The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel (40 page)

Campo hesitated before saying yes.

“And are you happy working as a prostitute?” I asked.

Minton stood.

“Your Honor, what does this have to do with—”

“Sustained,” the judge said.

“Okay,” I said. “Then, isn’t it true, Ms. Campo, that you have told several of your clients that your hope is to leave the
business?”

“Yes, that’s true,” she answered without hesitation for the first time in many questions.

“Isn’t it also true that you see the potential financial aspects of this case as a means of getting out of the business?”

“No, that’s not true,” she said forcefully and without hesitation. “That man attacked me. He was going to kill me! That’s
what this is about!”

I underlined something on my pad, another punctuation of silence.

“Was Charles Talbot a repeat customer?” I asked.

“No, I met him for the first time that night at Morgan’s.”

“And he passed your safety test.”

“Yes.”

“Was Charles Talbot the man who punched you in the face on March sixth?”

“No, he was not,” she answered quickly.

“Did you offer to split the profits you would receive from a lawsuit against Mr. Roulet with Mr. Talbot?”

“No, I did not. That’s a lie!”

I looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, can I ask my client to stand up at this time?”

“Be my guest, Mr. Haller.”

I signaled Roulet to stand at the defense table and he obliged. I looked back at Regina Campo.

“Now, Ms. Campo, are you sure that this is the man who struck you on the night of March sixth?”

“Yes, it’s him.”

“How much do you weigh, Ms. Campo?”

She leaned back from the microphone as if put out by what was an invasive question, even coming after so many questions pertaining
to her sex life. I noticed Roulet start to sit back down and I signaled him to remain standing.

“I’m not sure,” Campo said.

“On your ad on the website you list your weight at one hundred and five pounds,” I said. “Is that correct?”

“I think so.”

“So if the jury is to believe your story about March sixth, then they must believe that you were able to overpower and break
free of Mr. Roulet.”

I pointed to Roulet, who was easily six feet and outweighed her by at least seventy-five pounds.

“Well, that’s what I did.”

“And this was while he supposedly was holding a knife to your throat.”

“I wanted to live. You can do some amazing things when your life is in danger.”

She used her last defense. She started crying, as if my question had reawakened the horror of coming so close to death.

“You can sit down, Mr. Roulet. I have nothing else for Ms. Campo at this time, Your Honor.”

I took my seat next to Roulet. I felt the cross had gone well. My razor work had opened up a lot of wounds. The state’s case
was bleeding. Roulet leaned over and whispered one word to me.
“Brilliant!”

Minton went back in for a redirect but he was just a gnat flitting around an open wound. There was no going back on some of
the answers his star witness had given, and there was no way to change some of the images I had planted in the jurors’ minds.

In ten minutes he was through and I waived off a recross, feeling that Minton had accomplished little during his second effort
and I could leave well enough alone. The judge asked the prosecutor if he had any further witnesses and Minton said he would
like to think about it through lunch before deciding whether to rest the state’s case.

Normally, I would have objected to this because I would want to know if I had to put a witness on the stand directly after
lunch. But I let it go. I believed that Minton was feeling the pressure and was wavering. I wanted to push him toward a decision
and thought maybe giving him the lunch hour would help.

The judge excused the jury to lunch, giving them only an hour instead of the usual ninety minutes. She was going to keep things
moving. She said court would recess until 1:30 and then abruptly left the bench. She probably needed a cigarette, I guessed.

I asked Roulet if his mother could join us for lunch so that we could talk about her testimony, which I thought would come
in the afternoon if not directly after lunch. He said he would arrange it and suggested we meet at a French restaurant on
Ventura Boulevard. I told him we had less than an hour and that his mother should meet us at Four Green Fields. I didn’t like
the idea of bringing them into my sanctuary but I knew we could eat there quickly and be back to court on time. The food probably
wasn’t up to the standards of the French bistro on Ventura but I wasn’t worried about that.

When I got up and turned from the defense table, I saw the rows of the gallery were empty. Everybody had hustled out to lunch.
Only Minton was waiting by the rail for me.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

“Sure.”

We waited until Roulet had gone through the gate and left the courtroom before either one of us spoke. I knew what was coming.
It was customary for the prosecutor to throw out a low-ball disposition at the first sign of trouble. Minton knew he had trouble.
The main-event witness was a draw at best.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I was thinking about what you said about the thousand razors.”

“And?”

“And, well, I want to make you an offer.”

“You’re new at this, kid. Don’t you need somebody in charge to approve a plea agreement?”

“I have some authority.”

“Okay, then give me what you are authorized to offer.”

“I’ll drop it all down to an aggravated assault with GBI.”

“And?”

“I’ll go down to four.”

The offer was a substantial reduction but Roulet, if he took it, would still be sentenced to four years in prison. The main
concession was that it knocked the case out of sex crime status. Roulet would not have to register with local authorities
as a sex offender after he got out of prison.

I looked at him as if he had just insulted my mother’s memory.

“I think that’s a little strong, Ted, considering how your ace just held up on the stand. Did you see the juror who is always
carrying the Bible? He looked like he was about to shit the Good Book when she was testifying.”

Minton didn’t respond. I could tell he hadn’t even noticed a juror carrying a Bible.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s my duty to bring your offer to my client and I will do that. But I’m also going to tell him
he’d be a fool to take it.”

“Okay, then, what do you want?”

“A case like this, there’s only one verdict, Ted. I’m going to tell him he should ride it out. I think it’s clear sailing
from here. Have a good lunch.”

I left him there at the gate, halfway expecting him to shout a new offer to my back as I went down the center aisle of the
gallery. But Minton held his ground.

“That offer’s good only until one-thirty, Haller,” he called after me, an odd tone in his voice.

I raised a hand and waved without looking back. As I went through the courtroom door, I was sure that what I had heard was
the sound of desperation creeping into his voice.

A
fter we came back into court from Four Green Fields I purposely ignored Minton. I wanted to keep him guessing as long as possible.
It was all part of the plan to push him in a direction I wanted him and the trial to go. When we were all seated at the tables
and ready for the judge, I finally looked over at him, waited for the eye contact, and then just shook my head. No deal. He
nodded, trying his best to give me a show of confidence in his case and confusion over my client’s decision. One minute later
the judge took the bench, brought out the jury, and Minton promptly folded his tent.

“Mr. Minton, do you have another witness?” the judge asked.

“Your Honor, at this time the state rests.”

There was the slightest hesitation in Fullbright’s response. She stared at Minton for just a second longer than she should
have. I think it sent a message of surprise to the jury. She then looked over at me.

“Mr. Haller, are you ready to proceed?”

The routine procedure would be to ask the judge for a directed verdict of acquittal at the end of the state’s case. But I
didn’t, fearing that this could be the rare occasion that the request was granted. I couldn’t let the case end yet. I told
the judge I was ready to proceed with a defense.

My first witness was Mary Alice Windsor. She was escorted into the courtroom by Cecil Dobbs, who then took a seat in the front
row of the gallery. Windsor was wearing a powder blue suit
with a chiffon blouse. She had a regal bearing as she crossed in front of the bench and took a seat in the witness box. Nobody
would have guessed she had eaten shepherd’s pie for lunch. I very quickly went through the routine identifiers and established
her relationship by both blood and business to Louis Roulet. I then asked the judge for permission to show the witness the
knife the prosecution had entered as evidence in the case.

Permission granted, I went to the court clerk to retrieve the weapon, which was still wrapped in a clear plastic evidence
bag. It was folded so that the initials on the blade were visible. I took it to the witness box and put it down in front of
the witness.

“Mrs. Windsor, do you recognize this knife?”

She picked up the evidence bag and attempted to smooth the plastic over the blade so she could look for and read the initials.

“Yes, I do,” she finally said. “It’s my son’s knife.”

“And how is it that you would recognize a knife owned by your son?”

“Because he showed it to me on more than one occasion. I knew he always carried it and sometimes it came in handy at the office
when our brochures came in and we needed to cut the packing straps. It was very sharp.”

“How long did he have the knife?”

“Four years.”

“You seem pretty exact about that.”

“I am.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he got it for protection four years ago. Almost exactly.”

“Protection from what, Mrs. Windsor?”

“In our business we often show homes to complete strangers. Sometimes we are the only ones in the home with these strangers.
There has been more than one incident of a realtor being robbed or hurt… or even murdered or raped.”

“As far as you know, was Louis ever the victim of such a crime?”

“Not personally, no. But he knew someone who had gone into a home and that happened to them…”

“What happened?”

“She got raped and robbed by a man with a knife. Louis was the one who found her after it was over. The first thing he did
was go out and get a knife for protection after that.”

“Why a knife? Why not a gun?”

“He told me that at first he was going to get a gun but he wanted something he could always carry and not be noticeable with.
So he got a knife and he got me one, too. That’s how I know it was almost exactly four years ago that he got this.”

She held the bag up containing the knife.

“Mine’s exactly the same, only the initials are different. We both have been carrying them ever since.”

“So would it seem to you that if your son was carrying that knife on the night of March sixth, then that would be perfectly
normal behavior from him?”

Minton objected, saying I had not built the proper foundation for Windsor to answer the question and the judge sustained it.
Mary Windsor, being unschooled in criminal law, assumed that the judge was allowing her to answer.

“He carried it every day,” she said. “March sixth would have been no dif—”

“Mrs. Windsor,” the judge boomed. “I sustained the objection. That means you do not answer. The jury will disregard her answer.”

“I’m sorry,” Windsor said in a weak voice.

“Next question, Mr. Haller,” the judge ordered.

“That’s all I have, Your Honor. Thank you, Mrs. Windsor.”

Mary Windsor started to get up but the judge admonished her again, telling her to stay seated. I returned to my seat as Minton
got up from his. I scanned the gallery and saw no recognizable faces save that of C. C. Dobbs. He gave me an encouraging smile,
which I ignored.

Mary Windsor’s direct testimony had been perfect in terms of
her adhering to the choreography we had worked up at lunch. She had succinctly delivered to the jury the explanation for the
knife, yet she had also left in her testimony a minefield that Minton would have to cross. Her direct testimony had covered
no more than I had provided Minton in a discovery summary. If he strayed from it he would quickly hear the deadly
click
under his foot.

“This incident that inspired your son to start carrying around a five-inch folding knife, when exactly was that?”

“It happened on June ninth in two thousand and one.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

I turned in my seat so I could more fully see Minton’s face. I was reading him. He thought he had something. Windsor’s exact
memory of a date was obvious indication of planted testimony. He was excited. I could tell.

“Was there a newspaper story about this supposed attack on a fellow realtor?”

“No, there wasn’t.”

“Was there a police investigation?”

“No, there wasn’t.”

“And yet you know the exact date. How is that, Mrs. Windsor? Were you given this date before testifying here?”

“No, I know the date because I will never forget the day I was attacked.”

She waited a moment. I saw at least three of the jurors open their mouths silently. Minton did the same. I could almost hear
the
click
.

“My son will never forget it, either,” Windsor continued. “When he came looking for me and found me in that house, I was tied
up, naked. There was blood. It was traumatic for him to see me that way. I think that was one of the reasons he took to carrying
a knife. I think in some ways he wished he had gotten there earlier and been able to stop it.”

“I see,” Minton said, staring down at his notes.

He froze, unsure how to proceed. He didn’t want to raise his foot for fear that the mine would detonate and blow it off.