THE LINCOLN LAWYER (2005)

by Michael Connelly

  "Are you angry about being charged with attacking Ms. Campo?"

  "Of course I am."

  "Why?"

  He opened his mouth but didn't speak. He seemed outraged that I would ask such a question. Finally, he responded.

  "What do you mean, why? Have you ever been accused of something you didn't do and there's nothing you can do about it but wait? Just wait for weeks and months until you finally get a chance to go to court and say you've been set up. But then you have to wait even longer while the prosecutor puts on a bunch of liars and you have to listen to their lies and just wait your chance. Of course it makes you angry. I am innocent! I did not do this!"

  It was perfect. To the point and playing to anybody who had ever been falsely accused of anything. There was more I could ask but I reminded myself of the rule: get in and get out. Less is always more. I sat down. If I decided there was anything I had missed I would clean it up on redirect.

  I looked at the judge.

  "Nothing further, Your Honor."

  Minton was up and ready before I even got back to my seat. He moved to the lectern without breaking his steely glare away from Roulet. He was showing the jury what he thought of this man. His eyes were like lasers shooting across the room. He gripped the sides of the lectern so hard his knuckles were white. It was all a show for the jury.

  "You deny touching Ms. Campo," he said.

  "That's right," Roulet retorted.

  "According to you she just punched herself or had a man she had never met before that night punch her lights out for her as part of this setup, is that correct?"

  "I don't know who did it. All I know is that I didn't."

  "But what you are saying is that this woman, Regina Campo, is lying. She came into this courtroom today and flat out lied to the judge and the jury and the whole wide world."

  Minton punctuated the sentence by shaking his head with disgust.

  "All I know is that I did not do the things she said I did. The only explanation is that one of us is lying. It's not me."

  "That will be for the jury to decide, won't it?"

  "Yes."

  "And this knife you supposedly got for your own protection. Are you telling this jury that the victim in this case somehow knew you had a knife and used it as part of the setup?"

  "I don't know what she knew. I had never shown the knife to her or in a bar where she would have been. So I don't see how she could have known about it. I think that when she went into my pocket for the money she found the knife. I always keep my knife and money in the same pocket."

  "Oh, so now you have her stealing money out of your pocket as well. When does this end with you, Mr. Roulet?"

  "I had four hundred dollars with me. When I was arrested it was gone. Someone took it."

  Rather than try to pinpoint Roulet on the money, Minton was wise enough to know that no matter how he handled it, he would be facing a break-even proposition at best. If he tried to make a case that Roulet never had the money and that his plan was to attack and rape Campo rather than pay her, then he knew I would trot out Roulet's tax returns, which would throw serious doubt on the idea that he couldn't afford to pay a prostitute. It was an avenue of testimony commonly referred to by lawyers as a "cluster fuck" and he was staying away. He moved on to his finish.

  In dramatic style Minton held up the evidence photo of Regina Campo's beaten and bruised face.

  "So Regina Campo is a liar," he said.

  "Yes."

  "She had this done to her or maybe even did it herself."

  "I don't know who did it."

  "But not you."

  "No, it wasn't me. I wouldn't do that to a woman. I wouldn't hurt a woman."

  Roulet pointed to the photo Minton had continued to hold up.

  "No woman deserves that," he said.

  I leaned forward and waited. Roulet had just said the line I had told him to somehow find a way of putting into one of his answers during testimony.No woman deserves that . It was now up to Minton to take the bait. He was smart. He had to understand that Roulet had just opened a door.

  "What do you mean bydeserves? Do you think crimes of violence come down to a matter of whether a victim gets what they deserve?"

  "No. I didn't mean it that way. I meant that no matter what she does for a living, she shouldn't have been beaten like that. Nobody deserves to have that happen to them."

  Minton brought down the arm that held the photo. He looked at it himself for a moment and then looked back up at Roulet.

  "Mr. Roulet, I have nothing more to ask you."

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Istill felt that I was winning the razor fight. I had done everything possible to maneuver Minton into a position in which he had only one choice. It was now time to see if doing everything possible had been enough. After the young prosecutor sat down, I chose not to ask my client another question. He had held up well under Minton's attack and I felt the wind was in our sails. I stood up and looked back at the clock on the upper rear wall of the courtroom. It was only three-thirty. I then looked back at the judge.

  "Your Honor, the defense rests."

  She nodded and looked over my head at the clock. She told the jury to take the mid-afternoon break. Once the jurors were out of the courtroom, she looked at the prosecution table where Minton had his head down and was writing.

  "Mr. Minton?"

  The prosecutor looked up.

  "We're still in session. Pay attention. Does the state have rebuttal?"

  Minton stood.

  "Your Honor, I would ask that we adjourn for the day so that the state has time to consider rebuttal witnesses."

  "Mr. Minton, we still have at least ninety minutes to go today. I told you I wanted to be productive today. Where are your witnesses?"

  "Frankly, Your Honor, I was not anticipating the defense resting after only three witnesses and I -"

  "He gave fair warning of that in his opening statement."

  "Yes, but still the case has moved faster than anticipated. We're a half day ahead. I would beg the court's indulgence. I would be hard-pressed to get the rebuttal witness I am considering even into court before six o'clock tonight."

  I turned and looked at Roulet, who had returned to the seat next to mine. I nodded to him and winked with my left eye so the judge would not see the gesture. It looked like Minton had swallowed the bait. Now I just had to make sure the judge didn't make him spit it out. I stood up.

  "Your Honor, the defense has no objection to the delay. Maybe we can use the time to prepare closing arguments and instructions to the jury."

  The judge first looked at me with a puzzled frown. It was a rarity that the defense would not object to prosecutorial foot dragging. But then the seed I had planted began to bloom.

  "You may have an idea there, Mr. Haller. If we adjourn early today I will expect that we will go to closing statements directly after rebuttal. No further delays except to consider jury instructions. Is that understood, Mr. Minton?"

  "Yes, Your Honor, I will be ready."

  "Mr. Haller?"

  "It was my idea, Judge. I'll be ready."

  "Very well, then. We have a plan. As soon as the jurors are back I will dismiss them for the day. They'll beat the traffic and tomorrow things will run so smoothly and quickly that I have no doubt they will be deliberating by the afternoon session."

  She looked at Minton and then me, as if daring one of us to disagree with her. When we didn't, she got up and left the bench, probably in pursuit of a cigarette.

  Twenty minutes later the jury was heading home and I was gathering my things at the defense table. Minton stepped over and said, "Can I talk to you?"

  I looked at Roulet and told him to head out with his mother and Dobbs and that I would call him if I needed him for anything.

  "But I want to talk to you, too," he said.

  "About what?"

  "About everything. How do you think I did up there?"

  "You did good and everything is going goo
d. I think we're in good shape."

  I then nodded my head toward the prosecution table where Minton had returned and dropped my voice to a whisper.

  "He knows it, too. He's about to make another offer."

  "Should I stick around to hear what it is?"

  I shook my head.

  "No, it doesn't matter what it is. There's only one verdict, right?"

  "That's right."

  He patted my shoulder when he got up and I had to steady myself not to shrink away from the touch.

  "Don't touch me, Louis," I said. "You want to do something for me, then give me my fucking gun back."

  He didn't reply. He just smiled and moved toward the gate. After he was gone I turned to look at Minton. He now had the gleam of desperation in his eye. He needed a conviction-any conviction-on this case.

  "What's up?"

  "I have another offer."

  "I'm listening."

  "I'll drop it down further. Take it down to simple assault. Six months in county. The way they empty that place out at the end of every month, he probably won't do sixty days actual."

  I nodded. He was talking about the federal mandate to stop overcrowding in the county jail system. It didn't matter what was handed down in a courtroom; out of necessity, sentences were often drastically cut. It was a good offer but I didn't show anything. I knew the offer had to have come from the second floor. Minton wouldn't have had the authority to go so low.

  "He takes that and she'll rob him blind in civil," I said. "I doubt he'll go for it."

  "That's a damn good offer," Minton said.

  There was a hint of outrage in his voice. My guess was that the observer's report card on Minton was not good and he was under orders to close the case out with a guilty plea. Trash the trial and the judge's and jury's time, just get that plea. The Van Nuys office didn't like losing cases and we were only two months removed from the Robert Blake fiasco. It pleaded them out when the going got rough. Minton could go as low as he needed to go, just as long as he got something. Roulet had to go down-even if it was only for sixty days actual.

  "Maybe from your side of things it's a damn good offer. But it still means I have to convince a client to plead to something he says he didn't do. Then on top of that, the dispo still opens the door to civil liability. So while he's sitting up there in county trying to protect his asshole for sixty days, Reggie Campo and her lawyer are down here taking him to the cleaners. You see? It's not so good when you look at it from his angle. If it was left to me, I'd ride the trial out. I think we're winning. I know we've got the Bible guy, so we've got a hanger at minimum. But who knows, maybe we've got all twelve."

  Minton slapped his hand down on his table.

  "What the fuck are you talking about? You know he did this thing, Haller. And six months-let alone sixty days-for what he did to that woman is a joke. It's a fucking travesty that I'll lose sleep over, but they've been watching and think you've got the jury, so I have to do it."

  I closed my briefcase with an authoritative snap and stood up.

  "Then I hope you got something good for rebuttal, Ted. Because you're going to get your wish for a jury verdict. And I have to tell you, man, you're looking more and more like a guy who came naked to a razor fight. Better get your hands off your nuts and fight back."

  I headed through the gate. Halfway to the doors at the back of the courtroom I stopped and looked back at him.

  "Hey, you know something? If you lose sleep over this or any other case, then you gotta quit the job and go do something else. Because you're not going to make it, Ted."

  Minton sat at his table, staring straight ahead at the empty bench. He didn't acknowledge what I had said. I left him there thinking about it. I thought I had played it right. I'd find out in the morning.

  I went back over to Four Green Fields to work on my closing. I wouldn't need the two hours the judge had given us. I ordered a Guinness at the bar and took it over to one of the tables to sit by myself. Table service didn't start again until six. I sketched out some basic notes but I instinctively knew I would largely be reacting to the state's presentation. In pretrial motions, Minton had already asked and received permission from Judge Fullbright to use a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate the case to the jury. It had become all the rage with young prosecutors to put up the screen and flash computer graphics on it, as if the jurors couldn't be trusted to think and make connections on their own. It now had to be fed to them like TV.

  My clients rarely had the money to pay my fees, let alone for PowerPoint presentations. Roulet was an exception. Through his mother he could afford to hire Francis Ford Coppola to put together a PowerPoint for him if he wanted it. But I never even brought it up. I was strictly old school. I liked going into the ring on my own. Minton could throw whatever he wanted up on the big blue screen. When it was my turn I wanted the jury looking only at me. If I couldn't convince them, nothing from a computer could, either.

  At 5:30 I called Maggie McPherson at her office.

  "It's quitting time," I said.

  "Maybe for big-shot defense pros. Us public servants have to work till after dark."

  "Why don't you take a break and come meet me for a Guinness and some shepherd's pie, then you can go back to work and finish up."

  "No, Haller. I can't do that. Besides, I know what you want."

  I laughed. There was never a time that she didn't think she knew what I wanted. Most of the time she was right but not this time.

  "Yeah? What do I want?"

  "You're going to try to corrupt me again and find out what Minton is up to."

  "Not a chance, Mags. Minton is an open book. Smithson's observer is giving him bad marks. So Smithson's told him to fold the tent, get something and get out. But Minton's been working on his little PowerPoint closing and wants to gamble, take it all the way to the house. Besides that, he's got genuine outrage in his blood, so he doesn't like the idea of folding up."

  "Neither do I. Smithson's always afraid of losing-especially since Blake. He always wants to sell short. You can't be that way."

  "I always said they lost the Blake case the minute they passed you over. You tell 'em, Maggie."

  "If I ever get the chance."

  "Someday."

  She didn't like dwelling on her own stalled career. She moved on.

  "So you sound chipper," she said. "Yesterday you were a murder suspect. Today you've got the DA by the short hairs. What changed?"

  "Nothing. It's just the calm before the storm, I guess. Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever put a rush on ballistics?"

  "What kind of ballistics?"

  "Matching casing to casing and slug to slug."

  "Depends on who is doing it-which department, I mean. But if they put a real rush on it, they could have something in twenty-four hours."

  I felt the dull thud of dread drop into my stomach. I knew I could be on borrowed time.

  "Most of the time, though, that doesn't happen," she continued. "Two or three days is what it will usually take on a rush. And if you want the whole package-casing and slug comparisons-it could take longer because the slug could be damaged and tough to read. They have to work with it."

  I nodded. I didn't think any of that could help me. I knew they had recovered a bullet casing at the crime scene. If Lankford and Sobel got a match on that to the casing of a bullet fired fifty years ago from Mickey Cohen's gun, they would come for me and worry about the slug comparison later.

  "You still there?" Maggie asked.

  "Yeah. I was just thinking of something."

  "You don't sound so chipper anymore. You want to talk about this, Michael?"

  "No, not right now. But if I end up needing a good lawyer, you know who I'll call."

  "That'll be the day."

  "You might be surprised."

  I let some more silence into the conversation. Just having her on the other end of the line was a calming comfort. I liked it.

  "Haller, I should get back to m
y job now."

  "Okay, Maggie, put those bad guys away."

  "I will."

  "Good night."

  I closed the phone and thought about things for a few moments, then opened it up again and called the Sheraton Universal to see if they had a room available. I had decided that as a precaution I would not go home this night. There might be two detectives from Glendale waiting for me.