Devil in the Dock (A Robin Starling Courtroom Mystery) by Michael Monhollon Read Free Book Online Page A

houses, looking for a face at any of the windows, but I didn’t see anyone.
    I got in my car and noticed a folded piece of copy paper under one of the windshield wipers. Evidently everything Shorter’s neighbors wanted to say couldn’t be fit on my car windows. I opened the door again and triggered the windshield wiper, clamping my fingers down on the paper as the wiper brought it to me. The wiper didn’t smear the shoe polish, but it didn’t do anything to wipe it off, either.
    I sat back and unfolded the paper to read the handwritten message: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It was a line spoken by Dick the Butcher in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2. Of course, I recognized it: I was an English major turned lawyer. Who on this street was able to quote Shakespeare, though?
    I looked back at the paper in my hands. The first thing we do . . . The message had the unexpected effect of lightening my spirits. I didn’t like Bob Shorter, I didn’t think he was a good man, and his neighbors had begun to make me feel bad about it being my job to defend him. In Henry VI , Dick the Butcher had been an anarchist trying to throw England into chaos. The first step toward anarchy, he argued, was to take down England’s system of justice by killing all the lawyers and judges. The message under the windshield had the paradoxical effect of reaffirming the importance of my place in the system.

Chapter 5
    One downstroke of the H in bitch was directly in my line of sight. I drove home leaning to one side so I could see through the middle of the C . At one point, stopped at a light, I noticed a boy in the car stopped next to me staring, tugging at his mother’s arm, and tapping excitedly on his window. I smiled at them both through the crossbars of the E in Evil’s Whore and wiggled my fingers. The mother jerked at her son as if pulling him away from a smoking hot plate.
    I got home about four o’clock. I know what you’re thinking: I kept pretty good hours for a young lawyer on the make. I liked to tell myself that I was able to do it because I worked so efficiently at the office. A less hopeful explanation was that my practice was so small that I didn’t have enough work to keep me busy, but I preferred the first one.
    Cleaning my car windows was an activity I could do with Deeks, so I left my car in the driveway and went to get him. As I crossed the street, I felt joy bubbling up in me. It wasn’t just the release of tension after my confrontational afternoon, I thought. It was Deeks’s joy, infectious even in anticipation.
    I rang the doorbell and almost immediately heard the scrabbling of Deeks’s toenails on the tile floor of Dr. McDermott’s entrance hall, then the doctor’s dusty voice. “I know, boy—she’s here. She’s right outside. Here she is.”
    The door opened and Deeks’s shoulder clipped my leg as he exploded past me, leaped onto the lawn, and ran at full speed toward the street. Just before he reached it, he made a tight turn without slowing, his toenails throwing up grass clippings; then he was charging me.
    I stepped down onto the sidewalk, and he dropped into a sit in front of me, his sides heaving and his tongue lolling. I bent over to rub his sides, and he stood to jam his nose between my knees. “Hey, buddy,” I said. “Hey . . . it’s good to see you. It’s good to see you, too.” I rubbed his sides vigorously, then backed up a step for the more delicate work on his head and ears.
    From the front porch, Dr. McDermott said, “I always think he loves me more than he could love anyone until I see him with you.”
    I gave Deeks a few final slaps on his side, then straightened. “I have to say this is always one of the high points of my day.” Deeks pushed the side of his head against my thigh, and I scratched it with the tips of my fingers.
    “I was about to have some tea. Would you like some?”
    “Sure. Sounds good.”
    I sat at the kitchen table to give him