The Lincoln Lawyer

by Michael Connelly

  “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.

  “Mr. Minton, anything else?” the judge asked, a not so well disguised note of sarcasm in her voice.

  “One moment, Your Honor,” Minton said.

  Minton gathered himself, reviewed his notes and tried to salvage something.

  “Mrs. Windsor, did you or your son call the police after he found you?”

  “No, we didn’t. Louis wanted to but I did not. I thought that it would only further the trauma.”

  “So we have no official police documentation of this crime, correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  I knew that Minton wanted to carry it further and ask if she had sought medical treatment after the attack. But sensing another trap, he didn’t ask the question.

  “So what you are saying here is that we only have your word that this attack even occurred? Your word and your son’s, if he chooses to testify.”

  “It did occur. I live with it each and every day.”

  “But we only have you who says so.”

  She looked at the prosecutor with deadpan eyes.

  “Is that a question?”

  “Mrs. Windsor, you are here to help your son, correct?”

  “If I can. I know him as a good man who would not have committed this despicable crime.”

  “You would be willing to do anything and everything in your power to save your son from conviction and possible prison, wouldn’t you?”

  “But I wouldn’t lie about something like this. Oath or no oath, I wouldn’t lie.”

  “But you want to save your son, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And saving him means lying for him, doesn’t it?”

  “No. It does not.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Windsor.”

  Minton quickly returned to his seat. I had only one question on redirect.

  “Mrs. Windsor, how old were you when this attack occurred?”

  “I was fifty-four.”

  I sat back down. Minton had nothing further and Windsor was excused. I asked the judge to allow her to sit in the gallery for the remainder of the trial, now that her testimony was concluded. Without an objection from Minton the request was granted.

  My next witness was an LAPD detective named David Lambkin, who was a national expert on sex crimes and had worked on the Real Estate Rapist investigation. In brief questioning I established the facts of the case and the five reported cases of rape that were investigated. I quickly got to the five key questions I needed to bolster Mary Windsor’s testimony.

  “Detective Lambkin, what was the age range of the known victims of the rapist?”

  “These were all professional women who were pretty successful. They tended to be older than your average rape victim. I believe the youngest was twenty-nine and the oldest was fifty-nine.”

  “So a woman who was fifty-four years old would have fallen within the rapist’s target profile, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell the jury when the first reported attack occurred and when the last reported attack occurred?”

  “Yes. The first was October one, two thousand, and the last one was July thirtieth of two thousand and one.”

  “So June ninth of two thousand and one was well within the span of this rapist’s attacks on women in the real estate business, correct?”

  “Yes, correct.”

  “In the course of your investigation of this case, did you come to a conclusion or belief that there were more than five rapes committed by this individual?”

  Minton objected, saying the question called for speculation. The judge sustained the objection but it didn’t matter. The question was what was important and the jury seeing the prosecutor keeping the answer from them was the payoff.

  Minton surprised me on cross. He recovered enough from the misstep with Windsor to hit Lambkin with three solid questions with answers favorable to the prosecution.

  “Detective Lambkin, did the task force investigating these rapes issue any kind of warning to women working in the real estate business?”

  “Yes, we did. We sent out fliers on two occasions. The first went to all licensed real estate businesses in the area and the next mail-out went to all licensed real estate brokers individually, male and female.”

  “Did these mail-outs contain information about the rapist’s description and methods?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “So if someone wished to concoct a story about being attacked by this rapist, the mail-outs would have provided all the infor
mation needed, correct?”

  “That is a possibility, yes.”

  “Nothing further, Your Honor.”

  Minton proudly sat down and Lambkin was excused when I had nothing further. I asked the judge for a few minutes to confer with my client and then leaned in close to Roulet.

  “Okay, this is it,” I said. “You’re all we have left. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you’re clean and there isn’t much Minton can come back at you with. You should be safe up there unless you let him get to you. Are you still cool with this?”

  Roulet had said all along that he would testify and deny the charges. He had reiterated his desire again at lunch. He demanded it. I always viewed the risks of letting a client testify as evenly split. Anything he said could come back to haunt him if the prosecution could bend it to the state’s favor. But I also knew that no matter what admonishments were given to a jury about a defendant’s right to remain silent, the jury always wanted to hear the defendant say he didn’t do it. You take that away from the jury and they might hold a grudge.

  “I want to do it,” Roulet whispered. “I can handle the prosecutor.”

  I pushed my chair back and stood up.

  “The defense calls Louis Ross Roulet, Your Honor.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  L ouis Roulet moved toward the witness box quickly, like a basketball player pulled off the bench and sent to the scorer’s table to check into the game. He looked like a man anxious for the opportunity to defend himself. He knew this posture would not be lost on the jury.

  After dispensing with the preliminaries, I got right down to the issues of the case. Under my questioning Roulet freely admitted that he had gone to Morgan’s on the night of March 6 to seek female companionship. He said he wasn’t specifically looking to engage the services of a prostitute but was not against the possibility.

  “I had been with women I had to pay before,” he said. “So I wouldn’t have been against it.”

  He testified that he had no conscious eye contact with Regina Campo before she approached him at the bar. He said that she was the aggressor but at the time that didn’t bother him. He said the solicitation was open-ended. She said she would be free after ten and he could come by if he was not otherwise engaged.

  Roulet described efforts made over the next hour at Morgan’s and then at the Lamplighter to find a woman he would not have to pay but said he was unsuccessful. He then drove to the address Campo had given him and knocked on the door.

  “Who answered?”

  “She did. She opened the door a crack and looked out at me.”

  “Regina Campo? The woman who testified this morning?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Could you see her whole face through the opening in the door?”

  “No. She only opened up a crack and I couldn’t see her. Only her left eye and a little bit of that side of her face.”

  “How did the door open? Was this crack through which you could see her on the right or left side?”

  “As I was looking at the door the opening would have been on the right.”

  “So let’s make sure we make this clear. The opening was on the right, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So if she were standing behind the door and looking through the opening, she would be looking at you with her left eye.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Did you see her right eye?”

  “No.”

  “So if she had a bruise or a cut or any damage on the right side of her face, could you have seen it?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. So what happened next?”

  “She saw it was me and she said come in. She opened the door wider but still sort of stood behind it.”

  “You couldn’t see her?”

  “Not completely. She was using the edge of the door as sort of a block.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, it was kind of like an entry area, a vestibule, and she pointed through an archway to the living room. I went the way she pointed.”

  “Did this mean that she was then behind you?”

  “Yes, when I turned toward the living room she was behind me.”

  “Did she close the door?”

  “I think so. I heard it close.”

  “And then what?”

  “Something hit me on the back of my head and I went down. I blacked out.”

  “Do you know how long you were out?”

  “No. I think it was a while but none of the police or anybody ever told me.”

  “What do you remember when you regained consciousness?”

  “I remember having a hard time breathing and when I opened my eyes, there was somebody sitting on me. I was on my back and he was sitting on me. I tried to move and that was when I realized somebody was sitting on my legs, too.”

  “What happened next?”

  “They took turns telling me not to move and one of them told me they had my knife and if I tried to move or escape he would use it on me.”

  “Did there come a time that the police came and you were arrested?”

  “Yes, a few minutes later the police were there. They handcuffed me and made me stand up. That was when I saw I had blood on my jacket.”

  “What about your hand?”

  “I couldn’t see it because it was handcuffed behind my back. But I heard one of the men who had been sitting on me tell the police officer that there was blood on my hand and then the officer put a bag over it. I felt that.”

  “How did the blood get on your hand and jacket?”

  “All I know is that somebody put it on there because I didn’t.”

  “Are you left-handed?”

  “No, I am not.”

  “You didn’t strike Ms. Campo with your left fist?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Did you threaten to rape her?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Did you tell her you were going to kill her if she didn’t cooperate with you?”

  “No, I did not.”

  I was hoping for some of the fire I had seen on that first day in C. C. Dobbs’s office but Roulet was calm and controlled. I decided that before I finished with him on direct I needed to push things a little to get some of that anger back. I had told him at lunch I wanted to see it and wasn’t sure what he was doing or where it had gone.

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

  “Of course I am.”

  “Why?”

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

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

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

  I looked at the judge.

  “Nothing further, Your Honor.”

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

  “You deny touching Ms. Campo,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Roulet retorted.

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

  “I don’t know who did it. All I know is that I didn’t.”

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

  Minton punctuated the sentence by shaking his head with disgust.

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

  “That will be for the jury to decide, won’t it?”

  “Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “So Regina Campo is a liar,” he said.

  “Yes.”

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

  “I don’t know who did it.”

  “But not you.”

  “No, it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t do that to a woman. I wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

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

  “No woman deserves that,” he said.