The Fifth Witness

Eighteen

Louis Opparizio was a man who did not want to be served. As an attorney he knew that the only way he could be dragged into the Lisa Trammel trial was to be served with a subpoena to testify. Avoiding service meant avoiding testimony. Whether he had been tipped to the defense strategy or simply was smart enough to understand it on his own, he seemingly disappeared just at the time we began looking for him. His whereabouts became unknown and all the routine tricks of the trade to track him and draw him out had failed. We did not know if Opparizio was in the country, let alone in Los Angeles.

Opparizio had one very big thing going for him in his effort to hide. Money. With enough money you can hide from anybody in this world and Opparizio knew it. He owned numerous homes in numerous states, multiple vehicles and even a private jet to help him connect quickly to all his dots. When he moved, whether it was from state to state or from Beverly Hills home to Beverly Hills office, he traveled behind a phalanx of security men.

He also had one thing going against him. Money. The vast wealth he had accumulated by carrying out the bidding of banks and other lenders had also given him an Achilles’ heel. He had acquired the tastes and desires of the super rich.

And that was how we eventually got him.

In the course of his efforts to locate Opparizio, Cisco Wojciechowski amassed a tremendous amount of information about his quarry’s profile. From this data a trap was carefully planned and executed to perfection. A glossy presentation package announcing the closed-bid auction of an Aldo Tinto painting was sent to Opparizio’s office in Beverly Hills. The package said the painting would be on view for interested bidders for only two hours beginning at 7 P.M. two nights hence in Studio Z at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Bids would then be accepted until midnight.

The presentation looked professional and legitimate. The depiction of the painting had been lifted from an online art catalog that displayed private collections. We knew from a two-year-old profile of Opparizio in a bar journal that he had become a collector of second-tier painters and that the late Italian master Tinto was his obsession. When a man called the phone number on the portfolio, identified himself as a representative of Louis Opparizio and booked a private viewing of the painting, we had him.

At precisely the appointed time, the Opparizio entourage entered the old Red Car trolley station, which had been turned into an upscale gallery complex. While three sunglassed security men fanned out across the grounds, two more swept Gallery Z before giving the all-clear signal. Only then did Opparizio emerge from the stretch Mercedes.

Inside the gallery Opparizio was met by two women who disarmed him with their smiles and excitement about the arts and the painting he was about to see. One woman handed him a glass flute of Cristal to celebrate the moment. The other gave him a thick folded packet of documents on the painting’s pedigree and exhibition history. Because he held the champagne in one hand he could not open the documents. He was told he could read it all later because he must see the painting now before the next appointment. He was led into the viewing room where the piece sat on an ornate easel covered with a satin drape. A lone spotlight lit the center of the room. The women told him he could remove the drape himself and one of them took his glass of champagne. She wore long gloves.

Opparizio stepped forward, his hand raised in anticipation. He carefully pulled the satin off the frame. And there pinned to the board was the subpoena. Confused, he leaned forward to look, perhaps thinking this was still the Italian master’s work.

“You’ve been served, Mr. Opparizio,” Jennifer Aronson said. “You have the original in your hand.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, but he did.

“And the whole thing from the moment you drove in is on videotape,” said Lorna.

She stepped to the wall and hit the switch, bathing the entire room in light. She pointed to the two overhead cameras. Jennifer lifted the champagne flute as if giving a toast.

“We have your prints, too, if needed.”

She turned and raised a toast to one of the cameras.

“No,” Opparizio said.

“Yes,” Lorna said.

“We’ll see you in court,” Jennifer said.

The women headed to the side door of the gallery where a Lincoln driven by Cisco was waiting. Their job was done.

That was then, this was now. I sat in the Honorable Coleman Perry’s courtroom preparing to defend the service and validity of the Opparizio subpoena and the very heart of the defense’s case. My co-counsel, Jennifer Aronson, sat next to me at the defense table and next to her was our client, Lisa Trammel. At the opposing table sat Louis Opparizio and his two attorneys, Martin Zimmer and Landon Cross. Andrea Freeman was in a seat located back against the rail. As the prosecutor of the criminal case out of which this hearing arose, she was an interested party but this wasn’t her cause of action. Additionally, Detective Kurlen was in the courtroom, sitting three rows back in the gallery. His presence was a mystery to me.

The cause of action was Opparizio’s. He and his legal crew were out to quash the subpoena and prevent his participation in the trial. In strategizing how to do so they had thought it prudent to tip Freeman to the hearing in case the prosecution also saw merit in keeping Opparizio from the jury. Though largely there as a bystander, Freeman could step into the fray whenever she wanted and she knew that whether she joined in or not, the hearing would likely offer her a good look at the defense’s trial strategy.

It was the first time I saw Opparizio in person. He was a block of a man who somehow appeared as wide as he was tall. The skin on his face had been stretched tight by the scalpel or by years of anger. By the cut of his hair and of his suit, he looked like money. And he seemed to me to be the perfect straw man because he also looked like a man who could kill, or at least give the order to kill.

Opparizio’s lawyers had asked the judge to hold the hearing in camera-behind closed doors in his chambers-so that the details revealed would not reach the media and therefore possibly taint the jury pool that would assemble the following day. But everybody in the room knew that his lawyers were not being altruistic. A closed hearing guarded against details about Opparizio leaking to the press and informing something much larger than the jury pool. Public opinion.

I argued vigorously against closing the proceedings. I warned that such a move would cause public suspicion about the subsequent trial and this outweighed any possible taint of the jury pool. Elected to the bench, Perry was ever mindful of public perception. He agreed with me and declared the hearing open to the public. Score a big one for me. My prevailing on that one argument probably saved the entire case for the defense.

Not a lot of the media was there but there was enough for what I needed. Reporters from the Los Angeles Business Journal and the L.A. Times were in the front row. A freelance video man who sold footage to all the networks was in the empty jury box with his camera. I had tipped him to the hearing and told him to be there. I figured that between the print media and the lone TV camera, there would be enough pressure on Opparizio to force the outcome I was looking for.

After dispensing with the request to hide behind closed doors, the judge got down to business.

“Mr. Zimmer, you have filed a motion to quash the subpoena of Louis Opparizio in the matter of California versus Trammel. Why don’t you state your case, sir?”

Zimmer looked like a lawyer who had been around the block a few times and usually got to carry his enemies home in his briefcase. He stood to respond to the judge.

“We would love to address the court on this matter, Your Honor. I am going to speak first to the facts of the service of the subpoena itself and then my colleague, Mr. Cross, will discuss the other issue for which we seek relief.”

Zimmer then proceeded to claim that my office had engaged in mail fraud in laying the trap that resulted in Opparizio being served a subpoena. He said that the glossy brochure that had baited his client was an instrument of fraud and its placement in the U.S. mail constituted a felony that invalidated any action that followed, such as service of the subpoena. He further asked that the defense be penalized by being disallowed from any subsequent effort to subpoena Opparizio to testify.

I didn’t even have to stand up for this one-which was a good thing because the simple acts of standing and sitting still set off flares of pain across my chest. The judge raised his hand in my direction to hold me in check and then tersely dismissed Zimmer’s argument, calling it novel but ridiculous and without merit.

“Come on, Mr. Zimmer, this is the big league,” Perry said. “You have anything with some meat on the bone?”

Properly cowed, Zimmer deferred to his colleague and sat down. Landon Cross stood up next to face the judge.

“Your Honor,” he said, “Louis Opparizio is a man of means and standing in this community. He has had nothing to do with this crime or this trial and objects to his name and reputation being sullied by his inclusion in it. Let me emphatically repeat, he had nothing to do with this crime, is not a suspect and has no knowledge of it. He has no probative or exculpatory information to provide. He objects to defense counsel’s putting him on the witness stand to conduct a fishing expedition and he objects to counsel’s using him as a deflection from the case at hand. Let Mr. Haller fish for red herrings in a different pond.”

Cross turned and gestured to Andrea Freeman.

“I might add, Your Honor, that the prosecution joins me in this motion to quash for the same reasons mentioned.”

The judge swiveled on his seat and looked at me.

“Mr. Haller, you want to respond to all of that?”

I stood up. Slowly. I was holding the foam gavel from my desk, working it with my fingers, which were newly freed from plaster but still stiff.

“Yes, Your Honor. I would first like to say that Mr. Cross makes a good point about the fishing expedition. Mr. Opparizio’s testimony at trial, if allowed to proceed, would include a fair amount of fishing. Not all of it, mind you, but I would like to drop a line in the water. But this is only, Your Honor, because Mr. Opparizio and his defensive front have made it darn near impossible for the defense to conduct a thorough investigation of the murder of Mitchell Bondurant. Mr. Opparizio and his henchmen have thwarted all-”

Zimmer was up on his feet objecting loudly.

“Your Honor! I mean, really! Henchmen? Counsel is clearly engaged in playing to the media in the courtroom at Mr. Opparizio’s expense. I once again urge you to move these proceedings to chambers before we continue.”

“We’re staying put,” Perry said. “But Mr. Haller, I’m not going to allow you to call this witness just to let you grandstand for the jury. What’s his connection? What’s he got?”

I nodded like I was ready with an obvious answer.

“Mr. Opparizio founded and operates a company that acts as a middleman in the foreclosure process. When the victim in this case decided to foreclose on the home of the defendant, he went to Mr. Opparizio to get it done. That, to me, Your Honor, puts Mr. Opparizio on the front line of this case and I would like to ask him about this because the prosecution has stated to the media that the foreclosure is the motive for the murder.”

Zimmer jumped in before the judge could respond.

“That is a ridiculous assertion! Mr. Opparizio’s company has a hundred eighty-five employees. It is housed in a three-level office building. To-”

“Foreclosing on people’s homes is big business,” I interjected.

“Counsel,” the judge warned.

“Mr. Opparizio had nothing whatsoever to do with the defendant’s foreclosure other than the fact that it was handled by his company along with about a hundred thousand other such cases this year,” Zimmer said.

“A hundred thousand cases, Mr. Zimmer?” the judge asked.

“That’s right, Judge. On average the company has been handling two thousand foreclosures a week for more than two years. This would include the defendant’s foreclosure case. Mr. Opparizio has no specific knowledge of her case. It was one of many and was never on his radar.”

The judge dropped deep into thought and looked like he had heard enough. I had hoped not to have to reveal my ace in the hole, especially in front of the prosecutor. But I had to assume Freeman was already aware of the Bondurant letter and its value.

I reached down to the file in front of me on the table and flipped it open. There were the letter and four copies, ready to go.

“Mr. Haller, I’m inclined to-”

“Your Honor, if the court would indulge me, I would like to be allowed to ask Mr. Opparizio the name of his personal secretary.”

That gave Perry another pause and he screwed his mouth up in confusion.

“You want to know who his secretary is?”

“His personal secretary, yes.”

“Why would you want to know that, sir?”

“I am asking the court to indulge me.”

“Very well. Mr. Opparizio? Mr. Haller would like the name of your personal secretary.”

Opparizio leaned forward and looked at Zimmer as if needing his approval. Zimmer signaled him to go on and answer the question.

“Uh, Judge, I actually have two. One is Carmen Esposito and the other is Natalie Lazarra.”

He then leaned back. The judge looked at me. It was time to play the ace.

“Judge, I have here copies of a certified letter that was written by Mitchell Bondurant, the murder victim, and sent to Mr. Opparizio. It was received and signed for by his personal secretary Natalie Lazarra. The letter was turned over to me in discovery by the prosecution. I would like Mr. Opparizio to testify in court so that I can question him about it.”

“Let’s take a look,” Perry said.

I stepped away from the table and delivered copies of the letter to the judge and then to Zimmer. On my way back I swung by Freeman and offered her a copy.

“No, thanks. I already have it.”

I nodded and went back to the table but stayed standing.

“Your Honor?” Zimmer said. “Can we have a short recess to look this over? We haven’t seen it before.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Perry said.

The judge stepped down from the bench and went through the door to his chambers. I waited to see if the Opparizio team would take it out into the hall. When they didn’t move, I didn’t. I wanted them to worry that I might overhear something.

I huddled with Aronson and Trammel.

“What are they doing?” Aronson whispered. “They had to have known about the letter already.”

“I am sure the prosecution gave them a copy,” I said. “Opparizio acts like he’s the smartest guy in the room. Now we’re going to see if he is the smartest guy in the room.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve got him between a rock and a hard place. He knows he should tell the judge that if I ask about that letter he will take the Fifth and therefore the subpoena should be kicked. But he knows if he takes the Fifth in front of the media here, he’s in trouble. That puts blood in the water.”

“So what do you think he’ll do?” Trammel asked.

“Act like the smartest guy.”

I pushed back from the table and stood up. I nonchalantly started to pace behind the tables. Zimmer looked over his shoulder at me and then leaned in closer to his client. Eventually, I came back to Freeman, still in her chair.

“When do you wade in?”

“Oh, I’m thinking I might not have to.”

“They already had the letter, didn’t they? You gave it to them.”

She shrugged her shoulders but didn’t answer. I looked past her to Kurlen sitting three rows back.

“What’s Kurlen doing here?”

“Oh… he might be needed.”

That was a lot of help.

“Last week when you made the offer, that was because you had found the letter, wasn’t it? You thought your case was in real trouble.”

She looked up at me and smiled, not giving anything away.

“What changed? Why’d you pull the offer back?”

Again she didn’t answer.

“You think he’s going to take the Fifth, don’t you?”

The shrug again.

“I would,” I said. “But him…?”

“We’ll know soon enough,” she said, dismissively.

I went back to the table and sat down. Trammel whispered to me that she still wasn’t clear on what was going on.

“We want Opparizio to testify at trial. He doesn’t want to but the only way the judge will let him out of the subpoena is if he says he’ll invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. If he does that, we’re dead. He’s our straw man. We need to get him on the stand.”

“Do you think he will take the Fifth?”

“I’m betting no. Too much at stake with the media here. He’s putting the finishing touches on a big merger and knows if he takes the nickel the media will be all over him. I think he’s just smart enough to think he can talk his way out of it on the stand. That’s what I’m counting on. Him thinking he’s smarter than everybody else.”

“What if-”

She was cut off by the return of the judge to the bench. He quickly went back on record and Zimmer asked to address the court.

“Your Honor, I would like the record to reflect that against the advice of counsel my client has instructed me to withdraw the motion to quash.”

The judge nodded and pursed his lips. He looked at Opparizio.

“So your client will testify in front of the jury?” he asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Zimmer said. “He has made that decision.”

“You sure about this, Mr. Opparizio? You have a lot of experience sitting with you at that table.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Opparizio said. “I’m sure.”

“Then motion withdrawn. Any other business before the court before we begin jury selection tomorrow morning?”

Perry looked past the tables to Freeman. It was a tell. He knew there was further business to discuss. Freeman stood up, file in hand.

“Yes, Your Honor, may I approach?”

“Please do, Ms. Freeman.”

Freeman stepped forward but then waited for the Opparizio team to finish packing and move off the prosecution’s table. The judge waited patiently. Finally, she took her place at the table, remaining standing.

“Let me guess,” Perry said. “You want to talk about Mr. Haller’s updated witness list.”

“Yes, Judge, I do. I also have an evidentiary issue to bring up. Which would you like to hear first?”

Evidentiary issue. I suddenly knew why Kurlen was in the courtroom.

“Let’s go with the witness list first,” the judge said. “I saw that one coming.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Haller has put his co-counsel down on the witness list and I think, first of all, he needs to choose between having Ms. Aronson as second chair and having her as a witness. But second, and more important, Ms. Aronson has already handled the preliminary hearing for the defense as well as other duties, and so the state objects to this sudden move to make her a witness in the trial.”

Freeman sat down and the judge looked over at me.

“Sort of late in the game, isn’t it, Mr. Haller?”

I stood.

“Yes, Your Honor, except for the fact that it is no game and it’s my client’s freedom at stake here. The defense would ask the court for wide latitude in this regard. Ms. Aronson was intimately involved in the defense against the foreclosure proceedings against my client and the defense has come to the conclusion that she will be needed to explain to jurors what the background was and what was happening at the time of the murder of Mr. Bondurant.”

“And is it your plan to have her do double duty, both witness and defense counsel? That’s not going to happen in my courtroom, sir.”

“Your Honor, I assumed when I put Ms. Aronson’s name on the final list that we would have this discussion with Ms. Freeman. The defense is open to the court’s decision in regard to this.”

Perry looked at Freeman to see if she had further argument. She held still.

“Very well then,” he said. “You just lost your second chair, Mr. Haller. I will allow Ms. Aronson to remain on the witness list but tomorrow when we start picking the jury, you’re on your own. Ms. Aronson stays clear of my courtroom until she comes in to testify.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “Will she be able to join me as second chair after her testimony is concluded?”

“I don’t see that as a problem.” Perry asked, “Ms. Freeman, you had a second issue for the court?”

Freeman stood back up. I sat down and leaned forward with my pen, ready to take notes. The movement caused a searing pain to cross my torso and I almost groaned out loud.

“Your Honor, the state wants to head off an objection and protest I am sure will come from counsel. Late yesterday, we received a return on DNA analysis of a very small blood trace found on a shoe belonging to the defendant and seized during the search of her house and garage on the day of the murder.”

I felt an invisible punch in my stomach that made my rib pain disappear quickly. I instinctively knew this was going to be a game changer.

“The analysis matches the blood from the shoe to the victim, Mitchell Bondurant. Before counsel protests, I must inform the court that analysis of the blood was delayed because of the backup in the lab and because the sample being worked with was rather minute. The difficulty was accentuated by the need to preserve a portion of the sample for the defense.”

I flipped my pen up into the air. It bounced onto the table and then clattered to the floor. I stood up.

“Your Honor, this is just outrageous. On the eve of jury selection? To pull this now? And boy oh boy, that was sure nice of them to leave some for the defense. We’ll just run out and get it analyzed before jury selection starts tomorrow. You know, this is just-”

“Point well taken, Counsel,” the judge interrupted. “It troubles me as well. Ms. Freeman, you’ve had this evidence since the inception of the case. How can it be that it conveniently lands the day before jury selection?”

“Your Honor,” Freeman said, “I have a full understanding of the burden this places on the defense and the court. But it is what it is. I was informed of the findings at eight o’clock this morning when I received the report from the lab. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to bring it before the court. As to the reason for its coming in now, well, there are a few. I am sure the court is aware of the backup for DNA analysis at the lab at Cal State. There are thousands of cases. While homicide investigations certainly get a priority it is not to the exclusion of all other cases. We elected not to go to a private lab that could have turned it around faster because of the concern over the size of the sample. We knew if anything went wrong with an outside vendor then we would have completely lost the opportunity to test the blood-and hold a portion for the defense.”

I shook my head in frustration while waiting for the chance to speak again. This was indeed a game changer. It had been a completely circumstantial case. Now it was a case involving direct evidence connecting the defendant to the crime.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge said. “You want to respond?”

“I sure do, Judge. I think this goes beyond being sandbagged and I don’t for a moment believe the timing here is happenstance. I would ask that the court tell the prosecution that it is too late to spring this now. I move that this so-called evidence be excluded from the trial.”

“What about delaying the trial?” the judge said. “What if you were given the time to get the analysis done and get up to speed on this?”

“Get up to speed? Judge, this isn’t just about getting our own analysis done. This is about changing the entire defense strategy. The prosecution is seeking to change this from a circumstantial case to a science-based case on the eve of trial. I don’t only need time to do DNA testing. After two months, I now need to rethink the entire case. This is devastating, Your Honor, and it should not be allowed under the basic idea of fair play.”

Freeman wanted a comeback but the judge didn’t allow it. I took that as a good sign until I saw him looking at the calendar hanging on the wall behind the clerk’s corral. That told me he was only willing to ameliorate the situation with time. He was going to allow the DNA into evidence and would just give me extra time to prepare for it.

I sat back down in defeat. Lisa Trammel leaned toward me and desperately whispered, “Mickey, this can’t be. It’s a setup. There’s no way his blood could be on those shoes. You have to believe me.”

I put my hand up to cut her off. I didn’t have to believe a word out of her mouth and that was all beside the point. The reality was that the case was shifting. No wonder Freeman had all her confidence back.

Suddenly I realized something. I quickly stood back up. Too quickly. Pain shot down my torso into my groin and I bent over the defense table.

“Your… Honor?”

“Are you all right, Mr. Haller?”

I slowly straightened up.

“Yes, Your Honor, but I need to add something to the record, if I may.”

“Go ahead.”

“Your Honor, the defense questions the veracity of the prosecution’s claim of learning about this DNA result only this morning. Three weeks ago Ms. Freeman offered my client a very attractive disposition, giving Ms. Trammel twenty-four hours to think it over. Then-”

“Your Honor?” Freeman said.

“Don’t interrupt,” the judge commanded. “Continue, Mr. Haller.”

I had no qualms about breaking my agreement with Freeman not to reveal the disposition negotiations. The gloves were off at this point.

“Thank you, Your Honor. So we get the offer on a Thursday night and then on Friday morning Ms. Freeman mysteriously yanks it right back off the table without explanation. Well, I think we now have that explanation, Judge. She knew back then-three weeks ago-about this supposed DNA evidence but decided to sit on it in order to surprise the defense with it on the eve of trial. And I-”

“Thank you, Mr. Haller. What about that, Ms. Freeman?”

I could see the skin around the judge’s eyes had drawn tight. He was upset. What I had just revealed had the ring of truth to it.

“Your Honor,” Freeman said indignantly. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I have with me in the gallery here Detective Kurlen who will be happy to testify under oath that the DNA report was delivered over the weekend to his office and opened by him shortly after his arrival at seven thirty this morning. He then called me and I brought it to court. The district attorney’s office has not sat on anything and I resent the aspersion directed at me personally by counsel.”

The judge glanced out to the rows of seats and spotted Kurlen, then looked back at Freeman.

“Why did you withdraw the offer a day after making it?” he asked.

The million-dollar question. Freeman seemed unsettled that the judge would carry the inquiry any further.

“Judge, that decision involved internal issues perhaps better not aired in court.”

“I want to understand this, Counsel. If you want this evidence then you better allay my concerns, internal issues or not.”

Freeman nodded.

“Yes, Your Honor. As you know, there is an interim district attorney since Mr. Williams joined the U.S. Attorney General’s Office in Washington. This has resulted in a situation where we don’t always have clear lines of communication and direction. Suffice it to say that on that Thursday I had a supervisor’s approval for the offer I made to Mr. Haller. But on Friday morning I learned from a higher authority in the office that the offer was not approved internally and so I withdrew it.”

It was a load of crap but she had delivered it well and I had nothing that contradicted it. But when she told me the offer was gone that Friday I knew by the tone of her voice that she had something new, something else, and her decision had nothing to do with internal communication and direction.

The judge made his ruling.

“I am going to put back jury selection ten court days. This should give the defense time to have DNA testing of the evidence completed if it chooses to do so. It also allows ample time to consider what strategic change will come with this information. I will hold the state responsible for being totally cooperative in this matter and in getting the biological material to the defense without delay. All parties will be prepared to begin jury selection two weeks from today. Court is adjourned.”

The judge quickly left the bench. I looked down at the empty page on my legal pad. I had just been eviscerated.

Slowly I started packing my briefcase.

“What do we do?” Aronson asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I said.

“Run the test,” Lisa Trammel said urgently. “They’ve got it wrong. It can’t be his blood on my shoes. This is unreal.”

I looked at her. Her brown eyes fervent and believable.

“Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”

The optimism tasted sour in my mouth. I glanced over at Freeman. She was looking through files in her briefcase. I sauntered over and she gave me a dismissive look. She wasn’t interested in hearing my tale of woe.

“You look like things just went exactly the way you wanted them to go,” I said.

She showed nothing. She closed her case and headed toward the gate. Before pushing through she looked back at me.

“You want to play hardball, Haller?” she said. “Then you have to be ready to catch.”

Nineteen

The next two weeks went by quickly but not without progress. The defense rethought and retooled. I had an independent lab confirm the state’s DNA findings-at a rush cost of four grand-and then assimilated the devastating evidence into a view of the case that allowed for the science to be correct as well as my client’s innocence to be possible, if not probable. The classic setup defense. It would be an additional and natural dimension to the straw-man gambit. I began to believe it could work and my confidence began to rebuild. By the time delayed jury selection finally started, I had some momentum going and rolled it into the effort, actively looking for the jurors who might lend themselves to believing the new story I was going to spin for them.

It wasn’t until the fourth day of jury selection that yet one more Freeman fastball came whistling at my head. We were nearing completion of the panel and it was one of those rare times when both prosecution and defense were happy with the jury’s makeup, but for different reasons. The panel was well stocked with working-class men and women. Home owners who came from two-income households. Few had college diplomas and none had advanced degrees. Real salt-of-the-earth people and this was a perfect composition for me. I was going for people who lived close to the edge in the tough economy, who felt the threat of foreclosure at all times, and would have a hard time looking at a banker as a sympathetic victim.

On the other hand, the prosecution asked detailed financial questions of each prospective juror and was looking for hard workers who wouldn’t see someone who stopped paying her mortgage as a victim, either. The result, until the morning of the fourth day, was a panel full of jurors neither side objected to and who we each thought we could mold into our own soldiers of justice.

The fastball came when Judge Perry called for the midmorning break. Freeman immediately stood up and asked the judge if counsel could meet in chambers during the break to discuss an evidentiary issue that had just come up. She asked if Detective Kurlen could join the meeting. Perry granted the request and doubled the break time to a half hour. I then followed Freeman, who followed the court reporter and the judge into chambers. Kurlen came in last and I noticed that he was carrying a large manila envelope with red evidence tape on it. It was bulky and appeared to have something heavy inside. The paper envelope was the real giveaway, though. Biological evidence was always wrapped in paper. Plastic evidence bags trapped air and humidity and could damage biologicals. So I knew going in that Freeman was about to drop another DNA bomb on me.

“Here we go again,” I said under my breath as I entered the chambers.

The judge moved behind his desk and sat down, his back to a window that looked south toward the hills over Sherman Oaks. Freeman and I took side-by-side seats opposite the desk. Kurlen pulled a chair over from a nearby table and the court reporter sat on a stool to the judge’s right. Her steno machine was on a tripod in front of her.

“We’re on the record here,” the judge said. “Ms. Freeman?”

“Judge, I wanted to meet with you and counsel for the defense as soon as possible because I am anticipating that once again Mr. Haller will howl at the moon when he hears what I have to say and what I have to show.”

“Then let’s get on with it,” Perry said.

Freeman nodded to Kurlen and he started peeling back the tape on the evidence envelope. I said nothing. I noticed that he had a rubber glove on his right hand.

“The prosecution has come into possession of the murder weapon,” Freeman stated matter-of-factly, “and plans to introduce it as evidence as well as make it available to the defense for examination.”

Kurlen opened the envelope, reached in and brought out a hammer. It was a claw hammer with a brushed steel head and a circular striking surface. It had a polished redwood handle tipped in black rubber at the end. I saw a notch at twelve o’clock on the strike face and knew it likely corresponded with the skull impressions cataloged during the autopsy.

I stood up angrily and walked away from the desk.

“Oh, come on,” I said in full outrage. “Are you kidding me?”

I looked at the wall of shelved codebooks Perry had at the far side of the room, put my hands on my hips in indignation and then turned back to the desk.

“Judge, excuse my language, but this is bullshit. She can’t do this again. To spring this-what, four days into jury selection and a day before opening statements? We have most of the box already picked, we are possibly going to start tomorrow and she’s suddenly laying the supposed murder weapon on me?”

The judge leaned back in his seat as if distancing himself from the hammer Kurlen was holding.

“You better have a good and convincing story, Ms. Freeman,” he said.

“I do, Judge. I could not bring this forward until this morning and I am more than willing to explain why if-”

“You allowed this!” I said, interrupting and pointing a finger at the judge.

“Excuse me, Mr. Haller, but don’t you dare point your finger at me,” he said with restraint.

“I’m sorry, Judge, but this is your fault. You let her get away with the bullshit DNA story and after that there’s no reason for her not to-”

“Excuse me, sir, but you had better proceed cautiously. You are about five seconds away from seeing the inside of my holding cell. You do not point your finger or address a superior court judge as you have. Do you understand me?”

I turned back to the codebooks and took a deep breath. I knew I had to get something out of this. I had to come out of this room with the judge owing me something.

“I understand,” I finally said.

“Good,” Perry said. “Now come back over here and take a seat. Let’s hear what Ms. Freeman and Detective Kurlen have to say and it better be good.”

Reluctantly, I returned like a chastised child and dropped into my seat.

“Ms. Freeman, let’s hear it.”

“Yes, Your Honor. The weapon was turned in to us late Monday afternoon. A land-”

“Great!” I said. “I knew it. So you wait until four days into jury selection before you decide to-”

“Mr. Haller!” the judge barked. “I have lost all patience with you. Do not interrupt again. Continue, Ms. Freeman. Please.”

“Of course, Your Honor. As I said, we received this at the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division late Monday afternoon. I think it would be best if Detective Kurlen runs you through the chain of custody.”

Perry gestured to the detective to begin.

“What happened was that a landscaper working in a yard on Dickens Street near Kester Avenue found it that morning, lodged in a hedge near the front of his client’s house. This is in the street that runs behind WestLand National. The house is approximately two blocks from the rear of the bank. The landscaper who found the hammer is from Gardenia and had no idea about the murder. But thinking the tool belonged to his client, he left it on the porch for him. The home owner, a man named Donald Meyers, didn’t see it until he came home from work about five o’clock that afternoon. He was confused because he knew it was not his hammer. However, he then remembered reading articles about the Bondurant murder, at least one of which indicated the murder weapon might be a hammer and that it had not been found yet. He called his landscaper and got his story, then he called the police.”

“Well, you’ve told us how you got it,” Perry said. “You haven’t explained why we’re hearing about it three days later.”

Freeman nodded. She was ready for this and took over the narrative.

“Judge, we obviously had to confirm what we had and the chain of custody. We immediately turned it over to the Scientific Investigation Division for processing and only received the lab reports yesterday evening after court.”

“And what do those reports conclude?”

“The only fingerprints on the weapon belonged to-”

“Wait a minute,” I said, risking the judge’s ire again. “Can we just refer to it as the hammer? Calling it ‘the weapon’ on the record is a bit presumptuous at this point.”

“Fine,” Freeman said before the judge could respond. “The hammer. The only fingerprints on the hammer belonged to Mr. Meyers and his landscaper, Antonio Ladera. However, two things tie it solidly into the case. A small spot of blood found on the neck of the hammer has been conclusively matched through DNA testing to Mitchell Bondurant. We rushed this test with an outside vendor because of the protest counsel made over the precautions taken with the other test. The hammer was also turned over to the medical examiner’s office for comparison to the wound patterns on the victim. Again, we have a match. Mr. Haller, you can refer to it as the hammer or the tool or whatever you want. But I’m calling it the murder weapon. And I have copies of the lab reports to turn over to you at this time.”

She reached into the manila envelope, removed two paper-clipped documents and handed them to me with a satisfied smile on her face.

“Well, that’s nice of you,” I said in full sarcasm. “Thank you very much.”

“Oh, and there’s also this.”

She reached into the envelope again and withdrew two eight-by-ten photos, giving one to the judge and one to me. It was a photo of a workbench with tools hung on a pegboard on the wall behind it. I knew it was the workbench from Lisa Trammel’s garage. I had been there.

“This is from Lisa Trammel’s garage. It was taken on the day of the murder during the search of the premises under the authority of a court-ordered search warrant. You will notice that one tool is missing from the pegboard’s hooks. The open space created by this corresponds to the dimensions of a claw hammer.”

“This is crazy.”

“SID has identified the recovered hammer as a Craftsman model manufactured by Sears. This particular hammer is not sold separately. It comes only in the two-hundred-thirty-nine-piece Carpenter’s Tool Package. From this photograph we have identified more than a hundred other tools from that package. But no hammer. It’s not there because Lisa Trammel threw it into the bushes after leaving the scene of the crime.”

My mind was racing. Even with a defense based on the theory that the defendant was set up, there was a law of diminishing returns. Explaining away the blood drop on the shoe was one thing. Explaining away your client’s ownership of and connection to the murder weapon was not just a second thing. There was an exponential increase in the odds against setup as each piece of evidence is revealed. For the second time in three weeks the defense had been handed a devastating blow and I was left almost speechless. The judge turned to me. It was time to respond but I had no comeback that was worthy.

“This is very compelling evidence, Mr. Haller,” he prompted. “You have anything to say?”

I had nothing but I picked myself up off the mat before he reached the ten count.

“Your Honor, this so-called evidence that just sort of conveniently dropped from heaven should have been announced to the court and the defense the moment it was brought forward. Not three days later, not even a day later. If only to allow the defense to properly inspect the evidence, conduct its own tests and observe those of the prosecution. It was supposedly in the bushes undiscovered for what, three months at this point? And yet-voilà!-we have DNA to match to the victim. This whole thing stinks of a setup. And it’s too damn late, Your Honor. The train has left the station. We might have opening statements as early as tomorrow. The prosecution has had all week to think about how to drop the hammer into hers. What am I supposed to do at this point?”

“Were you planning to give your statement at the beginning or reserve until the defense phase?” the judge asked.

“I was planning on giving it tomorrow.” I lied. “I already have it written. But this is also information I could have used while picking the jurors we already have in the box. Judge, this whole thing-look, all I know is that five weeks ago the prosecution was desperate. Ms. Freeman came to my office to offer my client a deal. Whether she’ll admit it or not, she was running scared and she gave me everything I asked for. And then suddenly, we have the DNA on the shoe. Now, lo and behold, the hammer turns up and, of course, nobody’s talking about a disposition anymore. The coincidence of all of this puts it all to doubt. But the malfeasance in how it was handled should alone lead you to refuse to allow it into evidence.”

“Your Honor,” Freeman said as soon as I was finished. “May I respond to Mr. Haller’s allegation of mal-”

“No need to, Ms. Freeman. As I already said, this is compelling evidence. It comes in at an inopportune time but it is clearly evidence the jury should consider. I will allow it but I will also once again allow the defense extra time to prepare for it. We’re going to go back out there now and finish picking a jury. Then I am going to give them a long weekend and bring them back Monday for opening statements and the start of the trial. That gives you three extra days to prepare your opener, Mr. Haller. That should be enough time. Meanwhile, your staff, including that young go-getter you hired out of my alma mater, can work on assembling whatever experts and testing you’ll need on the hammer.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t good enough. I was going down fast here.

“Your Honor, I move that the trial be stayed while I take this matter up on appeal.”

“You can take it up on appeal, Mr. Haller. That’s your right. But it’s not going to stop the trial. We go on Monday.”

He gave me a little nod that I took as a threat. I take him up on appeal and he won’t forget it during trial.

“Do we have anything else to discuss?” Perry asked.

“I’m good,” Freeman said.

“Mr. Haller?”

I shook my head as my voice deserted me.

“Then let’s go out there and finish picking a jury.”

Lisa Trammel was pensively waiting for me at the defense table.

“What happened?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

“What happened was that we just got our asses handed to us again. This time it’s over.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they found the fucking hammer you threw in the bushes after you killed Mitchell Bondurant.”

“That’s crazy. I-”

“No, you’re crazy. They can tie it directly to Bondurant and they can tie it to you. It’s right off your fucking workbench. I don’t know how you could’ve been so stupid but that’s beside the point. It actually makes keeping the bloody shoes seem like a smart choice in comparison. Now I have to figure out a way to get a deal out of Freeman when she has absolutely no need to make a deal. She’s got a slam-bang case so why cut a deal?”

Lisa reached over with one hand and grabbed the left side of my jacket collar. She pulled me closer. Now she whispered through clenched teeth.

“You listen to yourself. How could I have been so stupid? That’s the question and the answer is I wasn’t. You know if anything I’m not stupid. I’ve told you from day one, this is a setup. They wanted to get rid of me and this is what they did. But I didn’t do this. You’ve had it right all along. Louis Opparizio. He needed to get rid of Mitchell Bondurant and he used me as the fall guy. Bondurant sent him your letter. That started everything. I didn’t-”

She faltered as the tears started to flood her eyes. I put my hand over hers as if to calm her and detached it from my collar. I was aware that the jury was filing into the box and didn’t want them to see any attorney-client discord.

“I didn’t do this,” she said. “You hear me? I don’t want any deal. I won’t say I did something I didn’t do. If that’s your best shot then I want a new attorney.”

I looked away from her to the bench. Judge Perry was watching us.

“Ready to proceed, Mr. Haller?”

I looked at my client and then back at the judge.

“Yes, Your Honor. Ready to proceed.”

Twenty

It was like being in the losing locker room but we had yet to play the game. It was Sunday afternoon, eighteen hours before opening statements to the jury, and I huddled with my crew, already conceding defeat. It was the bitter end before the trial had even begun.

“I don’t understand,” Aronson said into the void of silence that had enveloped my office. “You said we needed a hypothesis of innocence. An alternate theory. We have that with Opparizio. We have it in spades. Where is the problem?”

I looked over at Cisco Wojciechowski. It was just the three of us. I was in shorts and a T-shirt. Cisco was in his riding clothes, an army-green tank top over black jeans. And Aronson was dressed for a day in court. She hadn’t gotten the memo about it being Sunday.

“The problem is, we’re not going to get Opparizio into the trial,” I said.

“He withdrew the motion to quash,” Aronson protested.

“That doesn’t matter. The trial is about the state’s evidence against Trammel. It’s not about who else might have committed the crime. Might’ves don’t count. I can put Opparizio on the stand as the expert on Trammel’s foreclosure and the foreclosure epidemic. But I’m not going to get near him as an alternate suspect. The judge won’t let me unless I can prove relevance. So we’ve come all this way and we still don’t have relevancy. We still don’t have that one thing that pulls Opparizio all the way in.”

Aronson was determined not to give up.

“The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees Trammel a ‘meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.’ An alternate theory is part of a complete defense.”

So she could quote the Constitution. She was book smart but experience poor.

“California versus Hall, nineteen eighty-six. Look it up.”

I pointed to her laptop, which was open on the corner of my desk. She leaned over and started typing.

“Do you know the citation?”

“Try forty-one.”

She typed it in, got the ruling on her screen and started scanning. I looked over at Cisco, who had no idea what I was doing.

“Read it out loud,” I said. “The pertinent parts.”

“Uh…‘Evidence that another person had motive or opportunity to commit the charged crime, or had some remote connection to the victim or crime scene, is insufficient to raise the requisite reasonable doubt… Evidence of alternate party culpability is relevant and admissible only if it links the alternate party to the actual perpetration of the crime…’ Okay, we’re screwed.”

I nodded.

“If we can’t put Opparizio or one of his goons in that parking garage, then we are indeed screwed.”

“The letter doesn’t do it?” Cisco asked.

“Nope,” I said. “There’s no way. Freeman will kick my ass if I say the letter opens the door. It gives Opparizio a motive, yes. But it doesn’t link him directly to the crime.”

“Shit.”

“That’s about right. Right now, we don’t have it. So we don’t have a defense. And the DNA and the hammer… well, that nails it all down nicely for the state. No pun intended.”

“Our lab reports say there is no biological connection to Lisa,” Aronson said. “I also have a Craftsman expert who will testify it is impossible to say that the hammer in evidence came from her specific set of tools. Plus, we know the garage door was unlocked. Even if it is her hammer, anyone could’ve taken it. And anyone could have planted the blood on the shoes.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know all of that. It’s not enough to say what could’ve happened. We’re going to have to say this is what happened and we’re going to have to back it up. If we can’t, we won’t even get it in. Opparizio is the key. We need to be able to go at him without Freeman standing up on every question and saying, ‘What’s the relevance?’ ”

Aronson wouldn’t give it up.

“There must be something,” she said.

“There’s always something. We just haven’t found it yet.”

I swiveled on my chair until I was looking directly at Cisco. He frowned and nodded. He knew what was coming.

“On you, man,” I said. “You’ve got to find me something. Freeman’s going to take about a week to present the state’s case. That’s how much time you have. But if I stand up tomorrow and throw the dice, saying I’m going to prove somebody else did it, then I have to deliver.”

“I’ll start over,” Cisco said. “Ground up. I’ll find you something. You do what you have to do tomorrow.”

I nodded, more in thanks than in faith that he would come through. I didn’t really believe there was anything out there to get. I had a guilty client and justice was going to prevail. End of story.

I looked down at my desk. Spread across it were crime scene photos and reports. I held up the eight-by-ten of the victim’s briefcase lying open on the garage’s concrete floor. It was the thing that had stuck with me since the beginning, had given me hope that maybe my client didn’t do it. That is, until the last two evidentiary rulings by the judge.

“So still no report on the briefcase contents and if anything was missing?” I asked.

“Not that we’ve gotten,” Aronson said.

I had put her in charge of the first review of discovery materials as they had come in.

“So the guy’s briefcase was left wide open and they never tried to see if there was anything missing?”

“They inventoried the contents. We have that. I just don’t think they made a report on what was possibly not in it. Kurlen’s cagey. He wasn’t going to create an opening for us.”

“Yeah, well, he might be walking around with that briefcase shoved up his ass after I’m through with him on the stand.”

Aronson blushed. I pointed at my investigator.

“Cisco, the briefcase. We’ve got the list of contents. Talk to Bondurant’s secretary. Find out if anything was taken.”

“I already tried. She wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Try again. Give her the gun show. Win her over.”

He flexed his arms. Aronson continued to blush. I stood up.

“I’m going home to work on my opener.”

“You sure you want to give it tomorrow?” Aronson asked. “If you defer until the defense phase you’ll know what Cisco’s been able to find.”

I shook my head.

“I got the weekend because I told the judge I want to give it at the start of the trial. I go back on that and he’s going to blame me for losing Friday. He’s already a judge with a grudge because I lost it in chambers with him.”

I moved around from behind the desk. I handed the photo of the briefcase to Cisco.

“Make sure you guys lock up.”

No Rojas on Sundays. I drove the Lincoln home alone. There was light traffic and I got back quickly, even stopping to pick up a pizza at the little Italian joint under the market at the bottom of Laurel Canyon. When I got to the house I didn’t bother edging the big Lincoln into the garage next to its fleet twin. I parked at the bottom of the steps, locked it and went on up to the front door. It wasn’t until I got up to the deck that I saw that I had someone waiting for me.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Maggie McFierce. Rather, a man I had never seen before sat in one of the director’s chairs at the far end of the deck. He was slightly built and disheveled, a week’s worth of beard on his cheeks. His eyes were closed and his head tilted back. He was asleep.

I wasn’t concerned for my safety. He was alone and he wasn’t wearing black gloves. Still, I quietly put the key into the lock and opened the door without a sound. I stepped in, closed the door silently and put the pizza down on the kitchen counter. I then moved back to my bedroom and into the walk-in closet. Off the upper shelf-too high for my daughter to get to-I took down the wooden box that held the Colt Woodsman I’d inherited from my father. It had a tragic history and I hoped not to add to it now. I loaded a full magazine of ammunition into it, then headed back to the front door.

I took the other director’s chair and moved it over until it faced the sleeping man. Only after I sat down, holding the gun casually in my lap, did I reach out with my foot and tap him on the knee.

He startled awake, his eyes wide and darting about until they finally landed on my face then dropped to the gun.

“Whoa, wait a minute, man!”

“No, you wait a minute. Who are you and what do you want?”

I didn’t point the gun. I kept things casual. He raised his hands, palms out in surrender.

“Mr. Haller, right? I’m Jeff, man. Jeff Trammel. We talked on the phone, remember?”

I stared at him for a moment and realized I had not recognized him because I had never seen a photograph of him. During the times I had been in Lisa Trammel’s home there were no framed photos of him. She had excised his presence from the house after he had chosen to hightail it.

Now here he was. Haunted eyes and hangdog look. I thought I knew just what he was looking for.

“How did you know where I live? Who told you to come here?”

“Nobody told me. I just came. I looked your name up on the California Bar website. There was no office listed but this was the correspondence address. I came and saw it was a house and figured you live here. I didn’t mean nothing by it. I need to talk to you.”

“You could’ve called.”

“That phone ran out of juice. I gotta buy another one.”

I decided to run a little test on Jeff Trammel.

“That time you called me, where were you?”

He shrugged like it was no big deal to give up the information now.

“Down in Rosarito. I been staying down there.”

That was a lie. Cisco had gotten the trace back on his call. I had the number of the phone and the originating cell tower. The call had come from Venice Beach, about two hundred miles from Rosarito Beach in Mexico.

“What did you want to talk to me about, Jeff?”

“I can help you, man.”

“Help me? How?”

“I was talking to Lisa. She told me about the hammer they found. It’s not hers-I mean, ours. I can tell you where ours is. Lead you right to it.”

“Okay, then where is it?”

He nodded and looked off to the right and at the city down below. The never-ending hiss of traffic filtered up to us.

“That’s the thing, Mr. Haller. I need some money. I want to go back to Mexico. You don’t need a lot down there but you need a start, if you know what I mean.”

“So how much of a start do you want?”

He turned and looked directly at me now because I was speaking his language.

“Just ten grand, man. You got all that movie money coming in and ten won’t hurt you too bad. You give me that and I give you the hammer.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yeah, man, I’ll be out of your hair.”

“What about testifying on Lisa’s behalf at the trial? Remember, we talked about that?”

He shook his head.

“No, I can’t do that. I’m not the testifying type. But I can help you on the outside like this. You know, lead you to the hammer, stuff like that. Herb said the hammer is their biggest evidence and it’s bullshit because I know where the real one is.”

“So you’re talking to Herb Dahl, too.”

I could tell by the grimace that he’d made a slip. He was supposed to keep Herb Dahl out of the conversation.

“Uh, no, no, it was what Lisa said he said. I don’t even know him.”

“Let me ask you something, Jeff. How am I going to know this is the real hammer and not some replacement you’ve cooked up with Lisa and Herb?”

“Because I’m telling you. I know. I was the one who left it where it is. Me!”

“But you’re not going to testify, so all I’m left with is a hammer and no story. Do you know what ‘fungible’ means, Jeff?”

“Fun-uh, no.”

“It means mutually interchangeable. An item is fungible in the law if it can be replaced by an identical item. And that’s what we have here, Jeff. Your hammer is useless to me without the story attached. If it is your story then you have to testify to it. If you won’t testify, then it doesn’t matter.”

“Huh…”

He seemed crestfallen.

“Where’s the hammer, Jeff?”

“I’m not telling you. It’s all I have.”

“I’m not paying you a cent for it, Jeff. Even if I believed there was a hammer-the real hammer-I wouldn’t pay you a cent. That’s not how it works. So you think things over and you let me know, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now get off my porch.”

I carried the gun down at my side and stepped back into the house, locking the door behind me. I grabbed the car keys off the pizza box and hurried through the house to the back door. I went through and then slipped along the side of the house to a wooden gate that opened onto the street. I opened it a crack and looked for Jeff Trammel.

I didn’t see him but I heard a car engine roar to life. I waited and soon a car moved by. I went through the gate and tried to get a look at the plate but I was too late. The car coasted down the hill. It was a blue sedan but I was too consumed with the plate to identify the make and model. As soon as it took the first curve I hurried up the street to my own car.

If I was to follow him, I would have to get down the hill in time to see if he turned left or right on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Otherwise it was a fifty-fifty chance of losing him.

But I was too late. By the time the Lincoln negotiated the sharp turns and the intersection at Laurel Canyon came into sight, the blue sedan was gone. I pulled up to the stop sign and didn’t hesitate. I turned right, heading north toward the Valley. Cisco had traced Jeff Trammel’s call to Venice but everything else about the case was in the Valley. I headed that way.

It was a single lane on the northbound ascent of the roadway that cut over the Hollywood Hills. It then opened to two lanes on the down slope into the Valley. But I never caught up to Trammel and soon realized I had chosen the wrong way. Venice. I should’ve turned south.

Not being a fan of cold or reheated pizza I pulled off to eat at the Daily Grill at Laurel and Ventura. I parked in the underground garage and was halfway to the escalator when I realized I had the Woodsman tucked into the back of my pants. Not good. I returned to the car and put it under the seat, then double-checked to make sure the car was locked.

It was early but nonetheless crowded in the restaurant. I sat at the bar rather than wait for a table and ordered an iced tea and a chicken pot pie. I then opened my phone and called my client. She answered right away.

“Lisa, it’s your attorney. Did you send your husband over to speak to me?”

“Well, I told him he should see you, yes.”

“And was that your idea or Herb Dahl’s?”

“No, mine. I mean Herb was here but it was my idea. Did you talk to him?”

“I did.”

“Did he lead you to the hammer?”

“No, he didn’t. He wanted ten thousand dollars to do that.”

There was a pause but I waited.

“Mickey, it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask for something that will destroy the state’s evidence.”

“You don’t pay for evidence, Lisa. If you do, you lose. Where is your husband staying these days?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Did you talk to him in person?”

“Yes, he came here. He looked like something the cat dragged in.”

“I need to find him so I can subpoena him. Do you have any-”

“He won’t testify. He told me. No matter what. He just wants money and to see me in pain. He doesn’t even care about his own son. He didn’t even ask to see him when he came by.”

My meal was placed down in front of me and the bartender topped off my tea. I sliced into the top crust with my fork, just to let some of the steam out. It would be a good ten minutes before the dish would be cool enough to eat.

“Lisa, listen to me, this is important. Do you have any idea where he could be living or staying?”

“No. He said he came up from Mexico.”

“That’s a lie. He’s been here all the time.”

She seemed taken aback.

“How do you know that?”

“Phone records. Look, it doesn’t matter. If he calls you or comes by, find out where he is staying. Promise him there’s money coming or whatever you need to do but get me a location. If we can get him into court he’ll have to tell us about the hammer.”

“I’ll try.”

“Don’t try, Lisa. Do it. This is your life we’re talking about here.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Now did he drop any hint about the hammer at all when he spoke to you?”

“Not really. He just said, ‘Remember how I used to keep the hammer in my car when I was on repo duty?’ When he was at the dealership he had to repossess cars sometimes. They took turns. I think he kept the hammer for protection or in case they had to break into a car or something.”

“So he was saying the original hammer from your garage tool set was kept in his car?”

“I guess so. The Beemer. But that car was taken away after he abandoned it and disappeared.”

I nodded. I could put Cisco on it, have him try to confirm the story by seeing if a hammer was found in the trunk of the BMW left behind by Jeff Trammel.

“Okay, Lisa, who are Jeff’s friends? Up here in the city.”

“I don’t know. He had friends at the dealership but nobody that he brought around. We didn’t really have friends.”

“Do you have any names of those people from the dealership?”

“Not really.”

“Lisa, you’re not helping me here.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t think. I didn’t like his friends. I told him to keep them away.”

I shook my head and then thought of myself. Who were my friends outside of work? Could Maggie answer these same questions about me?

“All right, Lisa, enough of this for now. I want you thinking about tomorrow. Remember what we talked about. How you act and react in front of the jury. A lot will ride on it.”

“I know. I’m ready.”

Good, I thought. I wish I was.

Twenty-one

Judge Perry wanted to make up for some of the court time lost the Friday before, so on Monday morning he arbitrarily limited opening statements to the jury to thirty minutes apiece. This ruling came even though both the prosecution and the defense had ostensibly been laboring through the weekend on statements previously scheduled to be an hour long. The truth was, the edict was fine by me. I doubted I would even take ten minutes. The more you say on the defense side, the more the prosecution has to aim at in closing arguments. Less is always more when it comes to the defense. However, the capriciousness of the judge’s ruling was something else to consider. It clearly sent a message. The judge was telling us mere lawyers that he was firmly in charge of the courtroom and the trial. We were just visitors.

Freeman went first and as is my usual practice, I never took my eyes off the jury as the prosecutor spoke. I listened closely, ready to object on a moment’s notice, but I never once looked at her. I wanted to see how the jurors’ eyes took Freeman in. I wanted to see if my hunches about them were going to pay off.

Freeman spoke clearly and eloquently. No histrionics, no flash. It was straightforward eyes-on-the-prize stuff.

“We’re here today about one thing,” she said, standing firmly in the center of the well, the open space directly in front of the jury box. “We are here because of one person’s anger. One person’s need to lash out in frustration over her own failures and betrayals.”

Of course, she spent most of her time warning the jurors off what she called the defense’s smoke and mirrors. Confident in her own case, she sought to tear down mine.

“The defense is going to try to sell you a bill of goods. Big conspiracies and high drama. This murder is big but the story is simple. Don’t be led astray. Watch closely. Listen closely. Make sure that whatever is said here today is backed during the trial with evidence. Real evidence.

“This was a well-planned crime. The killer knew Mitchell Bondurant’s routines. The killer stalked Mitchell Bondurant. The killer was lying in wait for Mitchell Bondurant and then attacked swiftly and with the ultimate malice. That killer is Lisa Trammel and during this trial she will be brought to justice.”

Freeman pointed the accusatory finger at my client. Lisa, as previously instructed by me, stared back at her without blinking.

I zeroed in on juror number three who sat in the middle of the front row of the box. Leander Lee Furlong Jr. was my ace in the hole. He was my hanger, the one juror I was counting on to vote my way all the way. Even if it hung the jury.

About a half hour before the jury selection process had begun, the court clerk gave me the list of eighty names composing the first jury pool. I turned the list over to my investigator, who stepped out into the hallway, opened his laptop and went to work.

The Internet provides many avenues for researching the backgrounds of potential jurors, particularly when the trial will revolve around a financial transaction such as a foreclosure. Every person in the jury pool filled out a questionnaire, answering basic questions: Have you or anyone in your immediate family been involved in a foreclosure? Have you ever had a car repossessed? Have you ever filed for bankruptcy? These were weed-out questions. Anyone who answered yes to these questions would be dismissed by either the judge or the prosecutor. A person answering yes would be deemed biased and unable to fairly weigh evidence.

But the weed-outs were very general and there were gray areas and room between the lines. That’s where Cisco came in. By the time the judge had sat the first panel of twelve prospective jurors and gone over their questionnaires, Cisco was back to me with background notes on seventeen of the eighty. I was looking for people with bad experiences with and maybe even grudges against banks or government institutions. The seventeen ran the gamut from people who had outright lied on their questionnaires about bankruptcies or repossessions, to plaintiffs in civil claims against banks, to Leander Furlong.

Leander Lee Furlong Jr. was a twenty-nine-year-old assistant manager at the Ralph’s supermarket in Chatsworth. He had answered no to the question about foreclosure. In Cisco’s digital background search he went the extra mile and searched some national data sites. He came up with a reference to a 1994 foreclosure auction of property in Nashville, Tennessee, on which Leander Lee Furlong was listed as the owner. The petitioner in the action was the First National Bank of Tennessee.

The name seemed unique and the two instances had to be related. My prospective juror would have been thirteen at the time of the foreclosure. I assumed it was his father who lost the property to the bank. And Leander Lee Furlong Jr. had left mention of it off his questionnaire.

As jury selection progressed over two days, I nervously waited for Furlong to be randomly selected and moved into the box for questioning by the judge and attorneys. Along the way I passed up a handful of good prospects, using my peremptory challenges to clear spaces in the box.

Finally on the fourth morning Furlong’s number came up and he was seated for questioning. When I heard him speak with a southern accent I knew I had my hanger. He had to carry a grudge against the bank that took away his parents’ property. He was hiding it to get on the jury.

Furlong passed the judge’s and prosecutor’s questions with flying colors, saying just the right things and presenting himself as a God-fearing, hardworking man who had conservative values and an open mind. When it was my turn I hung back and asked a few general questions, then hit him with a zinger. I needed him to appear acceptable to me. I asked him if he thought people in foreclosure should be looked down upon or if it was possible that there were legitimate reasons why people sometimes could not pay for their home. In his southern twang, Furlong said that each case was different and it would be wrong to generalize about all people in foreclosure.

A few minutes and few more questions later, Freeman punched his ticket and I concurred. He was on the jury. Now I just had to hope his family history wasn’t discovered by the prosecution. If so he would be removed from the jury faster than a Crip from a Bloods holding cell.

Was I being unethical or breaking the rules by not reporting Furlong’s secret to the court? It depends on your definition of immediate-as in immediate family. The meaning of who and what constitutes your immediate family changes as you move through life. Furlong’s sheet said he was married and had a young son. His wife and child were his immediate family now. For all I knew, his father might not even be alive. The question asked was, “Have you or anyone in your immediate family been involved in a foreclosure?” The word ever was not in that sentence.

So it was a gray area and I felt I was under no obligation to help the prosecution by pointing out what was omitted from the question. Freeman had the same list of names and the power of the district attorney’s office and the LAPD at her immediate disposal. There had to be someone in those two bureaucracies as smart as my investigator. Let them look and find for themselves. If not, it was their loss.

I watched Furlong as Freeman started listing the building blocks of her case: the murder weapon, the eyewitness, the blood on the defendant’s shoe and her history of targeting the bank with her anger. He sat with both elbows on the armrests of his chair, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth. It was like he was hiding his face, peeking over his hands at her. It was a posture that told me I had read him right. He was my hanger, for sure.

Freeman began to lose steam as she hurried through a truncated recitation of how all the evidence fit together as guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This was where she had obviously chopped content out of her opener in deference to the judge’s arbitrary time constraint. She knew she could tie it all up in closing arguments so she skipped a lot of it here and got to her conclusion.

“Ladies and gentlemen, blood will tell,” she said. “Follow the evidence and it will lead you, without a doubt, to Lisa Trammel. She took Mitchell Bondurant’s life. She took everything he had. And now it’s time to bring her to justice.”

She thanked the jurors and returned to her seat. It was my turn now. I put my hand down below the table to check my zipper. You have to stand before a jury only once with your fly open and it will never happen again.

I got up and took the same spot in the well where Freeman had stood. I once again tried to show no sign of my still-healing injuries. And I began.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to start with a couple of introductions. My name is Michael Haller. I am counsel for the defense. It is my job to defend Lisa Trammel against these very serious charges. Our Constitution ensures that anyone accused of a crime in this country is entitled to a full and vigorous defense, and that is exactly what I intend to provide during the course of this trial. If I rub some of you the wrong way as I do this, then let me apologize up front. But please remember, my actions should not reflect on Lisa.”

I turned to the defense table and raised my hand as if welcoming Trammel to the trial.

“Lisa, would you please stand for a moment?”

Trammel stood up and turned slightly to the jury, her eyes slowly scanning the twelve faces. She looked resolute, unbroken. Just the way I told her to be.

“And this is Lisa Trammel, the defendant. Ms. Freeman wants you to believe she committed this crime. She is five foot three in height, weighs a hundred nine pounds soaking wet and is a schoolteacher. Thank you, Lisa. You can sit down now.”

Trammel took her seat and I turned back to the jury, keeping my eyes moving from face to face as I spoke.

“We agree with Ms. Freeman that this crime was brutal and violent and cold-blooded. No one should have taken Mitchell Bondurant’s life and whoever did should be brought to justice. But there should never be a rush to judgment. And that’s what the evidence will prove happened here. The investigators on this case saw the little picture and the easy fit. They missed the big picture. They missed the real murderer.”

From behind me I heard Freeman’s voice.

“Your Honor, can we please approach for a sidebar?”

Perry frowned but then signaled us up. I followed Freeman to the side of the bench, already formulating my response to what I knew she was going to object to. The judge flipped on a sound distortion fan so the jurors wouldn’t hear anything they shouldn’t and we huddled at the side of the bench.

“Judge,” Freeman began, “I hate interrupting an opening statement but this doesn’t sound like an opening statement. Is defense counsel going to hit us with the facts his defense case will prove and the evidence he has, or is he just going to talk in generalities about some mysterious killer that everybody else missed?”

The judge looked at me for a response. I looked at my watch.

“Judge, I object to the objection. I am less than five minutes into a thirty-minute allotment and she’s already objecting because I haven’t put anything on the board? Come on, Judge, she’s trying to show me up in front of the jury and I request that you take a continuing objection from her and not allow her to interrupt again.”

“I think he’s right, Ms. Freeman,” the judge said. “Way too early to object. I’ll carry it now as a running objection and will step in myself if I need to. You go back to the prosecution table and sit tight.”

He flipped the fan off and rolled his chair back to the center of the bench. Freeman and I returned to our positions.

“As I was saying before being interrupted, there is a big picture to this case and the defense is going to show it to you. The prosecution would like you to believe that this is a simple case of vengeance. But murder is never simple and if you look for shortcuts in an investigation or a prosecution then you are going to miss things. Including a killer. Lisa Trammel did not even know Mitchell Bondurant. Had never met him before. She had no motive to kill him because the motive the prosecution will tell you about was false. They’ll say she killed Mitchell Bondurant because he was going to take away her house. The truth was, he wasn’t going to get the house and we will prove that. A motive is like a rudder on a boat. You take it away and the boat moves at the whim of the wind. And that’s what the prosecution’s case is. A lot of wind.”

I put my hands in my pockets and looked down at my feet. I counted to three in my head and when I looked up I was staring directly at Furlong.

“What this case is really about is money. It’s about the epidemic of foreclosure that has swept across our country. This was not a simple act of vengeance. This was the cold and calculated murder of a man who was threatening to expose the corruption of our banks and their agents of foreclosure. This is about money and those who have it and will not part with it at any cost-even murder.”

I paused again, shifting my stance and moving my eyes across the whole panel. They came to a female juror named Esther Marks and held. I knew she was a single mother who worked as an office manager in the garment district. She probably made less than the men doing the same job and I had her pegged as someone who would be sympathetic to my client.

“Lisa Trammel was set up for a murder she did not commit. She was the patsy. The fall guy. She protested the bank’s harsh and fraudulent foreclosure practices. She fought against them and for that she was kept away with a restraining order. The very things that made her a suspect to lazy investigators were what made her a perfect patsy. And we’re going to prove it to you.”

All their eyes were on me. I’d captured their complete attention.

“The state’s evidence won’t stand,” I said. “Piece by piece we’ll knock it down. The measure by which you are charged to make your decision here is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I urge you to pay close attention and to think for yourself. You do that and I guarantee that you’ll have more reasonable doubt than you’ll know what to do with. And you’ll be left with only one question. Why? Why was this woman charged with this crime? Why was she put through this?”

One final pause and then I nodded and thanked them for their attention. I quickly moved back to my seat and sat down. Lisa reached over and put her hand on my arm as if to thank me for standing for her. It was one of our choreographed moves. I knew it was an act but it still felt good.

The judge called for a fifteen-minute break before the start of testimony. As the courtroom emptied, I stayed in place at the defense table. My opener had continued my sense of momentum. The prosecution would hold sway over the next few days but Freeman was now on notice that I was coming after her.

“Thank you, Mickey,” Lisa Trammel said as she got up to go out into the hall with Herb Dahl, who had come through the gate to collect her.

I looked at him and then I looked at her.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said.

Twenty-two

After the break, Andrea Freeman came out of the gate with what I called the prosecution’s scene-setter witnesses. Their testimony was often dramatic but did not get to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. They were merely called as part of the architecture of the state’s case, to set the stage for the evidence that would come later.

The trial’s first witness was a bank receptionist named Riki Sanchez. She was the woman who found the victim’s body in the parking garage. Her value was in helping to set a time of death and in bringing the shock of murder to the everyday people on the jury.

Sanchez commuted to work from the Santa Clarita Valley and therefore had a morning routine that she strictly adhered to. She testified that she regularly pulled into the bank garage at 8:45 A.M., which gave her ten minutes to park, get to the employee entrance and be at her desk by 8:55 to prepare for the bank’s doors to open to the public at 9.

She testified that on the day of the murder she had followed her routine and found an unassigned parking slot approximately ten spaces from Mitchell Bondurant’s assigned space. After leaving and locking her car, she walked toward the bridge that connected the garage to the bank building. It was then that she discovered the body. She first saw the spilled coffee, then the open briefcase on the ground, and finally Mitchell Bondurant lying facedown and bloodied.

Sanchez knelt next to the body and checked for signs of life, then pulled her cell phone out of her purse and called 911.

It’s rare to score defense points off a scene-setter witness. Their testimony is usually very prescribed and rarely contributes to the question of guilt or innocence. Still, you never know. On cross-examination I stood and threw a few questions at Sanchez just to see what might pop loose.

“Now, Ms. Sanchez, you described your very precise morning routine here but there really is no routine once you drive into the bank’s garage, correct?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean that you do not have an assigned parking space so there is no routine when it comes to that. You get into the garage and have to start hunting for a space, right?”

“Well, sort of. The bank isn’t open yet so there are always plenty of spaces. I usually go up to the second floor and park in the area where I did that day.”

“All right. In the past, had you walked into work with Mr. Bondurant?”

“No, he was usually in earlier than me.”

“Now on the day that you found Mr. Bondurant’s body, where was it that you saw the defendant, Lisa Trammel, in the garage?”

She paused as if it was a trick question. It was.

“I don’t-I mean, I didn’t see her.”

“Thank you, Ms. Sanchez.”

Next up on the stand was the 911 operator who took the 8:52 A.M. emergency call from Sanchez. Her name was LeShonda Gaines and her testimony was used primarily to introduce the tape of the call from Sanchez. Playing the tape was an overly dramatic and unneeded maneuver but the judge had allowed it over a pretrial objection from me. Freeman played forty seconds of the tape after handing out transcripts to the jurors as well as to the judge and the defense.

GAINES: Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?

SANCHEZ: There’s a man here. I think he’s dead! He’s all bloody and he won’t move.

GAINES: What is your name, ma’am?

SANCHEZ: Riki Sanchez. I’m in the parking garage at WestLand National in Sherman Oaks.

(pause)

GAINES: Is that the Ventura Boulevard location?

SANCHEZ: Yes, are you sending someone?

GAINES: Police and paramedics have been dispatched.

SANCHEZ: I think he’s already dead. There’s a lot of blood.

GAINES: Do you know who he is?

SANCHEZ: I think it’s Mr. Bondurant but I’m not sure. Do you want me to turn him over?

GAINES: No, just wait for the police. Are you in any danger, Ms. Sanchez?

(pause)

SANCHEZ: Uh, I don’t think so. I don’t see anybody around.

GAINES: Okay, wait for the police and keep this line open.

I didn’t bother asking any questions on cross-examination. There was nothing to be gained for the defense.

Freeman threw her first curveball after Gaines was excused. I expected her to go with the first responding officer next. Have him testify about arriving and securing the scene, and get the crime scene photos to the jury. But instead she called Margo Schafer, the eyewitness who put Trammel close to the crime scene. I immediately saw the strategy Freeman was employing. Instead of sending the jury to lunch with crime scene photos in their minds, send them out with the first ah-ha moment of the trial. The first piece of testimony that connected Trammel to the crime.

It was a good plan but Freeman didn’t know what I knew about her witness. I just hoped I got to her before lunch.

Schafer was a petite woman who looked nervous and pale as she took the witness stand. She had to pull the stemmed microphone down from the position Gaines had left it in.

Under direct questioning, Freeman drew from Schafer that she was a bank teller who had returned to work four years earlier after raising a family. She had no corporate aspirations. She just enjoyed the responsibility that came with the job and the interaction with the public.

After a few more personal questions designed to create a rapport between Schafer and the jury, Freeman moved on to the meat of her testimony, asking the witness about the morning of the murder.

“I was running late,” Schafer said. “I am supposed to be in place at my window at nine. I first go to get my bank out of the vault and sign it out. So usually I am there by quarter of. But on that day I hit traffic on Ventura Boulevard because of an accident and was very late.”

“Do you remember exactly how late, Ms. Schafer?” Freeman asked.

“Yes, ten minutes exactly. I kept looking at the clock on the dashboard. I was running exactly ten minutes behind schedule.”

“Okay, and when you got close to the bank did you see anything out of the ordinary or that caused you concern?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what was that?”

“I saw Lisa Trammel on the sidewalk walking away from the bank.”

I stood and objected, saying that the witness would have no idea where the person she claimed was Trammel was walking from. The judge agreed and sustained.

“What direction was Ms. Trammel walking in?” Freeman asked.

“East.”

“And where was she in relation to the bank?”

“She was a half a block east of the bank, also walking east.”

“So she was walking in a direction away from the bank, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“And how close were you when you saw her?”

“I was going west on Ventura and was in the left lane so that I could move into the turning lane to turn into the entrance to the bank’s garage. So she was three lanes across from me.”

“You had your eyes on the road, though, didn’t you?”

“No, I was stopped at a traffic light when I first saw her.”

“So was she at a right angle to you when you saw her?”

“Yes, directly across the street from me.”

“And how was it that you knew this woman to be the defendant, Lisa Trammel?”

“Because her photo is posted in the employee lounge and in the vault. Plus her photo was shown to bank employees about three months before.”

“Why was that done?”

“Because the bank had been granted a restraining order prohibiting her from coming within a hundred feet of the bank. We were shown her photo and told to immediately report to our supervisors any sighting of her on bank property.”

“Can you tell the jury what time it was when you saw Lisa Trammel walking east on the sidewalk?”

“Yes, I know exactly what time it was because I was running late. It was eight fifty-five.”

“So at eight fifty-five, Lisa Trammel was walking east in a direction that was moving away from the bank, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

Freeman asked a few more questions designed to elicit answers that indicated that Lisa Trammel was only a half block from the bank within a few minutes of the 911 call reporting the murder. She finally finished with the witness at 11:30 and the judge asked if I wanted to take an early lunch and begin my cross-examination afterward.

“Judge, I think it’s only going to take me a half hour to handle this. I’d rather go now. I’m ready.”

“Very well then, Mr. Haller. Proceed.”

I stood up and went to the lectern located between the prosecution table and the jury box. I carried a legal pad with me and two display boards. I held these so that their displays faced each other and could not be seen. I leaned them against the side of the lectern.

“Good morning, Ms. Schafer.”

“Good morning.”

“You mentioned in your testimony that you were running late because of a traffic accident, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did you happen to come upon the accident site while making the commute?”

“Yes, it was just west of Van Nuys Boulevard. Once I got past it, I started to move smoothly.”

“Which side of Ventura was it on?”

“That was the thing. It was in the eastbound lanes but everybody on my side had to slow down to gawk.”

I made a note on my legal pad and changed direction.

“Ms. Schafer, I noticed that the prosecutor forgot to ask you if Ms. Trammel was carrying a hammer when you saw her. You didn’t see anything like that, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. But she was carrying a large shopping bag that was more than big enough for a hammer.”

This was the first I had heard about a shopping bag. It had not been mentioned in the discovery materials. Schafer, the ever-helpful witness, was introducing new material. Or so I thought.

“A shopping bag? Did you happen to mention this shopping bag during any of your interviews with the police or the prosecutor on this case?”

Schafer gave it some thought.

“I’m not sure. I may not have.”

“So as far as you remember, the police didn’t even ask if the defendant was carrying anything.”

“I think that’s correct.”

I didn’t know what that meant or if it meant anything at all. But I decided to stay away from the shopping bag for the moment and to steer once again in a new direction. You never wanted the witness to know where you were going.

“Now, Ms. Schafer, when you testified just a few minutes ago that you were three lanes from the sidewalk where you supposedly saw the defendant, you miscounted, didn’t you?”

The second abrupt change of subject matter and the question gave her a momentary pause.

“Uh… no, I did not.”

“Well, what cross street were you at when you saw her?”

“Cedros Avenue.”

“There are two lanes of eastbound traffic on Ventura there, aren’t there?”

“Yes.”

“And then you have a turn lane onto Cedros, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. That makes three.”

“What about the lane of curbside parking?”

She made an Oh, come on face.

“That’s not a real lane.”

“Well, it’s space between you and the woman you claim was Lisa Trammel, isn’t it?”

“If you say so. I think that’s being picky.”

“Really? I think it’s just being accurate, wouldn’t you say?”

“I believe most people would say there were three lanes of traffic between me and her.”

“Well, the parking zone, let’s call it, is at least a car-length wide and actually wider, correct?”

“Okay, if you want to nitpick. Call it a fourth lane. My mistake.”

It was a grudging if not bitter concession and I was sure that the jury was seeing who the real nitpicker was.

“So then you are now saying that when you supposedly saw Ms. Trammel you would’ve been about four lanes away from her, not the three you previously testified to, correct?”

“Correct. I said, my mistake.”

I made a notation on my legal pad that really didn’t mean anything but that I hoped would look to the jurors as though I was keeping some sort of score. I then reached down to my display boards, separated them and chose one.

“Your Honor, I would like to display for the witness a photograph of the location we are talking about here.”

“Has the prosecution seen it?”

“Judge, it was contained on the exhibits CD turned over in discovery. I did not specifically provide the board to Ms. Freeman and she did not ask to see it.”

Freeman made no objection and the judge told me to carry on, calling the first board Defense Exhibit 1A. I set up a folding easel in an open area between the jury box and the witness stand. The prosecution planned to use the overhead screens to present exhibits and later I would as well, but for this demonstration I wanted to go the old-fashioned way. I put the display board up and then returned to the lectern.

“Ms. Schafer, do you recognize the photograph I have put on the easel?”

It was a thirty-by-fifty-inch aerial view of the two-block stretch of Ventura Boulevard in question. Bullocks had gotten it off Google Earth and all it cost us was the price of the blowup and the mounting on the board.

“Yes. It looks like a top view of Ventura Boulevard and you can see the bank and also the intersection with Cedros Avenue about a block away.”

“Yes, an aerial view. Can you please step down and use the marker on the easel’s ledge to circle the spot where you believe you saw Lisa Trammel?”

Schafer looked at the judge as if to seek permission. He nodded his approval and she stepped down. She took the black marker from the ledge and circled an area on the sidewalk, a half block from the bank’s entrance.

“Thank you, Ms. Schafer. Can you now mark for the jury where your car was located when you looked out the window and supposedly saw Lisa Trammel?”

She marked a spot in the middle lane that appeared to be at least three car lengths from the crosswalk.

“Thank you, Ms. Schafer. You can return to the witness stand now.”

Schafer put the marker back on the ledge and moved back to her seat.

“So how many cars were in front of you at the light, would you say?”

“At least two. Maybe three.”

“What about the turn lane to your immediate left, were there any cars there waiting to turn?”

She was ready for that one and wasn’t going to let me trick her.

“No, I had a clear view of the sidewalk.”

“So it was rush hour and you’re telling us there was nobody waiting in the turn lane to get to work.”

“Not next to me but I was two or three cars back. There could’ve been someone waiting to turn, just not next to me.”

I asked the judge if I could put the second board, Defense Exhibit 1B, on the easel now and he told me to go ahead. This was another photo blowup, but it was from ground level. It was a photo that Cisco had taken from a car window while sitting at the traffic light in the middle westbound lane of Ventura Boulevard at Cedros Avenue at 8:55 A.M. on a Monday a month after the murder. There was a time imprint on the bottom right corner of the image.

Back at the lectern, I asked Schafer to describe what she saw.

“It’s a photo of that same block, from the ground. There’s Danny’s Deli. We go there sometimes at lunch.”

“Yes, and do you know if Danny’s is open for breakfast?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Have you ever been there for breakfast?”

Freeman stood to object.

“Judge, I hardly see what this has to do with the witness’s testimony or the elements of this trial.”

Perry looked at me.

“If Your Honor would give me a moment the relevance will become quite clear.”

“Carry on, but make it quick.”

I refocused on Schafer.

“Have you had occasion to have breakfast at Danny’s, Ms. Schafer?”

“No, not breakfast.”

“But you do know that it is popular at breakfast, correct?”

“I really wouldn’t know.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted but it was helpful. It was the first time Schafer was being clearly evasive, purposely avoiding the obvious confession. Jurors who picked up on this would begin to see someone who wasn’t being an impartial witness, but a woman who refused to stray from the prosecution’s line.

“Then let me ask you this. What other businesses on this block are open before nine o’clock in the morning?”

“Mostly there are stores that wouldn’t be open. You can see the signs in the picture.”

“Then what do you think accounts for the fact that every metered space in this photo is taken? Would it be customers of the deli?”

Freeman objected again, saying the witness was hardly qualified to answer the question. The judge agreed and sustained the objection, telling me to move on.

“On the Monday morning at eight fifty-five when you claim you saw Ms. Trammel from four lanes away, do you recall how many cars were parked in front of the deli and along the curb?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You testified just a few moments ago, and I can have it read back to you if you wish, that you had a clear view of Lisa Trammel. Is it your testimony that there were no vehicles in the parking lane?”

“There may have been some cars there but I saw her clearly.”

“What about the traffic lanes, they were clear, too?”

“Yes. I could see her.”

“You said you were running late because westbound traffic was moving very slowly because of an accident, correct?”

“Yes.”

“An accident in the eastbound lanes, right?”

“Yes.”

“So how far was traffic backed up in the eastbound lanes if the westbound lanes were backed up enough to make you ten minutes late for work?”

“I don’t really recall.”

Perfect answer. For me. A dissembling witness always scores points for the D.

“Isn’t it true, Ms. Schafer, that you had to look across two lanes of backed-up traffic, plus a full parking lane, in order to see the defendant on the sidewalk?”

“All I know is that I saw her. She was there.”

“And she was even carrying a big shopping bag, you say, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“What kind of shopping bag?”

“The kind with handles, the kind you get in a department store.”

“What color was it?”

“It was red.”

“And could you tell if it was full or empty?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“And she carried this down at her side or in front of her?”

“Down at her side. With one hand.”

“You seem to have a good sense of this bag. Were you looking at the bag or the face of the woman who was carrying it?”

“I had time to look at both.”

I shook my head as I looked at my notes.

“Ms. Schafer, do you know how tall Ms. Trammel is?”

I turned to my client and signaled her to stand up. I probably should have asked the judge’s permission first but I was on a roll and didn’t want to hit any speed bumps. Perry said nothing.

“I have no idea,” Schafer said.

“Would it surprise you to know she is only five foot three?”

I nodded to Lisa and she sat back down.

“No, I don’t think that would surprise me.”

“Five foot three and you still picked her out across four lanes packed with cars.”

Freeman objected as I knew she would. Perry sustained the objection but I didn’t need an answer for the point to be made. I checked my watch and saw it was two minutes before noon. I fired my final torpedo.

“Ms. Schafer, can you look at the photograph and point to where you see the defendant on the sidewalk?”

All eyes moved to the photo blowup. Because of the line of cars in the parking lane, the pedestrians on the sidewalk were unidentifiable in the image. Freeman leapt to her feet and objected, claiming the defense was trying to sandbag the witness and the court. Perry called us to a sidebar. When we got there, he had stern words for me.

“Mr. Haller, yes or no, is the defendant in the photo?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Then you’re engaged in attempting to trick the witness. That will not happen in my courtroom. Take your photo down.”

“Judge, I’m not trying to trick anyone. She could simply say that the defendant is not in the photo. But she clearly can’t see the pedestrians on the other side of the traffic and I am trying to make that clear to-”

“I don’t care what you’re trying to do. Take your photo down and if you try another move like that you’re going to find yourself in a contempt hearing at the close of business. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your Honor,” Freeman said. “The jury should be told that the defendant is not in the photo.”

“I agree. Go back.”

On my way back to the lectern I took the display boards off the easel.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge said. “Let it be noted that the defendant was not in the photo that defense counsel put on display.”

The jury instruction was fine with me. I still made my point. The fact that the jurors had to be told that Lisa was not in the photo underlined how hard it would have been to see and identify someone on the sidewalk.

The judge told me to continue my cross-examination and I leaned to the microphone.

“No further questions.”

I sat down and put the photo boards on the floor under the table. They had served me well. I took the hit from the judge but it was worth it. It’s always worth it if you make your point.

Twenty-three

Lisa Trammel was ecstatic about my cross-examination of Margo Schafer. Even Herb Dahl couldn’t hold back from congratulating me as the trial was recessed for lunch. I counseled them not to get overly excited. It was early in the trial and eyewitnesses like Schafer were usually the easiest to handle and damage on the stand. There were still tough witnesses and tougher days ahead. They could count on that.

“I don’t care,” Lisa said. “You were marvelous and that lying bitch got just what she deserved.”

The invective was dripping with hate and it made me pause for a moment before responding.

“The prosecutor is still going to have a chance to rehabilitate her on redirect after lunch.”

“And then you can destroy her again on re-cross.”

“Well… I don’t know about destroying anybody. That’s not what-”

“Can you join us for lunch, Mickey?”

She punctuated the request by swinging her arm around Dahl, clearly showing what I had been assuming, that they were together in more than just business.

“There is nothing good around here,” she continued. “We’re going down to Ventura Boulevard to find a place. We might even try Danny’s Deli.”

“Thank you but no. I need to get back to the office and meet with my crew. They’re not here because they can’t be. They’re working and I need to check in.”

Lisa gave me a look that told me she didn’t believe me. It didn’t much matter to me. I represented her in court. It didn’t mean I had to eat with her and the man I was still sure was scheming to rip her off, no matter the romantic entanglement-if it even was romantic. I headed out on my own and walked back to my office in the Victory Building.

Lorna had already gone to the competing and far better Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City and picked up turkey and coleslaw sandwiches. I ate at my desk while telling Cisco and Bullocks what had happened that morning in court. Despite my reserve with my client, I felt pretty good about my cross with Schafer. I thanked Bullocks for the display board, which I believed had impressed the jury. Nothing like a visual aid to help throw doubt on a supposed eyewitness.

When I finished recounting the trial testimony I asked them what they had been working on. Cisco said he was still reviewing the police investigation, looking for errors and assumptions made by the detectives that could be turned against Kurlen during cross-examination.

“Good, I need all the ammo I can get,” I said. “Bullocks, anything from your end?”

“I pretty much spent the morning with the foreclosure file. I want to be bulletproof when it’s my turn.”

“Okay, good, but you’ve got some time there. My guess is the defense won’t start until next week. Freeman looks like she’s trying to keep a certain rhythm and momentum going, but she’s got a lot of witnesses on her list and it doesn’t look like a lot of smoke.”

Often prosecutors and defense attorneys pad their witness lists to keep the other side guessing as to who would actually get called and who was important in terms of testimony. It didn’t appear to me that Freeman had engaged in this sort of subterfuge. Her list was lean and every name on it had something to bring to the case.

I dipped my sandwich into some Thousand Island dressing that had dripped onto the paper wrapper. Aronson pointed to one of the display boards I had brought back with me from court. It was the ground-level shot I had tried to fool Margo Schafer with.

“Wasn’t that risky? What if Freeman hadn’t objected?”

“I knew she would. And if she didn’t the judge would have. They don’t like you trying to trick witnesses like that.”

“Yeah, but then the jury knows you’re lying.”

“I wasn’t lying. I asked the witness a question. Could she point out where Lisa was in the photo? I didn’t say Lisa was in the photo. If she had been given the opportunity to answer, the answer would have been no. That’s all.”

Aronson frowned.

“Remember what I said, Bullocks. Don’t grow a conscience. We’re playing hardball here. I played Freeman and she’s trying to play me. Maybe she already has played me in some way and I don’t even know it. I took a risk and got a little hand-slap from the judge. But every person on that jury was looking at that photo while we were at sidebar and every one of them was thinking how hard it would have been for Margo Schafer to see what she claimed she saw. That’s how it works. It’s cold and calculating. Sometimes you win a point but most times you don’t.”

“I know,” she said dismissively. “It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“No, you don’t.”

Twenty-four

Freeman surprised me after lunch by not calling Margo Schafer back to the stand to try to repair the damage I had inflicted on cross. My guess was that she had something else planned for later that would help salvage the Schafer testimony. Instead, she called LAPD Sergeant David Covington, who was the first officer to respond to WestLand National after the 911 call from Riki Sanchez was logged.

Covington was a seasoned veteran and a solid witness for the prosecution. In the precise if not droll delivery of someone who has seen more dead bodies and testified about them more times than he can remember, he described arriving on scene and determining that the victim was dead by means of foul play. He then described closing access to the entire garage, corralling Riki Sanchez and other possible witnesses, and cordoning off the second-floor area where the body was located.

Through Covington the crime scene photographs were introduced and displayed in all their bloody glory on the two overhead flat screens. These more than any testimony from Covington established the crime of murder, a requirement for conviction.

I’d had marginal success during a pretrial skirmish involving the crime scene photos. I had objected to their introduction, particularly the prosecution’s plan to display three-by-three blowups on easels in front of the jury box. I had argued that that they were prejudicial to my client. Photos of real victims of murder are always shocking and provoke strong emotions. It is human nature to want to harshly punish those responsible. Photos can easily turn a jury against the accused, regardless of what evidence connects the accused to the crime. Perry tried to split the baby. He limited the number of photos the prosecution could introduce to four and told Freeman she had to use the overhead screens, thus limiting the size of the photos. I had won a few points but knew that the judge’s order would not limit the visceral response of the jurors. It was still a victory for the prosecution.

Freeman chose the four photos that showed the most blood and the pitiful angle at which Bondurant had dropped face-first onto the concrete floor of the garage.

On cross-examination I zeroed in on one photo and tried to get the jury thinking about something other than avenging the dead. The best way to do that is to plant questions. If they are left with questions but no answers then I have done my job on cross.

With the judge’s permission, I used the projection remote to eliminate three of the photos on the screens, leaving only one remaining.

“Sergeant Covington, I want to draw your attention to the photo I’ve left on display. I believe it is marked People’s Exhibit Three. Can you tell me what that is in the foreground of the photo?”

“Yes, that is an open briefcase.”

“Okay, and is that how you found it when you arrived at the scene?”

“Yes, it is.”

“It was sitting there open like that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, and did you make any inquiry of any witness or anyone else to determine if someone had opened it after the victim was discovered?”

“I asked the woman who had called nine-one-one if she had opened it and she said she had not. That was the extent of my inquiry on it. I left it for the detectives.”

“Okay, and you’ve testified here that you have been working patrol for your entire career of twenty-two years, correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“You have responded to a lot of nine-one-one calls?”

“Yes.”

“What did seeing that open briefcase mean to you?”

“Nothing really. It was just part of the crime scene.”

“Did your experience cause you to think there may have been a robbery involved in this murder?”

“Not really. I’m not a detective.”

“If robbery was not a motive in this crime, why would the killer take the time to open the victim’s briefcase?”

Freeman objected before Covington could answer. She said that the question was beyond the witness’s scope of expertise and experience.

“Sergeant Covington has spent his entire career working patrol. He is not a detective. He has never investigated a robbery.”

The judge nodded.

“I tend to agree with Ms. Freeman, Mr. Haller.”

“Your Honor, Sergeant Covington may not have ever been a detective but I think it is safe to say he has responded to robbery calls and conducted preliminary investigations. I think he can certainly answer a question about his initial impressions of the crime scene.”

“I’m still going to sustain the objection. Ask your next question.”

Defeated on that point, I looked down at the notes I had previously worked up for Covington. I felt confident that I had firmly planted the question about robbery and the motive for the murder in the jurors’ minds, but I didn’t want to leave it at that. I decided to try a bluff.

“Sergeant, after you arrived in response to the nine-one-one call and surveyed the crime scene, did you call for investigators and medical examiners and crime scene experts?”

“Yes, I contacted the com center, confirming that we had a homicide and requesting the usual response of investigators from Van Nuys Division.”

“And you maintained control of the crime scene until those people arrived?”

“Yes, that is how it works. I transferred custody of the scene to the investigators. Detective Kurlen to be exact.”

“Okay, and at any time during this process, did you discuss with Kurlen or any other law enforcement officer the possibility that the murder had come out of a robbery attempt?”

“No, I did not.”

“Are you sure, Sergeant?”

“Quite sure.”

I wrote something on my legal pad. It was a meaningless scribble done for the jury.

“I have no further questions.”

Covington was excused and one of the paramedics who had responded to the nine-one-one call testified about confirming that the victim was dead at the scene. He was on and off the stand in five minutes, as Freeman was interested only in confirming death and I had nothing to gain from cross-examination.

Next up was the victim’s brother, Nathan Bondurant. He was used to confirm identification of the victim, another requirement for conviction. Freeman also used him much as she did the crime scene photos, to stir emotions in the jury. He tearfully described being taken by detectives to the medical examiner’s office where he identified his younger brother’s body. Freeman asked him when he had last seen his brother alive and his answer brought another torrent of tears as he described attending a Lakers basketball game together just a week before the murder.

It’s a rule of thumb to leave a crying man alone. There usually isn’t anything to be gained from cross-examining a victim’s loved one, but Freeman had opened a door and I decided to step through it. The risk I ran was that jurors might view me as cruel if I went too far in questioning the bereaved family member.

“Mr. Bondurant, I am sorry for your family’s loss. I have only a few quick questions. You mentioned that you and your brother went to the Lakers game a week before this horrible crime occurred. What did you talk about during that outing?”

“Uh, we talked about a lot of things. It would be hard to remember everything right now.”

“Only sports and Lakers?”

“No, of course not. We were brothers. We talked about a lot of things. He asked about my kids. I asked if he was seeing anyone. Things like that.”

“Was he seeing anyone?”

“No, not at the time. He said he was too busy with work.”

“What else did he say about work?”

“He just said it was busy. He was in charge of home loans and it was a bad time. A lot of foreclosures and all of that sort of stuff. He didn’t really get into it.”

“Did he talk about his own real estate holdings and what was happening with them?”

Freeman objected on relevance. I asked for a sidebar and it was granted. At the bench I argued that I had already put the jury on notice that I would not only be debunking the state’s case but putting forward a defense case that included evidence of an alternate theory of the crime.

“This is that alternate theory, Judge. That Bondurant was in trouble financially and his efforts to get out of the hole brought about his demise. I should be given the latitude to pursue this with any witness the prosecution puts before the jury.”

“Judge,” Freeman countered, “just because counsel says something is relevant doesn’t mean it is. The victim’s brother has no direct knowledge of Mitchell Bondurant’s financial or investment situation.”

“If that’s the case, Judge, Nathan Bondurant can say so and I’ll move on.”

“Very well, overruled. Ask your question, Mr. Haller.”

Back at the lectern I asked the witness the question again.

“He spoke very briefly and without going into detail about it,” the witness replied.

“What exactly did he say?”

“He just said that he was upside-down on his investment properties. He didn’t say how many that was or how much was involved. That was all he said.”

“What did that mean to you when he said he was upside-down?”

“That he owed more on his properties than they were worth.”

“Did he say he was trying to sell them?”

“He said he couldn’t sell them without taking a bath.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bondurant. I have no further questions.”

Freeman completed her tour of minor players by calling a witness named Gladys Pickett, who identified herself on the stand as the head teller at WestLand National’s main branch in Sherman Oaks. After eliciting from Pickett what her duties were at the bank Freeman got right down to the salient testimony.

“As the person in charge of the tellers at the bank, you have how many people reporting to you, Mrs. Pickett?”

“About forty altogether.”

“Is one of those people a teller named Margo Schafer?”

“Yes, Margo is one of my tellers.”

“I would like to draw your attention back to the morning of Mitchell Bondurant’s murder. Did Margo Schafer come to you with a particular concern?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Can you please tell the jury what Ms. Schafer was concerned about?”

“She came to me and reported that she had seen Lisa Trammel just a half block from the bank, walking down the sidewalk and moving in a direction away from the bank.”

“Why was this a concern?”

“Well, we have Lisa Trammel’s photograph up in the employees’ lounge and inside our vault and we have been instructed to report any sighting of Lisa Trammel to our supervisors.”

“Do you know why this instruction was put in place?”

“Yes, the bank has a restraining order keeping her away from the property.”

“Can you tell the jury what time it was when Margo Schafer told you about seeing Ms. Trammel near the bank?”

“Yes, it was as soon as she came into work that day. It was the first thing she did.”

“Now do you keep a record of when tellers arrive at work?”

“I keep a checkout list in the vault on which the time is posted.”

“This is when tellers come into the vault and get their money boxes to take to their stations?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“On the day in question, at what time do you show Margo Schafer’s name being checked off?”

“It was nine oh-nine. She was the last one checked in. She was late.”

“And would that have been when she told you about seeing Lisa Trammel?”

“Yes, precisely.”

“Now, at that time, did you know that Mitchell Bondurant had been murdered in the bank’s garage?”

“No, no one knew that yet because Riki Sanchez had stayed in the garage until the police came and then they kept her there for questioning. We didn’t know what was going on.”

“So the idea that Margo Schafer would have concocted the story about seeing Lisa Trammel after hearing about Mr. Bondurant’s murder is not possible, correct?”

“Correct. She told me about seeing her before she or I or anybody in the bank knew about Mr. Bondurant.”

“So at what point did you learn of Mr. Bondurant’s murder in the garage and offer the information you had received from Margo Schafer?”

“That was about a half hour later. That’s when we heard and I obviously thought the police needed to know that this woman had been seen nearby.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Pickett. I have no further questions.”

It was Freeman’s biggest hit so far. Pickett had successfully undone much of what I had been able to accomplish with Schafer on the stand. Now I had to decide whether to leave it alone or risk making things worse.

I decided to cut my losses and move on. They say never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. The rule applied here. Pickett had refused to talk to my investigator. Freeman could be setting a trap, leaving her up there with one more piece of information I might stumble into with an ill-advised question.

“I have no questions for this witness,” I said from my place at the defense table.

Judge Perry excused Pickett and called for the afternoon break of fifteen minutes. As people stood to leave the courtroom, my client leaned into me at the table.

“Why didn’t you go after her?” she whispered.

“Who? Pickett? I didn’t want to make it worse by asking the wrong thing.”

“Are you kidding me? You needed to destroy her like you did Schafer.”

“The difference was I had something to work with on Schafer. I didn’t have it on Pickett and going after somebody with nothing to go after her with is potential disaster. I left it alone.”

I could see anger darkening her eyes.

“Well, you should’ve gotten something on her.”

It came out as a hiss through what I believed were clenched teeth.

“Look, Lisa, I’m your attorney and I decide-”

“Never mind. I have to go.”

She stood up and hurried through the gate and toward the courtroom exit. I glanced over to Freeman to see if she had caught the display of attorney-client disagreement. She gave me a knowing smile, indicating she had.

I decided to go out into the hall to see why my client had so abruptly needed to leave. I stepped out and was immediately drawn by the cameras to one of the benches that ran along the hallway between courtroom doors. The focus was on Lisa, who was sitting on the bench hugging her son, Tyler. The boy looked extremely uncomfortable in the camera lights.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.

I saw Lisa’s sister standing on the periphery of the group and walked over.

“What is this, Jodie? She knows the judge ruled she can’t have the kid in court.”

“I know. He’s not going into the courtroom. He had a half day at school and she wanted me to bring him by. She thought if the media saw her with Ty that it might help things, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, the media’s got nothing to do with this. Don’t bring him back. I don’t care what she says, don’t bring him back.”

I looked around for Herb Dahl. This had to be his move and I wanted to deliver the same message to him. But there was no sign of the erstwhile Hollywood player. He had probably been smart enough to stay clear of me.

I headed back into the courtroom. I still had ten minutes of the break left and planned to use it brooding about working for a client I didn’t like and was beginning to despise.

Twenty-five

After the break Freeman moved on to what I call the hunter-gatherer stage of the prosecution’s case. The crime scene technicians. Their testimony would be the platform on which she would present Detective Howard Kurlen, the lead investigator.

The first hunter-gatherer was a coroner’s investigator named William Abbott who had responded to the crime scene and was charged with the body’s documentation and transport to the medical examiner’s office, where the autopsy would be conducted.

His testimony covered his observations of the crime scene, the head wounds sustained by the victim and the personal property found on the body. This included Bondurant’s wallet, watch, loose change and a money clip containing $183 in currency. There was also the receipt from the Joe’s Joe franchise that had helped investigators set the time of death.

Abbott, like Covington before him, was very matter-of-fact in his testimony. Being at the scene of a violent crime was routine for him. When it was my turn to ask the questions, I zeroed in on this.

“Mr. Abbott, how long have you been a coroner’s investigator?”

“I’m going on twenty-nine years now.”

“All with L.A. County?”

“That’s right.”

“How many murder scenes do you estimate you have been to in that time?”

“Oh, gee, probably a couple thousand. A lot.”

“I bet. And I assume many were scenes where great violence was involved.”

“That’s the nature of the beast.”

“What about this scene? You examined and photographed the wounds on the victim, correct?”

“Yes, I did. That is part of the protocol we follow before transporting the body.”

“You have a crime scene report in front of you that was admitted into evidence by pretrial agreement. Could you read the second paragraph of the summary to the jury?”

Abbott turned the page on his report and found the paragraph.

“ ‘There are three distinct impact wounds on the crown of the head noted for their violence and damage. Positioning of the body indicates immediate loss of consciousness before impact on the ground.’ Then in parentheses I have the word ‘overkill.’ ”

“Yes, I’m curious about that. What did you mean by putting ‘overkill’ in the summary?”

“Just that it looked to me like any one of these impacts would’ve done the job. The victim was unconscious and possibly even dead before he hit the ground. The first blow did that. This would indicate that two of the impacts came after he was facedown on the ground. It was overkill. Somebody was very angry at him is the way I was looking at it.”

Abbott probably thought he was smartly giving me the answer I most didn’t want to hear. Freeman, too. But they were wrong.

“So you are indicating in your summary that you detected there was some sort of emotional involvement in this murder, correct?”

“Yes, that is what I was thinking.”

“What kind of training do you have in terms of homicide investigation?”

“Well, I trained for six months before starting the job way back thirty years ago. And we have ongoing in-service training a couple of times a year. We’re taught the latest investigative techniques and so forth.”

“Is this specific to homicide investigation?”

“Not all of it but a lot of it is.”

“Isn’t it a basic tenet of homicide that a crime of overkill usually indicates that the victim knew his or her killer? That there was a personal relationship?”

“Uh…”

Freeman finally got it. She stood and objected, saying that Abbott was not a homicide investigator and the question called for expertise he did not have. I didn’t have to argue. The judge held his hand up to stop me from speaking and told Freeman that I had just walked Abbott down the path without objection from the state. The investigator had testified to his experience and training in the area of homicide without a peep from Freeman.

“You gambled, Ms. Freeman. You thought it was going to cut your way. You can’t back out now. The witness will answer the question.”

“Go ahead, Mr. Abbott,” I said.

Abbott stalled by asking for the question to be read to him by the court stenographer. He then had to be prompted again by the judge.

“There is that consideration,” he finally said.

“Consideration?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“When you have a crime of high violence it should be considered that the victim personally knew his attacker. His killer.”

“When you say crime of high violence, do you mean overkill?”

“That could be part of it, yes.”

“Thank you, Mr. Abbott. Now, what about other observations you made at the crime scene? Did you form any opinion in regard to the kind of power it took to make these three brutal strikes on the top of Mr. Bondurant’s head?”

Freeman objected again, stating that Abbott was not a medical examiner and did not have the expertise to answer the question. This time Perry sustained the objection, giving her a small victory.

I decided to take what I had gotten and be happy with it.

“No further questions,” I said.

Next up was Paul Roberts, who was the senior criminalist in the three-member LAPD crime scene unit that processed the scene. His testimony was less eventful than Abbott’s because Freeman kept him on a short leash. He spoke only of procedures and what he collected at the scene and processed later in the SID lab. On cross I was able to use the paucity of physical evidence to my client’s advantage.

“Can you tell the jury the locations of the fingerprints you collected from the scene that were later matched to the defendant?”

“There were none that we found.”

“Can you tell the jury what samples of blood collected at the scene came from the defendant?”

“There was none that we found.”

“Well, then what about hair and fiber evidence? Surely you connected the defendant to the crime scene through hair and fiber evidence, correct?”

“We did not.”

I took a few steps away from the lectern as if walking off my frustration and then came back.

“Mr. Haller,” the judge said. “Let’s skip the playacting.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Freeman said.

“I wasn’t addressing you, Ms. Freeman.”

I looked at the jury for a long moment before asking my next and final question.

“In summary, sir, did you and your team gather a single shred of evidence in that garage that connects Lisa Trammel to the crime scene?”

“In the garage? No, we didn’t.”

“Thank you, then I have nothing further.”

I knew that Freeman could hit back hard on redirect by asking Roberts about the hammer with Bondurant’s blood on it and the shoe with the same blood on it found in my client’s garage. He was part of the crime scene crews that handled both places. But I was guessing she wouldn’t do it. She had choreographed the delivery of her case to the last piece of evidence and to change things now would be to knock the case out of rhythm, threatening her momentum and the ultimate impact when all things came together. She was too good to risk that. She would take her lumps now, knowing that she would eventually deliver the knockout punch later in the trial.

“Ms. Freeman, redirect?” the judge asked, once I had returned to my seat.

“No, Your Honor. No redirect.”

“The witness may step down.”

I had Freeman’s witness list stapled to the inside flap of a case file on the table in front of me. I drew a line through the names Abbott and Roberts and scanned the names that were left. The first day of trial wasn’t even quite over and she had already put a sizable dent into the list. I scanned the remaining names and determined that Detective Kurlen was most likely the next witness up. But this presented a bit of a problem for the prosecutor. I checked my watch. It was 4:25 and court was scheduled to end at 5. If Freeman put Kurlen on the stand she would just be getting started when the judge recessed for the day. It was possible she could lead him toward a revelation that would be nice to have the jury considering overnight, but this might entail shuffling the delivery of his testimony and again I didn’t think Freeman would consider it a worthy trade.

I scanned the list again to see if she had a floater, a witness who could be dropped in anywhere in the prosecution’s case. I didn’t see one and looked across the aisle at the prosecutor, unsure what move she would make.

“Ms. Freeman,” the judge prompted. “Call your next witness, please.”

Freeman rose from her seat and addressed Perry.

“Your Honor, it is expected that the witness I planned to call next will be providing lengthy testimony on both direct and cross-examination. I would like to ask for the court’s indulgence and allow me to call the witness first thing in the morning so that the jury will not feel a disruption in testimony.”

The judge looked over Freeman’s head at the clock on the rear wall of the courtroom. He slowly shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, we’re not going to do that. We have more than a half hour of court time left and we are going to use it. Call your next witness, Ms. Freeman.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Freeman said. “The People call Gilbert Modesto.”

I had been wrong about the floater. Modesto was head of corporate security at WestLand National and Freeman must have believed his testimony could be dropped into the trial at any point and not be detrimental to momentum and flow.

After being sworn in and taking his seat on the stand, Modesto proceeded to outline his experience in law enforcement and his current duties at WestLand National. Freeman then brought the questioning around to his actions on the morning of Mitchell Bondurant’s slaying.

“When I heard it was Mitch, the first thing I did was pull the threat file to give to the police,” he said.

“What is the threat file?” Freeman asked.

“It’s a file we keep that contains every mailed or e-mailed threat to the bank or bank personnel. It also contains notes on any other kind of threat that comes in through phone or third party or the police. We have a protocol for weighing the severity of the threat and we have names that we flag and so forth.”

“How familiar are you personally with the threat file?”

“Very familiar. I study it. It’s my job.”

“How many names were in that file on the morning of Mitchell Bondurant’s murder?”

“I didn’t count but I would say a couple dozen.”

“And these were all considered legitimate threats to the bank and its employees?”

“No, our rule is that if we get a threat it goes into the file. Doesn’t matter how legitimate it is. It goes into the file. So most of them are not considered serious, just somebody blowing off steam or a little frustration.”

“In the file that morning, what name was on the top of the list in terms of seriousness of the threat?”

“The defendant, Lisa Trammel.”

Freeman paused for effect. I studied the jury. Almost all eyes looked toward my client.

“Why is that, Mr. Modesto? Did she make a specific threat against the bank or any bank employee?”

“No, she didn’t. But she was engaged in a foreclosure fight with the bank and had a history of protesting outside the bank until our lawyers got a temporary restraining order keeping her away. It was her actions that were perceived as a threat and it looks like we were right about that.”

I jumped up and objected, asking the judge to strike the end of Modesto’s answer as being inflammatory and prejudicial. The judge agreed and admonished Modesto to keep such opinions to himself.

“Do you know, Mr. Modesto,” Freeman said, “whether Lisa Trammel had made a direct threat against anyone at the bank, including Mitchell Bondurant?”

Rule number one was to turn all weaknesses into advantages. Freeman was asking my questions now, robbing me of the chance to inflect them with my own outrage.

“No, not specifically. But it was our feeling in terms of threat assessment that she was someone we should keep an eye out for.”

“Thank you, Mr. Modesto. Who did you give this file to within the LAPD?”

“Detective Kurlen, who was heading up the investigation. I went directly to him with it.”

“And did you have occasion to speak to Detective Kurlen again later in the day?”

“Well, we spoke a few times as the investigation was progressing. He had questions about the surveillance cameras in the garage and other things.”

“Was there a second time when you contacted him?”

“Yes, when it came to my attention that one of our employees, a teller, had reported to her supervisor that she believed she had seen Lisa Trammel either near or on the bank property that morning. I thought that was information the police needed to have so I called Detective Kurlen and set up an interview for him with the teller.”

“And was that Margo Schafer?”

“Yes, it was.”

Freeman ended her direct examination there and turned the witness over to me. I decided it would be best to get in and out, sow a few seeds and come back to harvest later.

“Mr. Modesto, as chief of corporate security at WestLand, did you have access to the foreclosure action the bank was taking against Lisa Trammel?”

Modesto emphatically shook his head.

“No, that was a legal case and as such I was not privy to it.”

“So when you gave Detective Kurlen that file with Lisa Trammel’s name at the top of the list, you wouldn’t have known if she was about to lose her house or not, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“You wouldn’t have known if the bank was in the process of backing off her foreclosure because it had employed a company engaged in fraudulent activities, am I-”

“Objection!” Freeman shrieked. “Assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Sustained,” Perry said. “Mr. Haller, be careful here.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Modesto, at the time you gave the threat file to Detective Kurlen, did you mention Lisa Trammel specifically or did you just hand him the file and let him go through it on his own?”

“I told him she was on the top of our list.”

“Did he ask you why?”

“I don’t really recall. I just remember telling him about her but I can’t say for sure whether that was volunteered by me or whether he asked me specifically.”

“And at the time you spoke to Detective Kurlen about Lisa Trammel as being a threat, you had no idea what the status of her foreclosure case was, correct?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“So Detective Kurlen didn’t have that information either, am I right?”

“I can’t speak for Detective Kurlen. You would have to ask him.”

“Don’t worry, I will. I have no further questions at this time.”

I checked the back wall as I returned to my seat. It was five minutes before five and I knew we were finished for the day. There was always so much that went into prepping for a trial. The end of the first day usually was accompanied by a wave of fatigue. I was just feeling it start to hit me.

The judge admonished the jurors to keep an open mind about what they had heard and seen during the day. He told them to avoid media reports on the trial and not to discuss the case among themselves or with others. He then sent them home.

My client went off with Herb Dahl, who had returned to the courthouse, and I followed Freeman through the gate.

“Nice start,” I said to her.

“Not bad yourself.”

“Well, we both know you get to pick off the low-hanging fruit at the beginning of a trial. Then it’s gone and it gets tough.”

“Yes, it’s going to get tough. Good luck, Haller.”

Once in the hallway we went our separate ways. Freeman down the stairs to the DA’s office and me to the elevator and then back to my office. It didn’t matter how tired I was. I still had work to do. Kurlen would likely be on the stand all day the next day. I was going to be ready.

Twenty-six

The People call Detective Howard Kurlen.”

Andrea Freeman turned from the prosecution table where she stood and smiled at the detective as he walked down the aisle, two impressively thick blue binders known as murder books under his arm. He came through the gate and headed toward the witness stand. He looked at ease. This was routine for him. He put the murder books down on the shelf in front of the witness chair and raised his hand to take the oath. He shot me a sideways look at that point. Outwardly, Kurlen looked cool, calm and collected, but we had done this dance before and he had to be wondering what I would be bringing this time.

Kurlen wore a sharply cut navy blue suit with a bright orange tie. Detectives always put on their best look to testify. Then I realized something. There was no gray in Kurlen’s hair. He was closing in on sixty and had no gray. He had dyed it for the TV cameras.

Vanity. I wondered if it was something I could use as an edge when it was my turn to ask him questions.

After Kurlen was sworn in, he took the witness seat and made himself comfortable. He’d probably be there the whole day and maybe longer. He poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher set up by the judge’s clerk, took a sip and looked at Freeman. He was ready to go.

“Good morning, Detective Kurlen. I would like to start this morning with you telling the jury a little bit about your experience and history.”

“I’d be glad to,” Kurlen said with a warm smile. “I am fifty-six years old and I joined the LAPD twenty-four years ago after spending ten years in the marines. I have been a homicide detective assigned to the Van Nuys Division for the past nine years. Before that I spent three years working homicides at the Foothill Division.”

“How many homicide investigations have you worked?”

“This case is my sixty-first homicide. I was a detective assigned to investigations of other crimes-robbery, burglary and auto theft-for six years before moving to homicide.”

Freeman was standing at the lectern. She flipped back a page on a legal pad, ready to move on to what mattered.

“Detective, let’s begin on the morning of the murder of Mitchell Bondurant. Can you walk us through the initial stages of the case?”

Smart move saying “us,” implying that the jury and prosecutor were part of the same team. I had no doubts about Freeman’s skills and she would be at her sharpest with her lead detective on the stand. She knew that if I could damage Kurlen, the whole thing might come tumbling down.

“I was at my desk at about nine fifteen when the detective lieutenant came to me and my partner, Detective Cynthia Longstreth, and said a homicide had occurred in the parking garage of the WestLand National headquarters on Ventura Boulevard. Detective Longstreth and I immediately rolled on it.”

“You went to the scene?”

“Yes, immediately. We arrived at nine thirty and took control of the scene.”

“What did that entail?”

“Well, the first priority is to preserve and collect the evidence from the crime scene. The patrol officers had already taped off the area and were keeping people away. Once we were satisfied that everything was covered there, we divvied up responsibilities. I left my partner in charge of overseeing the crime scene investigation and I would conduct preliminary interviews of the witnesses the patrol officers were holding for questioning.”

“Detective Longstreth is a less experienced detective than you, correct?”

“Yes, she has been working homicide investigations with me for three years.”

“Why did you give the junior member of your team the very important job of overseeing the crime scene investigation?”

“I did it that way because I knew that the crime scene people and the coroner’s investigator who were on scene were all veterans with many years on the job and that Cynthia would be with good experienced hands.”

Freeman then led Kurlen through a series of questions about his interviews with the gathered witnesses, starting with Riki Sanchez, who had discovered the body and called 911. Kurlen was at ease on the stand and almost folksy in his delivery. The word that came to mind was charming.

I didn’t like charming but I had to bide my time. I knew it might be the end of the day before I got the chance to go after Kurlen. In the meantime I had to hope that by then the jury hadn’t fallen completely in love with him.

Freeman was smart enough to know you can’t keep a jury’s attention with charm alone. Eventually, she moved out of the scene-setting preliminaries and started to deliver the case against Lisa Trammel.

“Detective, was there a time during the investigation when the defendant’s name became known to you?”

“Yes, there was. The bank’s head of security came to the garage and asked to see me or my partner. I spoke to him briefly and then accompanied him to his office, where we reviewed video from the cameras located at the vehicle entrance and exits to the garage and in the elevators.”

“And did the review of those videos provide you with any investigative leads?”

“Nothing initially. I saw no one carrying a weapon or acting in a suspicious way before or after the approximate time of the murder. Nobody running from the garage. There was nothing suspicious about the vehicles going in and out. Of course, we would run every license plate. But there was nothing on video upon that initial viewing that helped us and, of course, the actual murder itself was not captured by any camera. That was another detail that the perpetrator of the crime seemed to be aware of.”

I rose and objected to Kurlen’s last line and the judge struck it from the record and told the jury to ignore it.

“Detective,” Freeman prompted, “I believe you were going to tell us how Lisa Trammel’s name first came up in the investigation.”

“Yes, right. Well, Mr. Modesto, the bank security chief, also provided me with a file. What he called the threat-assessment file. He turned that over to me and it contained several names, including the name of the defendant. Then, just a short while later, Mr. Modesto called me and informed me that Lisa Trammel, one of the people listed in the file, happened to be seen that morning in close proximity to the bank.”

“The defendant. And so this was how her name came up in the investigation, correct?”

“Correct.”

“What did you do with this information, Detective?”

“I first returned to the crime scene. I then sent my partner to interview the witness who said she saw Lisa Trammel near the bank. It was important that we confirm that sighting and get the details. I then began to go through the threat-assessment file to study all of the names and the details of the perceived threats.”

“And did you draw any immediate conclusions?”

“I didn’t believe there was any individual listed who would immediately jump to the level of a person of interest based solely on what was reported in the file about them and their disputes with the bank. Obviously, they would all have to be looked at carefully. However, Lisa Trammel did rise to the level of being a person of interest because I knew from Mr. Modesto that she had allegedly been seen in the vicinity of the bank at the time of the murder.”

“So Lisa Trammel’s time and geographic proximity to the murder was key to your thinking at this point?”

“Yes, because proximity could mean access. It appeared from the crime scene that someone had been waiting for the victim. He had an assigned parking space with his name on the wall. There was a large support column next to the space. Our initial theory was that the killer had hidden behind the column and waited for Mr. Bondurant to pull in and park. It appeared that he was struck the first time from behind, just as he left his car.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

Freeman led her witness through a few more of the steps taken at the crime scene before bringing the focus back to Lisa Trammel.

“Did your partner return to the crime scene at some point to report back about her interview with the bank employee who claimed to have seen Lisa Trammel near the bank?”

“Yes, she did. My partner and I felt that the identification made by the witness was solid. We then discussed Lisa Trammel and the need for us to speak to her quickly.”

“But, Detective, you had a crime scene investigation under way and a file full of the names of people who had made threats against the bank or its employees. Why the urgency involving Lisa Trammel?”

Kurlen leaned back in his witness chair and adopted the pose of a wise and wily old veteran.

“Well, there were a couple things that gave us a sense of urgency in regard to Ms. Trammel. First of all, her dispute with the bank was over the foreclosure of her property. That put her dispute specifically in the home loan division. The victim, Mr. Bondurant, was a senior vice president directly in charge of the home loan division. So we were looking at that connection. Additionally, and more importantly-”

“Let me interrupt you there, Detective. You called that a connection. Did you know if the victim and Lisa Trammel knew each other?”

“Not at that point, no. What we knew was that Ms. Trammel had a history of protesting the foreclosure of her home and that the foreclosure action was initiated by Mr. Bondurant, the victim. But we did not know at that time whether these two people knew each other or had ever even met.”

It was a smooth move, bringing out the deficiencies in her case to the jury before I did. It made it harder for the defense to make its case.

“Okay, Detective,” Freeman said. “I interrupted you when you were going to tell us a second reason for having some urgency in regard to Ms. Trammel.”

“What I wanted to explain is that a murder investigation is a fluid situation. You must move carefully and cautiously, but at the same time you must go where the case takes you. If you don’t, then evidence could be at risk-and possibly other victims. We felt there was a need to make contact with Lisa Trammel at this point in the investigation. We couldn’t wait. We could not give her time to destroy evidence or harm other persons. We had to move.”

I checked the jury. Kurlen was giving one of his best performances ever. He held every eye in the jury box. If Clegg McReynolds ever made a movie, maybe Kurlen should play himself.

“So what did you do, Detective?”

“We ran a check on Lisa Trammel’s driver’s license, got her address in Woodland Hills and proceeded to her home.”

“Who was left at the crime scene?”

“Several people. Our coordinator and all the SID techs and the coroner’s people. They still had a lot to do and we were waiting on them anyway. Going to Lisa Trammel’s house in no way compromised the scene or the investigation.”

“Your coordinator? Who’s that?”

“The detective-three in charge of the homicide unit. Jack Newsome. He was the supervisor on scene.”

“I see. So what happened when you got to Ms. Trammel’s home? Was she there?”

“Yes, she was. We knocked and she answered.”

“Can you take us through what happened next?”

“We identified ourselves and said we were conducting an investigation of a crime. Didn’t say what it was, just said it was serious. We asked if we could come inside to ask her a few questions. She said yes, so we entered.”

I felt a vibration in my pocket and knew I had received a text on my cell phone. I slipped it out of my pocket and held it down below the table so the judge would not see it. The message was from Cisco.

Need to talk, show you something.

I texted back and we had a quick digital conversation:

You verify the letter?

No, something else. Still working the letter.

Then after court. Get me the letter.

I put the phone away and went back to watching Freeman’s direct examination. The letter in question had come in the afternoon before in the mail to my P.O. box. It came anonymously but if its contents could be confirmed by Cisco I would have a new weapon. A powerful weapon.

“What was Ms. Trammel’s demeanor when you met her?” Freeman asked.

“She seemed pretty calm to me,” Kurlen said. “She didn’t seem particularly curious about why we wanted to talk to her or what the crime was. She was nonchalant about the whole thing.”

“Where did you and your partner speak to her?”

“She walked us into the kitchen where there was a table and she invited us to sit down. She asked if we wanted water or coffee and we both said no.”

“And you started asking her questions then?”

“Yes, we started by asking if she had been in the house all morning. She said she had been except for when she drove her son to school in Sherman Oaks at eight. I asked if she had made any other stops on the way home and she said no.”

“And what did that mean to you?”

“Well, that somebody was lying. We had the witness who put her near the bank at close to nine. So somebody was wrong or somebody was lying.”

“What did you do at that point?”

“I asked if she would be willing to come with us to the police station where she would be interviewed and asked to look at some photographs. She said yes and we took her to Van Nuys.”

“Did you first apprise her of her constitutional rights not to speak to you without an attorney present?”

“Not at that time. She was not a suspect at this point. She was simply a person of interest whose name had come to the surface. I didn’t believe that we needed to give her the rights warning until we crossed that threshold. We weren’t close to being there yet. We had a discrepancy between what she told us and what a witness had told us. We needed to explore that further before anybody became a suspect.”

Freeman was at it again. Trying to patch holes before I could tear them open. It was frustrating but there was nothing I could do about it. I was busy writing down questions I would later ask Kurlen, ones that Freeman wouldn’t anticipate.

Skillfully Freeman led Kurlen back to Van Nuys station and the interview room where he had sat with my client. She used him to introduce the video of the session. It was played for the jury on two overhead screens. Aronson had ably argued against showing the interview but to no avail. Judge Perry had allowed it. We could appeal after conviction but success there was a long shot. I had to turn things now. I had to find a way to make the jury see it as an unfair process, a trap into which my innocent client had stumbled.

The video was shot from an overhead angle and the defense scored a minor point right off the bat because Howard Kurlen was a big man and Lisa Trammel was small. Sitting across a table from Trammel, Kurlen looked like he was crowding her, cornering her, even bullying her. This was good. This was part of a theme I planned to put into my cross-examination.

The audio was clear and the sound crisp. Over my objection, the jurors as well as the other players in the trial had been given transcripts with which to read along. I had objected because I didn’t want the jurors reading. I wanted them watching. I wanted them to see the big man bullying the little woman. There was sympathy to be gained there, but not in the words on the page.

Kurlen started casually, announcing the names of those in the room and asking Trammel if she was there voluntarily. My client said that she was but the starkness and angle of the video belied her words. She looked like she was being held in a prison.

“Why don’t we start with you telling us about your movements today?” Kurlen asked next.

“Starting when?” Trammel responded.

“How about with the moment you woke up?”

Trammel outlined her early morning routine of waking and preparing her son for school, then driving him there. The boy attended a private school and the drive usually ranged from twenty to forty minutes depending on traffic. She said she stopped after the drop-off to get coffee and then she went back home.

“You told us at your home you didn’t make any stops. Now you stopped for coffee?”

“I guess I forgot.”

“Where?”

“A place called Joe’s Joe on Ventura.”

A veteran interrogator, Kurlen abruptly went in a new direction, keeping his quarry off guard.

“Did you go by WestLand National this morning?”

“No. Is that what this is about?”

“So if someone said they saw you there, they would be lying?”

“Yes, who said that? I have not violated the order. You-”

“Do you know Mitchell Bondurant?”

“Know him? No. I know of him. I know who he is. But I don’t know him.”

“Did you see him today?”

Trammel paused here and this was detrimental to her cause. On the video, you could see the wheels working. She was considering whether to tell the truth. I glanced at the jury. I didn’t see one face that wasn’t turned up toward the screens.

“Yes, I saw him.”

“But you just said you didn’t go on WestLand property.”

“I didn’t. Look, I don’t know who told you they saw me at the bank. And if it was him then he’s a liar. I wasn’t there. I saw him, yes, but that was at the coffee shop, not the-”

“Why didn’t you tell us that this morning at your home?”

“Tell you what? You didn’t ask.”

“Have you changed clothes since this morning?”

“What?”

“Did you change clothes this morning after you got back home?”

“Look, what is this? You asked me to come down to talk and this is some sort of setup. I have not violated the order. I-”

“Did you attack Mitchell Bondurant?”

“What?”

Kurlen didn’t answer. He just stared at Trammel as her mouth came open in a perfect O. I checked the jury. All eyes were still on the screens. I hoped they saw what I saw. Genuine shock on my client’s face.

“Is that-Mitchell Bondurant was attacked? Is he all right?”

“No, actually, he’s dead. And at this point I want to advise you of your constitutional rights.”

Kurlen read Trammel the Miranda rights warning and Trammel said the magic words, the smartest four words to ever come out of her mouth.

“I want my attorney.”

That ended the interview and the video concluded with Kurlen placing Trammel under arrest for murder. And that was how Freeman ended Kurlen’s testimony. She surprised me by abruptly saying she was finished with the witness and then sitting down. She still had the search of my client’s house to cover with the jury. And the hammer. But it looked like she wouldn’t be using Kurlen for these.

It was 11:45 and the judge broke for an early lunch. That gave me an hour and fifteen minutes to make final preparations for Kurlen. Once more we were about to do the jury dance.

Twenty-seven

I stepped over to the lectern carrying two thick files and my trusty legal pad. The files were superfluous to my cross-examination but my hope was that they would make an impressive prop. I took my time organizing everything on top of the lectern. I wanted Kurlen to dangle. My plan was to treat him in the same manner he had treated my client. Bobbing and weaving, jabbing with the left when he was expecting the right, a hit-and-run mission.

Freeman had made the smart play, breaking up the testimony between the partners. I wouldn’t get the chance to make a cohesive attack on the case through just Kurlen. I would have to deal with him now and his partner Longstreth much later. Case choreography was one of Freeman’s strong points and she was showing it here.

“Anytime, Mr. Haller,” the judge prompted.

“Yes, Your Honor. Just getting my notes in order. Good afternoon, Detective Kurlen. I wonder if we could start by going back to the crime scene. Did you-”

“Whatever you want.”

“Yes, thank you. How long were you and your partner at the crime scene before you went off to chase down Lisa Trammel?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it chasing her down. We-”

“Is that because she wasn’t a suspect?”

“That’s one of the reasons.”

“She was just a person of interest, is that what you call it?”

“That’s right.”

“So then how long were you at the crime scene before you left to find this woman who was not a suspect but only a person of interest?”

Kurlen referred to his notes.

“My partner and I arrived at the crime scene at nine twenty-seven and one or both of us were there until we left together at ten thirty-nine.”

“That’s… an hour and twelve minutes. You spent only seventy-two minutes at the crime scene before feeling the need to leave to pick up a woman who was not even a suspect. Do I have that right?”

“It’s one way to look at it.”

“How did you look at it, Detective?”

“First of all, leaving the crime scene was not an issue because the crime scene was under the control and direction of the homicide squad coordinator. Several technicians from the Scientific Investigation Division were also on hand. Our job was not the crime scene. Our job was to follow the leads wherever they took us and they led us at that point to Lisa Trammel. She wasn’t a suspect when we went to see her but she became one when she started giving inconsistent and contradictory statements during the interview.”

“You’re talking about the interview back at Van Nuys Division, yes?”

“That’s correct.”

“Okay, then what were the inconsistent and contradictory statements you just mentioned?”

“At her house she said she made no stops after dropping the kid off. At the station she suddenly remembers getting coffee and seeing the victim there. She says she wasn’t near the bank but we had a witness who put her a half a block away. That was the big one right there.”

I smiled and shook my head like I was dealing with a simpleton.

“Detective, you’re kidding us, right?”

Kurlen gave me the first look of annoyance. It was just what I wanted. If it was perceived as arrogance it would be all the better when I humiliated him.

“No, I am not kidding,” Kurlen said. “I take my job very seriously.”

I asked the judge to allow me to replay a portion of the Trammel interview. Permission granted, I fast-forwarded the playback, keeping my eye on the time code at the bottom. I slowed it to normal play just in time for the jury to watch the exchange centering on Trammel’s denial of being near WestLand National.

“Did you go by WestLand National this morning?”

“No. Is that what this is about?”

“So if someone said they saw you there, they would be lying?”

“Yes, who said that? I have not violated the order. You-”

“Do you know Mitchell Bondurant?”

“Know him? No. I know of him. I know who he is. But I don’t know him.”

“Did you see him today?”

“Yes, I saw him.”

“But you just said you didn’t go on WestLand property.”

“I didn’t. Look, I don’t know who told you they saw me at the bank. And if it was him then he’s a liar. I wasn’t there. I saw him, yes, but that was at the coffee shop, not the-”

“Why didn’t you tell us that this morning at your home?”

“Tell you what? You didn’t ask.”

I stopped the video and looked at Kurlen.

“Detective, where is it that Lisa Trammel contradicts herself?”

“She says right there that she wasn’t near the bank and we have a witness who says she was.”

“So you have a contradiction between two statements by different people, but Lisa Trammel did not contradict herself, correct?”

“You are talking semantics.”

“Can you answer the question, Detective?”

“Yes, right, a contradiction between two statements.”

Kurlen didn’t consider the distinction important but I hoped the jury would.

“Isn’t it true, Detective, that Lisa Trammel has never contradicted her statement that she was not near the bank on the day of the murder?”

“I wouldn’t know. I am not privy to everything she has ever said since then.”

Now he was just being churlish, which was fine by me.

“Okay, then as far as you know, Detective, has she ever contradicted that very first statement to you that she was not near the bank?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

I asked the judge if I could replay another segment of the video and was granted permission. I moved the video back to a time spot early in the interview and froze it. I then asked the judge if I could put one of the prosecution’s crime scene photos on one of the overhead screens while leaving the video on the other. The judge gave me the go-ahead.

The crime scene photo I put up was a wide-angle shot that took in almost the entire crime scene. The tableau included Bondurant’s body as well as his car, the open briefcase and the spilled cup of coffee on the ground.

“Detective, let me draw your attention to the crime scene photo marked People’s Exhibit Three. Can you describe what you see in the foreground?”

“You mean the briefcase or the body?”

“What else, Detective?”

“You’ve got the spilled coffee, and the evidence marker on the left is where they found a tissue fragment later identified as coming from the victim’s scalp. You can’t really see that in the photo.”

I asked the judge to strike the part of the answer concerning the tissue fragment as nonresponsive. I had asked Kurlen to describe what he could see in the photo, not what he couldn’t see. The judge didn’t agree and let the whole answer stand. I shook it off and tried again.

“Detective, can you read what it says on the side of the coffee cup?”

“Yes, it says Joe’s Joe. It’s a gourmet coffee shop about four blocks from the bank.”

“Very good, Detective. Your eyes are better than mine.”

“Maybe because they look for the truth.”

I looked at the judge and spread my hands like a baseball manager who just saw a fastball down the pipe called a ball. Before I could verbally react the judge was all over Kurlen.

“Detective!” Perry barked. “You know better than that.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” Kurlen said contritely, his eyes holding on mine. “Mr. Haller somehow always seems to bring out the worst in me.”

“That’s no excuse. Another one like that and you and I are going to have a serious problem.”

“It won’t happen again, Judge. I promise.”

“The jury will disregard the witness’s comment. Mr. Haller, proceed and take us away from this.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. I’ll do my best. Detective, when you were at the crime scene for seventy-two minutes before leaving to question Ms. Trammel, did you determine whose coffee cup that was?”

“Well, we later found out that-”

“No, no, no, I didn’t ask you what you later found out, Detective. I asked you about those first seventy-two minutes when you were at the crime scene. During that time, before you went to Lisa Trammel’s house in Woodland Hills, did you know whose coffee that was?”

“No, we had not determined that yet.”

“Okay, so you didn’t know who dropped that coffee at the crime scene, correct?”

“Objection, asked and answered,” Freeman said.

It was a useless objection but she had to do something to try to knock me out of rhythm.

“I’ll allow it,” the judge said before I could respond. “You can answer the question, Detective. Did you know who dropped that cup of coffee at the crime scene?”

“Not at that time.”

I went back to the video and played the segment I had cued and ready to go. It was from the early part of the interview, when Trammel was recounting her routine activities during the morning of the murder.

“You stopped for coffee?”

“I guess I forgot.”

“Where did you stop to get the coffee?”

“A place called Joe’s Joe. It’s on Van Nuys Boulevard right by the intersection with Ventura.”

“Do you remember, did you get a large or small cup?”

“Large. I drink a lot of coffee.”

I stopped the video.

“Tell me something now, Detective. Why did you ask what size coffee she got at Joe’s Joe?”

“You throw out a big net. You go for as many details as you can.”

“Was it not because you believed the coffee cup found at the scene of the murder might have been Lisa Trammel’s?”

“That was one possibility at that point.”

“Did you count this as one of those admissions from Lisa Trammel?”

“I thought it was significant at that point in the conversation. I wouldn’t call it an admission.”

“But then, under further questioning, she told you she saw the victim at the coffee shop, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So didn’t that change your thinking on the coffee cup at the scene?”

“It was just additional information to consider. It was very early in the investigation. We had no independent information that the victim had been in the coffee shop. We had this one person’s statement but it was inconsistent with the statement of a witness we had already spoken to. So we had Lisa Trammel saying she saw Mitchell Bondurant at the coffee shop but that didn’t make it a fact. We still needed to confirm that. And later we did.”

“But do you see where what you considered an inconsistency early in the interview turned out to be totally consistent with the facts later?”

“In this one instance.”

Kurlen would give no quarter. He knew I was trying to back him up to the edge of a cliff. His job was to keep from going over.

“In fact, Detective, wouldn’t you say that when all was said and done, the only thing inconsistent about the interview with Lisa Trammel was that she said she wasn’t near the bank and you had a witness who claimed she was?”

“It’s always easy to look back with twenty-twenty vision. But that one inconsistency was and is pretty important. A reliable witness put her close to the scene of the crime at the time of the crime. That hasn’t changed since day one.”

“A reliable witness. Based on one short interview with Margo Schafer she was deemed a reliable witness?”

I put the proper mix of outrage and confusion in my voice. Freeman objected, saying that I was simply badgering the witness because I was not getting the answers I wanted. The judge overruled but it was a good message for her to get to the jury-the idea that I wasn’t getting what I wanted. Because, in fact, I was.

“The first interview with Margo Schafer was short,” Kurlen said. “But she was reinterviewed several times by several investigators. Her observations on that day have not changed one iota. I believe she saw what she said she saw.”

“Good for you, Detective,” I said. “Let’s go back to the coffee cup. Did there come a time that you came to a conclusion as to whose coffee was spilled and left at the crime scene?”

“Yes. We found a Joe’s Joe receipt in the victim’s pocket for a large cup of coffee purchased that morning at eight twenty-one. Once we found that, we believed that the coffee cup at the crime scene was his. This was later confirmed by fingerprint analysis. He got out of the car with it and dropped it when he was attacked from behind.”

I nodded, making sure the jury understood that I was indeed getting the answers I wanted.

“What time was it when that receipt was found in the victim’s pocket?”

Kurlen checked his notes and didn’t find an answer.

“I am not sure because the receipt was found by the coroner’s investigator who was in charge of checking the victim’s pockets and securing all property that had been on the victim’s person. This would have been done before the body was transported to the coroner’s office.”

“But it was well after you and your partner took off in pursuit of Lisa Trammel, correct?”

“We didn’t take off in pursuit of Trammel, but the discovery of the receipt would have been after we left to talk to Trammel.”

“Did the coroner’s investigator call you and tell you about the receipt?”

“No.”

“Did you find out about the receipt before or after you arrested Lisa Trammel for murder?”

“After. But there was other evidence in support of-”

“Thank you, Detective. Just answer the question I ask, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind telling the truth.”

“Good. That’s what we’re here for. Now, wouldn’t you agree that you arrested Lisa Trammel on the basis of inconsistent and contradictory statements that later turned out to be, in fact, consistent and not in contradiction with the evidence and the facts of the case?”

Kurlen answered as if by rote.

“We had the witness who placed her near the scene of the crime at the time of the crime.”

“And that’s all you had, correct?”

“There was other evidence tying her to the murder. We have her hammer and-”

“I’m talking about at the time of her arrest!” I yelled. “Please answer the question I ask you, Detective!”

“Hey!” the judge exclaimed. “There’s only one person who’s going to be allowed to raise their voice in my courtroom, and, Mr. Haller, you aren’t that person.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor. Could you please instruct the witness to answer the questions he is asked and not those that are not asked?”

“Consider the witness so advised. Proceed, Mr. Haller.”

I paused for a moment to collect myself and swept my eyes across the jury. I was looking for sympathetic reactions but I didn’t see any. Not even from Furlong, who didn’t meet my eyes with his. I looked back at Kurlen.

“You just mentioned the hammer. The defendant’s hammer. This was evidence you didn’t have at the time of the arrest, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“Isn’t it true that once you made the arrest and realized that the inconsistent statements you relied upon were not actually inconsistent, you began looking for evidence to fit your theory of the case?”

“Not true at all. We had the witness but we still kept a wide-open view of this thing. We weren’t wearing blinders. I would’ve been happy to drop the charges against the defendant. But the investigation was ongoing and the evidence that we started accumulating and evaluating did not cut her way.”

“Not only that but you had motive, too, didn’t you?”

“The victim was foreclosing on the defendant’s house. As far as motive went, that looked pretty strong to me.”

“But you were not privy to the details of that foreclosure, only that there was a foreclosure in process, correct?”

“Yes, and that there was a temporary restraining order against her, too.”

“You mean you are saying that the restraining order itself was a motive to kill Mitchell Bondurant?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying and not what I mean. I’m just saying it was part of the whole picture.”

“The whole picture adding up at that point to a rush to judgment, correct, Detective?”

Freeman jumped up and objected and the judge sustained it. That was okay. I wasn’t interested in Kurlen’s answer to the question. I was only interested in putting the question in each juror’s mind.

I checked the rear wall of the courtroom and saw that it was three thirty. I told the judge that I was going to move in a new direction with my cross-examination and that it might be a good time to take the afternoon break. The judge agreed and dismissed the jury for fifteen minutes.

I sat back down at the defense table and my client reached over and squeezed my forearm with a powerful grip.

“You’re doing so good!” she whispered.

“We’ll see. There’s still a long way to go.”

She pushed her chair back to get up.

“Are you going for coffee?” she asked.

“No, I need to make a call. You go. Just remember, no talking to the media. Don’t talk to anybody.”

“I know, Mickey. Loose lips sink ships.”

“You got it.”

She left the table then and I watched her head out of the courtroom. I didn’t see her constant companion, Herb Dahl, anywhere.

I pulled my phone and called Cisco’s cell number. He answered right away.

“I’m out of time, Cisco. I need the letter.”

“You got it.”

“What do you mean, it’s confirmed?”

“Totally legit.”

“We’re lucky we’re talking on the phone.”

“Why’s that, Boss?”

“Because I might have to kiss you for this.”

“Uh, that won’t be necessary.”

Twenty-eight

I used the last few minutes of the break to prepare the second part of my cross-examination of Kurlen. Cisco’s news was going to send a wave through the whole trial. How I handled the new information with Kurlen would impact the rest of the trial. Soon everyone was back in the courtroom and I was at the lectern and ready to go. I had one last item on my list to hit before I got to the letter.

“Detective Kurlen, let’s go back to the crime scene photo you see on the screen. Did you identify the ownership of the briefcase that was found open next to the victim’s body?”

“Yes, it had the victim’s property in it and his initials engraved on the brass locking plate. It was his.”

“And when you arrived at the crime scene and saw the open briefcase next to the body, what were your initial impressions of it?”

“None. I try to keep an open mind about everything, especially when I first come into a case.”

“Did you think the open briefcase could mean that robbery was a motive for the murder?”

“Among many possibilities, yes.”

“Did you think, Here is a banker dead and an open briefcase next to him. I wonder what the killer was after?”

“I had to think of that as a possible scenario. But as I said it was-”

“Thank you, Detective.”

Freeman objected, saying I was not giving the witness time to fully answer the question. The judge agreed and let Kurlen finish.

“I was just saying that the possibility of this being a robbery was just one scenario. Leaving the briefcase open could just as easily have been a move to make it look like a robbery when it wasn’t.”

I pushed on without losing a beat.

“Did you determine what was taken from the briefcase?”

“As far as we knew then and know now, nothing was taken from it. But there was no inventory as to what should have been in the briefcase. We had Mr. Bondurant’s secretary look at his files and work product to see if she could determine if anything was missing, like a file or something. She found nothing missing.”

“Then do you have any explanation for why it was left open?”

“As I said before, it could have been done as misdirection. But we also believe there is a good chance that the case sprung open when it was dropped on the concrete during the attack.”

I put my incredulous look on.

“And how did you come to that determination, sir?”

“The briefcase has a faulty locking mechanism. Any sort of jarring of the case could lead to its release. We conducted experiments with the case and found that when it was dropped to a hard surface from a height of three feet or more, it sprung open about one out of every three times.”

I nodded and acted like I was computing this information for the first time even though I already had it from one of the investigative reports received in discovery.

“So what you’re saying is that there was a one in three chance that the briefcase came open on its own when Mr. Bondurant dropped it.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you called that a good chance, correct?”

“A solid chance.”

“And of course there was a greater chance that that was not how the briefcase came open, right?”

“You can look at it that way.”

“There is a greater chance that someone opened the briefcase, correct?”

“Again, you can look at it that way. But we determined that nothing was missing from the briefcase so there was no apparent reason for it to have been opened except to create a misdirection of some kind. Our working theory was that it sprung open when it was dropped.”

“Do you notice in the crime scene photograph, Detective, that none of the contents of the case have fallen out and onto the pavement?”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you have an inventory of the briefcase in your binder there that you can read to us?”

Kurlen took his time finding it and then read it to the jury. The briefcase contained six files, five pens, an iPad, a calculator, an address book and two blank notebooks.

“When you conducted your tests in which you dropped the briefcase to the ground to see about the possibility of it popping open, did the case have the same contents?”

“It had similar contents, yes.”

“And on the times that the case popped open, how often did all the contents remain inside it?”

“Not every time but most of the time. It definitely could have happened.”

“Was that the scientific conclusion to your scientific experiment, Detective?”

“It was done in the lab. It wasn’t my experiment.”

With a pen and a noticeable wrist flourish, I made several check marks on my legal pad. I then moved on to the most important avenue of my cross-examination.

“Detective,” I said, “you told us earlier today that you received a threat-assessment file from WestLand National and that it contained information about the defendant. Did you ever check out any of the other names in the file?”

“We reviewed the file several times and did some limited follow-up. But as evidence came in against the defendant, we saw less and less of a need to.”

“You weren’t going to go chasing rainbows when you had your suspect already in hand, is that it?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. Our investigation was thorough and exhaustive.”

“Did this thorough and exhaustive investigation include pursuing any other leads at any time that did not involve Lisa Trammel as a suspect?”

“Of course. That’s what the job involves.”

“Did you review Mr. Bondurant’s work product and look for any leads unrelated to Lisa Trammel?”

“Yes, we did.”

“You have testified about investigating threats made against the victim in this case. Did you investigate any threats he might have made against others?”

“Where the victim threatened someone else? Not that I recall.”

I asked the court’s permission to approach the witness with Defense Exhibit 2. I handed copies to all parties. Freeman objected but she was simply going through the motions. The issue regarding Bondurant’s letter of complaint to Louis Opparizio had already been decided during pretrial arguments. Perry was allowing it, if only to even the score for allowing the state to enter the hammer and the DNA. He overruled Freeman’s objection and told me I could proceed.

“Detective Kurlen, you hold a letter sent by certified mail from Mitchell Bondurant, the victim, to Louis Opparizio, president of ALOFT, a contracted vendor to WestLand National. Could you please read the letter to the jury?”

Kurlen stared at the page I gave him for a long moment before reading.

“ ‘Dear Louis, Attached you will find correspondence from an attorney named Michael Haller who is representing the home owner in one of the foreclosure cases you are handling for WestLand. Her name is Lisa Trammel and the loan number is oh-four-oh-nine-seven-one-nine. The mortgage is jointly held by Jeffrey and Lisa Trammel. In his letter Mr. Haller makes allegations that the file is replete with fraudulent actions perpetrated in the case. You will note that he gives specific instances, all of which were carried out by ALOFT. As you know and we have discussed, there have been other complaints. These new allegations against ALOFT, if true, have put WestLand in a vulnerable position, especially considering the government’s recent interest in this aspect of the mortgage business. Unless we come to some sort of arrangement and understanding in regard to this I will be recommending to the board that WestLand withdraw from its contract with your company for cause and any ongoing business be terminated. This action would also require the bank to file an SAR with appropriate authorities. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to further discuss these matters.’ ”

Kurlen held the letter out to me as if he was finished with it. I ignored the gesture.

“Thank you, Detective. Now the letter mentions the filing of an SAR. Do you know what that is?”

“A suspicious activity report. All banks are required to file them with the Federal Trade Commission if such activity comes to their attention.”

“Have you ever before seen the letter you hold, Detective?”

“Yes, I have.”

“When?”

“While reviewing the victim’s work product. I noticed it then.”

“Can you give me a date when this happened?”

“Not an exact date. I would say I became aware of this letter about two weeks into the investigation.”

“And that would have been two weeks after Lisa Trammel was already arrested for the murder. Did you investigate further upon becoming aware of this letter, maybe talk to Louis Opparizio?”

“At some point I made inquiries and learned that Mr. Opparizio had a solid alibi for the time of the killing. I left it at that.”

“What about the people working for Opparizio? Did they all have alibis?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s right. I did not pursue this because it appeared to be a business dispute and not a legitimate motive for murder. I do not view this letter as a threat.”

“You did not consider it unusual that in this day of instant communication the victim chose to send a certified letter instead of an e-mail or a text or a fax?”

“Not really. There were several other copies of letters sent by certified mail. It seemed to be a way of doing business and keeping a record of it.”

I nodded. Fair enough.

“Do you know if Mr. Bondurant ever filed a suspicious activity report in regard to Louis Opparizio or his company?”

“I checked with the Federal Trade Commission. He did not.”

“Did you check with any other government agency to see if Louis Opparizio or his company were the subject of an investigation?”

“As best I could. There was nothing.”

“As best you could… and so this whole thing was a dead end to you, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“You checked with the FTC and you ran down a man’s alibi, but then dropped it. You already had a suspect and the case against her was easy and just fell right into place for you, correct?”

“A murder case is never easy. You have to be thorough. You can leave no stone unturned.”

“What about the U.S. Secret Service? Did you leave that stone unturned?”

“The Secret Service? I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Did you have any interaction with the U.S. Secret Service during this investigation?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How about the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles?”

“I did not. I can’t speak for my partner or other colleagues who worked the case.”

It was a good answer but not good enough. In my peripheral vision I could see that Freeman had moved to the edge of her seat, ready for the right moment to object to my line of questioning.

“Detective Kurlen, do you know what a federal target letter is?”

Freeman leapt to her feet before Kurlen could respond. She objected and asked for a sidebar.

“I think we’d better step back into chambers for this,” the judge said. “I want the jury and court personnel to stay in place while I confer with counsel. Mr. Haller, Ms. Freeman, let’s go.”

I pulled a document and the attached envelope from one of my files and followed Freeman toward the door that led to the judge’s chambers. I was confident that I was about to tilt the case in the defense’s direction or I was headed to jail for contempt.

Twenty-nine

Judge Perry was not a happy jurist. He didn’t even bother to go behind his desk and sit down. We entered his chambers and he immediately turned on me and folded his arms across his chest. He stared hard at me and waited for his court reporter to take a seat and set up her machine before he spoke.

“Okay, Mr. Haller, Ms. Freeman is objecting because my guess is that this is the first she’s heard about the Secret Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office and a federal target letter and what it all may or may not have to do with this case. I’m objecting myself because it’s the first I remember any mention of the federal government and I’m not going to allow you to go on a federal fishing trip in front of the jury. Now if you have something, I want an offer of proof on it right now, and then I want to know why Ms. Freeman doesn’t know anything about it.”

“Thank you, Judge,” Freeman said indignantly, hands on her hips.

I tried to defuse the situation a bit by casually stepping away from our tight grouping and moving toward the window with the view that rolled up the side of the Santa Monica Mountains. I could see the cantilevered homes along the crest. They looked like matchboxes ready to drop with the next earthquake. I knew what that was like, clinging to the edge.

“Your Honor, my office received an anonymously sent envelope in the mail that contained a copy of a federal target letter addressed to Louis Opparizio and ALOFT. It informed him that he and his company were the target of an investigation into fraudulent foreclosure practices undertaken on behalf of his client banks.”

I held up the document and envelope.

“I have the letter right here. It is dated two weeks before the murder and just eight days after the letter of complaint Bondurant sent to Opparizio.”

“When did you receive this supposedly anonymous envelope?” Freeman asked, her voice dripping with skepticism.

“It turned up yesterday in my P.O. box but wasn’t opened until last night. If counsel does not believe me I will have my office manager come over and you can ask her any question you like. She’s the one who went to the box.”

“Let me see it,” the judge demanded.

I handed Perry the letter and envelope. Freeman moved in close to him to read it as well. It was a short letter and he soon gave it back to me without asking Freeman if she was finished reading.

“You should’ve brought this up this morning,” the judge said. “At the very least you should have provided a copy to opposing counsel and told her you planned to introduce it.”

“Judge, I would have but it’s obviously a photocopy and it came in the mail. I’ve been sandbagged before. We probably all have. I needed to verify the document and make sure it was legitimate before I told anyone. I didn’t get that confirmation until less than an hour ago during the afternoon break.”

“What was the source of the confirmation?” Freeman asked before the judge could.

“I don’t know the exact details. My investigator simply told me that the letter was confirmed by the feds as legitimate. If you want further detail, I can also call in my investigator.”

“That won’t be necessary because I am sure Ms. Freeman will want to do her own due diligence. But bringing it up in cross-examination was far out of line, Mr. Haller. You should have informed the court this morning that you had received something in the mail that you were in the process of checking out and planned to introduce in court. You blindsided the state and the court.”

“I apologize, Your Honor. My intention was to handle it properly. I guess it was a learned behavior, seeing how the state has blindsided me at least twice so far with surprise evidence and questions about timing and chain of custody.”

Perry gave me a hard look but I knew he got the point. Ultimately, I believed he was a fair judge and would act accordingly. He knew the letter was legitimate and vital to the defense’s case. Basic fairness held that I be allowed to pursue it. Freeman read the same thing I did and tried to head the judge off.

“Your Honor, it’s four fifteen. I request that court be adjourned for the day so that the prosecution can digest this new material and be adequately prepared to proceed in the morning.”

Perry shook his head.

“I don’t like losing court time,” he said.

“I don’t either, Judge,” Freeman responded. “But no doubt, as you just said, I’ve been blindsided here. Counsel should have brought this information forward this morning. You cannot allow him to just proceed with it without the prosecution being prepared and conducting its own confirmation and due diligence as to the context of this information. I am asking for forty-five minutes, Judge. Surely, the state is entitled to that.”

The judge looked at me for opposing argument. I held my hands wide.

“Doesn’t matter to me, Judge. She can take all the time in the world but it doesn’t change the fact that Opparizio was and is under federal investigation for his dealings with WestLand among other banks. That would make the victim in this case a potential witness against him-the letter we introduced earlier makes that clear. The police and prosecution completely missed this aspect of the case and now Ms. Freeman wants to blame the messenger for their shallow invest-”

“Okay, Mr. Haller, we’re not in front of the jury here,” Perry said, cutting me off. “I understand your point. I’m going to adjourn early today but we’ll start at nine sharp tomorrow and I expect all parties to be prepared and for there to be no further delays.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Freeman said.

“Let’s go back,” Perry said.

And we did.

My client was clinging to me as we left the courthouse. She wanted to know what other details I had about the federal investigation. Herb Dahl trailed behind us like the tail on a kite. I was uncomfortable speaking to both of them.

“Look, I don’t know what it means, Lisa. That’s one reason why the judge broke early today. So both the defense and the prosecution can do some work on it. You have to just back off for a bit and let me and my staff handle it.”

“But this could be it, right, Mickey?”

“What do you mean, ‘it’?”

“The evidence that shows it wasn’t me-that proves it!”

I stopped and turned to her. Her eyes were searching my face for any sign of affirmation. Something about her desperation made me think for the first time that she may have truly been framed for Bondurant’s murder.

But that wasn’t like me, to believe in innocence.

“Look, Lisa, I am hoping that it will very clearly demonstrate to the jury that there is a strong alternate possibility, complete with motive and opportunity. But you need to calm down and recognize that it might not be evidence of anything. I expect that the prosecution is going to come in tomorrow with an argument to keep it away from the jury. We have to be prepared to fend that off as well as to proceed without it. So I have a lot-”

“They can’t just do that! This is evidence!”

“Lisa, they can argue anything they want. And the judge will decide. The good thing is he owes us one. In fact, he owes us two for the hammer and the DNA dropping out of the sky. So I hope he’ll do the right thing here and we’ll get it in. That’s why you have to let me go now. I need to get back to the office and get to work on this.”

She reached up and patted down my tie and adjusted the collar on my suit coat.

“Okay, I get it. You do what you have to do, but call me tonight, okay? I want to know where things stand at the end of the day.”

“If there’s time, Lisa. If I’m not too tired, I will call.”

I looked over her shoulder at Dahl, who stood two feet behind her. I actually needed the guy at the moment.

“Herb, take care of her. Get her home so I can go back to work.”

“I’ve got her,” he said. “No worries.”

Right, no worries. I had the whole case to worry about and I couldn’t help but worry about my client going off with the man I just sent her with. Was Dahl for real or was he just protecting his investment? I watched them head off across the plaza toward the parking garage. I then walked past the library and north toward my office. I was probably more excited about the possibilities that had dropped into my lap than Lisa was. I just wasn’t showing it. You never show your cards unless your opponent has called the final bet.

When I got back to the office I was still floating on adrenaline. The pure, high-octane form that comes with the unexpected twist in your favor. Cisco and Bullocks were waiting for me when I entered. They both started talking at once and I had to raise my hands to cut them both off.

“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “One at a time and I go first. Perry adjourned early so the state could jump on the target letter. We need to be ready for their best shot in the morning because I want to get it before the jury. Cisco, now you, what’ve you got? Tell me about the letter.”

My momentum, carried all the way from the courthouse, took us into my office and I went behind the desk. The seat was warm and I could tell someone had been working there all afternoon.

“Okay,” Cisco said. “We confirmed the letter was legit. The U.S. Attorney’s Office wouldn’t talk to us, but I found out that the Secret Service agent who’s named in the letter, Charles Vasquez, is assigned to a joint task force with the FBI that is looking into all angles of mortgage fraud in the Southern California district. Remember last year when all the big banks temporarily halted foreclosures and everybody in Congress said they would investigate?”

“Yeah, I thought I was going out of business. Until the banks started foreclosing again.”

“Yeah, well, one of the investigations that did get going was right here. Lattimore put together this task force.”

Reggie Lattimore was the U.S. attorney assigned to the district. I knew him years ago when he was a public defender. He later switched sides and became a federal prosecutor and we moved in different orbits. I tried to stay away from the federal courthouse. I saw him from time to time at lunch counters downtown.

“Okay, he won’t talk to us. What about Vasquez?”

“I tried him, too. I got him on the line, but as soon as he knew what it was about he had no comment. I called back a second time and he just hung up on me. I think if we want to talk to him we’re going to have to paper him.”

I knew from experience that trying to serve a subpoena on a federal agent could be like fishing without a hook on the end of your line. If they don’t want to be papered they’ll be able to avoid it.

“We might not have to,” I said. “The judge adjourned early so the prosecution could run the letter down. My guess is she’ll bring either Lattimore or Vasquez in and put him on before we can do it. Then she can try to spin it her way.”

“She won’t want this to blow up in her face during the defense phase,” Aronson added, like the seasoned trial veteran she was not. “And the best way to guard against that is to bring Vasquez in as a witness herself.”

“What do we know about this task force?” I asked.

“I don’t have anybody inside,” Cisco said. “But I’ve got someone close enough to know what is going on. The task force is obviously very political. The thinking was that there is so much fraud out there, it would be like shooting fish and they could grab headlines and look like they were doing something on their end about the whole mess. Opparizio is a perfect target: rich, arrogant and Republican. Whatever they are working in regard to him, it’s just starting and hasn’t gone very deep.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The target letter is all we need. It will make Bondurant’s letter look like a legitimate threat.”

“Do you really think this is what happened or are we just using this coincidence to deflect the jury’s attention?” Aronson asked.

She was still standing even though Cisco and I had sat down. There was something symbolic about it. As if by not sitting down with us as we schemed this out, she was not buying in or selling her soul.

“It doesn’t matter, Bullocks,” I said. “We have one job here and that’s to put a not guilty on the scoreboard. How we get there…”

I didn’t need to finish. I could see in her face that she was continuing to have difficulty with the lessons taught outside the classroom. I turned back to Cisco.

“So who leaked the letter to us?”

“That I don’t know,” he said. “I kind of doubt it was Vasquez. He acted too surprised and edgy on the phone. I’m thinking somebody in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

I agreed.

“Maybe Lattimore himself. If we’re lucky enough to get Opparizio on the stand, it might actually help the feds to have him locked into some sworn testimony.”

Cisco nodded. It was as good a possibility as anything else. I moved on.

“Cisco,” I said, “the text you sent me in the courtroom said you had something unrelated to this to tell me.”

“To show you. We need to take a ride when we’re finished here.”

“Where?”

“I’d rather just show you.”

I could tell by the way his face froze that he wasn’t going to talk in front of Bullocks. It didn’t matter that she was a trusted part of the team. I got the message and turned back to her.

“Bullocks, you wanted to say something when I first came in?”

“Uh, no, I just wanted to talk about my testimony. But we have a few days before we need to touch base. I guess we should just stay in the moment.”

“You sure? I can talk.”

“No, go with Cisco. Maybe we’ll get some time tomorrow.”

I could tell that something in the initial conversation was bothering her. I let it go and got up from my desk. I felt sympathy for her but not too much. Idealism dies hard with everybody.

Thirty

I drove the Lincoln because Cisco had ridden his motorcycle to work. He directed me north on Van Nuys Boulevard.

“Is this about Lisa’s husband?” I asked. “You found him?”

“Uh, no, not about that. It’s about the two guys in the garage, Boss.”

“The guys who attacked me? You connected them to Opparizio?”

“Yes and no. It’s about them, but it’s not connected to Opparizio.”

“Then who the hell sent them after me?”

“Herb Dahl.”

“What? You gotta be shitting me.”

“I wish.”

I looked over at my investigator. I completely trusted him but wasn’t seeing the logic in Dahl’s putting the two goons on me. We’d had the dispute over movie control and money, but how would busting my ribs and twisting my nuts help him in that regard? At the time of the attack, I had just found out he had made the deal with McReynolds. I got mugged before I could even register a protest.

“You better run this down for me, Cisco.”

“I can’t really do that yet. That’s why we’re in the car.”

“Then talk to me. What’s going on? I’m in the middle of trial here.”

“Okay, you told me you didn’t trust Dahl and that I should check him out. I did. I also had a couple of my guys start to keep an eye on him.”

“By your guys you mean Saints?”

“That’s right.”

Once upon a time, long before he married Lorna, Cisco was with the Road Saints, a motorcycle club that was somewhere on the spectrum between the Hell’s Angels and the Shriners’ clowns on wheels. He managed to retire from membership without a criminal record and now maintained an association with the club. For a long time I did, too, serving as house counsel and handling various traffic, brawling and drug offenses that distracted the membership. That was how I had first met Cisco. He was running security investigations for the club and I started using him on the criminal cases that came up. The rest was history.

On more than one occasion over the years Cisco had enlisted the Saints on my behalf. I even credit them with saving my family from potential harm when I was involved in the Louis Roulet case. So it was not a surprise to me that he had called on them again, except that he hadn’t bothered to clue me in.

“Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“I didn’t want to complicate things for you. You had the case to worry about. I was handling the two dirtbags who messed you up.”

By messed up he meant more than physically. He was keeping me out of things because he knew that sometimes the psychological beating you take is worse than the physical. He didn’t want me distracted or looking over my shoulder.

“Okay, I get it,” I said.

Cisco reached inside his black-leather riding vest and pulled out a folded photograph. He handed it to me and I waited until I stopped at the light at Roscoe before I looked. I unfolded it and saw a picture of Herb Dahl getting into a car with the two black-gloved assailants who had so expertly put me down on the floor of the parking garage by the Victory Building.

“Recognize them?” Cisco asked.

“Yeah, it’s them,” I said, anger rising in my throat. “Fucking Dahl, I’m going to kick his fucking ass.”

“Maybe. Turn left here. We’re going to the compound.”

I looked over my shoulder and squeezed the car into the turning lane just as the light changed and I got the signal. We headed west and I had to flip down the visor against the dropping sun. By compound I knew he meant the Saints’ clubhouse, which was near the brewery on the other side of the 405 Freeway. It had been a while since I had been there.

“When was that photo taken?” I asked.

“While you were in the hospital. They didn’t-”

“You’ve been sitting on this since then?”

“Relax. I wasn’t checking with my guys every day, okay? They also didn’t know about your ass getting kicked. So they saw Dahl with these guys, took a couple of pictures and never showed them to me because they didn’t print them out for more than a month. It was a fuckup, I know, but these guys aren’t pros. They’re lazy. I take responsibility for it. So if you need to blame someone, blame me. I saw the photo for the first time last night. The other thing is my guys told me they didn’t get it with the camera but they also saw Dahl give both of these assholes a roll of cash. So I think it’s pretty clear. He hired them to kick your ass, Mick.”

“Son of a bitch.”

I was seized with the same sense of helplessness I had felt when one of the assailants had pinned my arms and held me while the other one hit me with his gloved fists. I felt sweat popping on my scalp. And sympathetic pain throbbed in my ribs and testicles.

“If I ever get a chance to-”

I stopped and looked across the seat at Cisco. He had a slight smile playing on his face.

“Is that what this is? You have these two guys at the clubhouse?”

He didn’t answer but he kept the smile.

“Cisco, I’m in the middle of a trial and now you’re telling me the guy who has his fingers in my client’s pie is the one who set me up for that… that assault? I don’t have time for this, man. I have too much-”

“They want to talk.”

That shut my protest down quick.

“Did you interview them?”

“Nope. Waiting for you. Thought you should get first crack at them.”

I drove in silence the rest of the way, pondering what lay ahead. Soon we pulled to a stop in front of a compound on the east side of the brewery. Cisco got out to open the gate and the car immediately became infected with the sour smell of the brewery.

The compound was surrounded by a chain-link fence with a twist of razor wire running along top. The concrete-block clubhouse, which sat in the middle of the hardscrabble lot, looked unimpressive in comparison to the gleaming row of machines parked out front. Harleys and Triumphs only. No rice rockets for this crew.

We entered the clubhouse, took a moment to let our eyes adjust and then I saw Cisco walk up to a serve-yourself bar where two other men in leather vests sat on stools.

“Ready to do this?” he said.

The two men spun off their stools and stood up. Both of them went an easy six foot four and three hundred pounds. They were enforcers. Cisco introduced them to me as Tommy Guns and Bam Bam.

“They’re back here,” said Tommy Guns.

The two men led us down a hallway behind the bar. They were so big they had to walk in single file. There were doors on either side. Bam Bam opened a door midway down the right side and we entered a windowless room with the walls and ceiling painted black and a single bulb hanging from above. In the dim light I could see sketches painted on the walls. Men with beards and long hair. I realized this was like a dark chapel where the fallen Saints were memorialized. My first thought as I looked about was Pulp Fiction. My second was that I didn’t want to be here. Two men were lying on the floor hog-tied, with their arms and feet up behind their backs. They had black bags over their heads.

Bam Bam leaned down and started to pull the bags off. This started a chorus of groans and fearful sounds from the two men.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Cisco, I can’t be here. You’re bringing me into-”

“Is it them?” Cisco said, not waiting for me to finish my protest. “Look closely. You don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Me? It’s not my mistake! I didn’t ask you to do this!”

“Calm down. You’re here, so just look. Is it them?”

“Jesus Christ!”

Both men were gagged with duct tape wrapped completely around their heads. Their faces were distorted further by the swelling and bruising already forming around their eyes. They had been beaten. The features didn’t match with what I remembered from the Victory Building garage or even the photograph Cisco had showed me earlier. I bent down to look closer. Both men looked up at me, complete fear in their eyes.

“I can’t tell,” I said.

“It’s a yes-or-no question, Mick.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t scared shitless when they beat the crap out of me and they weren’t gagged.”

“Take off the tape,” Cisco ordered.

Bam Bam moved in, springing a switchblade open and roughly cutting through the tape on the first man. He then tore it off, taking chunks of neck hair with it. The man yelped in pain.

“Shut the fuck up!” Tommy Guns yelled.

The second man learned from his friend’s example. He took the harsh tape-removal process without making a sound. Bam Bam threw the gag to the side of the room and then moved behind the men. He grabbed the nexus of the rope that tied the arms and legs together and knocked each man onto his side so I could see his face better.

“Please don’t kill us,” one of the men said, desperation tightening his voice. “It wasn’t personal. We were paid to do a job. We coulda killed you but we didn’t.”

I suddenly recognized him as the one who did all the talking in the garage.

“It’s them,” I said, pointing down. “He did the talking and he did the punching. Who are they?”

Cisco nodded as though the confirmation was only a formality.

“They’re brothers. The talker is Joey Mack. The puncher is, get this, Angel Mack.”

“Listen, we don’t even know what it was about,” the Talker yelled out. “Please! We made a mistake. We-”

“You’re fucking-A right you made a mistake!” Cisco yelled, his voice coming down on both of them like the wrath of God. “And now you pay. Who wants to go first?”

The Puncher started to whimper. Cisco walked over to a card table where there was a spread of tools and weapons, plus the roll of tape. He chose a pipe wrench and a set of pliers and turned back. I thought and hoped it was all an act. But if it was, Cisco was turning in an Oscar-caliber performance. I put my hand on his shoulder and held him from approaching the two men. I didn’t have to say anything but the message was clear. Let me have a shot at them.

I took the wrench from Cisco and squatted like a baseball catcher in front of the captives. I hefted the heavy tool in my hand for a few seconds, getting a good feel for its weight, before speaking.

“Who hired you to hurt me?”

The Talker answered immediately. He wasn’t interested in protecting anybody but himself and his brother.

“A guy named Dahl. He told us to hit you hard but not kill you. You can’t do this, man.”

“I think we can do whatever we want. How do you know Dahl?”

“We don’t. But we had a mutual connection.”

“And who was that?”

No answer. I didn’t have to wait long before Bam Bam lived up to his moniker and leaned down and hit them both with pistonlike punches to the jaw. The Talker was spitting blood when he gave me the name.

“Jerry Castille.”

“And who’s Jerry Castille?”

“Look, you can’t tell anybody this.”

“You’re not in a position to tell me what I can or can’t do. Who’s Jerry Castille?”

“He’s the west coast representative.”

I waited but that was it.

“I don’t have all night, man. West coast representative of what?”

The bloodied man nodded like he knew there was only one way to go here.

“Of a certain east-coast organization. You get it?”

I looked at Cisco. Herb Dahl had ties to east-coast organized crime? It seemed far-fetched.

“No, you don’t get it,” I said. “I’m a lawyer. I want a direct answer. Which organization? You have exactly five seconds until-”

“He works for Joey Giordano outta Brooklyn, okay? Now you’ve sealed the deal on us anyway. So go fuck yourself.”

He reared back and spit blood at me. I had left my suit coat and tie at the office. I looked down at my white shirt and saw a bloodstain just outside the area that would be covered by a tie.

“This is a monogrammed shirt, you shit head.”

Tommy Guns suddenly moved between us and I heard the brutal impact of fist on face but didn’t see it because of Tommy’s massive size. He then stepped back and I could see the Talker was now spitting out teeth.

“Monogrammed shirt, man,” Tommy Guns said, as if offering an explanation for his vicious action.

I stood up.

“Okay, cut them loose,” I said.

Cisco and the two Saints turned to look at me.

“Cut ’em loose,” I said again.

“You sure?” Cisco said. “They’ll probably go running back to this fucker Castille and tell him we know.”

I looked down at the two men on the floor and shook my head.

“No, they won’t. They tell him that they talked and they’ll probably end up dead. So cut them loose and it’s like this never happened. They’ll drop out of sight until the bruises go away. And that will be the end of it.”

I bent down to get close to the two captives.

“I have that right, right?”

“Yeah,” said the Talker, a bulge the size of a marble forming on his upper lip.

I looked at his brother.

“Is that right? I want to hear it from both of you.”

“Yeah, yeah, right,” the Puncher said.

I looked at Cisco. We were finished here. He gave the order.

“Okay, Guns, listen up. You wait till dark. You leave them in here and wait till dark. Then you bag ’em and take ’em back to wherever they want to go. You drop them off but you leave ’em alone. You got it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Poor Tommy Guns. He truly looked disappointed.

I took one last look at the bloodied men on the floor. And they looked up at me. The feeling of holding their lives in my hands sent an electric jolt through me. Cisco tapped me on the back and I followed him from the room, closing the door behind me. We started down the hall but I put my hand on my investigator’s arm and stopped him.

“You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have brought me here.”

“Are you kidding? I had to bring you here.”

“What are you talking about? Why?”

“Because they did something to you. Inside. You lost something, Mick, and if you don’t get it back you aren’t going to be much good to yourself or anybody else.”

I stared at him for a long moment and then nodded.

“I got it back.”

“Good. Now we never have to talk about this again. Can you take me back to the office so I can pick up my bike?”

“Yeah. I can do that.”

Thirty-one

Driving by myself after dropping Cisco in the garage, I thought about the law of the land and the law of the streets and the differences between them. I stood in courtrooms and insisted that the law of the land be applied fairly and appropriately. There was nothing that had been fair and appropriate about what I had just been party to in the black room.

Still, it didn’t bother me. Cisco had been right. I needed to gain the upper hand inside my own soul before I could gain it in court or anywhere else. I felt renewed as I drove. I opened all the Lincoln’s windows and let the evening air course through the car as I came down Laurel Canyon toward home.

This time Maggie had used her key. She was already inside when I got there, an unexpected but pleasant surprise. The refrigerator door was open and she was leaning down and looking in.

“I really came because you always used to stock up before a trial. Your refrigerator was like going down the cold aisle at Gelson’s. But what happened? There’s nothing here.”

I dropped my keys on the table. She had been to her own home from work first and had changed. She wore faded denim jeans, a peasant shirt and sandals with thick cork heels. She knew I liked that outfit.

“I guess I didn’t get around to it this time.”

“Well, I wish I’d known. Might’ve considered going somewhere else on my one night this week with a sitter.”

She smiled slyly. I couldn’t figure out why we weren’t still living together.

“How about we go down to Dan’s?”

“Dan Tana’s? I thought you went there only when you won a case. You already counting your chickens, Haller?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“No, no way. But if I went there only when I won then I’d hardly ever get to eat there.”

She pointed a finger at me and smiled. It was a dance and we were both well used to it. She closed the fridge and walked through the kitchen door and then right past me without so much as a kiss.

“Dan Tana’s is open late,” she said.

I watched her walk down the hallway toward the master bedroom. She pulled the peasant blouse up over her head just as she disappeared into the room.

We didn’t really make love. Something about what I had seen and felt in the black room at the Saints was still with me. Call it residual aggression or the release of the impotent anger I had felt. Whatever it was, it informed all my moves with her. I pulled and pushed too hard. I bit her lip and held her wrists together above her head. I controlled her and I knew what it was all about while I did it. Maggie went with it at first. The newness of it was probably interesting. But curiosity eventually turned to concern and she turned her face from mine and struggled to free her hands. I held her wrists tighter. Finally, I saw tears well in her eyes.

“What?” I whispered into her ear, my nose pressing hard into her hair.

“Just finish,” she said.

All aggression and drive and desire went down the psychic drain after that. Her tears and telling me to finish made me unable to. I pulled out and off, rolling to the side of the bed. I put a forearm across my eyes but still could feel her watching me.

“What?”

“What is with you tonight? Is this something to do with Andrea? Getting me back for what’s going on in court or something?”

I felt her move off the bed.

“Maggie, of course not! Court’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Then what?”

But the bathroom door had closed before I could answer and the shower immediately was turned on, cutting off the exchange.

“I’ll tell you at dinner,” I said, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me.

Dan Tana’s was packed but Christian came through and got us quickly into a booth in the left corner. Maggie and I had not spoken during the fifteen-minute ride into West Hollywood. I had tried some small talk about our daughter but Maggie had been unresponsive so I let it go. I thought that I would try again in the restaurant.

We both ordered the Steak Helen with pasta on the side. Alfredo for Maggie and Bolognese for me. Maggie picked an Italian red for herself and I ordered a bottle of fizzy water. After the waiter left I reached across the table and put my hand on her wrist, gently this time.

“I’m sorry, Maggie. Let’s start over.”

She pulled her arm away from me.

“You still owe me an explanation, Haller. That wasn’t making love. I don’t know what’s going on with you. I don’t think you should treat anyone that way, but especially not me.”

“Maggie, I think you’re overdoing it a bit. For a while there you liked it and you know it.”

“And then you started to hurt me.”

“I’m sorry. I never want to hurt you.”

“And don’t try to act like it was a passing thing. If you ever want to be with me again you’d better start telling me what is happening with you.”

I shook my head and looked out at the crowded room. The Lakers were on the overhead TV in the bar that divided the place. People were crowded three deep behind the lucky patrons who had the stools. The waiter brought our drinks and that bought me some more time. But as soon as he left the table, Maggie was on me.

“Talk to me, Michael, or I’m taking my dinner to go. I’ll take a cab.”

I took a long drink of water and then looked at her.

“It has nothing to do with court or Andrea Freeman or anybody or anything else you know, okay?”

“No, not okay. Talk to me.”

I put my glass down and folded my arms on the table.

“Cisco found the two guys who attacked me.”

“Where? Who are they?”

“That doesn’t matter. He didn’t call the police, he didn’t turn them in.”

“You mean he just let them go?”

I laughed and shook my head.

“No, he held them. Him and two of his associates from the Saints. For me. In this place they have. To do what I wanted. Whatever I wanted. He said I needed it.”

She reached across the checked tablecloth and put her hand on my forearm.

“Haller, what did you do?”

I held her eyes for a moment.

“Nothing. I questioned them and then told Cisco to let them go. I know who hired them.”

“Who?”

“I’m not going to get into that. It’s not important. But you know what, Maggie? When I was in the hospital waiting to find out if they were going to be able to save my twisted nut, all I could think about were these violent images of me getting those two guys back. I mean, Hieronymus Bosch torture stuff. Medieval shit. I wanted to hurt them so bad. Then I get my chance, and believe me these guys would have just disappeared after, and I let it go… and then I’m with you and…”

She leaned back in the booth. She stared off into space, a mixture of sadness and resignation on her face.

“Pretty fucked up, huh?”

“I wish you hadn’t told me all of that.”

“You mean as a prosecutor?”

“There’s that.”

“Well, you kept asking. I guess I should’ve made up a story about being mad at Andrea Freeman. That would’ve been okay with you, right? If it was about men and women, you could understand that.”

She looked back at me.

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Sorry.”

We sat in silence and watched the activities in the bar. People drinking, being happy. At least outwardly. The waiters in tuxedos moving about and squeezing between the crowded tables.

When our food came I was no longer particularly hungry even though the best steak in town was on the plate in front of me.

“Can I ask you one final thing about it?” Maggie asked.

I shrugged. I didn’t see the point in talking about it anymore but relented.

“Ask away.”

“How do you know for sure that Cisco and his associates let those two men go?”

I cut into my steak and blood oozed onto the plate. It was undercooked. I looked up at Maggie.

“I guess I don’t know for sure.”

I went back to my steak and in my peripheral vision I saw Maggie wave down the busboy.

“I’m going to take this to go and try to grab a cab out front. Can you bring it out to me?”

“Of course. Right away.”

He hustled off with the plate.

“Maggie,” I said.

“I just need some time to think about all of this.”

She slid out of the booth.

“I can drive you.”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

She stood next to the table, opening her purse.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it.”

“You sure?”

“If there’s no cab out there, look down the street at the Palm. There might be one there.”

“Okay, thanks.”

She left then to wait for her food outside. I pushed my plate a few inches back and contemplated the half-full glass of wine she left behind. Five minutes later I was still considering it when Maggie suddenly appeared, the to-go bag in her hand.

“They had to call a cab,” she said. “It should be here any minute.”

She picked up her glass and sipped from it.

“Let’s talk after your trial,” she said.

“Okay.”

She put the glass down, leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Then she left. I sat there for a while thinking about things. I thought maybe that last kiss had saved my life.

Thirty-two

This time in his chambers Judge Perry sat down. It was 9:05 Wednesday morning and I was there along with Andrea Freeman and the court reporter. Before resuming trial the judge had agreed with Freeman’s request for one more conference out of the public eye. Perry waited for us to settle in our seats, then checked that his reporter’s fingers were poised over the keys of her steno machine.

“Okay, we’re on the record here in California versus Trammel,” he said. “Ms. Freeman, you called for an in camera conference. I hope you’re not going to tell me you need more time to pursue the issue involving the federal target letter.”

Freeman moved to the front edge of her seat.

“Not at all, Your Honor. There is nothing worth pursuing. The issue has been thoroughly vetted but full knowledge of what is going on with the federal agencies involved does not comfort me. I believe it is clear from what I know now that Mr. Haller is going to attempt to push this trial off the rails with issues that are definitely irrelevant to the matter before the jury.”

I cleared my throat but the judge stepped in first.

“We handled the issue of third-party guilt in pretrial, Ms. Freeman. I am allowing the defense the leeway to pursue it to a point. But you have to give me something here. Just because you don’t want Mr. Haller to pursue this target letter doesn’t make it irrelevant.”

“I understand that, Judge. But what-”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do I get a turn here? I’d like the chance to respond to the insinuation that I’m pushing-”

“Let Ms. Freeman finish and then you’ll get a good long tug, Mr. Haller. I promise you that. Ms. Freeman?”

“Thank you, Your Honor. What I’m trying to say is that a federal target letter essentially means almost nothing. It is a notice of a pending investigation. It is not a charge. It’s not even an allegation. It doesn’t mean that they have found something or will find something. It is simply a tool used by the feds to say, ‘Hey, we heard something and we’re going to look into it.’ But in Mr. Haller’s hands in front of the jury, he’s going to spin this into the harbinger of doom and attach it to someone not even on trial here. Lisa Trammel is the one on trial and this whole thing about federal target letters is not even remotely relevant to the material issues. I would ask that you disallow Mr. Haller from making any further inquiry of Detective Kurlen in this regard.”

The judge was leaning back with his hands in front of his chest, the fingers of each hand pressed against each other. He swiveled to face me. Finally, my cue.

“Judge, if I were in Your Honor’s position, I think that I would ask counsel, since she says she thoroughly vetted this letter and its origin, if there is a sitting federal grand jury looking into foreclosure fraud in Southern California. And then I would ask how she has concluded that a federal target letter amounts to ‘almost nothing.’ Because I don’t think the court is getting a very accurate assessment of what the letter means or what its impact is on this case.”

The judge swiveled back to Freeman and broke one of his fingers free to point in her direction.

“What about that, Ms. Freeman? Is there a grand jury?”

“Judge, you are putting me in an awkward position here. Grand juries work in secret and-”

“We’re all friends here, Ms. Freeman,” the judge said sternly. “Is there a grand jury?”

She hesitated and then nodded.

“There is a grand jury, Your Honor, but it has not heard any testimony in regard to Louis Opparizio. As I said, the target letter is nothing more than a notice of a pending investigation. It’s hearsay, Judge, and it doesn’t fit into any exception that would speak to its admissibility in this trial. Though the letter was signed by the U.S. attorney for this district, it was actually authored by a Secret Service agent handling the inquiry. I have the agent waiting downstairs in my office. If the court wishes, I can have him in chambers in ten minutes to tell you exactly what I just did. That this is a lot of smoke and mirrors on Mr. Haller’s part. At the time of Mr. Bondurant’s death there was no active investigation yet and no connection between the two. There was just the letter.”

That was a mistake. By revealing that Vasquez, the Secret Service agent who penned the target letter, was in the building, Freeman had put the judge into a difficult position. That the agent was nearby and easily accessible would make it harder for the judge to dismiss the issue out of hand. I stepped in before the judge could respond.

“Judge Perry? I would suggest that, since counsel says she has the federal agent who wrote the letter right here in the courthouse, she simply put him on the stand to counter anything that I might draw from Detective Kurlen on cross-examination. If Ms. Freeman is so sure the agent will say the target letter he wrote amounts to nothing, then let him tell the jury that. Let him blow me out of the water. I remind the court that we’ve already dipped our toes into these waters. I asked Kurlen about the letter yesterday. To simply go back out there and not mention it again or have you tell the jurors to un-ring the bell and dismiss it from memory… that could be more damaging to our collective cause than a full airing of this issue.”

Perry answered without hesitation.

“I tend to think that you are correct about this, Mr. Haller. I don’t like the idea of leaving the jury all night with this mysterious target letter to ponder and then pulling the rug out from under them this morning.”

“Your Honor,” Freeman said quickly. “May I be heard once more?”

“No, I don’t think that is necessary. We need to stop wasting time in here and get the trial started.”

“But, Your Honor, there is one other exigent issue the court has not even considered.”

The judge looked frustrated.

“And what is that, Ms. Freeman? My patience is drawing thin.”

“Allowing testimony about a target letter directed at the defense’s key witness will likely complicate that witness’s previous decision not to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights during testimony in this case. Louis Opparizio and his legal counsel may well reconsider that decision once this target letter is introduced and discussed publicly. Therefore, Mr. Haller may be building a defense case that ultimately results in his key witness and straw man, if you will, refusing to testify. I want it on record now that if Mr. Haller plays this game he must abide by the consequences. When Opparizio decides next week that it’s in his best interest not to testify and asks for a new hearing on the subpoena, I don’t want defense counsel crying to the court for a do-over. No do-overs, Judge.”

The judge nodded, agreeing with her.

“I guess that would be tantamount to the man who killed his parents asking the court to show mercy on him because he’s an orphan. I’m in agreement, Mr. Haller. You are on notice that if you play it this way you must be prepared to shoulder the consequences.”

“I understand, Judge,” I said. “And I will make sure my client does as well. I only have one point of argument and that is counsel’s labeling of Louis Opparizio as a straw man. He’s no straw man and we’ll prove it.”

“Well,” the judge said, “at least you’ll get a chance to. Now time is wasting. Let’s get back into the courtroom.”

I followed Freeman out, leaving the judge behind while he put on his robe. I expected her to hit me with a verbal assault but I got the opposite.

“Well played, Counselor,” she said.

“Thanks, I think.”

“Who do you think sent you the letter?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Have the feds contacted you? My guess is they’re going to want to find out who’s leaking sensitive and confidential documents to the public.”

“Nobody’s said jack yet. Maybe it was the feds who leaked it. If I get Opparizio on the stand he’s stuck with his testimony. Maybe I’m just an instrument of the federal government here. Ever think of that?”

The suggestion seemed to put a pause in her step. As I passed her I smiled.

As we entered the courtroom I saw Herb Dahl in the front row of the gallery behind the defense table. I suppressed the urge to pull him over the rail and pound his face into the stone floor. Freeman and I took our positions at our respective tables and in a whisper I filled my client in on what had happened in chambers. The judge entered and brought the jury in.

The last piece of the picture was filled in when Detective Kurlen returned to the witness stand. I grabbed my files and legal pad and went back to the lectern. It seemed like a week since my cross-examination had been interrupted but it had been less than a day. I acted as though it had been less than a minute.

“Now, Detective Kurlen, when we left off yesterday I had just asked you if you knew what a federal target letter is. Can you answer that question now?”

“My understanding is that when a federal agency is interested in gathering information from an individual or company, they sometimes send out a letter that tells that individual or company that they want to talk. It’s sort of a letter that says, ‘Come on in and let’s talk about this so there’s no misunderstanding.’ ”

“And that’s it?”

“I’m not a federal agent.”

“Well, do you think it’s a serious matter to receive a letter from the federal government telling you that you are the target of an investigation?”

“It could be, I guess. I would assume that it depends on the crime they’re looking into.”

I asked the judge for permission to approach the witness with a document. Freeman objected for the record, citing relevance. The judge overruled without comment and told me I could give the document to the witness.

After handing the document to Kurlen I returned to the lectern and asked the judge to mark the document as Defense Exhibit 3. I then told Kurlen to read the letter.

“ ‘Dear Mr. Opparizio, This letter is to inform-’ ”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “Could you first read and describe what is at the top of the letter? The letterhead?”

“It says ‘Office of the United States Attorney, Los Angeles’ and it’s got a picture of an eagle on one side and the U.S. flag on the other. Should I read the letter part now?”

“Yes, please do.”

“ ‘Dear Mr. Opparizio, This letter is to inform you that A. Louis Opparizio Financial Technologies-known as ALOFT-and you, individually, are among the targets of a multi-agency task force investigating all levels of mortgage fraud in Southern California. Receipt of this letter puts you on notice not to remove or destroy any documents or work materials related to the business of your company. Should you wish to discuss this investigation and cooperate with members of the task force, please do not hesitate to call or have your legal counsel make contact with me or Charles Vasquez, of the U.S. Secret Service, who has been assigned to the ALOFT investigation as case agent. We will make every effort to meet with you to discuss this matter. If you do not wish to cooperate, you can be assured that you will be contacted shortly by agents of the task force. I once again have to remind you not to destroy or remove any documents or work product from your offices or associated premises. To do so after receiving this notice would be to commit a serious crime against the United States of America. Sincerely, Reginald Lattimore, U.S. Attorney, Los Angeles.’ That’s it, except it gives everybody’s phone numbers at the bottom.”

A low murmur went through the courtroom. I was sure most of the general citizenry was unaware of things like federal target letters. It was law enforcement in the new era. I was sure the so-called task force amounted to token contributions of agents from a handful of agencies and no budget. Instead of mounting expensive investigations, it would take a shot at scaring people into coming in and begging for mercy. A design to pick the low-hanging fruit, grab a few headlines and call it a day. Someone like Opparizio probably used the original letter received via certified mail as toilet paper. But that didn’t matter to me. My plan was to use the letter to help keep my client out of prison.

“Thank you, Detective Kurlen. Now, can you tell us, is the letter dated?”

Kurlen checked the copy before answering.

“It’s dated January eighteenth of this year.”

“Now, Detective, had you seen that letter before yesterday?”

“No, why should I have seen it? It’s got nothing to do with-”

“Move to strike as unresponsive,” I said quickly. “Your Honor, the question was simply whether he had seen the letter before.”

The judge instructed Kurlen to answer only the question asked.

“I had not seen this letter before yesterday.”

“Thank you, Detective. And now let’s go back to the other letter I asked you to read yesterday, from the victim, Mitchell Bondurant, to the same Louis Opparizio who is addressed in the federal target letter. Do you have that handy there in your binder?”

“If I could have a moment.”

“Please.”

Kurlen found the letter in the binder, removed it and held it up.

“Good. Can you tell us the date of that letter, please?”

“January tenth, this year.”

“And that letter was delivered to Mr. Opparizio by certified mail, correct?”

“It was sent certified. I cannot tell you if Mr. Opparizio received it or ever saw it. It has someone else’s name listed as signing for it.”

“But no matter who signed for it, it is a certainty that it was sent on January tenth, correct?”

“I think that’s correct.”

“And the second letter we’ve talked about here, the target letter from the Secret Service agent, was sent by certified mail as well, am I right?”

“That’s right.”

“So the date of January eighteenth is certified as to when it was mailed.”

“Correct.”

“So let me see if I have this right. Mr. Bondurant sends Louis Opparizio a certified letter that threatens to expose alleged fraudulent practices in his company and then eight days later a federal task force sends Mr. Opparizio another certified letter, this one saying he is the target of an investigation into foreclosure fraud. Do I have this time line right, Detective Kurlen?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“And then less than two weeks later Mr. Bondurant is brutally murdered in the garage at WestLand, right?”

“That’s right.”

I paused and rubbed my chin like a deep thinker. I really wanted to hold the jury with this. I wanted to look at their faces but knew it would reveal my play. So I went with the deep thinker pose.

“Detective, you have testified about your wealth of experience as a homicide detective, correct?”

“I have a lot of experience, yes.”

“Hypothetically speaking, do you wish you knew then what you know now?”

Kurlen squinted like he was confused, even though he knew exactly what I was doing and where I was going.

“I’m not sure I understand,” he said.

“Put it this way, would it have been good for you to have those letters in hand on the first day of the murder investigation?”

“Sure, why not? I’d take all evidence and information on the first day anytime. But that never happens.”

“Hypothetically speaking, if you knew that your victim, Mitchell Bondurant, had sent a letter threatening to expose another man’s criminal behavior just eight days before that man learned he was the target of a criminal investigation, wouldn’t that be a significant avenue of investigation for you?”

“It is hard to say.”

Now I looked at the jury. Kurlen was waffling, refusing to acknowledge what common sense dictated he should own up to. You didn’t need to be a detective to understand that.

“Hard to say? Are you saying that if you had this information and these letters on the day of the murder it would be hard to say if you would follow up on them as a significant lead?”

“I’m saying that we don’t have all the details so it is hard to say how significant it was or wasn’t. But as a general answer, all leads are followed up. It’s as simple as that.”

“As simple as that, yet you never pursued this angle of investigation, did you?”

“I didn’t have this letter. How could I have followed it up?”

“You had the victim’s letter and you did nothing with it, did you?”

“Not true at all. I checked it out and determined it had nothing to do with the murder.”

“But isn’t it true that by that time you already had your supposed murderer and you weren’t going to let anything change your mind or make you deviate from that path?”

“No, not true. Not true at all.”

I stared at Kurlen for a long time, hoping that my face showed my disgust.

“No further questions at this time,” I finally said.

Thirty-three

Freeman kept Kurlen on the stand for another fifteen minutes of redirect and did her best to resculpt his account of the investigation into a sterling effort of crime fighting. When she was through I passed on another crack at him because I was convinced that I was already ahead on Kurlen. My effort had been to sell the investigation as an exercise in tunnel vision and I believed I had succeeded.

Freeman apparently felt that the need to address the federal target letter was urgent. Her next witness was the Secret Service agent, Charles Vasquez. He had not even been known to her twenty-four hours earlier but had now been interjected into her carefully orchestrated lineup of witnesses and evidence. I could have objected to his testimony on the grounds that I had not had the opportunity to question or prepare for Vasquez but I thought that would be pushing it with Judge Perry. I decided to at least see what the agent had to say on direct before I’d go that far.

Vasquez was about forty, with a dark complexion and hair to match. During the preliminaries he said he had formerly been a DEA agent before shifting to the Secret Service. He went from chasing drug dealers to chasing counterfeiters until the opportunity came to join the foreclosure task force. He said the task force had a supervisor and ten agents coming from the Secret Service, FBI, the Postal Service and the IRS. An assistant U.S. attorney oversaw their work but the agents, assigned to pairs, largely worked autonomously, with freedom to pursue targets of their choice.

“Agent Vasquez, on January eighteenth of this year you authored a so-called target letter to a man named Louis Opparizio and it was signed by U.S. Attorney Reginald Lattimore. Do you recall that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Before we get into that specific letter, can you tell the jury exactly what a target letter is?”

“It’s a tool we use to smoke out suspects and offenders.”

“How so?”

“We basically inform them that we are looking into their affairs, their business practices and actions they have taken. A target letter always invites the recipient to come in to discuss the situation with the agents. A high percentage of the time the recipients do just that. Sometimes it leads to cases, sometimes it leads to other investigations. It’s become a useful tool because investigations cost a lot. We don’t have the budget. If a letter can result in charges being filed or a witness cooperating or a solid investigative lead then it’s a good deal for us.”

“So in regard to the letter to Louis Opparizio, what made you send him a target letter?”

“Well, my partner and I were very familiar with his name because it came up often in other cases we were working. Not necessarily in a bad way, just that Opparizio’s company is what we call a foreclosure mill. It handles all the paperwork and filing on foreclosures for many of the banks operating in Southern California. Thousands of cases. So we kept seeing the company-ALOFT-and sometimes there were complaints about the methods the company was using. My partner and I decided to take a closer look. We sent out the letter to see what sort of response we’d get.”

“Does that mean you were fishing for a reaction?”

“It was more than fishing. As I said, there was quite a lot of smoke from this place. We were looking for fire and sometimes the reaction we get from a target letter dictates what our next moves will be.”

“At the time you authored and sent the target letter, had you gathered any evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Louis Opparizio or his company?”

“Not at that point, no.”

“What happened after you sent the letter?”

“Nothing so far.”

“Has Louis Opparizio responded to the letter?”

“We got a response from an attorney saying that Mr. Opparizio welcomed the investigation because it would give him the opportunity to show he ran a clean business.”

“Have you availed yourself of that welcome and investigated Mr. Opparizio or his company further?”

“No, there hasn’t been time. We have several other ongoing investigations that appear to be more fruitful.”

Freeman checked her notes before finishing.

“Finally, Agent Vasquez, is Louis Opparizio or ALOFT currently under investigation by your task force?”

“Technically, no. But we plan to follow up on the letter.”

“So the answer is no?”

“Correct.”

“Thank you, Agent Vasquez.”

Freeman sat down. She was beaming and obviously pleased with the testimony she had drawn from the agent. I stood up and took my legal pad back to the lectern. I had written down a few questions off the direct examination.

“Agent Vasquez, are you telling the jury that an individual who does not respond to your target letter by immediately coming in and confessing must be innocent of any wrongdoing?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Because Louis Opparizio did not do so, do you consider him to be in the clear now?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you make it a practice to send target letters to individuals you believe are innocent of any criminal activity?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then what is the threshold, Agent Vasquez? What does one need to do to receive a target letter?”

“Basically, if you come across my radar in any sort of suspicious way, then I’ll do some preliminary checking and that may lead to the letter. We’re not sending these out scattershot. We know what we’re doing.”

“Did you or your partner or anyone from the task force speak with Mitchell Bondurant in regard to the practices of ALOFT?”

“No, we didn’t. Nobody did.”

“Would he have been someone you would’ve talked to?”

Freeman objected, calling the question vague. The judge sustained the objection. I decided to leave the question floating out there unanswered in front of the jury.

“Thank you, Agent Vasquez.”

Freeman went back to her scheduled rollout of the case after Vasquez, calling the gardener who found the hammer in the bushes of the home a block and a half from the scene of the murder. His testimony was quick and uneventful, by itself unimportant until it would be tied in later with testimony from the state’s forensic witnesses. I did score a minor point by getting the gardener to acknowledge that he had worked in and around the bushes at least twelve different times before he found the hammer. It was a little seed to plant for the jury, the idea that maybe the hammer itself had been planted long after the murder.

After the gardener, the prosecution followed with a few quick hits of testimony from the home owner and the cops who carried the chain of custody of the hammer to the forensic lab. I didn’t even bother with cross-examination. I was not going to contest chain of custody or the fact that the hammer was the murder weapon. My plan was to agree not only that it was the weapon that killed Mitchell Bondurant but also that it belonged to Lisa Trammel.

It would be an unexpected move, but the only one that worked with the defense theory of a setup. The lead through Jeff Trammel that the hammer might be in the back of the BMW he’d left behind when he disappeared to Mexico didn’t pan out. Cisco was able to locate that car, still in use at the dealership where Jeff Trammel had worked, but there was no hammer in the trunk and the man in charge of fleet management said there never was. I dismissed Jeff Trammel’s story as an effort to get paid off for information that might be helpful to his estranged wife’s case.

The murder weapon sequence brought us to lunch, and the judge, as was beginning to be his custom, broke fifteen minutes early. I turned to my client and invited her to go to lunch with me.

“What about Herb?” she said. “I promised him I would go to lunch with him.”

“Herb can come, too.”

“Really?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Because I thought you didn’t… Never mind, I’ll tell him.”

“Good. I’ll drive.”

I had Rojas pick us up and we went down Van Nuys to the Hamlet near Ventura. The place had been there for decades and while it had classed itself up since the days it was called Hamburger Hamlet, the food was just the same. Because the judge had gotten us out early, we avoided the noon lineup and were immediately shown to a booth.

“I love this place,” Dahl said. “But I haven’t been here in ages.”

I sat across from Dahl and my client. I didn’t respond to his enthusiasm for the restaurant. I was too busy working out how I was going to play the lunch.

We ordered quickly because even with the early start our time window was small. Our conversation was focused on the case and how Lisa perceived things to be going. She was pleased so far.

“You get something that helps me from every witness,” she said. “It’s quite remarkable.”

“But the question is, do I get enough?” I responded. “And what you have to remember is that the mountain gets steeper with each witness. Do you know the piece Boléro? It’s classical music. I think it was composed by Ravel.”

Lisa gave me a blank stare.

“Bo Derek, in Ten,” Dahl said. “Love it!”

“Right. Anyway, the point is it’s a long piece, maybe fifteen minutes or so, and it starts off slow with just a few quiet instruments and then it gathers momentum and builds and builds into a crescendo, a big finish with all the instruments in the orchestra coming in together. And at the same time, the emotions of the listeners build and come together at the same moment. And that’s what the prosecutor is doing here. She’s building sound and momentum. Her best stuff is still to come because she’s going to bring everything together with drums and strings and horns by the time she’s finished. You understand, Lisa?”

She nodded reluctantly.

“I’m not trying to knock you down. You are excited and hopeful and righteous and I want you to stay that way. Because the jury picks up on it and it helps just as much as anything I do in there. But you have to remember, the mountain is getting steeper. She’s got the science still to come and juries love science because it gives them a way out, a way of deferring. People think they want to be on jury duty. You get out of work, you sit front row on an interesting case, real-life drama in front of you instead of on the tube at home. But eventually they have to go back into that room and look at each other and decide. They have to decide somebody’s life. Believe me, not too many people want to do that. The science makes it easier. ‘Oh, well, if the DNA matches then it can’t be wrong. Guilty as charged.’ You see? This is what we still face, Lisa, and I don’t want there to be any illusions about it.”

Dahl gallantly put his hand on her arm, which leaned on the table. He gave it a comforting squeeze.

“Well, what will we do about their DNA?” Trammel asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do. I told you before trial we had our own people test it and we got the same answers. It’s legit.”

Her eyes were cast down in defeat and I saw the start of tears, which was what I wanted. The waitress chose that moment to show up with our lunch plates. I waited until we were left alone before continuing.

“Cheer up, Lisa. The DNA is just window dressing.”

She looked up at me in confusion.

“I thought you just said it’s legit.”

“It is. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation for it. I’ll handle the DNA. Like you said when we sat down, my job here is to drop a doubt into each piece of their puzzle. Then we hope when all their pieces are in place and they hold the picture up to the jury that all the little seeds of doubt we have sown have grown into something that changes that picture. If we do that, then we get tan.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We go home. We go to the beach and we get tan.”

I smiled at her and she smiled back. Her tearing up had smeared the intricate makeup work she had performed that morning.

The rest of lunch was punctuated by small talk and uninformed or inane observations of the criminal justice system by my client and her paramour. This was a common thing I had observed in my clients. They don’t know the law but are quick to tell me what is wrong with it. I waited until Trammel forked the last bite of salad into her mouth.

“Lisa, your mascara got a little smeared during the first part of our conversation. It’s very important that you stay strong and look strong. I want you to go into the restroom and make yourself look strong, okay?”

“Can I just do it at the courthouse?”

“No, because we might be going in at the same time as some of the jurors or the reporters. You never know who will see you. I don’t want anyone thinking you’re spending your lunch hour crying, okay? I want you to do it now. And I’ll call Rojas to come pick us up.”

“It might take me a few minutes.”

I checked my watch.

“Okay, take your time. I’ll wait a little bit on Rojas.”

Dahl got up so she could slide out of the booth. Then we were left alone. I had pushed my plate to the side and had my elbows on the table. I had my hands clasped together in front of my mouth, like a poker player holding up his cards to help hide his face. At heart a good lawyer was a negotiator. And now it was time to negotiate Herb Dahl’s exit.

“So Herb… it’s time for you to go.”

He gave me a small smile of misunderstanding.

“What do you mean? We all came together.”

“No, I mean from the case. From Lisa. It’s time for you to disappear.”

He kept the I don’t understand demeanor going.

“I’m not going anywhere. Lisa and me… we’re close. And I have a lot of money tied up in this thing.”

“Well, your money’s gone. And as far as Lisa goes, that’s a charade that is coming to an end right now.”

I reached into the inside pocket of my coat and pulled out the photo of Herb with the brothers Mack that Cisco had given me the night before. I handed it across the table to him. He gave it a quick look and then laughed uneasily.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Who are they?”

“The Mack brothers. The men you hired to work me over.”

He shook his head and glanced over his shoulder at the rear hallway that led to the restrooms. He then turned back to me.

“Sorry, Mickey, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you have to remember here that you and I have a deal on the movie. A deal involving circumstances I am sure the California Bar would be interested in reviewing, but other than that…”

“Are you threatening me, Dahl? Because if you are you’re making a mistake.”

“No, no threat. I’m just trying to figure out where you’re coming from.”

“I’m coming from a dark room where I had an interesting conversation with the Mack brothers.”

Dahl refolded the photo and handed it back to me.

“These two? They were asking me for directions, that’s all.”

“Directions, huh? Are you sure it wasn’t money they were asking for? Because we have photos of that, too.”

“I might’ve given them a few bucks. They asked for help and seemed nice enough.”

Now I had to smile.

“You know, you’re good, Herb, but I got their story. So let’s just skip all the bullshit and get down to the play.”

He shrugged.

“Okay, this is your show. What’s the play?”

“The play is what I said at the top. You’re gone, Herb. You kiss Lisa goodbye. You kiss the movie deal goodbye. You kiss your money goodbye.”

“That’s a lot of kissing. What do I get for all that?”

“You get to stay out of prison, that’s what you get.”

He shook his head and glanced over his shoulder again.

“Doesn’t work that way, Mick. You see, that wasn’t my money. It didn’t come from me.”

“Who’d it come from, Jerry Castille?”

His eyes made a quick movement and then settled. The name had hit him like an invisible punch. He now knew that the Mack brothers had caved and talked.

“Yeah, I know about Jerry and I know about Joey in New York, too. No honor among thugs, Herb. The Mack brothers are ready to start singing like Sonny and Cher. And the song is ‘I’ve Got You, Babe.’ I’ve got you all wrapped up in a nice little package and unless you slink on out of Lisa’s life and my life today, I’m going to drop it off at the DA’s office where I happen to have an ex-wife who’s a prosecutor and who was very distressed by that attack on me.

“I figure she’ll sail this one through the grand jury in a single morning and you, asshole, will go down for aggravated assault with GBH. That means ‘with great bodily harm.’ It’s called a charging enhancement. It will get you an extra three years on the sentence. And as the victim I’m going to insist on that. That’s for my twisted nut. I’d say that all told with gain time you’re looking at four years inside, Herb. And there’s one thing you should know. They don’t let you wear no fucking peace sign in Soledad.”

Dahl put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. For the first time I could see desperation enter his eyes.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“Listen, asshole-can I call you asshole?-I don’t give a rat’s ass who I’m dealing with. I’m looking at you and I want you away from me and this case and-”

“No, no, you don’t get it. I can help you. You think you know what’s going on in this case? You don’t know shit. But I can school you, Haller. I can help you reach the beach and we can all get tan.”

I leaned back away from him, my arm up on the booth’s padded backrest. Now I was puzzled. I flicked a wrist like this was a complete waste of time.

“So school me.”

“You think I just showed up on her picket line and said, ‘Let’s make a movie’? You dumb fuck! I was sent there. Before Bondurant was even put down, I was getting close to Lisa. You think that was happenstance?”

“Sent by who?”

“Who do you think?”

I stared at him and felt the coalescing of all aspects of the case, like streams to the river. The hypothesis of innocence was not a hypothesis. The setup was real.

“Opparizio.”

He made one slight nod in confirmation. And at that moment I saw Lisa come through the back hallway, heading toward us, her eyes shiny and bright again for court. I looked back at Dahl. I wanted to ask many questions but we were out of time.

“Seven o’clock tonight. Be at my office. Alone. You tell me about Opparizio then. You tell me about everything… or I go to the DA.”

“The one thing is I’ll never testify to anything. Never.”

“Seven o’clock.”

“I’m supposed to have dinner with Lisa.”

“Yeah, well, change of plans. Think of something. You just be there. Now let’s go.”

I started to slide out of the booth as Lisa arrived. I pulled my phone and called Rojas.

“We’re ready,” I said. “Pick us up out front.”

Thirty-four

After court reconvened the prosecution called Detective Cynthia Longstreth to the witness stand. By going with Kurlen’s partner as her next witness Freeman was confirming what had been my growing assumption: that her version of Boléro climaxed with the science. It was the smart play. Go with what can’t be questioned or denied. Lay out the investigation through Kurlen and Longstreth and then bring it all together with the forensics. She would finish out the case with the medical examiner and the DNA evidence. A nice tight package.

Detective Longstreth did not look as tough and as severe as she did the first day of the case when I had met her at Van Nuys Division. First of all, she was wearing a dress that made her look more like a schoolteacher than a detective. I had seen this sort of transformation before and it always bothered me. Whether it was at the instruction of the prosecutor or by the detective’s own wiles, many a time I had been faced with a female police witness who had transformed herself to be softer and more pleasing to the jury. But if I dared point this out to the judge, or anybody for that matter, I ran the risk of being slapped down as a misogynist.

So most times I just had to grin and eat it.

Freeman was using Longstreth to outline the second half of the investigation. Her testimony would be primarily about the search of the Trammel house and its findings. I was expecting no surprises here. After Freeman got her witness’s bona fides on the record, she went right to it.

“Did you obtain a search warrant from a judge granting you access to Lisa Trammel’s home?” Freeman asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“What is that process? How do you get a judge to issue such an order?”

“You make a request that contains a probable cause statement, which lists the facts and evidence that have led you to the point of needing to search the premises. I did that here, using the statement of the witness who saw the suspect in the vicinity of the bank as well as the suspect’s own inconsistent statements during the interview. The warrant was signed and issued by Judge Companioni and we proceeded to the house in Woodland Hills.”

“Who is ‘we,’ Detective?”

“My partner, Detective Kurlen and I, and we decided to bring a videographer and a crime scene team with us to process anything we might find during the search.”

“So the whole search was put on video?”

“Well, I would not say it was the whole search. My partner and I split up to make things move faster. But there was only one cameraman and he couldn’t be with both of us at once. The way we worked it was that when we found something that looked like evidence or something we wanted to take into custody for examination, we would call for the camera.”

“I see. And did you bring the video with you today?”

“I did and it has been placed in the player and is ready to go.”

“Perfect.”

The jury was then treated to a ninety-minute video accompanied by Longstreth’s narration. The camera followed the police team as they arrived at the house and made a complete circuit around it before entering. While the view was in the backyard, Longstreth made sure to point out to jurors an herb garden stepped with railroad ties and freshly turned soil. It was what the great filmmakers would call foreshadowing. Its meaning would become apparent later, once the camera was inside the garage.

I was having trouble concentrating on the testimony. Dahl had dropped a bomb when he revealed the connection to Opparizio. I kept thinking about the possible scenario and what it could mean to the case. I wanted court to be over and for it to be seven o’clock.

On the video, a key taken from Lisa Trammel’s belongings following her arrest was used to gain entrance to the house without damaging the property. Once inside, the team began a systematic search of the premises that seemed to follow a protocol born of experience. The shower and bathtub drains were examined for blood evidence. The washer and dryer as well. The longest part of the search took place in the closets, where every shoe and piece of clothing was carefully examined and subjected to chemical and lighting treatments designed to draw attention to blood evidence.

The camera eventually followed Longstreth as she left a side door to the house and crossed a small portico to another door. This door was unlocked and she went through it, bringing the camera into the garage. Freeman stopped the video here. Like an expert Hollywood craftsman, she had built her viewers’ anticipation and now came the big tease.

“What was found in the garage became very important to the investigation, correct, Detective?”

“Yes, it did.”

“What did you find?”

“Well, in one incidence, it was what we didn’t find.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“Yes. There was a tool bench that ran along the back wall of the garage. It appeared to be fully stocked with tools. Most of them were hanging on hooks attached to a pegboard installed above the bench and along the wall. The different locations for hanging the tools were marked with the name of the tool. Everything had its place on the board.”

“Okay, can you show us?”

The video was restarted and soon it came to a head-on view of the workbench. At this point Freeman froze the image on the overhead screens.

“Okay, so this is the workbench, correct?”

“Yes.”

“We see the tools hanging on the pegboard. Is there anything missing?”

“Yes, the hammer is missing.”

Freeman asked the judge for permission for Longstreth to step down and use a laser pointer to show on the screens where the spot for the hammer was on the pegboard. The judge allowed it. Longstreth pointed it out on both screens and then returned to the witness stand.

“Now, Detective, was that spot specifically marked as being for a hammer?”

“Yes, it was.”

“So the hammer was missing.”

“It was not found anywhere in the garage or the house.”

“And did there come a time when you identified the make and model of the tools that were on the pegboard?”

“Yes, by using the tools that were still there we were able to determine that the Trammels had a set of Craftsman tools that came in a specific package. It was a two-hundred-thirty-nine-piece set called the Carpenter’s Tool Package.”

“And was the hammer from this package available outside of this set?”

“No, it was not. There was a specific hammer that came from this particular set of tools.”

“And it was missing from the tool set in Lisa Trammel’s garage.”

“That is correct.”

“Now, did there come a time during the investigation that a hammer was turned in to police that had been found near the scene of the murder of Mitchell Bondurant?”

“Yes, a hammer was found by a gardener in some bushes a block and a half from the garage where the murder took place.”

“Did you examine this hammer?”

“I examined it briefly before turning it over to the Scientific Investigation Division for analysis.”

“What kind of hammer was it?”

“It was a claw hammer.”

“And do you know who manufactured the hammer?”

“It was produced by Sears Craftsman.”

Freeman paused as though she was expecting the jury to collectively gasp at the revelation when everybody in the courtroom had known exactly what was coming. She then stepped over to the prosecution table and opened a brown evidence bag. From it she pulled out a hammer that was encased in a clear plastic bag. Holding the hammer aloft she returned to the lectern.

“Your Honor, may I approach the witness with an exhibit?”

“You may.”

She walked the hammer to Longstreth and handed it to her.

“Detective, I ask you to identify the hammer you are holding.”

“This is the hammer that was found and turned over to me. My initials and badge number are on this evidence bag.”

Freeman retrieved the hammer from her and asked that it be marked as state’s evidence. Judge Perry gave his approval. After returning the hammer to the prosecution table, Freeman went back to the lectern and proceeded with her examination.

“You testified that the hammer was turned over to SID for forensic examination, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“And subsequent to that did you get a forensics report on the tool?”

“Yes, and I have it here.”

“What were their findings?”

“Two things of note. One was that they identified the hammer as being made exclusively for the Craftsman Carpenter’s Tool Package.”

“The same set that was found in the defendant’s garage?”

“Yes.”

“But minus the hammer?”

“Correct.”

“And the other forensic finding of note was what?”

“They found blood on the hammer’s handle.”

“Even though it had been found in the bushes and been there for several weeks?”

I stood and objected, arguing that no testimony or evidence established how long the hammer had been in the bushes.

“Your Honor,” Freeman responded. “The hammer was found several weeks after the murder occurred. It only stands to reason that it was in the bushes during that time.”

Before the judge could make a ruling I quickly countered.

“Again, Judge, the state has introduced nothing in the way of evidence or testimony that concludes the hammer was in that bush for that long a time. In fact, the man who found it testified he had worked in and around those bushes at least twelve times since the murder and didn’t see it until the morning he actually found it. The hammer could have easily been planted the night before it was-”

“Objection, Your Honor!” Freeman shouted. “Counsel is using his objection to put forth the defense’s case because he knows it will-”

“Enough!” the judge bellowed. “From both of you. The objection is sustained. Ms. Freeman, you need to reword your question so that it does not assume facts not in evidence.”

Freeman looked down at her notes, calming herself.

“Detective, did you see blood on the hammer when it was turned in to you?”

“No, I did not.”

“Then how much blood was actually on the hammer?”

“It is described in the report as trace blood. A minute amount that was beneath the upper part of the rubber grip that encases the wood handle.”

“Okay, so what did you do after receiving the report?”

“I arranged for the blood from the hammer to be tested at a private DNA lab in Santa Monica.”

“Why didn’t you use the regional crime lab at Cal State? Isn’t that normal procedure?”

“It is normal procedure but we wanted to put a rush on this. We had the money in the budget so we thought we should move quickly with it. I had the results reviewed by our lab.”

Freeman paused there and asked the judge to include the forensic report on the hammer as a prosecution exhibit. I didn’t object and the judge approved. Freeman then changed course, leaving the DNA revelation for the DNA expert who would come in at the end of the prosecution’s case.

“Let’s go back to the garage now, Detective. Were there any other significant findings?”

I objected again, this time to the form of the question, which assumed that there had been a significant finding when in fact none had been testified to. It was a cheap shot but I took it because the last skirmish over an objection had knocked down Freeman’s momentum. I wanted to keep trying to do that. The judge told her to rephrase the question and she did.

“Detective, you have testified about what you didn’t find in the garage. The hammer. What can you tell us that you did find?”

Freeman turned to me after asking it as if to get my approval. I nodded at her and smiled. The fact that she would even acknowledge me was a sign I had gotten to her with the last two objections.

“We found a pair of gardening shoes and got a positive reaction for blood when we conducted a Luminol test.”

“Luminol being one of the agents that reacts to blood under ultraviolet lighting, correct?”

“That’s correct. It is used to detect locations where blood has been cleaned or wiped away.”

“Where was the blood found here?”

“On the shoelace of the left shoe.”

“Why were these particular shoes tested with Luminol?”

“First of all, it is routine to test all shoes and clothing when you are looking for the possibility of blood evidence. There was blood at the scene of the crime so you work under the assumption that some must have gotten on the assailant. Secondly, we had noticed in the backyard that the garden had been recently worked. The soil had been overturned and yet these shoes were very clean.”

“Well, wouldn’t someone clean their gardening shoes before going into the house?”

“Possibly, but we weren’t in the house. We were in the garage and the shoes were in a cardboard box that contained a lot of loose dirt, presumably from the garden, and yet the shoes were quite clean. It drew our attention.”

Freeman forwarded the video to the point where the shoes were shown. They were sitting side by side in a box that said COCA-COLA. They were on a shelf under the workbench. Not hidden by any means. Just in the spot where they were probably routinely stored.

“Are these the shoes?”

“Yes. You can see one of the forensic techs collecting them there.”

“So you are saying that the fact that they were so clean but stored in a dirty box made them suspicious?”

I objected, stating she was leading the witness. I won the point but the message got to the jury. Freeman moved on.

“What made you think the shoes were Lisa Trammel’s?”

“Because they were small, obviously a woman’s shoes, and because we found a framed photograph in the house that depicted Lisa working in the garden. She was wearing the shoes.”

“Thank you, Detective. What became of the shoes and the spot on the one shoelace that initially tested as showing blood?”

“The shoelace was turned over to the regional crime lab at Cal State for DNA testing.”

“Why didn’t you use the private lab for this?”

“The sample of blood was quite small. We decided not to risk that we might lose the sample in an outside lab. My partner and I actually hand-delivered it to the Cal State lab. We also sent along other exemplars for comparison.”

“Other exemplars for comparison-what does that mean?”

“Blood from the victim was sent under separate delivery to the lab as well so that it could be compared to what was found on the shoe.”

“Why separate delivery?”

“So there would be no chance of cross-contamination.”

“Thank you, Detective Longstreth. I have no further questions at this time.”

The judge called for the mid-afternoon break before cross-examination would begin. My client, unaware of the true purpose of my lunch invitation, invited me to join her and Dahl for coffee. I declined, saying I had to write out my questions for cross. The truth was I already had my questions ready. While before the trial I had thought Freeman would use Kurlen to introduce and testify about the hammer, the shoes and the search of Lisa Trammel’s home, I was nonetheless ready because the direct examination had gone exactly as I had expected it would.

Instead, I spent the break on the phone with Cisco, preparing him for the meeting with Dahl at seven. I told him to clue in Bullocks and have Tommy Guns and Bam Bam outside the Victory Building for security. I wasn’t sure whether Dahl was going to play it straight or not, but I was going to be ready either way.

Thirty-five

After the break, Detective Longstreth retook the stand and the judge turned it over to me. I threw no softballs and got right to the points I wanted to make in front of the jury. Primarily, this was testimony that informed the jury that the neighborhood surrounding WestLand was searched by police on the day of the murder. This included the house and presumably the landscaping where the hammer was eventually found.

“Detective,” I asked, “did it trouble you that this hammer was found so long after the murder and yet so close to the murder scene and in a spot that was inside a rather intense search perimeter?”

“No, not really. After the hammer was found I went out and looked at the bushes in front of that house. They were big and very dense. It didn’t surprise me or trouble me at all that a hammer could have been in there all that time. In fact, I thought we had been pretty lucky that it had been found at all.”

Good answer. I was beginning to see why Freeman had broken things up between Kurlen and Longstreth. Longstreth was damn good on the stand, maybe even better than her veteran partner. I moved on. One of the rules of the game was to distance yourself from mistakes. Don’t compound things by dwelling.

“Okay, let’s move to the house in Woodland Hills now. Detective, wouldn’t you agree that the search of the house was a bust?”

“A bust? I’m not sure I would call it a bust. I-”

“Did you find the defendant’s bloody clothes?”

“No, we did not.”

“Did you find the victim’s blood in the shower or bathtub drains?”

“No, we did not.”

“What about in the washing machine?”

“No.”

“What evidence has the state presented during this trial that was obtained from inside the defendant’s home? I am not talking about the garage. Just the home.”

It took Longstreth a few long moments of silence as she conducted an internal inventory. Finally, she shook her head.

“I can’t recall anything at the moment. But that still doesn’t mean the search was a bust. Sometimes not finding evidence is just as useful as finding it.”

I paused. She was baiting me. She wanted me to ask her to explain. But if I did that I had no idea where she would go. I decided to pull back, not take the bait and move on.

“Okay, but the real treasure-the evidence you did find-was found in the garage, right? The evidence that has been or will be brought to court in this trial.”

“I would think so, yes.”

“We’re talking about the shoe with the blood on it and the tool set missing the hammer, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Am I missing something else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, then let me show you something here on the overhead screens.”

I grabbed the remote, which Freeman had conveniently left on the lectern. I reversed the search video, keeping my eyes on the rewinding images. I ran it right by the images I wanted and stopped it, then moved forward to the right spot and paused.

“Okay, can you tell the jury what is happening at this point in the video?”

I hit the play button and the image on the screen started to move. It showed Longstreth and one of the forensic techs leaving the main house and crossing the portico to the door that led to the garage.

“Uh, this is when we go into the garage,” Longstreth said.

Then her voice came from the recording.

“We might need the key from Kurlen,” she said.

But on the video she reached a gloved hand to the doorknob and it turned.

“Never mind, it’s open.”

I let the video run until Longstreth and the forensic tech had entered the garage and turned on the lights. I then paused it again.

“Was this the first time you had entered the garage, Detective?”

“Yes.”

“I see you turned on the lights here. Had anybody else from the search team entered the garage before you?”

“No, they had not.”

I slowly backed up the video to the point where she had opened the door to enter. I started the playback again and asked my questions as it played.

“I notice you don’t use a key to enter the garage, Detective. Why is that?”

“I tried the door, as you can see here, and it was unlocked.”

“Do you know why?”

“No, it was just unlocked.”

“Was anybody at the home when the search team arrived?”

“No, the house was empty.”

“And the door to the house itself was locked, correct?”

“Yes, Ms. Trammel had locked it when she agreed to accompany us to Van Nuys.”

“Did she want to lock it or did you have to tell her?”

“No, she wanted to lock up.”

“So at the time that she locked the house she left the outside door that led into the garage unlocked, correct?”

“It would appear so.”

“It’s safe to say that it was unlocked at the time you and the others arrived with the search warrant, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Meaning anyone could have entered the garage while its owner, Lisa Trammel, was in police custody, correct?”

“I guess it’s possible, yes.”

“By the way, when you and Detective Kurlen left the house with Ms. Trammel that morning, did you leave a police officer on post at the house to sort of watch over it, make sure nothing was disturbed or taken from inside?”

“No, we did not.”

“Didn’t you think that would be prudent, considering that the house might contain evidence in a murder investigation?”

“At the time she was not a suspect. She was just someone we wanted to talk to.”

I almost smiled and Longstreth almost smiled. She had tiptoed past a trap I had set for her. She was good.

“Ah,” I said. “Not a suspect, that’s right. So how long, would you say, was that side door left unlocked and the garage available for anyone to enter?”

“That would be impossible for me to tell. I don’t know when it was left unlocked in the first place. It’s possible she never locked the garage.”

I nodded and put a pause under her answer.

“Did you or Detective Kurlen instruct the forensics team to see if there were any fingerprints on the door leading to the garage?”

“No, we did not.”

“Why not, Detective?”

“We didn’t think it was necessary. We were searching the house, not holding it as a crime scene.”

“Let me ask you hypothetically, Detective. Do you think that someone who has carefully planned and carried out a murder would then leave a pair of bloody shoes in their unlocked garage? Especially after taking the time to get rid of the murder weapon?”

Freeman objected, citing the compound nature of the question and arguing that it assumed facts not in evidence. I didn’t care. The question hadn’t been for Longstreth to consider. It had been directed at the jury.

“Your Honor, I withdraw the question,” I announced. “And I have nothing further for this witness.”

I moved away from the lectern and sat down. I stared pointedly at the jurors, my eyes sweeping across one row of them and then the other. Finally, I held them on Furlong in the three spot. He held my stare and didn’t look away. I took that as a very good sign.

Thirty-six

Herb Dahl came alone. Cisco met him at the door of the office suite and escorted him into my office, where I was waiting. Bullocks sat to my left and we had an empty seat for Dahl right in front of my desk. Cisco stayed standing, which was by design. I wanted Cisco pacing and pensive. I wanted Dahl to feel unease, that the wrong word spoken could unleash the big man in the tight black T-shirt.

I didn’t offer Dahl coffee, soda or water. I didn’t start with any platitudes or efforts to mend our strained relationship. I simply got down to business.

“What we’re going to do here, Herb, is find out exactly what you’ve done, what your involvement with Louis Opparizio has been and what we’re going to do about it. As far as I know, I’m not needed anywhere until nine o’clock tomorrow morning, so we’ve got all night if that’s what it takes.”

“Before we start I want to know that we have a deal if I cooperate,” Dahl said.

“I told you at lunch the deal is you stay out of prison. In exchange, you tell me what you know. Beyond that, no promises.”

“I won’t testify to anything. This is informational only. Besides, I have something better for you than my testifying.”

“We’ll see about that. But right now why don’t we start at the beginning? You said today that you were told to go on Lisa Trammel’s picket line. Start there.”

Dahl nodded but then disagreed.

“I think I have to start before that. This goes back to the beginning of last year.”

I raised two open hands.

“Have at it. We’ve got all night.”

Dahl then proceeded to tell a long story about a movie he produced a year earlier called Blood Racer. It was a warm family movie about a girl who is given a horse named Chester. She finds a tattooed number inside the animal’s lower lip that indicates he was once a thoroughbred racehorse thought to have been killed in a barn fire years before.

“So she and her pop do some more investigating and-”

“Look,” I interrupted. “It sounds like a nice story but can we talk about Louis Opparizio? I may have all night but let’s stay on point anyway.”

“That is the point. This movie. It was supposed to be low budget all the way but I love horses. Ever since I was a little kid. And I really thought I could get out of the racks with this one.”

“The racks?”

“The straight-to-DVD dreck you see out there. I was thinking this story was a diamond in the rough and if we did it right we could get a major theatrical release. But to get that you need production value and to get that you need money.”

It always comes down to money.

“You borrowed the money?”

“I borrowed the money and put it into the flick. Stupid, I know. And this was on top of the investor money I took at the start. But the director was this perfectionist freak from Spain. Guy barely spoke English but we hired him. He did take after take on every setup-thirty takes at a frickin’ snack bar scene! Bottom line is we ran out of money and I needed a quarter mill minimum just to finish the film. I had already been all over town and everybody was tapped. But I loved this flick. To me it was like the little movie that could, you know?”

“You got the money on the street,” Cisco said from a position behind Dahl’s chair.

Dahl twisted around to look up at him and nodded.

“Yeah, from a guy I know. A bent-nose guy.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“We don’t need his name in this,” Dahl said.

“Yes, we do. What is his name?”

“Danny Greene.”

“I thought you said-”

“Yeah, I know. He’s with them but his name’s Greene-what can I say? It’s ‘Green’ with an ‘e’ at the end.”

I gave Cisco a look. He would need to check this out.

“Okay, so you took a quarter million from Danny Greene and what happened?”

Dahl raised his palms in a gesture indicating frustration.

“That’s just it, nothing happened. I finished the flick but I couldn’t sell it. I took it to every frickin’ festival in North America and nobody wanted it. I took it to the American Film Market, rented a frickin’ suite at the Loews in Santa Monica and only sold it to Spain. Of course, the one country that was interested was where my asshole director was from.”

“So Danny Greene wasn’t too happy, was he?”

“Nope, he wasn’t. I mean, I had been keeping up with the payments but it was a six-month loan and he called it in. I couldn’t pay it all. I gave him the Spanish money but most of that was on the come. They gotta dub it and all that shit and I won’t see most of that cash till the end of this year when the movie comes out over there. So I was seriously fucked.”

“What happened?”

“Well, one day Danny comes to me. I mean, he just shows up and I’m thinking he’s here to break my legs. But instead he says they need me to do something. It’s like a long-term job and if I do it they’ll restructure my loan and I can even lay off a good chunk of the remaining principal. So, man, I’m sitting there, I’ve got no choice. What’m I going to do, tell Danny Greene no? Uh-uh, doesn’t work that way.”

“So you said yes.”

“That’s right. I said yes.”

“And what was the job?”

“To get close to these people who were agitating and protesting about all the foreclosures. This organization called FLAG. He wanted me to get inside their camp if I could. So I did and that’s how I met Lisa. She was the top agitator.”

This sounded crazy but I played along with it.

“Were you told why?”

“Not really. I was just told there was a guy out there who was sort of paranoid and he wanted to know what she was up to. He had some kind of deal going and didn’t want these people to mess it up. So if Lisa was planning a protest or something, then I was supposed to tell Danny where it would be and who the target was and like that.”

The story was starting to have the ring of truth to it. I thought about the LeMure deal. Opparizio had been in the process of setting up the sale of ALOFT to the publicly traded company. It was prudent business practice to keep tabs on any potential threats to the deal before it was finished in February. That could even include Lisa Trammel. Bad publicity could hinder the sale. Stockholders always want squeaky-clean acquisitions.

“Okay, what else?”

“Not a whole lot else. Just intelligence gathering. I got close to Lisa but then like a month later she got popped for the murder. Danny came back then. I thought he was going to say deal’s off because she was in jail. But he said he wanted me to put up the money and get her out. He gave me the money in a bag-two hundred thou. Then when I got her out I was supposed to do the same thing again, only with you people. Get inside the defense camp, see what was going on and report back.”

I looked over at Cisco. His pensive moves were no longer an act. We both knew that Dahl could be the tip of an iceberg that would tear the bottom out of the prosecution’s case and sink it. We also knew we might have a client in Lisa Trammel who was completely unlikable but innocent.

And if she was innocent…

“Where does Opparizio come into this?” I asked.

“Well, he sort of doesn’t-at least, not directly. But when I call Danny to check in he always wants to know what you’ve got on Opparizio. That’s how he says it, ‘What do they have on Opparizio?’ He asks that every time. So I’m thinking, maybe he’s the guy I’m really doing this work for, you know?”

I didn’t respond at first. I swiveled in my chair, thinking the story over.

“You know what I don’t get and what isn’t in your story, Dahl?” Cisco said.

“What?”

“The part about you hiring those two guys to go after Mick. You left that part out, asshole.”

“What about that?” I added.

Dahl raised his hands in surrender to show his innocence.

“Hey, they told me to do it. They sent me those two guys.”

“Why beat me up? What did that do?”

“It slowed you down, didn’t it? They want Lisa to go down for this and they started thinking you were too good. They wanted to slow you down.”

Dahl avoided eye contact by brushing imaginary lint off his thigh as he spoke. It made me think he might be lying about the reason behind the attack on me. It was the first false note I had picked up during the confession. My guess was that Dahl had been freelancing on the attack, that maybe he was the one who wanted me hurt.

I looked at Bullocks and then at Cisco. My quibble with Dahl’s last answer aside, we had an opportunity here. I knew what Dahl was going to offer next. Himself as a double agent. We’d reach the beach with him feeding Opparizio false intelligence.

I had to think about this. I could easily give Dahl misleading information to take back to Danny Greene. But it would be a risky maneuver, not to mention the ethical considerations.

I stood up and signaled Cisco toward the door.

“Everybody sit tight for a minute. I want to talk to my investigator out here.”

We stepped into the reception area and I closed the door behind me. I walked over to Lorna’s desk.

“You know what this means?” I asked.

“It means we’re going to win this fucking case.”

I opened the middle drawer of Lorna’s desk and took out the stack of delivery menus for local restaurants and fast-food chains.

“No, it means those two guys at the clubhouse? They might’ve been Bondurant’s killers and we fucked things up with that little play in the back room.”

“I don’t know about that, Boss.”

“Yeah, what did your two associates do with them?”

“Exactly what I told them to do, drop them off. They told me later that both of them wanted to be left off at some bottle club in downtown. That was it. I mean it, Mick.”

“It’s still fucked up.”

With the menus in my hand, I headed toward the door to my office. Cisco spoke to my back.

“Do you believe Dahl?”

I looked back at him before opening the door.

“To a point.”

I went into the office and put the menus down in the middle of the desk. I took my seat again and looked at Dahl. He was a weasel always on the make. And I was about to go down the path with him.

“We shouldn’t do it,” Bullocks said.

I looked at her.

“Do what?”

“Use him to feed bad intel back to Opparizio. We should put him on the stand and make him tell the story to the jury.”

Dahl immediately protested.

“I’m not testifying! Who the fuck is she, saying how this-”

I raised my hands in a calming gesture.

“You’re not testifying,” I said. “Even if I wanted you to I couldn’t get you on the stand. You have nothing that directly connects Opparizio to this. Have you ever even met the man?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen him before?”

“Yeah, in the court.”

“Before that.”

“No, and I had never even heard his name until Danny asked me about him.”

I looked at Bullocks and shook my head.

“They’re too smart to leave a direct link out there. The judge wouldn’t let him anywhere near the stand.”

“Then what about Danny Greene? We put him on the stand.”

“And what do we use to compel him to testify? He’d take the Fifth before we even got to his name. There is only one thing to do here.”

I waited for further protest but Bullocks was finally and sullenly silent. I looked back at Dahl. I disliked the man intensely and trusted him about as much as I trusted that he had his own hair. But that didn’t stop me from taking the next step.

“Dahl, how is contact initiated with Danny Greene?”

“I usually call him about ten.”

“Every night?”

“Yeah, during the trial it’s been that way. He always wants to hear from me. Most nights he answers and if not he calls me back pretty quick.”

“Okay, let’s dig in and order some takeout. Tonight you make the call from here.”

“What am I going to say?”

“We’re going to work that out between now and ten when you make the call. But essentially I think you are going to tell Danny Greene that Louis Opparizio doesn’t have a thing to worry about when he takes the stand. You’re going to tell him that we’ve got nothing, that we’ve been bluffing and that the coast is clear.”

Thirty-seven

Thursday was supposed to be the day when all the orchestral elements came together in a crescendo for the prosecution. Since Monday morning Andrea Freeman had carefully rolled out her case, easily handling the variables and unknowns, like the potshots I had taken and the intrusion of the federal target letter, in a strategic buildup that gathered momentum and led inalterably to this day. Thursday was the science day, the day that all elements of evidence and testimony would be tied together with the unbreakable bindings of scientific fact.

It was a good strategy but this is where I intended to turn her plans upside-down. In the courtroom there are three things for the lawyer to always consider: the knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. Whether at the prosecution or defense table, it is the lawyer’s job to master the first two and always be prepared for the third. On Thursday I intended to be one of the unknown unknowns. I had seen Andrea Freeman’s strategy from a mile away. She would not see mine until she had stepped into it like quicksand and it silenced her crescendo.

Her first witness was Dr. Joachim Gutierrez, the assistant medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Mitchell Bondurant’s body. Using a morbid slide show that I had halfheartedly and unsuccessfully objected to, the doctor took the jury on a magical mystery tour of the victim’s body, cataloging every bruise, abrasion and broken tooth. Of course, he spent the most time describing and showing on the screens the damage created by the three impacts of the murder weapon. He pointed out which had been the first blow and why it was fatal. He called the second two strikes, delivered when the victim was facedown on the ground, overkill and testified that in his experience overkill was equated with an emotional context. The three brutal strikes revealed that the killer had personal animosity toward the victim. I could have objected to both the question and answer but they played nicely into a question I would later ask.

“Doctor,” Freeman asked at one point, “you have three brutal strikes on the top of the head, all within a circle with a four-inch diameter. How is it that you can tell which one came first and which one was the fatal blow?”

“It is a painstaking process yet a very simple one. The blows to the skull created two fracture patterns. The immediate and most damaging impact was in the contact area where each strike of the weapon created what is termed a depressed calvarial fracture, which is really just a fancy way of saying it created a depression in the skull or a dent.”

“A dent?”

“You see, all bone has a certain elasticity. With injuries like this-a forceful, traumatic impact-the skull bone depresses in the shape of the striking instrument and two things happen. You get parallel break lines on the surface-these are called terraced fractures-and on the interior, you get a deep depression fracture-the dent. On the inside of the skull this depression causes a fracture that we call a pyramid splinter. This splinter projects through the dura, which is the interior lining, and directly into the brain. Often, and as was found in this case, the splinter breaks and is propelled deep into the brain tissue like a bullet. It instantly causes the termination of brain function and death.”

“Like a bullet, you said. So these three impacts on the victim’s head were so forceful that it was literally tantamount to him being shot three times in the head?”

“Yes, that is correct. But it only took one of these splinters to kill him. The first one.”

“Which brings me back to my initial question. How can you tell which impact was the first one?”

“Can I demonstrate this?”

The judge gave permission for Gutierrez to put a diagram of a skull on the video screens. It was an overhead view and it showed the three impact spots where the hammer had struck. These points were drawn in blue. Other fractures were drawn in red.

“To determine the sequence of blows in a multiple-trauma situation we go to the secondary fractures. Those are the fractures in red. I called these parallel breaks terraced fractures because, as I said earlier, they are like steps moving away from the impact point. A fracture or crack like this can extend completely across the bone and here you see that with this victim these fracture lines stretch across the parietal-temporal region. But such fractures always end when they reach an already-existing fracture. The energy is simply absorbed by the existing fracture. Therefore, by studying the victim’s skull and tracing the terraced fractures it becomes possible to determine which of these fractures came first. And then of course you trace these back to the impact point and you can easily see the order of the blows.”

On the drawing on the screen the numbers 1, 2 and 3 were in place, depicting the order of blows that rained down on Mitchell Bondurant’s head. The first blow-the fatal impact-had been to the very top of his head.

Freeman moved on from there and spent most of the morning milking the testimony, finally reaching a point where she was belaboring the obvious in many areas with too many questions that were repetitive or not germane. Twice the judge asked her to move along to other areas of testimony. And I began to believe she was trying to stall. She had to keep the witness going through the morning because her next witness was possibly not on hand and may have even flaked out on her.

But if she was nervous about some problem, Freeman didn’t show it. She kept her focus on Gutierrez and steadfastly walked him through his testimony, finishing with what was most important-tying the Craftsman hammer found in the bushes to the wounds on the victim’s head.

To do this she brought out the props. Following the Bondurant autopsy, Gutierrez had made a mold of the victim’s skull. He also took a series of photos of the scalp and had prints made that depicted the wounds in one-to-one size.

Presented with the hammer that had been entered into evidence, Gutierrez removed it from its plastic bag and began a demonstration that showed how its flat, circular face fit the wounds and skull indentations perfectly. The hammer also had a notch on the top edge of its facing that could be used to hold a nail. This notch was clearly seen in the depression left on the skull. It all fit together in a perfect prosecutorial puzzle. Freeman was beaming as she saw a key element of proof solidify in front of the jury.

“Doctor, do you have any hesitation in telling the jury that this tool could have created the fatal injury to the victim?”

“None.”

“You realize that this tool is not unique, correct?”

“Of course. I am not saying that this specific hammer caused these injuries. I am saying it was either this hammer or one that came out of the same mold. I can’t be more specific than that.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Now let’s talk about the notch on the strike surface of the hammer. What can you tell about the position of the notch in the wound pattern?”

Gutierrez held up the hammer and pointed to the notch.

“The notch is on the top edge. This area is magnetized. You put the nail in place here, the hammer holds it and then you drive the nail into the surface of the material you are working with. Because we know the notch is on the top edge we can then look at the wounds and see which direction they came from.”

“And what direction is that?”

“From the rear. The victim was struck from behind.”

“So he may have never even seen his assailant coming.”

“That is correct.”

“Thank you, Dr. Gutierrez. I have no further questions at this time.”

The judge turned the witness over to me and as I passed Freeman on the way to the lectern she gave me a deadpan look that transmitted the message: Take your best shot, asshole.

I intended to. I put my legal pad down on the lectern, tightened my tie and shot my cuffs, then looked at the witness. Before I sat down again, I wanted to own him.

“Around the medical examiner’s office, they call you Dr. Guts, don’t they, sir?”

It was a good out-of-the-gate question. It would make the witness wonder what other inside information I knew and could possibly spring on him.

“Uh, sometimes, yes. Informally, you might say.”

“Why is that, Doctor?”

Freeman objected on relevance and it got the judge’s attention.

“Do you want to tell me how this ties into the reason we are here today, Mr. Haller?” he asked.

“Your Honor, I think if allowed to respond, the answer Dr. Gutierrez will give will reveal that he has an expertise in pathology that is not in the area of tool patterns and head wounds.”

Perry mulled things over and then nodded.

“The witness will answer.”

I turned my focus back to Gutierrez.

“Doctor, you can answer the question. Why are you called Dr. Guts?”

“It is because as you said I have an expertise in identifying diseases of the gastrointestinal tract-the guts-and it also goes with the name, especially when it is pronounced incorrectly.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Now can you tell us how many times you have had a case in which you matched a hammer to the wounds on a victim’s skull?”

“This would be the first one.”

I nodded to underline the point.

“So you’re sort of a rookie when it comes to a killing with a hammer.”

“That’s right, but my comparison was painstaking and cautious. My conclusions are not wrong.”

Play to his superiority complex. I am a doctor, I am not wrong.

“Have you ever been wrong before in giving court testimony as a witness?”

“Everyone makes mistakes. I am sure I have.”

“What about the Stoneridge case?”

Freeman quickly objected as I knew she would. She asked for a sidebar and the judge waved us up. I knew this would go no further but I had gotten it out in front of the jury. They knew from what little had just been said that somewhere in his past Gutierrez had testified and been wrong. That was all I needed.

“Judge, we both know where counsel is going and not only is it not relevant to this matter, but Stoneridge is still under investigation and there has been no official conclusion. What could-”

“I withdraw it.”

She looked at me with searing hostility in her eyes.

“No problem. I have another question.”

“Oh, as long as the jury hears the question you don’t care what the answer is. Judge, I want an instruction on this because what he is doing is not right.”

“I’ll take care of it. Go back. And Mr. Haller? You watch yourself.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

The judge instructed the jurors to disregard my question and reminded them that it would be unfair of them to consider anything outside of the evidence and testimony while later conducting their deliberations. He then told me to proceed and I went in a new direction.

“Doctor, let’s zero in on the fatal wound and get a little more detailed. You called this a depression fracture, correct?”

“Actually, I called it a depressed calvarial fracture.”

I always loved it when the prosecution’s witnesses corrected me.

“Okay, so the depression or dent that was left by this traumatic impact, did you measure it?”

“Measure it in what way?”

“How about its depth? Did you measure that?”

“Yes, I did. May I refer to my notes?”

“You sure can, Doctor.”

Gutierrez checked his copy of the autopsy protocol.

“Yes, we called the fatal impact wound one-A. And, yes, indeed, I did measure the definitions of the wound pattern. Shall I give you those measurements?”

“My next question. Please tell us, Doctor, how did it measure out?”

Gutierrez looked at his report while speaking.

“Measurements were taken at four points of the circular impact location. Using a clockface, the measurements were at three, six, nine and twelve. The twelve being where the notch on the surface was located.”

“And what did the measurements tell you?”

“There was very little play in these numbers. Less than a quarter of a centimeter separated the four measurements. They averaged out to seven millimeters in depth, which is approximately a quarter of an inch.”

He looked up from his notes. I was writing his numbers down even though I had already gotten them off the autopsy protocol. I glanced over at the box and saw a few jurors writing in their notebooks. A good sign.

“So, Doctor, I noticed that this part of your work didn’t come up on direct examination by Ms. Freeman. What did these measurements mean to you in terms of the angle of impact of the weapon?”

Gutierrez shrugged. He stole a glance at Freeman and got the message. Be careful here.

“There is nothing really to conclude from these numbers.”

“Really? Wouldn’t the fact that the impression in the bone-the dent, as you called it-left by the hammer was almost even at all measurable points indicate to you that the hammer struck the victim evenly on the top of the head?”

Gutierrez looked down at his notes. He was a man of science. I had just asked him a science-based question and he knew how to answer it. But he also knew he had somehow strayed into a minefield. He didn’t know how or why, only that the prosecutor sitting fifteen feet from him was nervous.

“Doctor? Do you want me to repeat the question?”

“No, that is not necessary. You must remember that in science one-tenth of a centimeter can mean quite a difference.”

“Are you saying that the hammer did not strike Mr. Bondurant evenly, sir?”

“No!” he said in an annoyed tone. “I am just saying that it is not as cut and dried as people think. Yes, it appears that the hammer struck the victim flush, if you will.”

“Thank you, Doctor. And when you look at your wound-depth measurements on the second and third strikes, they are not as even, correct?”

“Yes, that is correct. In both of these impacts the deviation ranges up to three millimeters in each.”

I had him now. I was rolling. I stepped back from the lectern and started to wander to my left, into the open space between the lectern and the jury box. I put my hands in my pockets and adopted a pose of a completely confident man.

“And so, Doctor, you have the fatal blow delivered clean and flush to the top of the head. The next two, not the same way. What would account for this difference?”

“The orientation of the skull. The first strike stopped brain function within a second. The abrasions and other injuries to the body-the broken teeth, for example-indicate an immediate dead fall from a standing position. It is likely that the second and third strikes occurred after he was down.”

“You just said the other injuries indicate ‘an immediate dead fall from a standing position.’ Why are you sure the victim was standing when attacked from behind?”

“The abrasions to both knees are indicative of this.”

“So he could not have been kneeling when attacked?”

“It seems unlikely. The abrasions on the knees indicate otherwise.”

“What about crouching, like a baseball catcher?”

“Again, not possible when you look at the damage to his knees. Deep abrasions and a fracture to the left patella. The kneecap, as it is more commonly called.”

“So no doubt in your mind that he was standing when struck with the fatal blow?”

“None.”

It was perhaps the most important answer to any question in the whole trial, but I glided on like it was just part of the routine.

“Thank you, Doctor. Now let’s go back to the skull for a moment. How strong would you say the skull is in the area where the fatal impact occurred?”

“Depends on the age of the subject. Our skulls grow thicker as we age.”

“Our subject is Mitchell Bondurant, Doctor. How thick was his skull? Did you measure it?”

“I did. It was point eight centimeters thick in the impact region. About one-third of an inch.”

“And have you conducted any sort of study or test to determine what kind of force it would have taken for a hammer to create the fatal dent fracture in this case?”

“I have not, no.”

“Are you aware of any such studies of this question in general?”

“There are studies in the area. The conclusions are very broad. I happen to think each case is unique. You can’t go by general studies.”

“Isn’t it widely held that the threshold measurement of pressure needed to create a depression fracture is one thousand pounds of pressure per square inch?”

Freeman stood and objected. She said that I was asking questions outside the scope of Dr. Gutierrez’s expertise as a witness.

“Mr. Haller himself was quick to point out in his cross-examination that the witness’s expertise is in diseases of the GI tract, not bone elasticity and depression.”

It was a no-win situation for her and she had chosen the lesser of two evils: burning her witness or allowing me to continue to ask him questions that he didn’t know the answers to.

“Sustained,” the judge said. “Let’s move on, Mr. Haller. Ask your next question.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I flipped a few pages on my pad and acted like I was reading. It would buy me a few moments while I considered the next move. I then turned and looked at the clock on the back wall of the courtroom. It was fifteen minutes till lunch. If I wanted to send the jury out with a final bit of food for thought, I needed to act now.

“Doctor,” I said. “Did you record the height of the victim?”

Gutierrez checked his notes.

“Mr. Bondurant was six feet, one inch tall at the time of his death.”

“So this area at the crown of the head would be six feet and one inch high. Is that fair to say, Doctor?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Actually, with Mr. Bondurant wearing shoes he would have been even taller, correct?”

“Yes, maybe an inch and a half to account for the heels.”

“Okay, so knowing the victim’s height and knowing that the fatal wound came in flush on the top of his head, what does that tell us about the angle of attack?”

“I am not sure what you mean by angle of attack.”

“Are you sure about that, Doctor? I am talking about the angle the hammer was at in relation to the impact area.”

“But this would be impossible to know because we don’t know the posture of the victim or whether he was ducking from the blow or what the exact situation was when he was struck.”

Gutierrez ended his answer with a nod, as though proud of the way he had handled the challenge.

“But Doctor, didn’t you testify during direct examination from Ms. Freeman that it appeared to you, at least, that Mr. Bondurant was struck from behind in a surprise attack?”

“I did.”

“Doesn’t that contradict what you just said about ducking from the blow? Which is it, Doctor?”

Feeling cornered, Gutierrez reacted in the way most cornered men do. With arrogance.

“My testimony is that we do not know exactly what happened in that garage or what posture the victim was in or what the orientation of his skull was when he was struck with the fatal blow. To be minutely guessing and second-guessing at this point is a fool’s errand.”

“You are saying it is foolish to attempt to understand what happened in the garage?”

“No! I am not saying that at all. You are taking the words and twisting them.”

Freeman had to do something. She stood and objected and said I was badgering the witness. I wasn’t and the judge said as much, but the little interruption was enough for Gutierrez to collect himself and resume his calm and superior demeanor. I decided to wrap things up. I had largely been using Dr. Guts as a setup man for my own expert, who would testify during the defense phase. I believed I was almost there.

“Doctor, would you agree that if we could determine the victim’s posture and the orientation of his skull at the time of that first, fatal blow, then we would have insight as to the angle at which the murder weapon was held?”

Gutierrez considered the question for longer than it had taken me to ask it, then reluctantly nodded.

“Yes, it would give us some insight. But it is imposs-”

“Thank you, Doctor. My next question is if we knew all of these things-the posture, the orientation, the angle of the weapon-wouldn’t we then be able to make some assumptions about the height of the attacker?”

“It doesn’t make sense. We can’t know these things.”

He held both his hands up in frustration and turned to look at the judge for help. He got none.

“Doctor, you are not answering the question. Let me ask you again. If we did indeed know all of these factors, could we then make assumptions about the attacker’s height?”

He dropped his hands in an I give up gesture.

“Of course, of course. But we do not know these factors.”

“ ‘We,’ Doctor? Don’t you mean you don’t know these factors because you didn’t look for them?”

“No, I-”

“Don’t you mean you didn’t want to know these factors because they would reveal that it was physically impossible for the defendant, at five foot three, to have ever committed-”

“Objection!”

“-this crime against a man ten inches taller than her?”

Luckily they no longer used gavels in California courtrooms. Perry would have smashed his through the bench.

“Sustained! Sustained! Sustained!”

I picked up my pad and flipped over all the folded back pages in a show of frustration and finality.

“I have nothing further for-”

“Mr. Haller,” the judge barked, “I have warned you repeatedly about acting out in front of the jury. Consider this your last warning. Next time, there will be consequences.”

“Noted, Your Honor. Thank you.”

“The jury will disregard the last exchange between counsel and the witness. It is stricken from the record.”

I sat down, not daring to glance at the jury box. But that was okay, I felt the vibe. Their eyes were on me. They were riding with me.

Not all of them, but enough.

Thirty-eight

I spent the lunch hour schooling Lisa Trammel on what to expect during the afternoon session of court. Herb Dahl was not present, having been dispatched on a phony errand so I could be alone with my client. As best I could, I tried to explain to her the risks we would be taking as the prosecution’s case wound down and the defense took center stage. She was scared, but she trusted me and that’s about all you can ask from a client. The truth? No. But trust? Yes.

Once court reconvened Freeman called Dr. Henrietta Stanley to the witness stand. She identified herself as a supervising biologist for the Los Angeles Regional Crime Laboratory at Cal State L.A. My guess was that she would be the last witness for the prosecution and her testimony would have two parts of major significance. She would confirm that DNA testing of the blood found on the recovered hammer matched Mitchell Bondurant’s DNA perfectly and that the blood found on Lisa Trammel’s gardening shoe also matched the victim’s.

The scientific testimony would bring the case full circle, with blood being the link. My only intention was to rob the prosecution of the moment.

“Dr. Stanley,” Freeman began. “You either conducted or supervised all DNA analysis that came from the investigation of Mitchell Bondurant’s death, did you not?”

“I supervised and reconfirmed one analysis conducted by an outside vendor. The other analysis I handled myself. But I must add that I have two assistants in the lab who help me and they do a good portion of the work under my supervision.”

“At one point in the investigation you were asked to have a small amount of blood that had been found on a hammer analyzed for a DNA comparison to the victim, were you not?”

“We used an outside vendor on that analysis because time was of the essence. I supervised that process and later confirmed the findings.”

“Your Honor?”

I was standing at the defense table. The judge looked annoyed with me for interrupting Freeman’s examination.

“What is it, Mr. Haller?”

“To save the court’s time and the jury from going through a long-drawn-out explanation of DNA analysis and matching, the defense stipulates.”

“Stipulates to what, Mr. Haller?”

“That the blood on the hammer came from Mitchell Bondurant.”

The judge didn’t miss a beat. The chance to jump the trial forward an hour or more was welcomed-with caution.

“Very well, Mr. Haller, but you will not get the opportunity to challenge this during the defense phase. You know that, right?”

“I know it, Judge. There will be no need to challenge it.”

“And your client does not object to this tactic?”

I turned my body slightly toward Lisa Trammel and gestured to her.

“She is perfectly aware of this tactic and agrees. She is also willing to go on record, if you wish to ask her directly.”

“I don’t think that is necessary. How does the state feel about this?”

Freeman looked suspicious, like she was looking for the trap.

“Judge,” she said, “I want it clear that the defendant is acknowledging that the blood found on the hammer was indeed Mitchell Bondurant’s blood. And I want a waiver on ineffective counsel.”

“I don’t think a waiver is necessary,” Perry said. “But I will get the stipulation directly from the defendant.”

He then asked Lisa questions that confirmed she was on board with the stipulation.

Once Freeman said she was satisfied Perry turned his chair and rolled to the end of the bench so he could address the jury.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the witness was going to take you through an explanation of the science of DNA typing and matching, leading you to testimony in regard to lab tests matching blood found on the hammer that is in evidence to that of our victim, Mitchell Bondurant. By stipulating, the defense is saying they agree with those findings and will not object to them. So what you take from this is that the blood found on the handle of the hammer found in the bushes near the bank did indeed come from the victim, Mitchell Bondurant. This is now stipulated as a proven fact and I will have that in writing for you when you begin your deliberations.”

He nodded once and then rolled back into place where he told Freeman to proceed. Knocked out of rhythm by my unexpected move, she asked the judge for a few moments while she got her bearings and found the place from which to restart her examination. Finally, she looked up at her witness.

“Okay, Dr. Stanley, the blood from the hammer was not the only sample of blood from this case that you were asked to have analyzed, correct?”

“That is correct. We were also given a separate sample of blood discovered on a shoe found on the defendant’s premises. In the garage, I believe. We typed-”

“Your Honor,” I said as I rose from my seat again, “once more the defense wishes to stipulate.”

This time the move brought complete silence to the courtroom. Nobody was whispering in the gallery, the bailiff wasn’t using his hand to muffle his voice on his telephone, the court reporter’s fingers were held steady over the keys. Complete silence.

The judge had been sitting with the fingers of both hands knitted together beneath his chin. He held his pose for a long moment before using both hands to signal Freeman and me forward to the bench.

“Come on up here, Counsel.”

Freeman and I stood side by side in front of the bench. The judge whispered.

“Mr. Haller, your reputation preceded you when you came into my courtroom on this case. I was told by more than one source that you were a damn fine lawyer and a tireless advocate. I need to ask, however, if you know what you’re doing here. You want to stipulate to the prosecution’s contention that the victim’s blood was found on your client’s own shoe? Are you sure about that, Mr. Haller?”

I nodded as if to concede that he had made a good point in questioning my trial strategy.

“Judge, we did the analysis ourselves and it came back as a match. The science doesn’t lie and the defense is not interested in trying to mislead the court or the jury. If a trial is a search for truth then let the truth come out. The defense stipulates. We will prove later that the blood was planted on the shoe. That is where the real truth lies, not with whether or not it was his blood. We acknowledge that it was and we’re ready to move on.”

“Your Honor, may I be heard?” Freeman said.

“Go ahead, Ms. Freeman.”

“The state objects to the stipulation.”

She had finally caught on. The judge looked aghast.

“I don’t understand, Ms. Freeman. You get what you want. The victim’s blood on the defendant’s shoes.”

“Your Honor, Dr. Stanley is my last witness. Counsel is seeking to undercut the state’s case by robbing me of the ability to present evidence in the way I wish to present it. This witness’s testimony is devastating to the defense. He just wants to stipulate to lessen its impact on the jury. But a stipulation must be agreed to by both parties. I made a mistake taking the stipulation on the hammer, but not this time. Not on the shoes. The state objects to this.”

The judge was undaunted. He saw a savings of at least a half day of court time and he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Counsel, understand that the court can overrule your objection in the cause of judicial economy. I’d rather not do that.”

He was telling her not to go against him on this. To accept the stipulation.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but the state still objects.”

“Overruled. You can step back.”

And so it went. As with the hammer, the judge relayed the stipulation to the jury and promised they would receive a document outlining the evidence and facts agreed to by the start of deliberations. I had successfully silenced the crescendo of the prosecution’s case. Instead of going out with the crashing of cymbals, drums and evidence that screamed SHE DID IT! SHE DID IT! SHE DID IT!, the prosecution went out with a whimper. Freeman was seething. She knew how important the payoff was to the gradual buildup. You don’t listen to Boléro for ten minutes and turn it off with the final two minutes to go.

Not only did the truncating of her case hurt, but I had effectively turned her last and most important witness into the first witness for the defense. By stipulating, I had made it seem as if the DNA returns were the initial building blocks of my case. And there was nothing Freeman could do. She had put the whole case out and had nothing left. After excusing Stanley from the witness stand, she sat at the prosecution table, turning through her notes, probably thinking about whether she should put Kurlen or Longstreth back on the stand to finish the case with a detective’s roundup of all the evidence. But there were risks to that. She had rehearsed their testimony before. But not this time.

“Ms. Freeman?” the judge finally asked. “Do you have another witness?”

Freeman looked over at the jury box. She had to believe she had the verdict. So what if the evidence wasn’t delivered according to the plan she had choreographed? The evidence was still there and in the record. The vic’s blood on the hammer and on the defendant’s shoes. It was more than enough. She had the verdict in her pocket.

She slowly rose, still looking at the jurors. Then she turned and addressed the judge.

“Your Honor, the People rest.”

It was a solemn moment and again the courtroom turned still and silent, this time for almost a whole minute.

“Very well,” the judge finally said. “I don’t think any of us thought we would be at this place so soon. Mr. Haller, are you ready to proceed with the presentation of the defense’s case?”

I stood.

“Your Honor, the defense is ready to proceed.”

The judge nodded. He still seemed a bit shell-shocked by the defense’s decision to acknowledge and accept as evidence the victim’s blood on the defendant’s shoes.

“Then we’ll take our afternoon break a little early,” he said. “And when we come back, the defense phase will begin.”