Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) Read Free Page A

there might be an innocent explanation. Make the prosecution prove its case.”
    She blew me a raspberry. “Ain’t nothing innocent about Bob Shorter.”
    “Probably not.”
    “So why’re you helping him?”
    “I don’t like him. He may be a monster just like you say he is, but there are a lot of monsters out there. All of them can’t have killed Bill Hill.”
    “I can’t believe it. You’re unbelievable.”
    “He’s entitled to his day in court like any of us would be.”
    “You’re a monster yourself, ain’t ya? All you lawyers.”
    I tried a smile on her. “I like to think not.”
    She lifted her chin. “I don’t have nothing more to say to you.” She turned and jerked open her door. After she went in, she slammed it behind her. So much for the power of a smile.
     
    Bill Hill had lived around the corner in a split-level house that probably dated from the 1950s. It was part brick, but the eaves and the second-floor siding were badly in need of a good paint job. I let myself into the backyard through the gate in a wobbly chain-link fence. Bill had a small patio outside his back door, a square of cement with a single lawn chair sitting on it, one of the chair’s crisscrossing straps broken and hanging down. The yard in back was like the front, with more clover and henbit than fescue. Against the house to one side of the patio was a big, rust-spotted tank for heating oil.
    The back door, though it may not have been locked when the police came, was locked now. Peering through the glass, I could see a bit of the kitchen with a small table against one wall and two chairs. I hoped he had occasionally had a visitor to occupy one of them. I checked under the fraying rope doormat for a house key, then on the sill of the nearest window. No luck. If I wanted to take a look through Hill’s house, I was going to have to be more creative.
    The fabric of the lawn chair stretched and popped as I took a seat to consider my options. Neither Bill nor his neighbors had a privacy fence, and the backyards were separated only by waist-high chain-link fences. The house next door to Bill’s was on the corner, and I could see directly across its backyard to the front of Shorter’s house. Bill’s chair faced Shorter’s house, in fact, as if to allow him to watch Shorter come and go on his twice-daily walks. It was not a prosperous neighborhood, but I liked its openness. People could know their neighbors here. They could have a sense of community.
    A curtain moved in a window of the house next door. I watched it out of the corner of my eye, but it didn’t move again. Judging by the size and placement of the window, I thought it might be the window over the kitchen sink.
    I got up and went back around Hill’s house, letting myself through the gate again. There were a few scraggly bushes along the house’s foundation, looking as forlorn and neglected as the house itself. Just to be thorough, I tried the front door, but it was locked tight.
    Next door to Bill’s, where I’d seen the curtain move, I stepped up onto the front stoop and rang the bell. Chimes sounded, but no one came to the door.
    “Hello?” I said.
    Silence.
    “My name is Robin Starling. Your neighbor Jenn suggested I might talk to you.” Okay, so Jenn had done nothing of the sort. Desperate times call for lying like a son of a gun. “I was hoping to get some information about your neighborhood.”
    I had started to turn away when the dead bolt clicked back. The door opened, and the pale face of a woman with pale hair appeared in the narrow opening. She looked up at me with the anxious expression of someone who feared unpleasantness.
    “Hi,” I said. “Thanks for opening the door.”
    “Jenn didn’t send you,” she said in a voice so soft I had to lean in to hear her.
    I dropped my gaze, doing what I could to look abashed. “Well, no. She did spend some time talking to me. I was hoping you would, too.” I refrained from putting my hands behind my