Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  “They were the same sizes as the other shirts and pants in the closet.”

  “You evidently spent some time talking to the neighbors. Did you ask any of them whether he or she had ever seen the defendant wearing those clothes?”

  “No.”

  “So conceivably, these clothes could have belonged to someone else who was about the same height and weight as Bob Shorter.”

  “They were in the defendant’s closet,” Hernandez said.

  “And no one else had access to the house?”

  “Not as far as we know, no.”

  “No spare key in the toolshed?”

  “Not that we found.”

  “Any nails in the toolshed that might have held a key before somebody took it?”

  “Objection,” Maxwell said, standing. “Calls for speculation.”

  “Sustained.”

  I said, “Your Honor, could I have a moment? I want to ask the witness a question about a photograph of the closet where these clothes were found.”

  “Your Honor,” Maxwell said, “there can be no doubt as to the admissibility of these clothes.”

  I waited for the judge’s ruling, and he cleared his throat. “By all means,” he said. “Take a moment.”

  I shuffled through the photographs in the folder on my table until I found the one I wanted. It wasn’t one the prosecution had introduced. I hadn’t planned on introducing it, either, so I had only the one copy.

  “Could I approach the witness to show him this photograph?” I asked the judge, holding it up. He made a circling gesture with his hand, so I took my photograph to the witness stand and handed it to Hernandez.

  “Can you identify this photograph?” I asked him.

  “It’s a photograph of the defendant’s closet.”

  “It’s a police photograph, isn’t it, made at the time you searched his house and found these clothes that you’ve just identified?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it fairly and accurately depict the closet as it was on the day you made your search?”

  It did. The closet’s sliding doors were pushed to the right, and two rows of hanging clothes were visible above three pairs of shoes and a pair of slippers that looked like a couple of Chihuahuas had been at them. I had the photograph marked for identification.

  “There’s a spot on the photograph I’m curious about. It’s on the floor, maybe a foot from the back wall of the closet. Do you see it?” It was a spot that wasn’t on my own photographs of the closet taken some days later.

  “I see it,” Hernandez said.

  “Can you tell us what it is?”

  He took a moment. “I think it’s an old aspirin tin,” he said.

  “There was a pillbox listed on the search inventory and return you signed. Would that be it?”

  “Probably.”

  “So you took the pillbox when you made the search. Can you tell us why?”

  He shrugged. “It was there. It was something you wouldn’t expect to find on the floor of someone’s closet.”

  “Like the blood-spotted clothes shoved back against the wall where no one could see them?”

  “Like the clothes.”

  “Did you look inside the pillbox? Did it contain aspirin?”

  “I don’t think it did. It seems like it was some other kind of pill, two or three of them.”

  “Capsules?”

  “I seem to remember pills.”

  “Prescription pills of some kind?”

  “Yes, though I couldn’t tell you what they were.”

  Maxwell said, “Your Honor, these questions seem to be going rather far afield. This isn’t the time for Ms. Starling’s cross-examination. It’s voir dire on the admissibility of the clothing.”

  “Your point is well taken,” Judge Cooley said. “Ms. Starling?”

  “I’m done, Your Honor.” I had done what damage I could, which, as you may have noticed, was nil. I sat down, and the shirt and pants were admitted into evidence. Hernandez testified that, like the knife, the clothes had been delivered to the office of the chief medical examiner for DNA profiling of the blood on them.

  “Now you may cross-examine,” Maxwell told me.

  I got up. “Detective Hernandez, you testified about fingerprints on this paring knife you found. Are you able to tell us about other fingerprints that were found inside the house of Bill Hill?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of your own knowledge?”

  “I was there when the prints were lifted and photographed, and there when the comparisons were made.”

  Bob Shorter had assured me in graphic terms that he had not been inside Hill’s house in eight years, not since the night he had left Bill Hill afoot in a snowstorm. I believed him, not because I thought he wouldn’t lie if it suited him, but because Maxwell hadn’t called any crime scene technicians to testify about finding his fingerprints in the murder house. So far, there had only been Hernandez’s testimony about the one set of prints found on the beechwood handle of the murder weapon. “So whose fingerprints were found inside the Hill house, other than Mr. Hill’s own?”

  “Just the defendant’s prints on the murder weapon.”

  “None anywhere else in the house?”

  “None anywhere else,” Hernandez said. It was what I needed for my closing argument, so I left that point and went on.

  “There was another fingerprint on the beechwood handle, wasn’t there? One that did not belong to the defendant.”

  Hernandez shifted. “There was. A smudged print.”

  “One that you haven’t been able to identify.”

  “No, though we think it came from one of the decedent’s fingers.”

  “Bill Hill’s? I thought he was wearing gloves.”

  “He was when we found him.”

  “And there were not enough points of similarity to establish that the print did, in fact, come from the decedent, were there?

  “No.”

  “But you do know that the print was not made by the defendant Bob Shorter.”

  He did know that. I asked a few more questions about the print. I don’t know that I fairly raised the possibility that the knife had been handled by person or persons unknown, but I did my best.

  “Did Bill Hill have anything in his pockets when his body was found?”

  “Yes. A wallet, a key ring, some change.”

  “No comb?”

  Hernandez shook his head, a bemused half smile on his face. “I don’t believe so, no. Of course, he didn’t have much hair.”

  “Where are those items now?”

  Hernandez looked at Maxwell, then back at me. “They should be in the evidence locker at police headquarters.”

  “Okay. Let’s go back to your search of Mr. Shorter’s house. I asked you about the police photograph of the defendant’s closet that showed a pillbox on the floor. Was any photograph taken of the contents of that pillbox?”

  “No, I don’t believe there was.”

  “Where is the pillbox now?”

  “Also in the evidence locker.”

  I looked up at the judge. “Your Honor, it’s almost noon. Could we take our lunch recess now to give this witness the opportunity to bring those objects to court?”

  “Which objects are those?” Judge Cooley asked, looking at the clock.

  “The pillbox found on the floor of the defendant’s closet and the contents of Bill Hill’s pockets.”

  “Your Honor,” Maxwell objected. “Counsel has no idea what she hopes to prove by these items. It’s obviously a fishing expedition, and it’s a waste of the court’s time.”

  “Maybe so, but it is almost noon,” Judge Cooley said. I wondered if he was thinking about the comfy sofa he had in chambers.

  “I would also welcome the chance to change my clothes,” I said. “I keep smelling coffee.”

  Again that bray of laughter from the jury box. The judge smiled.

  “Very well.” He banged his gavel. “Court is recessed until two o�
�clock. The witness will have the requested items when he resumes his testimony.”

  When I got back to the defense table, Shorter asked, “Are you onto something? What’s significant about a comb?”

  I flashed him a smile. “It is a fishing expedition,” I said. “I’m hoping to land us a nice, big trout.”

  The momentarily hopeful expression soured on his face, but I was already looking past him. Brooke Marshall had slipped into the gallery, and she carried a paper bag with handles. With any luck, the bag contained some clean clothes for me.

  Chapter 17

  Ray Hernandez returned to the witness stand, and the judge reminded him that he had already been sworn. “Ms. Staring,” he said, turning the floor over to me.

  He’d gotten my name wrong again—misled, I can only assume, by my big blue eyes—but I didn’t correct him. “Do you have the pillbox?” I asked Hernandez.

  “I do.” He set a plastic bag on the rail. Inside was a small yellow rectangle that said, “Bayer.” It was an aspirin tin.

  “Were you able to get any prints off the box?”

  “No, everything was too smeared.”

  “Did you try?”

  He smiled. “Over the lunch hour.”

  “So it would be all right to handle it?”

  “It wouldn’t destroy any evidence, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Open it, please. Let’s see what’s inside.”

  He opened the plastic bag and took out the tin, then pinched the corners of the tin so that it popped open. “There are two pills inside,” he said.

  “Identical to each other?”

  “Yes. Two capsule-shaped tablets with R-P-R-hypen-2-0-2 printed on one side.”

  “Do you know what drug that is?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Or what the drug is prescribed to treat?”

  “No.”

  I had the aspirin tin marked for identification and moved to have it admitted into evidence.

  “Your Honor,” Maxwell said, “I don’t know what counsel is getting at, but this isn’t proper cross-examination. Counsel will have an opportunity to present her case after the commonwealth rests.”

  I said, “On direct examination, this witness testified about the contents of the defendant’s closet. You can’t put in pants and a shirt and refuse to consider an item lying right next to them that might have fallen from one of the pockets.”

  “Is that your contention?” Judge Cooley asked me. “That this item fell out of one of the pockets in the clothes that have been admitted into evidence?”

  “Not necessarily. The pillbox might have been placed there on the floor deliberately. Either way, it would be significant.”

  “I’ll grant your motion.”

  Since I seemed to be on a roll, I got Bill Hill’s wallet and his ring of keys marked for identification and admitted into evidence while I was at it.

  “No further questions,” I said.

  “Any redirect?”

  “No, Your Honor,” Maxwell said.

  “Call your next witness.”

  I turned back to the defense table and saw that Paul and Mike had come in: They were sitting with Brooke just beyond the rail. I gave them a perfunctory smile, noticing Paul’s intent expression and Mike’s look of puzzlement. Shorter pushed a yellow pad in front of my chair and tapped it with a yellowed fingernail. In the middle of the page was written, “Did you land your trout or didn’t you?”

  I shook my head. Underneath his question I wrote, “Not a nibble,” and pushed the legal pad back to him. He rolled his eyes upward as he sat back in his chair.

  “Call Tara Nelson.”

  Tara was a technician with the forensic unit. Maxwell used her to establish that if none of Shorter’s prints were found in Bill Hill’s house other than those on the murder weapon, nobody else’s were, either. There was no fiber or other trace evidence to suggest anyone other than Bill Hill and Bob Shorter had ever been in the house.

  I’d met Tara before. She was an attractive woman in her midthirties with dark, shoulder-length hair. When it was my turn to cross-examine, I asked her, “You’re telling us the defendant left no trace evidence in that house?”

  “Other than the prints on the knife, none that we found.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as remarkable?”

  “Not particularly. It does suggest the defendant didn’t spend long in the house.”

  “Or maybe that he was never there at all,” I said.

  “He did carry blood from the crime scene on his clothes back to his house.”

  “You’re assuming that it was the defendant who carried the clothes back to his house and not a third party.”

  “Yes.”

  This wasn’t going well. I decided to cut my losses. “No further questions.”

  “I have a few questions on redirect, Your Honor,” Maxwell said.

  The judge inclined his head.

  “Ms. Nelson. Can you tell us whether the clothes found in the defendant’s house were fresh? Had they been worn after the last time they were laundered?”

  She smiled. “Yes, they had. There were creases at the hips and back of the knees and two short hairs inside one of the pant legs.”

  “Leg hairs?”

  “I think so.”

  “How did you connect them to the defendant?”

  “I didn’t. I turned them over to the office of the chief medical examiner to do a DNA profile.”

  I’d been right to stop my questioning. Maxwell hadn’t asked about the leg hairs on direct because he had hoped that I’d bring it out—and that, coming from me, the additional connection of the bloody clothes to Bob Shorter would make more of an impact on the jury. As it was, the impact was great enough. Maxwell got Tara Nelson to identify two hairs in a plastic bag that was marked for identification and then admitted into evidence. I couldn’t think of an objection that could keep them out, so I remained silent.

  At the table, Shorter leaned toward me so far that when I turned toward him, our foreheads were all but touching. “I don’t always wash my clothes,” he whispered in an invisible cloud of stale tobacco smoke.

  I frowned, blinking as my eyes began to water.

  “After I wear them,” he said. “Sometimes, if they’re not too dirty, I drape them on the bed or even hang them back up in the closet to wear again.”

  I switched to mouth breathing. In a stuffy voice I said, “So you’re saying that anyone who had access to your clothes would have access to clothes you’d been wearing.”

  “Right. So her testimony doesn’t mean anything.”

  I wasn’t so sure. How was I going to get how Shorter handled his dirty clothes into evidence without putting him on the witness stand?

  “You’ve said that you did a thorough dusting for fingerprints inside Bill Hill’s house,” Maxwell was saying. “Did you also dust for prints inside the defendant’s house?”

  This time I did object. “That’s not proper redirect, Your Honor. On cross I asked nothing about prints inside the defendant’s house.” I hadn’t asked, because I knew from the police reports what was coming: No prints had been found inside Shorter’s house other than his own. Their absence didn’t disprove my theory of a frame-up, but it didn’t help, either.

  The judge looked over his glasses at Maxwell. “Counselor?”

  Maxwell tongue slid across his lower lip. He was caught. “She did ask about the witness’s examination of the defendant’s clothes, which were inside the house.”

  I said, “I did not ask about her examination of the defendant’s clothes. You yourself asked those questions.”

  “Could we have the court reporter read back Ms. Starling’s last question?” Maxwell said.

  The judge nodded. “Mr. Yielding?”

  Mr. Yielding found the question and read, “You’re assuming that it was the defendant who carried the clothes back to his house and not a third party. Answer: Yes.”

  Maxwell was silent, thinking. I said,
“That is not a question about her examination of clothes. Rather, it’s a question about an assumption of the witness that goes to bias.”

  Judge Cooley nodded. “I’ll sustain the objection.”

  After a moment, Maxwell nodded. “No further questions.”

  His next witness was one I’d been expecting almost from day one: Dr. Harold Pavlicek, a pathologist with the office of the chief medical examiner. He told us that death had occurred in the afternoon or evening of March 9. “Death was brought about by a stab wound to the chest,” he said.

  “Did the stab wound pierce the heart?”

  “No, the blade missed the heart, though it did damage the left coronary artery. There was a great deal of bleeding, both internal and external.”

  “Would death have been instantaneous in such a case?” Maxwell asked.

  “No, it would not. And in this particular case, the extensive bleeding shows us that death could not have been instantaneous, because, once the heart stops, bleeding slows considerably. Here the decedent lived for probably twenty or thirty minutes after the wound was inflicted.”

  “But the stab wound was the cause of death?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Did you prepare a DNA profile of the decedent’s blood?”

  He had.

  “And a DNA profile of the blood found on a shirt and a pair of pants that were given to you by the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “A DNA profile of two leg hairs that came from that pair of pants?”

  “Two leg hairs delivered to me by one Tara Nelson.”

  “I show you Prosecution Exhibit 19 and ask if you can identify it.”

  “That’s the shirt given to me by police for purposes of DNA comparison.”

  “The shirt with blood on it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you identify Prosecution Exhibit 20?” Maxwell exhibited the pair of bloodstained khakis.

  Dr. Pavlicek could.

  “Prosecution Exhibit 21?” It was the paring knife.

  “Yes, it was given to me for purposes of doing a DNA comparison between the reference sample and the blood on it.”