Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  Shorter and I waited in one of the courthouse’s smaller conference rooms.

  “How long are we going to have to wait?” he asked.

  “Don’t know. Probably, the judge will give them until five thirty or six o’clock, then send them home for the night.”

  “They haven’t been sequestered?”

  I shook my head.

  “So how do you think it’s going to go?”

  “I don’t know. We’re about to find out whether a group of trustworthy citizens is willing to let an open sociopath go free.”

  “I’m not a sociopath.”

  “No? Don’t you reject any moral or legal claims on your behavior?”

  “Not at all. I obey the law. I have to as a matter of self-preservation.”

  “But you don’t have a conscience.”

  “Let’s just say I don’t let it bother me.”

  “And you have no regard for the rights of others.”

  “What rights? If you mean extralegal rights, then no. It’s nonsense to talk about people having rights other than those the law gives them.”

  “And you show a proclivity for violence, at least toward dogs. I think we’re getting pretty close to the definition of a sociopath.”

  “Morality is all about power, you know. Of course, the law is, too—it’s just that the law is more obviously about power. The majority of our fellow citizens are a bunch of sheep, and they pass laws in an effort to control the wolves in their midst. They push their moral conventions the same way: they ostracize people and apply social pressure where they can’t enact legal penalties.”

  “So you think morality is all a matter of self-interest,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “For you, morality isn’t even the majority opinion about right and wrong,” I said.

  “There is no such thing as right and wrong.”

  I didn’t know how to refute that statement with logical argument. I did have an impulse to leap on Shorter and choke the life out of him, but I resisted it.

  Shorter said, “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m wondering what the difference is between a sociopath and a psychopath.”

  His eyes cut to the ceiling. “More labels. I’m a realist, that’s all.”

  I presented my last argument, reluctantly because I wasn’t sure that it would stand up to Shorter’s assault. “What about God?” I said.

  “What about heaven and Jesus and the saints and the prophets?” He blew a raspberry.

  “You think it’s all superstition?”

  “Oh, come on. Is that the basis of your morality? ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that, because God wouldn’t like it’?”

  “I prefer to think of it as living my life in conformity to the character of God, doing what pleases him.”

  “And who told you there was a God? Your mommy and your daddy? Can’t you see it was an effort to control your behavior from the cradle? I don’t blame them, you understand. By that time, your parents themselves had experienced a lifetime of conditioning.”

  “I don’t accept that.”

  “Do you go to church?”

  I moved my head equivocally.

  “So you don’t believe, not really—and you can’t. You’re too smart for that.”

  “I believe in God or whatever or whoever gives us a moral sense, a sense that some things are inherently right and some things are inherently wrong. I believe in a moral awareness that makes us human.” It felt a little like the recitation of a creed.

  Shorter studied me, and I met his gaze, not blinking even as my eyes began to water.

  There was a tap on the door, and a woman put her head in. “The jury’s reached a verdict,” she said.

  A few more seconds passed, then Shorter broke eye contact and stood. “That was fast,” he said.

  “Very fast,” I agreed.

  “I’m thinking that can’t be good.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The jury filed into the courtroom. They sat. The bailiff called the court to order, and the judge swept in. “Has the jury reached its verdict?” he asked.

  Andrew Hartman stood, the young man with the sense of humor, the foreman I would have picked if the choice had been up to me rather than his fellow jurors. “We have, Your Honor,” he said. He gave a form to the bailiff, who took it to the judge. The judge read it, nodded, and gave it back to the bailiff.

  “Stand for the reading of the verdict.”

  We stood, the members of the jury and all of us before the bar—Shorter and me and Ian Maxwell. The bailiff read from the form, “We, the members of the jury, find the defendant, Robert Shorter, not guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.”

  There was no reaction from the gallery behind us. I exhaled and glanced at Shorter, who looked back at me without smiling.

  Judge Cooley said, “Robert Shorter, you have been tried by a jury of your peers and found not guilty. Members of the jury, I thank you for your service. This court is adjourned.”

  The reaction from the gallery began as the murmur of voices from a dozen conversations, then two dozen, then three. As the volume grew, the judge exited the courtroom. Shorter held out his hand. I looked at it and then took it. “You’re a confused young woman, but I wasn’t wrong about you,” he said. “You know your stuff.”

  My mouth stretched. “Justice, no matter who it’s for or against,” I said. I’d finally gotten around to looking up the phrase on the Internet. It was a quote from Malcolm X. I had no idea how it had gotten stuck in my brain.

  The corner of Shorter’s mouth rose, revealing once again those yellow teeth. “How long will it take me to get my doorknob back?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A while.”

  “Well, I won’t wait for it.” He gave me a curt nod and went around me to push his way through the bar. The spectators moved and shuffled to make way for him as he walked down the aisle. He passed through the open door and was gone.

  My gaze went to my friends, then to Rodney Burns and Dr. Gore beside him. I got nods, a smile or two, and a thumbs-up from Paul. I smiled. When I glanced toward the jury box, one of the jurors was waving me over. A big woman in her fifties, she reached across the rail to put a meaty hand on my arm.

  “You’re too nice a young lady to be associated with that awful man,” she said.

  I gave her a lopsided smile. “Thank you. My association seems to be over now.”

  “Even if we couldn’t convict him for this—and we couldn’t, we all knew we couldn’t—he ought to go to prison for what he did to Mr. Hill, leaving him in a snowstorm that way just for his own amusement. And what he did to that dog! I have two little Pomeranians myself, and I’d give him the electric chair just for that. I’d be willing to throw the switch myself.”

  “Me, too,” I told her. “I have a Lab.”

  Andrew Hartman was just leaving the courtroom; he turned back in the doorway and caught me looking at him. He gave me a nod and a mocking smile, and then he was gone.

  Shorter’s neighbors were waiting for me outside the courthouse doors—Jenn, Valerie, Mark Rehrer, and several I didn’t even know.

  “So you did it, didn’t you?” Jenn said. “You managed to smear my son and get that murdering devil off.”

  I had my own coterie of supporters, Paul and Brooke and Mike. Paul stepped in front of me, but I put a hand to his shoulder and urged him to one side.

  “I didn’t see you in the courtroom,” I said. “Any of you.”

  “We know what happened,” Valerie said.

  “I think your son was in my neighborhood last night,” I told Jenn. “Larkin and his buddies and a handful of firecrackers.”

  “Larkin was home watching TV.”

  I nodded. “Better keep him there.”

  “What do you mean by that? Is that a threat?”

  Valerie said, “I know there’s not much we can do to you. File a complaint with the state bar association, maybe.”

  “Larkin’s
done it already. We’ll see how far it goes.”

  Jenn’s expression was as close to a snarl as anything I’d seen on a human face.

  “How did you get to Melissa?” Mark asked. “We know about her part in this.”

  “I served her with a subpoena, threatened her with contempt of court if she didn’t show.” I smiled. “She didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.”

  “You are a hateful, hateful woman,” Valerie said.

  I nodded. “I’m a hateful woman who believes a man should be held accountable for the crimes he has committed and not those he hasn’t.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Mark said.

  “Wait and see.”

  Chapter 20

  I met Hernandez and Jordan in a bar on Strawberry Street in Richmond’s Fan district. They already had their beers and were halfway through an order of potato skins when I sat down.

  Hernandez signaled the waiter. “Get this woman a drink,” he said. “She’s earned it.”

  “A glass of Riesling,” I told the waiter. To Hernandez I said, “Earned it? By helping a bad man go free?”

  “Not for that. For what you did afterward.”

  “Shorter’s back in jail,” Jordan said. “With Melissa Stimmler’s testimony and that video evidence of hers—”

  Hernandez said, “We’ve got the testimony of Mark Rehrer, too, the guy who lives across from Bill Hill and Melissa. Turns out he remembers seeing that shepherd dog after Shorter finished beating it to death. He thought at first it had been hit by a car, until we showed him Melissa’s video.”

  “After Shorter got no more than a fine for what he did to Bill Hill’s dog, Melissa didn’t think it would do much good to report him,” I said. “And of course she was scared of him. Still is, no doubt, but she’s been in the witness stand now and discovered that testifying is something she can do.”

  My wine came, and I took a sip. It had a crisp, fruity flavor. I thought Riesling might be my new favorite for the coming summer.

  “Have a potato skin,” Hernandez said. “They’re still warm.”

  “I’m meeting someone for dinner.”

  “A fine is still a conviction,” Jordan said. “It’s that prior conviction that gives these new charges such punch,” Jordan said.

  I nodded and sipped my wine. In Virginia, a second conviction for cruelty to animals was a class-six felony.

  “One to five years,” Hernandez said, pushing most of a potato skin into his mouth. He nodded with apparent satisfaction as he chewed.

  “One thing we wanted to ask you,” Jordan said, “the reason we asked you to meet us here.”

  “The reason we bought you a drink,” Hernandez said.

  “You’re not going to represent Shorter on this, are you?”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “Suppose he offers you a big pile of money,” Hernandez suggested.

  “I have a dog whom I love dearly. There isn’t enough money.”

  “So you’ll represent him when he’s accused of killing a human being, just not when he’s accused of something really bad like killing a dog.”

  “I didn’t know he was guilty of killing the human being. I do know he beat the dog to death.”

  “Isn’t he entitled to his day in court?” Jordan asked.

  I nodded. “Sure he is, just not with me sitting next to him.”

  “I never thought I’d say this to a lawyer,” Hernandez said, “but you’ve got integrity.”

  “Don’t let it get around. We’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

  The Robin Starling Legal Thriller Series

  Trial by Ambush (Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery #1)

  Juggling Evidence (Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery #2)

  Dog Law (Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery #3)

  Laughing Heirs (Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery #4)

  Devil in the Dock (Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery #5)

  Gone Ballistic (Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery #6)

  Visit the author website at

  www.literaryclippings.com