Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) (24 page)

The response took ten minutes and, when it came, was uninformative:
It’s going.

I started to text back to ask if he could possibly be more specific, but I let it go. Rodney was a good man, and he’d do what he could. Our waitress was handing out drinks. Brooke and I had water; Paul and Mike each had a beer. As I sipped my water, I said to Paul, “Beer with waffles? Really?”

“Chicken waffles. It’s Friday, and anyway, I’m taking a day’s vacation.”

“And beer and pizza is a classic,” Mike said, taking a sip from his mug.

I looked at Brooke, and she shrugged. She was sharing Mike’s pizza, but, at least for herself, obviously considered water an adequate beverage to go with it.

“Gonna wait until you’re married to put him on beer rations?” I asked her.

“Now that’s not helpful,” Mike said.

“I’m not his mother,” Brooke said.

“That’s my girl.” He tapped her water glass with his mug, then leaned toward her to kiss her cheek.

“Public displays of affection?” I said.

“Boy, you’re critical today,” Mike said. “Why are you trying to stir up trouble?”

Paul sipped his beer and wisely stayed out of it.

“Sorry,” I said to Mike. “I’m feeling pressure.”

“It sounds like you’ve got a plan. What is it?”

“To flounder around in all directions in hopes of catching hold of something that floats.”

Paul said, “That sounds like you’re drowning.”

Brooke said, “It doesn’t sound encouraging—that’s for sure.”

“Relax, it’s her modus operandi,” Mike said, but I couldn’t tell if he intended the remark as encouraging or critical.

“Well thank you all for the vote of confidence.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Mike said. “You’re the best on your feet of any lawyer I’ve ever seen. You do tend to work without a net, though.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors,” I said. “Am I a boxer or an acrobat?”

“Both. I mixed my metaphors deliberately.” He sipped his beer and looked smug.

When our food had come and we’d ingested a good bit of it, Brooke said, “Why do you want Shorter’s doorknob? And Bill Hill’s medical records? I don’t see the connection.”

“I should think it’s obvious,” I said. “You tell me.”

They all looked at me, and I smiled. “Just kidding. I don’t know that there is a connection.”

“So what are you thinking?” Mike asked.

“At this point, I’d rather not say. I’m just pulling on every thread I can think of.”

Mike and Brooke and Paul chewed thoughtfully.

“Threads you’re going to use to weave a rug?” Paul asked.

Mike said, “You’re pulling threads to unravel something?”

So the metaphor of pulling threads wasn’t particularly enlightening. I turned to Brooke. “I’m planning to call you as my next witness. You up for it?”

She stopped chewing, then swallowed. “No. What for?”

“Nothing serious. I want to introduce the photographs you took at Bill Hill’s house.”

“I don’t want to testify.”

“I know.”

She took a breath. “I’ll do it,” she said. “If you need me.”

“Thank you. With that settled, I can relax and finish my fish tacos.” I took a bite.

“I hope
you’re
hungry,” Brooke said to Mike, pushing the dish with the last piece of their pizza toward him.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to spoil your appetite.”

“So is she on your witness list?” Mike asked, picking up his fourth piece of pizza. “Or is that going to be a problem?”

“She’s on my witness list.”

“You didn’t tell me I was on your witness list,” Brooke said.

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“You’ve got an idea,” Paul said.

“Oh, I’m full of them,” I said. “Or maybe just full of it. We’ll see.”

“Ms. Starving,” the judge said, “call your next witness.” I didn’t know how many possible mispronunciations of my name there were, but surely by now Judge Cooley had worked through just about all of them.

“Starling,” I said.

“Yes, of course. Starling.”

I looked back over the gallery, but Rodney Burns still had not returned.

“Call Brooke Marshall,” I said.

She stood and pushed through the bar, looking as cool as lemonade. When she’d been sworn and taken her seat, though, she looked at me reproachfully.

“Could you tell us your name, please?” I asked.

She told us.

“Your occupation?”

When we had the preliminaries out of the way, I distributed copies of photographs I had brought with me to the lectern. I showed Brooke one of them. “Could you tell us what this photograph is?”

“It’s a photograph of the inside of Bill Hill’s medicine cabinet.”

“Who took it?”

“You did.”

“Does the photograph fairly and accurately represent the inside of the medicine cabinet as it existed on the afternoon of March 26, the day we walked through Mr. Hill’s house with two police officers?”

“It does.” After a pause, she added, “None of us took anything out of the medicine cabinet or added anything to it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It wasn’t, but thank you. That’s very helpful.” After the photograph had been marked for identification, I presented her with another one. “Can you tell us what this photograph is?”

“A close-up of Mr. Hill’s prescription medications in that same medicine cabinet.”

That photograph too fairly and accurately represented what we had seen on March 26. I got her to authenticate one more photograph, then moved to admit them into evidence.

Maxwell objected. “I don’t see the relevance, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Staving?” Okay, the judge had found one more.

“I’ll connect it up, Your Honor.”

“Then I’ll wait to rule on your motion until you do.”

“No further questions,” I said.

Maxwell stood. Brooke’s testimony was so limited in scope that there wasn’t much he could do with it on cross-examination. “No questions, Your Honor.”

As I got back to the defense table, Rodney Burns and another man came through the door, Rodney with a box under his arm. I met his gaze and gave him a nod. He jerked his head at the bald, red-faced man who had come in with him, and I smiled.

I turned back to the judge. “Call Dr. Richard Gore.”

Unlike Melissa Stimmler, Brooke Marshall, and Rodney Burns, all of whom I had listed in an abundance of caution, Dr. Gore was not on my witness list. Maxwell objected, and we had a bench conference.

“I didn’t expect to call Dr. Gore until he walked into the courtroom just now,” I said. “At best, I was hoping to introduce some of his records. Bill Hill was his patient.”

“Your Honor, not only is this an unfair surprise to the prosecution, but I fail to see any relevance of this witness to the question of whether or not the defendant killed Bill Hill.”

“As I promised, I’m trying to connect up those photographs that were just marked for identification. I would have had Dr. Gore on the witness list, but it was only today that I realized how important his testimony was going to be to the defendant’s case.”

“Important in what way?” Judge Cooley asked me.

I would have liked to be able to tell him, but actually I was still working on that. “I’m sorry it’s a surprise to Mr. Maxwell, but I don’t think he’s going to find himself disadvantaged. If he’s right about the relevance of the testimony, the worst we’re looking at is a waste of time. It will be a bigger waste of time, though, if I have to try to get at the same facts through the people whose names are on my witness list.”

Judge Cooley raised his chin to look at me through the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.

“If I can call Dr. Gore, I expect to rest my case by the end of the day,” I said. “Otherwise, it will be tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

That clinched it. The judge overruled the prosecution’s objection, and Dr. Gore came to the witness stand.

“Hi,” I said to him. “I’m Robin Starling. Could you tell us your name?”

“Richard Gore.”

He didn’t put the “Dr.” in front of his name, which gave me an instant liking for him. Though I’ve called him bald, he wasn’t completely. He had a fringe of reddish-blond hair, and his pudgy face had a boyish look that I found appealing. “Your profession?” I asked him.

“I’m a neurologist.”

“We appreciate your taking time out of your busy practice to come talk to us today.”

He smiled perfunctorily. “Actually, I didn’t have any patients scheduled after four, and my last one called to cancel while I was talking to your detective. I wouldn’t have missed it, really. This will give me something to tell my boys at the dinner table.”

“We’ll try not to make it too noteworthy. Did you know William Hill during his lifetime, Dr. Gore?”

“He was my patient. I was treating him for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

“Could you tell us about the progression of the disease in Mr. Hill’s case?”

Dr. Gore took a breath and exhaled it. “Bill was diagnosed about a year and a half ago. An electromyogram showed nerve damage. Other tests ruled out muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord tumors, and a few other possibilities. Over the next eighteen months, he continued to get progressively weaker. His arms and legs stiffened, and he lost muscle mass. His biggest problems were increased difficulty in speaking and swallowing. We’d begun to talk about what he would do when independent living was no longer possible.”

“How long did he have to live?”

“It’s hard to say. People generally live from two to five years after diagnosis, but Mr. Hill was likely to be at the lower end of that range.”

“So at the time of his death he might not have had more than six months to live,” I said.

“He might not have.”

“What do ALS patients ultimately die of?”

“Respiratory failure, usually hastened by aspiration pneumonia.”

Maxwell stood. “I don’t see the relevance of this line of questioning. Is counsel suggesting that Mr. Hill’s murder was a mercy killing? That’s not a valid defense, and she knows it.”

“Your Honor,” I said. “Dr. Gore’s testimony is part of the res gestae. If I’m allowed to proceed, I can connect it up.”

“I’ll overrule the objection.”

“Thank you.” I showed Dr. Gore the close-ups of the prescription drugs in Bill Hill’s medicine cabinet. “Are these medications that you were prescribing for Mr. Hill?” I asked him.

“Yes, most of them.”

“Could you walk us through them, tell us what each was for?”

“Sure.” He held the photograph a little farther away and tilted his head so that he was looking through the bottom part of his glasses. “Baclofen is a muscle relaxer, which I prescribed to help with pain and muscle stiffness. Phenytoin is an anticonvulsant that also helped with cramps. Elavil is a tricyclic antidepressant to control excess saliva production and help with involuntary drooling. Rilutek decreases serum glutamate, which is an amino acid that often increases in ALS patients to the point that it damages nerve cells. This bottle labeled BCAA is actually a nutritional supplement to help with muscle decline and weight loss. Cymbalta was to help with Mr. Hill’s depression . . .” It turned out that at the time of his death, Bill Hill had been taking pretty much everything in his medicine cabinet on a daily basis.

“There was some kind of breathing machine by Mr. Hill’s bed,” I said. “Would that have been related to his ALS?”

Dr. Gore nodded. “A BiPAP machine to help him breathe at night.”

I retrieved the aspirin tin from the court clerk. “Could you tell us what this is?”

“Some kind of pillbox,” he said. “It says aspirin.”

“Could you open it and tell us if it actually contains aspirin?”

He opened it. “It does not. There are two pills here, both of them Rilutek.”

“That would be one of the drugs you prescribed for Mr. Hill?”

“It would.”

“Thank you, Dr. Gore. That will be all.”

The aspirin tin had gotten Maxwell’s attention. He went to the lectern. “I remain puzzled by the purpose of your testimony,” he said.

Dr. Gore smiled at him, blinking through his glasses. “As do I.”

Maxwell looked at him thoughtfully another moment, then picked back up his legal pad. “Never mind,” he said. “I have no questions of this witness.”

I stood and watched as Dr. Gore pushed through the bar and took a seat in the gallery, possibly hoping for more to tell his boys at the dinner table. “Call Rodney Burns,” I said.

He came forward with the cardboard box, setting it on the defense table on his way to the witness stand. As he was being sworn, I looked in the box and saw a keyed doorknob and a dead bolt.

“Hello,” I said, giving him my patented put-the-witness-at-ease smile. “Could you give us your full name, please?”

He didn’t smile back. Rodney Burns was a phlegmatic cuss. “Rodney Burns,” he said.

“Your address and occupation?”

“Ten-eleven East Main Street.” It was his business address, the same as mine. “I’m a private investigator licensed by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services.”

“Have you been employed as a private investigator today, Mr. Burns?”

“I have. You employed me.”

“And what did I employ you to do?”

He glanced at the judge, then back at me. “To remove the doorknob from the back door of Bob Shorter’s house.”

I pulled the doorknob and dead bolt from the box with the air of a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat. There did seem to be a mild stirring of interest in the jury box.

“Can you tell us what these are?” I asked Rodney.

“They’re the doorknob and dead bolt off Bob Shorter’s back door.”

“The defendant Robert Shorter?”

“Yes. It was his back door.”

I carried doorknob and dead bolt to the prosecutor’s table. “Would you like a closer look?”

Maxwell took first the dead bolt, then the doorknob from me and handed them back. I carried them to the judge. After I got the court clerk to put a number on each, I took the doorknob and dead bolt to Rodney Burns. “When did you get this doorknob and this dead bolt?” I asked him.

“Shortly after one o’clock this afternoon, maybe one fifteen or one twenty.”