Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery)

by Michael Monhollon

  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.”

  “Your Honor, I move to have the doorknob and dead bolt admitted into evidence.”

  Maxwell stood as Judge Cooley frowned, the judge’s mouth puckering and his bushy white eyebrows coming together. “Objection,” Maxwell said. “Relevance. This is another line of testimony that seems to have nothing to do with the issues at hand.”

  Judge Cooley nodded. “Perhaps you’d better make it clear to us how these items relate to the case.”

  I said, “As I indicated in my opening statement, it’s the contention of the defense that Mr. Shorter has been framed, that some person or persons unknown entered into his house to ta
ke a paring knife from his kitchen and clothes from his closet and later reentered his house to plant the bloodstained clothes.”

  “Go on.”

  “That person or persons had to enter through the door of Mr. Shorter’s house, a door locked by this door knob and this dead bolt.”

  “And the locks show signs of having been forced or picked? Mr. Burns is going to testify to that effect?”

  “No, Your Honor. It is not my contention that the locks were picked. Recall that a house key was kept on a nail in the toolshed in the defendant’s backyard.”

  “As I remember it, a witness testified only to looking for a key.”

  “And finding an empty nail,” I said nodding.

  “Ms. Steering. I’m afraid you’re going to have to give us something more before we can admit those items into evidence.”

  I took a breath. “Very well.” I turned back to the witness. “Mr. Burns, is the dead bolt currently locked or unlocked?”

  He held it up. The thumb-turn was screwed into the housing, and the deadbolt itself stuck out through the strike plate. “I can’t tell. I think it’s unlocked.”

  It looked locked to me, but I retrieved Bill Hill’s key ring from the court clerk and took it to Rodney. “Can you tell us what this is?”

  “A key ring with four keys on it.”

  “This key ring has been admitted into evidence as the key ring that was found in the pants pocket of Bill Hill, the decedent in this case. Could you try the keys on the dead bolt to see if one of them will lock the dead bolt?”

  He selected one of the keys and tried to insert it in the lock, but it didn’t fit. My mouth had gone dry, and my heart had begun to hammer. I had staked my whole case and possibly my career on this moment, not to mention Bob Shorter’s life.

  Rodney tried another key. It went in.

  And turned. The bolt clicked out another inch or so.

  “Does that same key work the doorknob?”

  Rodney wriggled the doorknob to show us that it wouldn’t turn. He fitted the key to the lock and turned it. Unlocked, the doorknob turned freely.

  “Your Honor,” I said, looking up at the judge. “I renew my motion that the doorknob and dead bolt be admitted into evidence.”

  Maxwell stood. “These two items came off the back door of the defendant’s house?” he asked Rodney.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just today?”

  “On the lunch break.”

  “And they are in the same condition as they were when you found them? They haven’t been altered in any way?”

  “Well, there’s not a door connected to them anymore,” Rodney said.

  Maxwell ignored the titter that swept the courtroom. “You haven’t rekeyed the locks,” he said. “You have not altered the locking mechanism in any way.”

  “I have not.”

  Maxwell made a face. “No objection,” he told the judge.

  “Motion granted,” the judge said. “The doorknob and dead bolt are admitted into evidence.”

  I said, “Those are all my questions of this witness.”

  “Mr. Maxim?”

  “No further questions.”

  “Ms. Standing?” the judge said.

  “The defense rests.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Very well. We’ll go to closing arguments. Mr. Maximus?”

  Chapter 19

  Mr. Maximus, although he seemed a bit bewildered by the testimony of Dr. Gore and Rodney Burns, made a very coherent closing argument that reiterated his original theory of the case and referred neither to Bill Hill’s medications nor to Bob Shorter’s doorknob, at least not directly. He did warn the jury that an attempt had been made to introduce facts that had little or no bearing on the question of the defendant’s guilt or innocence. “Focus your mind on the relevant facts,” he told them. “The defendant had nothing but ill will for Bill Hill. On previous occasions he injured Mr. Hill’s dog, and he left Mr. Hill himself by the side of the road in a snowstorm. The murder weapon in this case was the defendant’s own knife, which bore his fingerprints and no one else’s. None of these facts have been disputed. Despite the assertions of the defendant’s lawyer to the contrary, the most likely explanation for the defendant’s own blood-spattered clothes in the defendant’s own closet is that the defendant himself left them there when he took them off after killing Bill Hill. That is the most reasonable, it is the only reasonable, interpretation of the facts of the case.” Maxwell took a seat less than thirty minutes after he had begun his argument.

  I went to the lectern. “Members of the jury. I have conceded that I have an unsympathetic client, but we are not here to determine whether or not Bob Shorter is a good man or a bad man. We are here to determine, if we can, whether it is beyond a reasonable doubt that Bob Shorter killed Bill Hill on March 9. The theory of the case I’m about to lay before you accounts for all of the evidence and accounts for it better than the theory you have just heard from the prosecution.” I turned to give a nod to Ian Maxwell that he did not return.

  “Bill Hill hated his neighbor Bob Shorter,” I said, turning back to the jury, “and he had good reason to. Bob Shorter beat Mr. Hill’s dog so badly that it eventually had to be put to sleep. His idea of a practical joke, driving off and leaving Mr. Hill in a snowstorm, cost him the front part of his foot. Day after day, Bob Shorter took his daily walks past Mr. Hill’s residence, and Mr. Hill, who could walk only with increasing difficulty, could do no more than watch.

  “Of course, Mr. Hill suffered from more than a partially missing foot. He had a progressive, disabling illness for which there is no cure. It was coming to the point that he was going to have to give up his home and move into an institution of some sort. Looking forward, he saw only increasing disability, increasing pain, and an unpleasant death. All this quite naturally had a depressing effect on his emotional well-being, and his treating physician has told you that he prescribed an antidepressant to combat it. Still, Bob Shorter persisted in walking past his house every day, walking with an easy gait and swinging the ax handle he called his equalizer, the picture of health.

  “March 9 was the day Bill Hill could stand it no longer. When Bob Shorter left on one of his long walks, Mr. Hill made his way, with difficulty, to Shorter’s house. Having once been close friends with the defendant, Mr. Hill knew where he kept his spare key. He got it from the toolshed and let himself into Shorter’s house. It was a cold day, and Mr. Hill was wearing a jacket and gloves, all of which he was still wearing when his body was found. He would have left no fingerprints in Shorter’s house.

  “He took a paring knife from the counter in Shorter’s kitchen—it was sheer luck that it had three of Shorter’s fingerprints on it—and took it back into the closet in Shorter’s bedroom. After finding a shirt and a pair of pants that Shorter had recently worn—maybe in a laundry hamper, on the end of the bed, draped over a clothes tree—he let down his own pants, cut his thigh with the paring knife, and bloodied Shorter’s clothes. He closed the cut on his thigh with a butterfly bandage and tossed the bloody clothes back against the wall under Shorter’s hanging clothes. When he pulled up his pants, he failed to notice that a small pillbox had fallen from his pocket. That pillbox contained Rilutek, a prescription medication for ALS, a condition that he had and the defendant Bob Shorter did not. Mr. Hill took the paring knife back to his own house with him. Probably, he would have liked to return the key to the shed in Shorter’s backyard. Perhaps he simply didn’t have the strength for it. Perhaps he didn’t even notice the key until he had returned home, when there was nothing he could do but slide the key onto his own ring and hope it would not be noticed. He had one more task.

  “If he wanted one final victory over the man who had done him so much harm, he not only had to kill himself, but had to do it with the paring knife he had taken from Bob Shorter’s house. I can only imagine the despair and hatred that would have given him the strength to do it. He took the beechwood handle in his gloved hands, and he drove the
blade into his chest. It may be hard for us to imagine a man doing such a thing, but remember, there were no defensive wounds on Mr. Hill’s hands or forearms to indicate he had tried to ward off an attacker. There were no defensive wounds because Bill Hill was his own killer. He fell forward from his chair onto the floor and found, possibly to his surprise, that he was not yet dead. He touched his hand to his bleeding chest and used his blood-tipped finger to scrawl Shorter’s name on the wood flooring. It was done. The frame was complete. About thirty minutes later, Bill Hill died from blood loss.”

  I stepped away from the lectern, wanting nothing between me and the jury as I made my final pitch. “Do we know with one hundred percent certainty that this was what happened? Probably not. Certainty is something usually denied to juries. Juries have to deal in probabilities. If you think there is a reasonable possibility that the sequence of events was something like the one I have just described, then it is your duty to find the defendant not guilty. And it is a reasonable possibility, one that explains facts that the prosecution’s theory cannot explain: the key to Shorter’s house in Bill Hill’s pocket, the pillbox containing Bill Hill’s medications on the floor of Shorter’s closet, the wound on Bill Hill’s thigh.”

  I swept my gaze over the faces of the jurors, meeting the eyes of all of them who would look at me. “The prosecution has itself presented evidence that Bill Hill had reason to hate Bob Shorter. That hatred provides a powerful motive for Mr. Hill’s attempt to frame him for the crime of murder. I am sure you do not like Bob Shorter yourselves. He is not a likable man. But as much as you may shrink from doing it, your duty is to acquit if you have any reasonable doubt that he drove that knife into Bill Hill. Bob Shorter may have a lot to answer for, but punishment for those crimes must rest in the hands of a higher tribunal.”

  When I sat down, the energy seemed to drain from my body and puddle on the floor. I hardly heard Maxwell’s rebuttal argument. When the judge gave his charge to the jury, I was vaguely glad to hear him emphasizing some of the points I had made regarding the prosecution’s burden of proof and the presumption of innocence. He finished the charge, and the jury stood and exited the courtroom to begin their deliberations.