Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “What was the word?”

  “Shorter.”

  Maxwell turned to look at the members of the jury, emphasizing the importance of that one word. “Shorter, as in Robert Shorter?” he asked the witness.

  “Objection,” I said. “Leading.” Lawyers aren’t allowed to ask their own witnesses questions in ways that suggest the answer. Of course, everyone knew that Shorter was the defendant’s name, but I saw no reason to let Maxwell wallow in it.

  “Sustained,” the judge said.

  Maxwell spent an inordinate amount of time turning pages on his yellow pad. Finally he looked up and asked, “Was the word Shorter written in all capitals?”

  “The S was. Well, it was as tall as the vertical line of the H beside it. All the other letters were little letters.”

  “Lowercase letters?”

  “Yes. Lowercase.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Warren said. “I called it in and waited for Homicide.”

  “Your witness,” Maxwell told me.

  I half stood. “No questions.”

  Shorter flapped his hand at me, his expression suggesting he’d been sucking on a lemon. I leaned toward him.

  “When are you going to question one of these witnesses?”

  “When I think it will do us some good,” I said.

  “Well, I didn’t pay you thirty thousand dollars to sit there on that scrawny little butt of yours.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have misunderstood.”

  Maxwell was calling his next witness, a doctor named Rosen. Shorter’s hand closed on my forearm, the strength of his grip suggesting he hadn’t appreciated the levity of my response.

  I tilted my head toward him, smiling as pleasantly as I could with warm breath that smelled overpoweringly of stale tobacco caressing my face. In a low voice I said, “Create a scene here in front of the jury, and you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison. There won’t be a thing you or I or any other lawyer can do about it.”

  He let go of my arm, and the reek of his breath receded.

  Dr. Rosen had come to the witness box wearing a sports jacket and tie that seemed a little dressy for his rumpled chinos and battered, brown athletic shoes. He had dark, curly hair that was just beginning to gray.

  “Could you state your name for the record?” Maxwell asked him.

  The doctor could. He was an ER doctor at Chippenham Hospital who had been on duty one night eight years ago when William Hill came in with frostbite in his hands and feet.

  “How did you know it was frostbite?”

  “Symptoms and patient history.”

  “What were the symptoms?”

  “Fever, intense shivering, slurring of speech. Patches of his skin were hard and waxy in appearance and grayish yellow in color. I’m referring specifically to the skin on his chin and his nose and his fingers and toes, including most of his right foot.”

  “And the patient history?”

  I stood up. “Your Honor? May counsel approach the bench?”

  Judge Cooley’s head bobbed on his thin, wattled neck. “You may approach.”

  As Maxwell and I went forward, the court reporter moved closer and pushed the button that turned on the white noise designed to keep the jury from hearing our bench conference. I had asked for one because I didn’t want the jury to know I was trying to keep them from hearing relevant evidence. Juries don’t like that.

  “Your Honor,” I said. “What the witness is about to give us is hearsay, something the decedent told him or told a hospital nurse many years before his death.”

  Maxwell said, “It was a statement made for medical diagnosis or treatment. That’s a clear exception to the hearsay rule.”

  “What’s the prosecution trying to prove by this testimony?” I asked the judge. “Not that Bill Hill had part of his foot amputated because of frostbite.”

  “What I’m trying to prove is that this isn’t the first time the defendant tried to kill him.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “The defendant’s name is going to come out of this doctor’s mouth, and that name had nothing to do with the patient’s condition or his course of treatment.”

  “It falls within the exception to hearsay, Your Honor.”

  “It’s highly prejudicial and not especially reliable. I can’t cross-examine Mr. Hill about who he said was responsible for his condition. He could have had a grievance against Mr. Shorter or some other reason for not being truthful about the events that led to his frostbite. He came in with frostbite. That’s all this witness can tell us of his own knowledge.”

  The judge turned his gaze to Maxwell, who shrugged. “It falls within the exception, Your Honor.”

  I said, “Even if the patient history did fall under the hearsay exception—and it doesn’t—the best evidence rule excludes this doctor’s testimony. There is a written hospital record, which is itself the best evidence of the history given by the patient. In fact, after eight years, it is all but certain that everything this witness knows about the case has come from reviewing that record. The prosecution should use this witness to authenticate the record and admit it into evidence as the best evidence of the patient history.”

  “I’m entitled to present my case in the manner of my choosing,” Maxwell said.

  Having said all there was to say, we waited while the judge sucked his colorless lips, looking first at Maxwell, then at me from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “I’m going to allow the question,” he said.

  It was a blow, a heavy one. I went back to my seat thinking about the possibilities for appeal if we lost at trial, and Maxwell returned to the lectern. The white noise in the courtroom faded.

  Maxwell said to Dr. Rosen, “Please give us the history of frostbite given to you by Mr. Hill for purposes of diagnosis and treatment.”

  “This was eight years ago in early February, February 4. Snow fell for most of the day and into the evening, and the road conditions were bad and getting worse. The temperature never got out of the teens. Mr. Hill and a friend of his went out driving, evidently just to drink beer and slide around. Mr. Hill ingested more than a half-dozen cans of beer. He and his friend were working their way through a case.”

  “Who was driving, Mr. Hill or his friend?”

  “The friend.”

  This was clearly outside the personal knowledge of the witness, but an objection might serve no purpose other than to emphasize the damaging nature of the testimony. It didn’t really matter who was driving.

  “What accounted for Mr. Hill’s long exposure to the elements?” Maxwell asked. “Did their car get stuck?”

  “Mr. Hill needed to urinate. His friend stopped the car, and Mr. Hill got out to relieve himself. While he was doing it, his friend drove off and left him.”

  “There in the snowstorm.”

  “Yes. In the snowstorm, at dusk, on a thinly traveled road. It was roughly ninety minutes before Mr. Hill could attract the attention of a motorist, who then transported him to the hospital.”

  “Who was the friend who left him in the snowstorm that day?”

  “A man named Bob Shorter.”

  Maxwell looked at Shorter, and every eye in the courtroom followed his gaze. Shorter remained expressionless.

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  It was my turn to cross-examine. “Doctor, did you personally take down the patient’s history?”

  “In part. The admissions nurse would have begun the history, and I would have edited it after talking to the patient.”

  “Would have? You don’t specifically remember doing so?”

  “I have a sense that I did.”

  “Did the patient say the name Bob Shorter to you, or was it already in the notes?”

  “Both, I think. My memory is that he kept saying the name over and over: ‘Shorter did this to me. Shorter left me by the road in a blizzard.’ That sort of thing.”

  “But you have no way of knowing that it was,
in fact, Shorter who had done it to him.”

  “No, just what he told me.”

  “If Mr. Hill was angry at Bob Shorter, if they had just had a violent argument, or if Shorter had wronged him in some other way, then Mr. Hill might have just been getting back at him.”

  “Maybe. It didn’t strike me that way.”

  “Or maybe Mr. Hill was trying to account for his presence in the snow without implicating himself in some wrongdoing we don’t know anything about.”

  The witness didn’t respond, but of course I hadn’t asked him a question. I said, “Did you question him closely about the events of the evening, specifically about whom he’d been with?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You didn’t press him on any of those points.”

  “Just what I needed for diagnosis and treatment.”

  “Which wouldn’t have included anything about Shorter.”

  “Well, I remember being interested. It was quite a story. That’s why I remember it all these years later.”

  The testimony wasn’t getting any better from my point of view.

  “No further questions,” I said.

  When I sat down, Shorter pushed a paper toward me on which he had written, “You should have been able to keep the jury from hearing that.”

  I wrote underneath his words, “You should have refrained from evil,” and pushed the paper back to him.

  Chapter 12

  For lunch Brooke and I walked to the Richmond on Broad Café. Ironically, after we’d gotten our food, we sat at the same table where Mike and Sarah had had their rendezvous. It reminded me that I’d promised Mike McMillan a favor. As Brooke took a sip of her water, I got out my phone. Mike had texted me Sarah Fleckman’s number. I opened my messages and tapped her name.

  “Who are you calling?” Brooke asked as I put the phone to my ear.

  She should suspect the answer, I thought, if Mike had told her about finding Sarah in his bed. “Just listen. Don’t let your head explode. I’ll explain afterward.”

  A woman answered.

  “Hi, Sarah. This is Robin Starling. I’m a lawyer with an office in the Ironfronts on Main.” Brooke’s chin lowered, her eyes fixed on me.

  “I know who you are,” Sarah said.

  “Oh, good. I know we’ve met a couple of times.” I gave a small laugh. “I really couldn’t tell you when or where.”

  “Really? The first time was at Arts in the Park. You were with John Parker.”

  That name was a blast from the past.

  “I dated John awhile before you did, which is why I noticed you particularly. It was interesting to see who he’d taken up with after me.”

  Okay, it was coming back to me. She’d been with someone, too, but I couldn’t quite bring him into focus.

  “I was with another lawyer myself. Mike McMillan.”

  So I’d met him before the first time I’d run into him with Paul, and I hadn’t remembered.

  “I understand you’re with Paul Soldano now,” Sarah said. “How’s that going?” The conversation was beginning to feel a bit creepy.

  “Good,” I said. “Paul’s a sweetie.”

  “Is he. He never had any use for me, I can tell you that. Paul Soldano was not a fan.”

  “I wonder if we could meet for coffee sometime in the next couple of days.”

  There was a silence. “I guess,” she said. “How come?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you, if that’s all right. Would tomorrow morning work?”

  It wouldn’t. We got it settled for the day after that, seven thirty at the Coffee Grounds. It was another bit of irony in that Brooke’s brother, Brian, and his girlfriend were the co-owners.

  “Okay,” Brooke said when I’d hung up. “This I’ve got to hear.”

  I sensed a land mine, so I took a big bite of my salad wrap and chewed while I thought about it. “Gotta to be back in court soon,” I mumbled through my food by way of excuse, gesturing at my working jaws. I waited until I swallowed before I said anything else. Brooke waited, too, not touching her food.

  “Mike asked me to talk to her,” I said. “Convince her to leave him alone.”

  “So what’s she done now?”

  “Evidently, when she and Mike stopped seeing each other, she returned his key. Just what you’d expect.”

  “The key to his house?”

  I nodded. “But she seems to have made a copy of it first.”

  Brooke pushed her food away. I put a hand on her tray and pushed it back in front of her. “Eat,” I said. “You’ll like this. Okay. She let herself into his house while we were all at Enrique’s last night. Mike got home, no idea anyone was in the house. He hung up his suit, washed his face, brushed his teeth, pulled on a T-shirt, and climbed into his unmade bed.”

  “And she was there.”

  “Wearing nothing but her own skin. Mike came out of the bed like he’d been scalded, went down the stairs and straight out the front door, leaving Sarah in possession of his house. He went to Paul’s. Both of them were at my place before midnight.” I took another bite of my wrap and chewed. Brooke waited. I gave up and swallowed.

  “They went back to Paul’s to spend the night. The way we left it, I was going to talk to Sarah.”

  “Was anyone going to talk to me?”

  I moved my head. “I thought Mike was, but maybe I misunderstood. Maybe that was my job, too.”

  “So talking to me is a job?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I have to say, though—I had no idea how you’d react. He probably didn’t, either. My thinking is he’s scared to broach the subject of Sarah.”

  “Scared of me?”

  I took another bite of my wrap, and, finally, she pulled over her own tray and started eating.

  “I guess I have been a bit touchy on the subject of Sarah,” she said finally.

  “A bit,” I said.

  She ate some more. She took a sip of her water, choked, and snorted the water out through her nose. “I’m just picturing Mike’s face at the moment he realized he’s not alone in the bed,” she said in a strangled voice.

  “Eyes go wide, heart pounding,” I said.

  “She says something, and he realizes it’s Sarah.”

  “This limpet that seems to have attached herself to him and won’t let go.”

  “‘Came out of bed like he’d been scalded.’ I can just picture it.”

  It wasn’t long before we both had the giggles.

  “Poor Mike,” Brooke said. “Not one scary woman in his life, but two.”

  “And one’s about all any man can handle.”

  After the lunch break, Maxwell called Valerie Shaw to the witness stand. She had dressed up for the occasion, and her tight dress accented her beefy physique. If Shorter’s tombstones were to be believed, Val was forty-eight and had no mate. I knew from personal experience that she had a voice like metal screeching on metal.

  “Do I know Bob Shorter!” she exclaimed in response to questions. “Sure I know him! I know Bob Shorter just like I knew Bill Hill. I saw every day how they hated each other.”

  I doubted the “every day” part. Also, “they hated each other” was an opinion, something only a witness who had been qualified as an expert was entitled to give. Nonexperts were supposed to testify to the facts and let the jury draw its own conclusions. I didn’t object, though, because the facts and not Val’s opinions were what was going to kill us.

  “I’m not asking you about how they felt about each other,” Maxwell said with a curious glance in my direction. “Just whether you ever observed any conflict between the two men.”

  “There was that time Mr. Shorter beat Mr. Hill’s dog half to death—is that what you mean?”

  Yes, that was what he meant. Of course it was what he meant. Bill’s dog had died, Melissa Stimmler had told me, but she had left out some crucial details.

  Her purse clutched in front of her, Valerie told the jury that Bob Shorter took long walks through the nei
ghborhood, one or two a day, and he always carried an ax handle with him. “My equalizer,” he’d called it on more than one occasion, even though no one ever asked him, not as far as she knew. Anyway, Buster, Mr. Hill’s dog, had gotten out, and Mr. Shorter claimed it had attacked him. No one saw Buster attack Bob Shorter, of course. Valerie had seen him hitting Buster, though, not just once but again and again. “He brought that ax handle down,” Valerie said, raising her own fist over her head and striking down with it. “Thump! He raised it, and he brought it down again. Thump! I ran out onto my lawn, screaming at him to stop, but he hit that poor, yelping animal another time or two before he did. When Bob Shorter turned to me, his face had a funny yellow color to it, and I thought for a moment he was going to come at me. At least I distracted him from that poor dog, though, and it was able to drag itself out of Mr. Shorter’s reach. You should have heard him! Buster was whining just as pitiful as anything you could imagine. It never did walk right after that. It just dragged itself around the house, Mr. Hill said. Didn’t live too long, either, maybe six months or so, and Mr. Hill had to have it put down. It was just in so much pain, you know?” She had worked herself up to the point that her face was red and tears were beginning to run down her cheeks.

  “What did you do after witnessing Bob Shorter beat the dog?”

  “I called the police, of course, but nothing came of it. I think there was some kind of plea bargain, and Bob Shorter paid a fine, but he never went to jail or anything.”

  “No further questions,” Maxwell said.

  The judge looked at me. “Ms. Starling?”

  Every member of the jury was looking at Bob Shorter, each with some expression of revulsion. I myself wanted to do nothing so much as to break off a table leg and beat Shorter to a bloody pulp with it. Instead I got up and went to the lectern.

  “Ms. Shaw,” I said.

  She sniffed loudly and raised her tear-streaked face.

  “Ms. Shaw, did you ever see Bob Shorter strike down a little old lady on the street, maybe because she had the gall to wish him good morning?”

  “What?” There was a silence in the courtroom. Finally, she said, “No, I never saw him do that.”