Juggling Evidence (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  The man pulled out a leather folder and showed me a badge.

  “Wait a second, I want to see it.” I took the folder from him. His name was Adam King. “You?” I said.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she produced her own identification. I studied it, then handed it back.

  “Thank you, Stephanie,” I said. “Now perhaps you can tell us what you want.”

  “We want the Nolans.”

  I assumed that the police knew who I was and that playing dumb would be counterproductive. “Their rooms are on the third floor,” I said. “I called up when I first got here and talked to Matt.”

  “They’re not in their rooms.”

  “Well, they’re not in here,” I said.

  Adam toed the wooden frame beneath the bedspread. There weren’t a lot of potential hiding places.

  “What did you do with them?” Stephanie said.

  “I just got here,” I said. “I walked in with you. Remember?”

  She looked at Bruno, who looked back, but didn’t speak. Her eyes fastened on the connecting door to room 439, and she strode to it and pulled it open to reveal the blank door on the other side. She knocked on it.

  We all waited, but she didn’t get an answer.

  She went to the bedside table, picked up the receiver, and dialed a number. “Hi,” she said. “This is Stephanie Hoard of the Richmond Police Department. Could you tell me if room 439 is occupied? Uh huh. Thank you.” She hung up and glared at me.

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  To Adam, she said, “It’s rented to a Brooke Marshall.”

  The name, evidently, didn’t mean anything to either of them.

  “Unless you have a warrant, I think it’s time you left,” I said.

  Stephanie’s mouth tightened. She left the hotel room, and I followed her closely enough to catch the door as she knocked on the door directly across from Bruno’s. It was opened by a man I hadn’t seen before. They engaged in a whispered conversation, then Stephanie went to room 439 and banged on the door with the heel of her fist. She hit the door three times, waited, then hit it three more times. I wondered whether Lynn and Matt were sitting on the bed, paralyzed with dread, or whether they were trying to conceal themselves in the closet or behind the shower curtain.

  Much to my surprise, the door to room 439 opened. Brooke was there, her hair tousled. She was wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe with the name of the hotel stitched on the breast. Her expression, as she looked at Stephanie, was incredulous.

  “What is wrong with you? It’s the middle of the night,” she said. Seeing the rest of us, she asked, “Is something the matter? Is there a fire?”

  Stephanie held up her badge. “We’d like to search your room,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “May we come in?”

  Brooke looked suddenly angry. “Do you have a warrant?”

  “Do we need to get one?”

  “I think you do.”

  “What have you got to hide?”

  “Nothing to hide, but lots to protect,” Brooke said. “You can’t just…”

  Stephanie’s cell phone began playing a song by Green Day. She stepped back and pulled it off her belt. “Hoard,” she said, giving her last name.

  She listened.

  “Son of a gun,” she said. After a moment she flipped the phone closed. To Adam she said, “The Nolans are back in their room. John just saw them going in.”

  “Where have they been?”

  She rolled her eyes. “We know where they’ve been.”

  “Where do they say they’ve been?”

  “For a walk.” She jerked her head at Bruno and me, who were standing together. “Let’s take one ourselves.”

  The man who had been in the room across from Bruno’s said, “They didn’t come out that door.” He pointed at the door of Bruno’s room.

  “Well, they sure got out somehow.”

  Chapter 6

  “How did you get them out?” I asked Brooke. It was an hour later, and we were headed once again out the Downtown Expressway toward I-64.

  “I took a chance,” Brooke said. “When I heard all those people in Bruno’s room, I checked the corridor. It looked empty to me, so I sent the Nolans high-tailing it toward the stairwell at the opposite end of the hall from the elevators.”

  “We were lucky.” I brought her up to date, telling her everything I’d learned from the Nolans and from Steve Bruno. She’d already heard some of it from Lynn and Matt.

  “I don’t see that the hocus pocus at the hotel matters much,” she said, taking the ramp onto I-64. “If Matt Nolan could establish that Lynn and Steve Bruno were old sweethearts, then the police can.”

  “Sure, but nothing would bring it home to the jury like finding her in his hotel room the night of her husband’s murder.”

  “Can’t the police still testify about seeing her go into his room?”

  “Sure, but they’d also have to admit that she wasn’t there an hour or so later and that they never saw her leave. I think it muddies the waters enough that the prosecution will leave it alone.”

  Brooke drove for a while in silence. “So Steve Bruno showed up three weeks ago and has been seeing Lynn on the sly,” she said at last.

  “You think there’s a romantic angle?” I asked her.

  “Don’t you?”

  I didn’t know. “There doesn’t have to be,” I said. “It could be an old friend helping out in tough times.”

  “When do you think Derek popped her in the eye?”

  “Yesterday?” I checked my watch. “Day before yesterday,” I amended. “The discoloration was already pretty far advanced yesterday morning.”

  “So he pops her in the eye, and within twenty-four hours someone’s shot him in the head.”

  “And we have an old boyfriend going in and out of the master bedroom,” I said.

  “It looks bad. It’s plain neither Derek’s wife nor his kid will miss him much.”

  “True. Somehow I can’t see either one of them as a killer, though.”

  “Would you know a killer if you saw one?”

  “Maybe. The embezzler’s our best candidate—big beefy guy with a bald head.”

  “Oh yes, clearly a killer.” After a bit she added, “Why, though? Revenge for being canned?” She exited the interstate in the far West End.

  “The motive is stronger than that. Derek’s murder may save him from criminal prosecution. Walker goes in, shoots Derek Nolan, takes the forged notes from the drawer, and he’s home free. The file drawer was open, remember.”

  “He risks prosecution for murder to cover up an embezzlement?” Brooke asked.

  “He might not have expected to run into Melissa Butler on the way out. If Walker was the man she saw.”

  “And if the man she saw was the killer.”

  I sighed. “I know. All we know for sure is that she saw a man leaving the scene.”

  “And we don’t know if he matches Walker’s description or Bruno’s or somebody else’s entirely.”

  “I’d sure like to ask her some questions about that.”

  “Be nice if you’d questioned her while you had her,” Brooke said.

  “Who knew she was about to disappear? I didn’t have any reason to question her, anyway. Everyone was telling me Derek was the one who had knocked her down. By the time I knew that was impossible, I had a corpse to think about and a client who was intent on tampering with the evidence.”

  “Now that’s what’s interesting,” Brooke said. “Why would she do that? She’s obviously protecting someone.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Think about it. Someone’s murdered her husband. She has no idea who or why. Depending on the motivation, she or her son could be the next target, and yet all she cares about is obstructing the police investigation.”

  “Doesn’t make sense, does it?” I said.

  “Not unless she has a pretty good idea who did it, and why.”

&nb
sp; “Or at least who might be accused of doing it.”

  Brooke nodded and turned onto our street. “I think we have a pretty good idea of who’s going to be accused of doing it.”

  “Steve Bruno?”

  “Or Lynn herself. Maybe both.”

  “Well, as soon as Melissa Butler turns up, we’ll have a chance to straighten things out. Either she saw Bruno, and he’s cooked, or she saw somebody else. Whoever she saw is going to be the number-one suspect.”

  “You’re assuming Melissa Butler is going to turn up,” Brooke said.

  “She better turn up. She has my car, and my wallet’s under the front seat.”

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, the police arrested Lynn Nolan and Steve Bruno for the murder of Derek Nolan. I got Lynn’s call at the office just as I was preparing to leave for lunch.

  “Don’t answer questions,” I told her. “Don’t say anything about your family or about Bruno or about anything you did yesterday.” I was on my feet behind my desk, trying to think, my hand gripping the receiver so hard that it was becoming painful.

  “They found a gun,” she said. “In a shoebox in my closet.”

  Of course they did. “This isn’t the time to talk about it. I’ll come see you this afternoon.”

  “I didn’t put it there. I’d never seen the gun before.”

  “We’ll talk about it later, as early in the afternoon as I can make it.”

  “I want you to represent both of us. Steve and me.”

  “I can’t,” I said automatically.

  “They claim we did it together.”

  It might mean that she and Bruno had no conflict of interests, but a conflict of interests was something I didn’t want to come within a mile of. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Which one do they say pulled the trigger?”

  “They’ve told it to me both ways. I don’t think they care.”

  I hung up, and the phone rang again. I reached for it, then stopped dead, my hand on the receiver. The LCD read “Starling, Charles.” It was my father. The phone rang four times, then switched the caller to voice mail. I sat with my hand still on the receiver, waiting for the red message light to appear.

  Behind me, a voice said, “You ready?” and I spun in my chair.

  John Parker, another of the firm’s associate attorneys, stood in my doorway.

  “You ready?” he said again.

  “For what?” My heart was still pounding.

  “Aren’t we going to lunch?”

  We were. Not too long before Lynn’s phone call he’d called to ask, and I’d agreed, somewhat against my better judgment. I had something of a history with John, and I still found any time spent with him to be charged with possibilities. For me John Parker wasn’t quite safe.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “Ten minutes ago you were starving.”

  “I have meat to eat ye know not of.”

  John frowned at me, looking perplexed.

  “It’s the Bible,” I said. “The last few times I’ve stayed in a hotel, I’ve read bits of the one in the nightstand.”

  “I know it’s the Bible. Are you saying you’ve been witnessing to Samaritans?”

  Evidently, John knew the Bible better than I did. “I got a phone call,” I said. Actually two phone calls. I glanced back at the phone, but Dad hadn’t left a message. “I’m about to be involved in my second criminal case.”

  ‘Uh oh.” He came into the office and dropped into a chair across the desk from me. “As attorney or defendant?”

  I felt one corner of my mouth lifting. “Attorney,” I said.

  “Better than the alternative, but Larsen’s not going to like it.” Dick Larsen was the firm’s senior partner.

  “I know. That’s what’s happened to my appetite.”

  “Just don’t handle it like you did the last one.”

  “In the last one I was representing you,” I said.

  My phone rang yet again, but the tone this time indicated an internal call. It was the receptionist.

  I picked up. “Starling.”

  “A Sergeant Jordan is on his way back.”

  “Crap,” I said.

  “Pardon?” she said.

  “I mean, thank you.” I put the receiver back in its cradle and turned to John. “Sergeant James Jordan is…” It was too late. Jordan was in the hallway, visible through the glass wall of my office. The glass walls were the thing I hated most about working at Northcutt, Hambrick and Larsen. The partners had offices with opaque walls along the perimeter of the ninth and tenth floors. The associates were clustered in the interior, each in his or her own goldfish bowl.

  John turned as Jordan stopped in the open doorway.

  “Mr. Parker,” Jordan said.

  John stood warily, keeping his gaze fixed on Jordan. “Officer Jordan,” he said.

  “You two still thick as thieves?” Jordan nodded at me. “Hello, Robin.”

  “I’ll see you,” John said to me. Jordan stepped aside for him and watched him stride off down the hall.

  Jordan came in and sat down. “Nervous fellow,” he said, jerking his head in the direction John had gone.

  “How come he’s Mr. Parker, and I’m just Robin?” I asked.

  Jordan smiled. “I guess I don’t like him as well as I do you.”

  “At least this time you’re not here to arrest him.”

  “No, this time it’s you I’m after.”

  “Me?”

  “We found your car. It was parked along the curb near the Greyhound station. The meter had expired.”

  “So I’ve got a ticket?”

  “The car’s been impounded. I’m afraid it will cost you something to get it back.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m afraid not. One-eighty in towing charges.”

  I was incredulous. “One hundred eighty dollars? If you’d just called me, I’d have come and gotten it.”

  He gave me a shrug and a smile that might have been apologetic. “By the time I knew anything about it, it was too late.”

  I sat back in my chair, disgusted. Finally, I said, “Well, where is Melissa? What does she have to say for herself?”

  “Nothing. We still can’t find her.”

  “Did she take a bus out of town? Where’d she go?”

  “Evidently nowhere, at least not by bus.”

  “That’s interesting. Has she been back to her apartment?”

  “No.”

  “Where did she go then? What was the car doing at the bus station?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. Evidently, somebody picked her up outside the station.”

  “Taxi?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have a car.”

  “She left the murder scene in your car.”

  “I’ve explained that. Look, I’m the last person to want to hide Melissa Butler. I’m desperate for some kind of description of the man who knocked her down.”

  “Are you? Maybe you didn’t like what she had to say, and that’s why Melissa’s gone missing.”

  “You’ve made that accusation before,” I said. “I’m not going to keep denying it.”

  “You talked to her. I didn’t. It just seems odd you’d have let her go without getting a description out of her.”

  “I didn’t let her go. I thought I was dealing with domestic violence. Everybody else in that house did, too. I had no idea she was about to take off.”

  “I’m just telling you how it looks,” Jordan said. “They tell me the district attorney is mad as a wet hen. If much more turns up in the way of evidence, you could be losing your license to practice law.”

  “Well, I don’t know what I can do about it.” I thought about it, and my mouth twitched. “Did somebody really compare Aubrey Biggs to a wet hen?”

  Jordan stood up. “I take it you know we’ve arrested Lynn Nolan and Steve Bruno for the murder.”

  “I just got the
phone call.”

  “So I’ll be seeing you. A lot, maybe.” He raised a hand to me as he turned toward the door.

  “Wait.” I snatched my purse from the desk drawer, more for appearances than anything, since my wallet had been in my car, and went around the desk after him. “I need a ride to the impound lot, or wherever the heck they’ve taken my car.”

  Chapter 8

  My wallet was still where I had put it, tucked underneath the front seat. After I’d written my check and signed the necessary papers, I called Brooke on her cell phone. “Where are you?” I asked when she picked up, knowing she was often on site at some company or other. She was an information systems manager who recently had begun working out of the house as a consultant.

  “At home. I’ve got an appointment, though, in a little over an hour. Where are you?”

  “Just leaving the impound lot. They found my car.”

  “Where?”

  I told her about it and about the arrest of Steve Bruno and Lynn Nolan. “What I’d like to do now is have my car dusted for prints.”

  “Fingerprints? You mean Melissa’s fingerprints?”

  “Yes. I want to find her.”

  “The police didn’t dust it?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to ask. What I’m hoping is that we can find a detective agency that can lift the prints and check the databases to see if Melissa Butler has a record somewhere.”

  “A criminal record? What makes you think that?”

  “Her disappearance. It seems to be voluntary, and I’m looking for a reason.”

  “Aren’t the police looking for one, too?”

  “The police already have their reason. They think I engineered her disappearance so she wouldn’t identify Steve Bruno. I know I didn’t, so I’m one up on them. Can you call a few detective agencies for me while I’m at the jail talking to my clients?”

  “Plural?”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Suppose you could get Lynn off by implicating Bruno?”

  “That would be the problem. I don’t think she’d want me to do it, though.”