave us alone.”

  “He called it his equalizer.”

  “So I’ve heard. I didn’t know about it then, though. How could I know it had such a bad reputation?”

  I was addressing my comments more to the street than to her, not wanting to spook her by making eye contact. When I heard the rattle of the door chain, I turned. The door was standing open about a foot, but I no longer saw her in the opening.

  I stood slowly, approached slowly, not wanting to startle her into hiding. In the doorway, I paused. “May I come in?”

  “Please.”

  I stepped inside, feeling like a bull entering a china shop, all too aware that any movement might send the crockery tumbling. Melissa was standing so that she was shielded by the door.

  “You know why he calls it his equalizer?” she asked from behind it.

  “Was he afraid of the teenage boys in the neighborhood?”

  “No.”

  “Dogs? Are there pit bulls and Rottweilers roaming the streets?”

  “People’s dogs get out sometimes.”

  “And Shorter’s afraid of dogs?”

  I wasn’t sure whether she shook her head or had a brief seizure. “He doesn’t like them.” In a voice so soft it bordered on inaudibility, she added, “If they get too close . . . he hits them.”

  “Have you seen him do it?”

  Melissa’s eyes widened, but she didn’t answer.

  “Well, I won’t carry his ax handle again.”

  She nodded, birdlike.

  “May I?” I gestured toward the picture window and, when she didn’t object, moved to it. She shut the door finally with a soft click and stepped after me, staying just outside of arm’s reach as if I myself were a Rottweiler of uncertain temperament.

  Her lawn sloped toward the street a little, and she had a view up the street in both directions. “Do Mr. Shorter’s daily walks take him past your house?” I glanced at her. “You have a great perspective on the world here.”

  That observation triggered a small head movement that might have been a nod.

  “When is the last time you saw Bill Hill and Bob Shorter together?” I asked. “Ever?”

  She shook her head. “It’s been years.”

  “What about the day of the murder, Friday the ninth—did you see Shorter go into Bill’s house?”

  “No.”

  “See him in Bill’s yard?”

  “I saw him that evening, just after dusk, walking and swinging his stick like always, but he stayed on the street.”

  It was her longest statement yet. Encouraged, I said, “You watched him pass Bill’s house?”

  “I did.”

  “And come back?”

  “He doesn’t come back. He makes a circle.”

  “Would you have seen him if he approached Bill’s house from the back, through the alley?”

  Her thin shoulders twitched. “Maybe, if I was in the kitchen. I didn’t, though.”

  I nodded, thinking.

  “I did see Bill in his yard that evening,” she said.

  “The Friday he was killed?” From somewhere back in the house came a shrill, thin whistle. “Is that . . .”

  “Would you like some tea? I put the kettle on when I decided to let you in.”

  “Sure.”

  I followed her back to the kitchen. She took a battered-looking chrome kettle off the stove, and the whistle petered out. “I can offer you Earl Grey or Sleepytime,” she said. “Sleepytime doesn’t have caffeine. It’s a mix of herbs—mostly chamomile but some spearmint, too, I think.” She gestured with her head. “My window here looks out over Bill’s backyard. I was washing some dishes when I saw him that night.”

  I looked over her head into Bill’s small, square yard with its postage stamp of a patio and its single, sagging lawn chair. The pathology report had placed the time of death between noon and midnight. If Melissa had seen him alive in the middle of that twelve-hour window . . . As she separated tea bags and dropped them into mismatched mugs, I asked, “What time was that exactly—do you remember?”

  She poured on the water, and steam rose from the cups. She looked up at me, stricken. “I gave us both Sleepytime. I asked you what you wanted, but I didn’t wait for your answer.”

  I smiled. “Sleepytime’s fine. I’d like to try it.”

  She nodded, apparently relieved, and put a spoon into each. I started to ask her again about when she had seen Bill Hill, but she spoke first. “It was just starting to get dark. That would make it a little after seven, wouldn’t it?” She squinted at me. “No, that was before the time change. It would have been a little after six.”

  “When was this in relation to when you saw Bob Shorter on his walk? Before or after?”

  “Just before. It was darker when I saw Mr. Shorter but not completely dark.”

  “Did you see Bill Hill after
that?”

  She carried the cups to the small, Formica-topped table, and we both sat. “No. That glimpse I had of him through the kitchen window, it was the last time I saw poor Bill alive.” She moved her tea bag around with her spoon, and I did the same. After a few minutes of mutual silence, she lifted spoon and tea bag onto a saucer she’d placed on the table between us. I lifted out my own and set my spoon next to hers.

  “You seem to have run out of questions,” she said. The wisp of a smile touched her mouth and then was gone.

  That sounded like an invitation, but I refrained from pouncing. “I thought you might like to enjoy your tea in peace.” I sipped from my mug.

  “That’s very considerate of you.”

  “Thank you. I’m afraid consideration isn’t something I often get accused of.”

  “It’s all right, though, if there’s anything else you need to ask.”

  “Are you close to your neighbors? Jenn and Valerie and all the rest of them?”

  “Not really.” She looked sad to me. “I used to talk to Bill. I see Valerie Shaw sometimes, every couple of months or so. Have you met her?”

  “Yes.”

  “She usually shouts whatever she has to tell me through the door. By the time I get it open, all that’s left is for her to repeat herself.”

  “When the door’s open and she’s repeating herself, does she lower her voice?”

  “Not much.” That ghost of a smile touched her mouth again.

  I nodded. “Valerie Shaw does have a voice on her.” We sipped tea companionably a little longer. As I neared the bottom of the mug, mine was getting cold.

  I said, “The reason I ask about your neighbors, I wondered how Larkin and his friends got that photograph of me with the stick. Did you call one of them, let them know you had it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did they see you in the window?”

  She looked as if she felt sick to her stomach. “Windows work both ways, I guess. That’s always been the problem.”

  It sounded like a commentary on her life, but she didn’t expand on it. “What happened?” I asked. “Did the boys come pound on the door until you opened it?”

  She didn’t answer, just looked at the table.

  “And one of them snatched the camera out of your hands to see what you had?”

  “My cell phone. Larkin Entwistle grabbed it and started scrolling through my photographs.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He said, ‘This is great, this is going to fix her,’ or something like that. He texted the photo to himself before he would let me have my phone back.”

  I nodded. “The son of a gun.”

  “Yes. Son of a gun.” Her tone carried a sudden tinge of viciousness, and I smiled at her. Tentatively, she returned the smile.

  “It wasn’t the only picture I took,” she said. She took the phone out of the pocket of her housecoat and tapped the screen. She handed it to me.

  I was looking at a picture of Warren with his arms around Brooke, clutching her from behind. The angle wasn’t the best—I was looking at the two of them from the back—but it was clear he had her arms pinned. Just beyond them, Larkin was reaching for me.

  “I don’t want to do a Larkin on you. May I text this to myself?”

  “Scroll back a picture. There’s another one.”

  I slid my thumb across the screen. This photograph showed two boys sitting on my car, Larkin leaning against it, and Brooke and me stopped in front of them.

  “You can have them both, if it will help.”

  I took a moment to send them to myself, feeling lighter of heart than I had since getting the notice from the Virginia State Bar. “I thank you for this,” I said. “You can’t know what it means to me.”

  When I stood to go, I noticed two bowls sitting on the floor at the end of the counter. They looked like dog dishes, but both were empty. “Do you have a dog?” I hadn’t seen any other evidence of one . . . yes, I had. There had been a small cushion on the floor in the living room next to the recliner.

  Melissa didn’t respond immediately. I glanced at her.

  “I used to,” she said, still sitting at the table.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Her name was Nellie. Lymphoma took her. She was a little wire-haired dachshund.”

  “Those don’t usually get cancer, I don’t think.”

  “You know dachshunds?”

  “My father was a veterinarian, and I helped him some. From a dachshund I would have expected back problems, maybe epilepsy or diabetes, but not lymphoma. I bet she barked a lot.”

  “She was a barker, but Bill Hill didn’t mind, fortunately, and he’s the only one who lived close enough to hear her.” Melissa looked sad. “Dachshunds don’t usually get along well with other dogs, you know, but she liked Buster. Buster was Bill’s dog.”

  I sat back down across from her. “Bill Hill? I didn’t know Bill had a dog.”

  “He used to. He died, too.” It seemed that she was going to tell me something else, but if so, the impulse died without her adding anything.

  I said, “Did the police ever question you about what you saw or didn’t see on the day of the murder?”

  “They came by, two men. One of them had on a tie.”

  “Did the one with the tie have a handlebar mustache?” I drew one on my face with an index finger. “And the other one a broad face, dusky skin, black hair?”

  She gave one of her quick nods. “Hispanic, I think.”

  Jordan and Hernandez. “And you told them about seeing Bill Hill in his backyard that evening?” I asked.

  “I didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought they might want me to testify. And I didn’t see anything, not really, just a man sitting in his own backyard.”

  “It means Bill was alive at six o’clock. That’s something we may not be able to establish apart from your testimony.”

  “They didn’t say that. Does it matter? If he was killed before six o’clock or after?”

  I didn’t know. “Bob Shorter doesn’t have an alibi for Friday evening, so maybe not.”

  She exhaled some of her tension and sipped her cooling tea.

  “Could you testify, if I needed you?” I sipped my cold tea to give her time to think about it. Some of the tension had returned to her thin shoulders.

  “I don’t know,” she said in a voice so soft I had to lean forward to hear it.

  I studied her, a small, frail woman who might not top five feet in height. I didn’t know if she could, either. She seemed broken in some way, and I wondered what events in her life accounted for it.

  “I understand,” I said.

  I was in my car when I saw a yellow school bus letting off kids about a block and a half away: Four kids: Larkin, his two friends, and a girl with a chalk-white face and spiky, turquoise-colored hair. Warren and the girl turned away from me, her trailing him by half a dozen paces, both of their heads down and their eyes on the ground as they trudged along. Larkin and Nate came toward me, walking together, not talking. I put my car in gear and rolled forward, pressing the button that lowered the window.

  Nate spotted me first and bumped Larkin’s arm with the back of his hand. Both of them stopped. I brought the Beetle to a stop beside them.

  “Hey, guys,” I said.

  Larkin said, “This is harassment. I’m going to report it.”

  “Who’s your contact?” I asked. “Aubrey Biggs, the commonwealth’s attorney, or somebody else?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  To Nate I said, “Did you and Warren see the same thing Larkin did, Bob Shorter coming out of Bill Hill’s house on the day of the murder?”

  Nate shot Larkin a glance. “I don’t have nothing to do with that, man. I’m not involved.”

  “So you weren’t all together that day, you and Warren and Larkin?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “T
rue enough.” I shifted my attention to Larkin. “Must have scared the piss out of you, seeing Shorter coming toward you out of Bill Hill’s house swinging that equalizer of his.”

  “Not just that. He had blood on him, too, all over his clothes.”

  “Did he? Splotches of blood, or were his clothes soaked with it?”

  He just curled his lip at me. I heard a door slam, and a woman’s voice loud enough to make me cringe, even at that distance. “Hey! What are you doing back here? You leave them boys alone.”

  I located Valerie Shaw in my side mirror, barreling down her sidewalk, her meaty arms pumping. I waved my hand out the window. “Just a friendly hello,” I called. To Larkin and Nate: “You boys play nice.”

  I took my foot off the brake and rolled forward.

  That evening, sometime after Deeks and I had finished our run, the music of Mozart was streaming through my TV’s sound system. It was one of his operas, which I’m sure I would have enjoyed more if I understood German. I was dressed for bed in an oversize T-shirt and sipping my second glass of chardonnay—my second half glass, to be strictly accurate. Deeks was flaked out was on the cool tile in the foyer.

  My mood was subdued. I would have appreciated company, but Paul had gone to Boston with Mike, despite his reservations. The next time Paul wanted to stay the night with me, I might just let him, I thought.

  My phone began playing ABBA’s “I Have a Dream,” and I reached for it. “Hey, Brooke.”

  “Hey, Robin. How’s it going?”

  “All right. I was just wondering about the point of having a cuddly boyfriend if he’s not going to be around to cuddle.”

  “I know what you mean. Have you ever been in Mike’s house? You know where it is, don’t you? In the Fan.”

  “I’ve driven by it. Paul’s pointed it out.”

  “You wanna come over?”

  “Are you there now? How come?” Brooke had her own apartment, and if she’d given it up and moved in with Mike, I hadn’t heard about it.

  “There’s something I’d like you to see.”

  “What’s wrong? You’re not doing something weird, are you, going through his stuff?”

  “Will you come?”

  “Sure. Is Deeks invited?” I glanced in his direction, and he raised his head at the sound of his name.