Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) (3 page)

“Melissa Stimmler. Do you know anything about what happened next door?”

She shook her head.

“Did you ever see Bob Shorter entering or leaving Bill Hill’s house?” I asked. “I mean, in the last week or so.”

“No. Never.”

“Did you see anyone else entering or leaving?”

“Just Bill. Bill doesn’t have many visitors.”

“But he has had some?”

“Not recently.”

I nodded. My list of alternative suspects remained a blank page. “Did Bob Shorter hate Mr. Hill, as far as you know?” I asked.

“He hates everybody.”

Specifics regarding Bob Shorter were hard to come by. “Did Mr. Hill hate Bob Shorter?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you know why?”

“Lots of reasons,” she said.

“For instance . . .”

“You said it yourself.”

“I did?”

“Mr. Shorter is evil. He’s an evil, evil man.”

“That sounds like a story.” I sat back in my chair and smiled encouragingly, but she didn’t say anything more on the subject of Mr. Shorter’s evil nature. I tried leaning forward. “What’s he done?” I whispered conspiratorially.

“He killed Bill Hill.” Her blue eyes brimmed with tears. “Poor ol’ Bill,” she said. A tear spilled from her lower lid and slid down her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She nodded.

“May I leave you a business card? Maybe if you think of something . . .” I put it on the end table by her chair. I was at the door when she said something, and I turned back.

“Don’t help him,” she said. “Don’t help him get away with it.”

“We can’t be completely sure he did it, can we?”

“I’m sure.”

“How can you be? Did you see something? Hear something?”

“I’m just sure. We all are,” she said.

Paul Soldano’s car was parked on the curb in front of my house, I noticed it as I crossed my street to the alley that led to my driveway. I parked my car in the garage and walked through the house to the front door.

Paul was sitting on the front steps with my dog, a chocolate Labrador retriever. As I pulled the door open, Deeks spun out from under Paul’s arm so fast that he nearly turned himself inside out. Paul got up more slowly. He was shorter than I was and more squarely built. Okay, he was chubby, a teddy bear of a man who I think would have been content to have me drag him around by one arm everywhere I went.

“Back from your trip early?” I said, stepping onto the front porch and scratching the top of Deeks’s head. Paul was a bank examiner, and he was on the road more weeks than not, visiting banks in Hampton Roads or Fredericksburg or even Grundy, a little town of one thousand or so in the southwest corner of the state.

“I didn’t go anywhere. I’m in town this week, remember?”

I hadn’t remembered. Feeling a pang of guilt for not keeping better track of him, I kissed him on the mouth. Deeks head-butted my thigh to regain my attention, and I broke the kiss just as Paul seemed to be getting into it.

“I thought I’d surprise you,” he said, giving Deeks a look as Deeks stuck his nose between my legs just above my knees for some serious head scratching.

“With dinner? You brought food?” Deeks’s tail was going ninety-to-nothing as I scratched. I bent over him to rub his sides.

“Well, no,” Paul said. “The surprise is that you have a dinner guest—me. I thought you might have the food.”

I looked up at him, still scratching Deeks. “Salad, some deli meat, a balsamic vinaigrette,” I said.

“And beer. Remember? I brought over that case of Löwenbräu.”

“Very considerate.” I myself didn’t drink beer, but it did give me something to offer my teddy-bear boyfriend when he came over. I straightened. “Well, come in. It’s getting chilly out here. I thought you knew where my spare key was.”

“I do know where your spare key is. In fact, I let myself in before I went over to get Deacon.”

When I was at work, my dog stayed across the street with a retired physician named Dr. McDermott. I liked to think it gave them both some welcome companionship. “I can see you got Deacon,” I said. “Why didn’t the two of you go in?”

“He wouldn’t let me go in.”

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “What do you mean, he wouldn’t let you go in?”

“Actually, it would be more accurate to say he wouldn’t let me stay in. I went over and visited with Dr. McDermott, and when I left Deacon was perfectly happy to go with me. He ran here and there as we crossed the street, kept circling back to give my hand a lick—it was like I was his best friend. I opened the door to your house, and he bounded past me, streaked into the kitchen and then back into the bedroom looking for you. I was still in the entrance hall when he realized you weren’t home and came back to eject me from the house.”

“He’s a dog. How did he eject you?”

“He growled at me.”

“Ooh. He growled at you.”

“I’m serious. He came toward me with his head down and his tail down, a big rumble deep in his throat. I tried to walk past him, and he lunged at me.”

“Lunged at you? Deeks?”

“And he was snarling. I took a step back, and he took a step forward. I talked to him, called him by name, tried to walk past him again, but it was a no go. Finally, I just went back outside to wait for you. Deacon came with me, and as soon as the door closed behind us, it was like a switch flipped. He was my best friend again.”

I bent over Deeks to hold his head and look him in the face. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked him. “You know Paul is our friend.”

Paul said, “We’re buddies. He likes me. But he knows I’m not supposed to be in this house when you’re not home.”

“Let’s see if he’ll let you in now.”

I pushed open the door, and, as Paul started through it, Deeks shot between him and the door frame, almost knocking him off balance. When Deeks turned, though, his tail was wagging.

“I think you’re making it all up,” I said.

“I thought he was supposed to wait to go through the door last,” Paul said. “Remind him he’s not the alpha dog, but the bottom dog in the pack.”

“We’re still working on it.”

Deeks licked Paul’s hand as I closed the door behind us.

“I can’t tell you’re working on it,” Paul said, bending to scratch Deeks just above his tail.

“It’s a subtle owner-dog thing.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so subtle about it, he wouldn’t think he’s in charge when you’re not home.”

As we ate, I told Paul about my new case.

“So on the plus side, you’ve got thirty thousand dollars in the bank,” he said.

“An additional thirty thousand dollars. I had some in there already, maybe fifteen hundred dollars or so.”

“I stand corrected. On the minus side, you’re representing a man who seems to be the devil incarnate.”

“According to his neighbors.”

“All his neighbors, evidently.”

“Yeah, it gives me a bad feeling. If I had it to do over, I might just shove his check up one of his nostrils with a sharp pencil.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “You sound more vicious than Deeks.”

Deeks raised his head, and his tail thumped the floor.

“Maybe this new client of yours is a nice guy—he’s just misunderstood,” Paul said.

I shook my head. “He made Carly cry, or brought her close to it. And Deeks isn’t vicious.”

On hearing his name again, Deeks got up and came over to put his head on my thigh. His eyes rolled up to take in my face.

“Ever hopeful,” I said, stroking his head.

“There’s another reason to think your client’s guilty,” Paul said. “Why else would he pay out thirty thousand dollars before he’d even been arrested? He knows the blood on that clothing is the victim’s, and there’s only one way he could know that.”

“He just knows it’s not his blood, and if he didn’t get the blood on those clothes . . .”

“He admits the clothes are his, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“And you know he’s a bad person. His neighbors think he’s evil, and he makes receptionists cry.”

I moved my head in a gesture that was not quite a nod. “Yeah,” I said.

“So you’ve got to face the very real possibility that he’s guilty as charged. Which means you’re going to be working hard to keep a murderer out of prison.”

“You know, as amazing as it seems, I’ve never been in the position of representing someone who was actually guilty.”

“I think you’re in it now,” Paul said.

“That would be too bad. On the other hand, I’m just a lawyer. I don’t have to decide if Shorter goes to prison or faces execution. I just have to present facts to the jury and put the least incriminating interpretation I can on those facts.”

“You won’t go down without a fight.”

I shrugged. “No—but if the facts are truly incriminating, I’ll lose.”

“I don’t know. Even if the facts are against you, you’ve got your courtroom skills and your grasp of legal technicalities.”

“I haven’t been practicing criminal law that long. I’m not that strong on legal technicalities.”

“Then we’re down to courtroom skills,” Paul said.

There was a message from Shorter waiting for me when I got to work the next morning. “He said he’s been arrested,” Carly told me cheerily as she handed me the pink slip that was the record of his call. “And that it’s time for you to do your thing.”

“My thing is what I do.” I rapped my knuckles on the counter and went back to my office to make a phone call to the DA’s office. Shorter had been searched and fingerprinted and photographed the day before, but he hadn’t yet been presented before a magistrate.

“He spent the night in a cell here at the courthouse. We’ve been holding him until you can get here.”

“That’ll put him in a good mood,” I said. I picked my briefcase up again and the drawstring shoe bag that still held my dress pumps. On my way out, I stopped to ask Carly, “When did Shorter call? There wasn’t a date or a time on the message you gave me.”

“No, there wasn’t. That’s the best part.”

“Well?”

“Three thirty-eight yesterday afternoon.”

“You know he spent the night in a cell.”

“Oh!” She pushed out her lips in an exaggerated frown. “That’s just awful!”

“You didn’t call me.”

“You’d gone home. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to rush over to the courthouse to bail him out.”

“He didn’t choose his enemies wisely when he picked on you, did he?”

“I’m a community college dropout with nothing on the ball. I can’t be expected to relay a simple phone message, can I?”

I grinned at her. “You cannot,” I said. “Good job.”

It took me a bit under fifteen minutes to walk across downtown to the courthouse. Once I had changed out of my sneakers, which I did sitting on the courthouse steps, I went in to find Shorter.

The Richmond Police Department had a station in the basement of the courthouse. An officer pulled open the heavy door of a cell to reveal Shorter lying on a bench attached to one wall. It wasn’t a long bench. Shorter lay on his back with his feet on the floor and his hands on his chest. He didn’t move until the cell door had closed behind me.

“Robin Starling,” he said. “So good of you to come.”

“I just got your message.”

“That receptionist of yours has more spine than I gave her credit for.”

“Evidently,” I said.

He sat up with an effort. “So what happens now?”

“They take you before a magistrate to charge you formally.”

“Is that where they set bail? I’m ready to get out of this place. You know I have to bang on the door every time I need to go to the can? I don’t drink a whole lot, but still. I’m an old man. My bladder’s got about a one-cup capacity, and I can’t hardly empty it most times.”

I put my briefcase on the floor at the end of his bench. “Too much information, Shorter. You’re in mixed company.”

He snorted. “I’m in the company of my lawyer. If you’re that sensitive, you don’t have any business accepting checks for thirty thousand dollars.”

“You ought to be more careful about forcing checks on thin-skinned, skinny-ass females.”

His mouth spasmed in what might have been a smile, though he might have just had gas. “So, are we just going to keep trading shots in this cozy little hellhole, or do we go see this magistrate?”

“I’ll let them know we’re ready.” I banged on the door with the palm of my hand.

The presentation went as well as could be expected, which is to say not well. When the magistrate denied bail, I protested that Shorter was a longtime resident of Richmond who owned a home and paid his taxes. “He’s not a flight risk, Your Honor.”

The magistrate was a thin, fiftyish woman with dark-framed glasses. I’d stood there in front of the desk in her tiny office once before. The bail she’d set on that occasion had been high, but she hadn’t denied it altogether. “He faces the possibility of the death penalty,” she said.

“If convicted.”

“He may conclude the risk of conviction is unacceptably high. And there’s the potential risk to his community. He did stab a neighbor.”

“At this point, he’s presumed innocent of that charge, Your Honor.”

Her mouth stretched in a thin-lipped smile. “I have to consider the possibility of his guilt, Counselor—don’t I? Otherwise all these presumably innocent defendants would be walking the streets.”

It was her last word on the subject.

“I’ll give you my findings of fact and the reasons for my decision in writing,” she said. “It’ll go out later today.”

“I think maybe I overpaid for your legal skills,” Shorter said sourly when the hearing was over and we were out in the hall.

“They often deny bail in murder cases,” I told him. “But this is just the presentation. We’ll get another shot at bail at the preliminary hearing.”

“When’s that?”

“Maybe sometime next week. I’ll have to talk to the prosecutor to set a date. In the meantime, I’d like the key to your house.”

“Why? I don’t have anything you’d want.”

“I wasn’t thinking of looting the place. I thought it would be helpful to look at the scene of this supposed frame-up.”

“Supposed? So you don’t believe me?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Selling a frame-up to a jury isn’t going to be easy. I’m going to have to look at the facts from every angle I can think of.”