Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “As far as you know, has Mr. Shorter ever snatched up a baby and dashed its brains out on the pavement?”

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Of course not?” I walked back to my table and stood behind my client. “You think there’s a limit to Bob Shorter’s depravity, then?”

  “Well, I . . .” She sniffed again, loudly. “I don’t know.”

  “Your Honor,” Maxwell said, “Valerie Shaw hasn’t been qualified as an expert on the depravity of men.”

  “I just wanted to save counsel the trouble of presenting more evidence that this man is a monster,” I said. “He clearly is just that. If there’s such a thing as a demon in human form, then he’s sitting right here at this table. You want the jury to believe Bob Shorter hated Bill Hill. Of course he did! He hated everyone. That’s not the question before us. The only question before us is whether sometime on March 9, Mr. Shorter walked over to Bill Hill’s house, stabbed him where he sat, and left him to bleed out on the floor while he went home to change his clothes before dinner. Would he have had any scruples about doing so? Probably not. Did he do it? There’s some evidence that he did, but evidence can be manufactured, and as much as he hated his neighbors, his neighbors hated him. In evaluating the evidence—”

  “You’re arguing your case,” Maxwell objected.

  It had taken him a long time to get there, probably because he’d been so stunned by the direction my argument had taken. I was a bit stunned myself.

  “I have no further questions,” I said. I sat beside my client, reflected a moment, then moved my chair about a foot farther away.

  Chapter 13

  I made the newspaper, front page above the fold. The headline was “Lawyer Says Client a Monster.” The newspaper had evidently gotten a transcript from the court reporter, or else had a reporter of its own at the trial taking shorthand, because they got my whole speech word for word, including such memorable phrases as “demon in human form.” Dr. McDermott brought his copy of the paper over while I was having my morning bowl of granola with Greek yogurt stirred in. He sat and scratched Deeks’s ears while I read the article.

  “You’re making a name for yourself,” he said when I looked up.

  “New clients are going to be flocking to my door.”

  “Are you playing a deep game that’s difficult for us laymen to grasp?”

  “I’m just conceding the obvious. Shorter’s character has been trashed beyond the possibility of rehabilitation. I can exhaust my credibility trying to convince the jury he’s a good guy, or I can give up that point and try to focus the jury on the facts of the case. Not even a monster can have committed every crime that’s occurred in the city of Richmond.”

  “Not even a demon in human form?”

  “I may have gone a bit overboard there.” Deeks gave Dr. McDermott’s hand a lick and ran out of the kitchen.

  “And this monster is connected to this particular crime by fingerprint and blood evidence,” Dr. McDermott said.

  “Well, yes.”

  “If you win this one, you’ll have established a reputation as a miracle worker.”

  I nodded glumly. “Great.”

  “That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?”

  “I guess. Every sleazeball in the city will want me to represent him, but it’s work.”

  “It’s not really likely you’ll win, though, is it?” Deeks reappeared, and Dr. McDermott took the ball Deeks offered him.

  “No,” I said. Deeks’s eyes were focused on the ball like a missile guidance system.

  “What are the consequences of losing?”

  “At this point? Suit for malpractice. Disciplinary proceedings.”

  “So you’ve got to win.”

  “If I can.”

  “You don’t sound as pumped up as usual.”

  “I don’t feel as pumped up as usual.”

  “That’s a bummer,” Dr. McDermott said.

  “It is that,” I agreed.

  Rodney Burns, the private detective in my office cluster, was also a subscriber to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He was in Brooke’s office with a copy of it when I got to work.

  “Shouldn’t you be in trial?” Brooke asked.

  “Doesn’t start until ten o’clock this morning. Judge had some motions in other cases to take care of.”

  “So you’re here to plan your strategy for the day?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “My plan was to sit and think and hope something comes to me.”

  Brooke’s eyes focused on something behind me, and I turned to see Paul coming through the archway of exposed brick. He had a newspaper.

  “You don’t even subscribe,” I said.

  “Mike called me. I picked it up on the way over.”

  “How did you know she’d be here?” Brooke asked. “She’s supposed to be in trial.”

  “She told me last night court was starting late this morning.”

  “So you knew about this.”

  “No. She didn’t say anything about turning on her client and gutting him like a deer.”

  “I didn’t want to think about it,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t you say, ‘Gutting him like a monster’?” Rodney Burns asked.

  “Or ‘Gutting him like a demon in human form’?” Brooke said.

  “I take it you’ve given up on the case,” Paul said.

  “No, I’ve just repositioned myself. Think of it as a strategic retreat.”

  “Is it strategic to jump down a well?”

  “I don’t get it,” Brooke said. “Jump down a well?”

  “He’s probably got some kind of Civil War image in mind,” I said. “Analogies aren’t really Paul’s strong suit.”

  Mike McMillan came in. He, too, had a paper. We shifted to make room for him in Brooke’s small office. “I need to get more chairs,” she said, looking apologetically at Mike.

  “You’ve got enough,” Rodney said. “What with chairs, desk, table, file cabinet, everybody’s got a place to perch.”

  Mike kissed Brooke’s cheek, which seemed to irritate rather than please her, and parked his hip on the file cabinet. He looked at me. “What were you thinking? I don’t do a lot of trial work, but I have to say, I don’t get it.”

  “It’s a strategic retreat,” Brooke said. “She’s maneuvering the prosecution to just where she wants him.”

  “Really? There’s a plan?”

  I exhaled. “No, not really. I had two choices: try to expose Valerie Shaw as a liar or do something really desperate.”

  “I can see you chose desperate,” Mike said. “Does that mean you don’t think she was lying?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t think I’d have accomplished anything if I’d gone that route. I’d have just damaged my credibility.”

  “And as it is? Do you think you did your case some good?”

  “I don’t know. I confess, I wasn’t following any grand strategy. I got caught up in the moment.”

  “Mike’s worried,” Paul said. “He thinks you could lose your law license over this.”

  “And thirty thousand dollars isn’t nearly compensation enough for this case if you lose your license,” Mike said. “Have you looked at the rules of professional conduct recently?”

  “I think I read an article in the Virginia Bar Journal a couple of months ago,” I said. “I took a course in law school.”

  “A lawyer shall not intentionally prejudice or damage a client during the course of the professional relationship,” Mike said. “That’s pretty much a quote. Your client files a complaint against you with the state bar, and the disciplinary committee is not going to be kind. Heck, he may not even have to file a complaint. It’s on the front page of the paper. The disciplinary committee may take it up on its own, especially since they’re already looking into your intimidation of witnesses.”

  “My alleged intimidation,” I corrected. “Of a single witness. And as for yesterday, if I win the case, t
he committee will have a hard time arguing I damaged my client.”

  “What are your chances of that?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Somewhere between slim and none,” Paul said for me.

  “I think you’re overstating her chances,” Mike told him.

  There were too many people in the office for me to focus on the upcoming day in court, so I left for the courthouse early. When I got there, the courtroom was virtually empty, Judge Cooley evidently having disposed of his early-morning motions. Unfortunately, I still didn’t have a grand plan to work on. I opened my briefcase and got out my photograph folders: police photographs of the crime scene, police photographs from Bob Shorter’s house, the photographs Brooke and I had taken. I flipped through them as spectators and court personnel drifted into the courtroom. When a deputy sheriff brought in my client, I was staring at a photograph of Bill Hill’s medicine cabinet.

  Shorter dropped into the seat next to me as Ian Maxwell pushed through the bar. “If it isn’t my backstabbing lawyer,” Shorter said to me. “What are you working on?”

  If it isn’t my devil in the dock, I thought. The dock was the enclosed space where the accused used to stand in British courtrooms. We didn’t have such enclosed spaces for prisoners in US courtrooms, but the expression persisted. “I was just thinking Bill Hill took a lot pills,” I said.

  “He was a hypochondriac, like I told you.”

  I glanced over at the prosecution’s table, where Ian Maxwell was arranging folders and legal pads. The bailiff strode to the front of the courtroom and demanded we all rise. We stood as he called the court into session, and Judge Cooley entered, stopping and blinking at us as if surprised to find his courtroom full of people.

  Maxwell’s first witness of the day was Jerry Patterson, who lived across the street from Shorter. “I’ve lived in the same house for twenty-four years,” he said. He looked to be in his seventies, with liver spots on his face and thin, white hair parted on one side. “I knew Bill back when he still had both his feet. He and Bob Shorter used to be pretty close. They came and went through the alley that runs along the side of my house. The two of ’em, Bill and Bob, would sit out on Bill’s patio back of his house and drink beer. Last four or five years I seen Bill sitting on his patio alone sometimes, but he don’t go over to Bob Shorter’s no more, and Bob Shorter don’t go to his place. Tell the truth, I seen Bill in his backyard less and less as the years passed. Mostly he’d be a-sitting in his living room, staring out the picture window and watching the world go by. I seen him there when I drove out for groceries or to go to my lodge meetings.”

  “Would he wave to you when you passed him?” Maxwell asked.

  “Yeah, sometimes. I tell you one person he didn’t never wave to, though, and that was Bob Shorter. He’d fix his gaze on Bob as Bob went by the house on his walks, and Bill’s face would tighten, and he’d keep his eyes locked on Bob until he disappeared down the street. Between you and me and the fence post, I think Bob Shorter did it on purpose. He walked past Bill’s house pretty much every time he went out, just to be sure Bill could see him walking around on his healthy legs and feet.”

  Maxwell glanced at me. I could have objected to this obvious introduction of the witness’s opinion, maybe asked whether he based this opinion on anything Shorter had said or whether he had it from the fence post on good authority, but I didn’t see anything to be gained from beating up on Shorter’s neighbors. Maxwell asked, “Do you recall any occasion in particular?”

  “Well. I was driving home one day when I seen Bob Shorter across the street from Bill’s house, a-pointin’ his stick at Bill there in the window, Bill starin’ back at him. You know about Bob’s equalizer, don’t you?”

  Maxwell’s mouth quirked. “We’ve heard about it, yes.”

  “People are kinda leery of old Bob and his equalizer, myself included.”

  Matthew Quinn testified next. He was a younger guy, maybe early thirties, who worked as a nurse at Saint Mary’s. He lived two streets over from Bill Hill and Bob Shorter and from his property didn’t have a line of sight to either of their houses. “Then how do you know the defendant, Bob Shorter?” Maxwell asked him.

  “I run in the same neighborhood where Mr. Shorter takes his walks.” Matthew’s dark hair was neatly trimmed, and he wore khakis and a green sweater over a white dress shirt.

  “How often do you encounter Bob Shorter?”

  Mathew smiled. “Less than I used to. I make an effort to avoid him.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I nodded to him once as I went by him on the street, and he lunged at me with that stick he carries.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  Matthew shook his head. “Maybe he thought I was passing too close to him. I was five or six miles into my run, pretty sweaty, and I may not have smelled too fresh. Anyway, he lunged at me, and when I jumped away from him, I tripped on the curb and fell onto someone’s lawn. I got maybe a dozen grass burrs in one forearm that I had to pick out afterwards.”

  “So you avoided him after that? Turned down another street when you saw him coming, crossed to the other side of the street, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes. And when I started running with my little girl—I have a twelve-month-old and push her sometimes in a running stroller—I got a gun.”

  “You got a gun,” Maxwell repeated.

  “Just a little derringer I carry in a pocket holster. I feel better with it there. I mean, suppose he knocked me down one day and went after my little Emily?”

  My gaze slid to Shorter. His eyes were on Matthew, his lip curled with an expression I took as a look of disdain. I stood up. “Your Honor, may we approach the bench?”

  Judge Cooley nodded. Maxwell and I went forward, and the white noise went up.

  “Your Honor,” I said. “I think this testimony might be grounds for a mistrial. It has nothing to do with the relationship between the defendant and Bill Hill, and nothing to do with the murder weapon. We don’t even know when this so-called lunge occurred in relation to the time of the murder.”

  “I’m coming to that,” Maxwell said.

  “This testimony is not probative at all, and it’s highly prejudicial. I don’t think the prejudice can be cured by striking the testimony and admonishing the jury. The jury’s heard it, and it can’t unhear it.”

  “Bob Shorter’s neighbors were scared of him, afraid of actual physical violence. That’s relevant, Your Honor.”

  “You can’t convict a man of murder because he’s a scary guy,” I said.

  “I’m going to strike it,” Judge Cooley said, “and I’ll admonish the jury not to consider it in their deliberations.” He eyed me over the half lenses of his glasses. “I’m not going to declare a mistrial. If it comes to it, no doubt you’ll do what you can with it on appeal.”

  I nodded my head in acceptance. I’d never expected a mistrial. Getting the testimony stricken was going to increase my credibility with the jury and diminish Maxwell’s, though.

  The judge struck the testimony, admonished the jury, and recessed for lunch.

  “You need to watch your facial expressions,” I told Shorter as the jury filed out. “You can’t sit there sneering at the witnesses. The jury already doesn’t like you. Don’t give them anything else to work with.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Just smile and pretend to enjoy this parade of assholes trying to railroad me into the gas chamber?”

  “Into death by lethal injection,” I corrected. “Or the electric chair, if you prefer it. Virginia doesn’t use the gas chamber. Look, I know you hate everyone. Fine, but you can’t show it. Wear an expression of concern. Try to look surprised now and then that actions of yours that were so entirely innocent could have been misconstrued by whoever it is that’s testifying.”

  “You want me to be an actor.”

  “Exactly. You’re a nice old man who got off on the wrong foot with his neighbors. All you want is a chance to explain yoursel
f, to heal the breaches in all these relationships.”

  He rolled his eyes as he stood for the sheriff’s deputy to cuff him. “Do you really think . . .” He broke off. “Ah, hell. I’ll do what I can.”

  Chapter 14

  After lunch, a sheriff’s deputy brought in Bob Shorter and uncuffed him so he could take a seat. As you may have noticed, the ritual of cuffing and uncuffing always takes place while the jury is out of the courtroom. Seeing a man in shackles a couple of times a day is likely to prejudice a jury of his peers.

  I sat silently beside my client as the courtroom filled behind us. This time I wasn’t looking through photographs or flipping through my notes. I was just sitting. Eventually I glanced at my watch. Maxwell was late.

  Shorter leaned toward me. “You know why nobody likes me, don’t you?”

  I rolled my head toward him and raised my eyebrows.

  “It’s not because I carry an ax handle or that I look at people the wrong way. It’s because they can’t control me.”

  “I thought it was because you were a nasty piece of work.”

  “Come on, Starling. You’re better than that. Social conventions, religion, law . . . all of it is designed to control us, to bend us to the will of others. We reject that. We can be independent, free, completely autonomous.”

  I glanced behind me, but no one seemed to be within earshot. “Are you telling me you killed Bill Hill?”

  “No. You’re missing the point.”

  “You’re saying you could have killed him and felt no moral compunctions about doing it.”

  “Well, yes. I didn’t, though. I told you I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you told me. I’m thinking we’ve been indoctrinated to tell the truth, though. That it’s one more attempt by society to control us. It doesn’t work with you, though, does it?”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Should I? If you want me to like you, then I’m controlling you. If I ought to like you, then you’re controlling me. Enlightened people such as ourselves reject that.”

  Maxwell pushed through the rail. This time Aubrey Biggs, Richmond’s vertically challenged commonwealth’s attorney, was with him. Biggs met my gaze and smiled, an expression that made him look like the Grinch as he contemplated the evils he was planning to inflict on Whoville.