Trial by Ambush (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Read online

  He winced.

  “It is your DNA, I take it?”

  “Yes, it’s my DNA. It’s my DNA, all right?”

  “Was it your telephone wire, too?”

  “What?”

  “The wire around her neck. Did you strangle her?”

  “No, I didn’t strangle her. I told you that.”

  “I believe that was part of the same conversation in which you denied having intercourse.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I raised a hand. “I’ll let it go. It’s not like I believed you in the first place.”

  “What do you mean, you didn’t believe me?”

  “Save the outrage. Liars aren’t entitled to it. What I mean is that men are unreliable where their hormones are concerned, so I try not to rely on them.”

  He took a breath, then shrugged. “So what do we do now?”

  “If you strangled her, then you shouldn’t say anything,” I said. “They’ll charge you, or they won’t. They’ll prove their case against you if they can.”

  “But if I’m innocent?”

  “I don’t know. What have they got on you? They’ve got you downtown with her on the day of her death. They’ve got her inside your apartment, and they’ve got you inside hers. And, of course, they’ve got you having sex with her.”

  “What else do they need?”

  “I’m sure they’d like to have your prints on the murder weapon.”

  “The telephone wire? They won’t have that.”

  “So what they have is opportunity. What they don’t have is motive. Without that, I think they’ve got to do more than prove you had opportunity. They’ve got to show you were the only one with opportunity.”

  “To do that, they’d have to show I was in her apartment when she died. They can’t narrow down time-of-death like that.”

  “You think?” It was what I thought, too, but I was operating way outside my area of specialization.

  “Even if they could,” John said, “they’d need a witness who’d clocked my coming and going.”

  I looked at him, thinking. Finally, I said, “I’m over my head, John. What you need is a criminal defense lawyer with a team of investigators going around talking to the neighbors to see if any of them saw somebody else entering or leaving that apartment. You need your own forensics expert to challenge what the police have on time of death. You need to remain silent until your lawyer knows exactly what their case is — and probably all the way through trial. You need all kinds of things, and I don’t even know what all of them are.”

  “You finished?”

  “I’m finished.”

  “Three things, Robin. Money. Reputation. Time.” He raised a finger. “I haven’t got the money for the kind of three-ring circus you’re talking about.” He raised another finger. “If I spend the next several months as a murder suspect, I’ll never practice law in this town again. Three, I can’t afford the time. If I’m in jail for any time at all, I’m going to be out of a job.”

  He seemed to have devoted some thought to it.

  “So what do you want from me?” I asked.

  “You remember when we first came to the firm, how you and I got all the call-in clients?”

  “And the walk-ins.” My favorite had been a fifty-year-old man who wanted to sue Fruit-of-the-Loom because he thought his jockey shorts had made him impotent.

  John said, “One of my call-ins was an employee of one of the firm’s corporate clients, a blue collar guy who was calling us because he knew we were the company’s lawyers. He’d been arrested for drunk driving, and the police wanted him to take a sobriety test, one of those things where he walks along a straight line and climbs some steps and so on.”

  “Didn’t they have the results of a breathalyzer test?”

  John frowned. “I can’t remember. Maybe he refused it. That’s not the point. The point is, I was a new lawyer, what did I know? I told him if they wanted him to take the test, I guess he had to take it.”

  “Good grief.”

  “Then I got on the phone to a criminal defense lawyer on the firm’s referral list. I was feeling terrible at that point — I’d just given legal advice over the phone, and I didn’t know what I was talking about. The criminal defense lawyer…”

  “Who was it?”

  “I can’t remember. Anyway, he told me that if the client didn’t feel drunk, it was probably okay for him to take the test.”

  It suddenly seemed like I’d heard the story before. “I thought he said that ordinarily he advised clients not to take any tests,” I said.

  John looked taken aback. “Well, he did say that. But when I told him what I’d done, he said it was probably all right. That when people didn’t feel drunk, they could usually touch their noses and climb stairs and all that without too much of a problem.”

  “And this guy did.”

  “That’s right. He passed the test, and the D.A. ultimately abandoned the case.”

  I could see why. If the police had wanted him to take the test, they must have thought the test was valid: If he had failed the test, officer, wouldn’t that suggest that his blood alcohol was high? So, since he passed the test, doesn’t that suggest that his blood alcohol was not high? Has the test been validated, or hasn’t it, officer? Is the Richmond Police Department in the habit of giving drunk-tests that don’t mean anything? It would have been a tough case to prosecute.

  “So what’s the point?” I asked. “They’re not asking you to take a drunk-test.”

  “The point is, I’m innocent, so the facts will bear me out. I don’t have the time or the money to develop the facts. The police department does.”

  “That would be nice if the police department had your interests at heart. But once you’re a suspect, what the police are going to be looking for are incriminating facts, not exculpatory facts.”

  “Facts are facts.”

  “So you want to talk to the police?”

  “I think I have to. I know about what time I left her apartment, and that might help the police narrow down the time of death. She talked to you about accounting scandals, but I was the one who saw her looking out windows and jumping at noises. Between the two of us, we can show that she was scared to death and we can show why. We might get the police looking in a more useful direction.”

  “It sounds like you’ve made the decision.”

  “I think I have.”

  “Then what am I here for? You want me to tell you you’re doing the right thing?”

  “I want your help. This is going to be the cross-examination of my life, and I’m on the wrong side of it.”

  I studied him.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.” I didn’t know if talking to the police was a good idea or not, but it was the client’s decision. I got up and banged on the door.

  Chapter 20

  I sat next to John on the side of the table farthest from the door. Jordan and Hernandez sat across from us. Jordan and I both had legal pads. Hernandez put a small tape recorder in the middle of the table and turned it on.

  “Okay, shoot,” Jordan said to John Parker.

  I said, “I’d think we’d rather proceed by question and answer.”

  “Did you kill Wendy Walters?” Hernandez asked John.

  “No.”

  “I’m sure that’s a load off your mind,” I said.

  “What do you mean by that crack?” Jordan asked me.

  “I was thinking you’d be more interested in specifics.”

  “Okay.” He said to John, “When did you first meet Wendy Walters?”

  “Monday morning. I saw her in Robin’s office.”

  “That would be Robin Starling, your attorney?”

  “That’s right.” In response to further questions, John told him about Wendy calling him to go by her house with her, then about taking her to his own apartment.

  Hernandez said, “She suggested going to your place?”

 
; “Yes. We were at her apartment, but she didn’t even want to go up.”

  “She wanted to go to your place.”

  “That’s what I said. She was scared.”

  “That’s why she wanted you to go home with her.”

  “Yes. Evidently, she thought someone might be there. She wanted me, or someone, with her while she checked it out.”

  “But she didn’t check it out.”

  “No, when it came to it, she was too scared to go in at all.”

  “She told you she was scared, or she seemed scared?”

  “Well, if she wanted someone to go with her into her own apartment, she’s obviously scared about something.”

  “But she didn’t tell you what.”

  “No. I understand she had told Robin what she was scared of earlier in the day. And I think she tried to get hold of Robin before she called me.”

  I felt Jordan’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look at him.

  John said, “So we got to my place, and things…progressed. We were getting along pretty well. Then a dog started barking in the next building, and she just got completely unwound.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  John gave him specifics, Wendy insisting he go to the balcony to take a look, then going out onto the balcony herself, then going to the peephole in the front door to check that out, and so on. She never settled down again. Eventually, she wanted to go home.

  “Let me get this straight. She’s so scared about going home that she comes on to you, a guy she met for the first time that morning.”

  John opened his mouth to respond, but I interrupted. “That’s not a question,” I said.

  “She was so scared, though, that she was willing to put out in exchange for a place to stay.”

  I shook my head.

  “Isn’t that right?” Hernandez said.

  “He’s asking you to speculate,” I said to John. “If you know why she was putting out, you can answer the question. If you don’t, say so. Don’t speculate.”

  “I don’t know,” John said.

  Hernandez said, “You know, this woman was an accountant. I would have expected her to go to a hotel, she needed a place to stay.”

  “So we’re done here?” I said. “You don’t have any more questions?”

  “Another thing that bothers me,” Hernandez said. “She’s scared to go in her apartment in daylight with you right there, then in the middle of the night she’s okay with it.”

  I stood up. “Okay, then.”

  Jordan waved his hand at me. “Sit down, counselor. I’ve got a question. Mr. Parker, did she say anything that suggested a reason why she didn’t want to stay at your place any longer?”

  John looked at me, and I nodded. “You can tell them what she said.”

  “I don’t know what she said exactly, but it was clear she thought we’d been followed to my place.”

  “Because a dog barked?” Hernandez said.

  “She seemed to think it was barking at something. That someone was out there.”

  “You see anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Hear anything other than the dog barking?”

  “No.”

  The question and answer continued. When exactly did they leave John’s apartment? Did they go straight to Wendy’s or did they make a stop on the way?

  “We stopped off to get my car.”

  “Where was that?”

  John told them. He told how long the drive had taken from his place to the parking garage and from the parking garage to Wendy’s apartment. He told about parking on the street, then going upstairs with her to check behind the shower curtain, check the wardrobe, look under the bed.

  “I thought that would be it, but then suddenly she didn’t want me to leave.”

  “‘John, don’t leave me. I want you so much,’” Hernandez said.

  John looked at me, then back at Hernandez. He didn’t respond.

  Jordan said, “What did she say? Exactly.”

  “She asked if I wanted to stay.”

  “And what did you say?” Jordan asked.

  “I needed to get home and get some rest. I was starting a trial the next morning.”

  “A trial. Still going on?”

  “It never started. The case settled.”

  “How long did you stay at her place?”

  “Maybe an hour.”

  “And that’s where you had sex? Her place?”

  John hadn’t admitted to sex, but since he’d left a DNA calling card, there seemed little point in objecting. I turned over my hand, palm up.

  “Yes,” John said.

  “Something you hadn’t done at your apartment,” Jordan said.

  “No.”

  “What time did you leave her?”

  “Just before one o’clock.”

  “A minute before? Five minutes before?”

  “Say five minutes.”

  “Why didn’t you spend the night?”

  “She fell asleep. I…” John shrugged.

  Hernandez said, “You’d got what you came for.”

  “The way she’d been acting was freaking me out.”

  “But not so much you didn’t want to have sex with her.”

  “That’s not a question,” I said, keeping my eyes on the tip of my pen. My ears felt hot.

  “She couldn’t have been acting all that freaky once she was asleep,” Jordan said.

  “Still not a question,” I said. I glanced up.

  Jordan and Hernandez were looking at John. John was looking back.

  “Let’s go back to when you got to her place,” Jordan said. “Did you see anyone around?”

  “No.”

  Hernandez said, “What was she wearing when you left her? Bra and panties?”

  John’s eyes started to cut toward me, then stopped. “Probably not that much,” he said.

  Jordan said, “It hardly seems like something she’d have put on to receive a visitor after you left.”

  John didn’t say anything. I had him trained.

  “Hardly seems like something the killer would have done after he’d killed her.”

  “Is that it?” I said. “No more questions?”

  Jordan and Hernandez exchanged glances. “I guess not,” Jordan said finally. “Not right now.”

  “So we can go?”

  “No.”

  “How can you charge him? You can’t tie the telephone wire to him, and you haven’t got a motive.”

  “We have opportunity,” Jordan said.

  “Not unless he was carrying a three-foot piece of telephone wire around in his pocket. Do you carry telephone wire in your pocket?”

  “I’m not planning to strangle anyone.”

  “Now you’ve got him planning to kill her when he left his apartment. What’s the motive?”

  “Maybe he found the wire at her place.”

  “Maybe it was a weapon of convenience,” Hernandez said.

  “Any evidence of that? A kitchen drawer with pliers and screws and bits of wire, and John’s thumbprint on the inside of it?”

  They didn’t say anything.

  “If you can’t tie John to that telephone wire, you haven’t got squat,” I said.

  “We’ve got him inside her apartment as late as one a.m. The coroner says she died sometime between midnight and two o’clock.”

  “We’ve got pick-up sex sometime around midnight,” Hernandez said.

  Jordan said, “And the key to her apartment was on his dresser.”

  That stopped me. Wendy’s apartment had been locked up tight when I broke into it, and there had been no signs that anyone else had forced entry.

  “She was asleep,” John said, “and the lock on the door is a double-keyed deadbolt. There was a key hanging on a nail at the head of the stairs. I had to use it to get out, then to lock the door behind me. I wasn’t going to leave her there with the door unlocked.”

  “Quite the gentleman,” Hernandez said.

  We
ndy’s key ring had been in her purse, I thought. If, after John left, she woke up to let her murderer in, how had the murderer locked up after himself?

  John said, “Why would I have bothered to lock up if she were already dead?”

  “Delay discovery of the body,” Hernandez said.

  “Keeping the key gave him an excuse to see her again,” I said. “Another benefit to locking up after himself.”

  John looked at me, then dropped his gaze.

  Jordan said, “The killer has a key. The locked, double-keyed deadbolt tells us that. Your client’s is the only one we’ve found so far.”

  “And there was only one nail in the wall to hang a key on,” Hernandez added. “No reason to suppose that more than one spare key ever existed.”

  Chapter 21

  They fingerprinted John Parker, strip-searched him, and photographed him. He was still in his own clothes when they took him before the magistrate, a thin woman of about fifty who had an office there in the police station.

  James Jordan had drafted and signed the complaint. He read it aloud.

  John pleaded not guilty.

  The magistrate set bail at 250,000 dollars.

  “That’s excessive, your honor,” I said, and she looked at me over the narrow lenses of her glasses.

  “Do tell,” she said.

  I told. “The accused is a junior associate at a law firm here in Richmond. He can’t come up with a quarter-million dollars. Bail is supposed to be high enough to guarantee his appearance, not so high as to preclude the possibility of his making it altogether.”

  “He’s accused of a capital crime. I could have denied bail altogether.” She was talking about it in the past tense, as something already done.

  Though I knew I had lost, I said, “You’ve as good as done that.”

  “When someone faces death by lethal injection, there may not be a lot of overlap between what he can pay and what it will take to guarantee his appearance.”

  I bit my lip, because she had a point.

  “This is bad,” I said to John when we were alone again. Jordan and Hernandez were off doing paperwork and getting John the orange jumpsuit he’d be wearing while he awaited trial.

  “Do tell.”

  He looked depressed, but was evidently not too depressed to be a wise-ass. I said, “I’ll talk to a bondsman this afternoon. I think I’ve heard that if you can put down ten percent…”