“No, of course not.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I would remember that, don’t you think?”
“Okay. Where did you stop to get your coffee?”
“At the Joe’s Joe on Ventura by Woodman. I always go there.”
I paused. I looked at Cisco and then at Aronson. Cisco had previously reported that Mitchell Bondurant had been carrying a cup of Joe’s Joe when attacked. I decided not to ask the obvious question yet about whether Lisa had seen or interacted with Bondurant at the coffee shop. As Lisa’s defense attorney I would be bound by what I knew. I could never assist in perjury. If Lisa was to tell me that she had seen Bondurant and even exchanged words with him then I would not be allowed to have her spin a different story at trial if she was to testify.
I had to be careful about soliciting information that would constrain me this early in the case. I knew this was a contradiction. My mission was to know all I could and yet there were things I didn’t want to know right now. Sometimes knowing things limits you. Not knowing them gives you more latitude in crafting a defense.
Aronson was staring at me, obviously wondering why I wasn’t asking the follow-up question. I just gave her a quick head shake. I would explain my reasons to her later—one more lesson they didn’t teach her in law school.
I stood up.
“Lisa, I think that’s enough for today. You’ve given us a lot of information and we’ll go to work on it. I’ll have my driver take you home now.”
Seven
She was fourteen years old and still liked to eat pancakes for dinner. My daughter and I had a booth at the Du-par’s in Studio City. Our Wednesday night ritual. I picked her up from her mother’s and we stopped for pancakes on the way back to my place. She did her homework and I did my casework. It was my most treasured routine.
The official custody arrangement was that I had Hayley every Wednesday night and then every other weekend. We alternated Christmases and Thanksgivings and I also had her for two weeks in the summer. But that was just the official arrangement. Things had been going well over the past year and often the three of us did things together. On Christmas we had dinner as a family. Sometimes my ex-wife even joined us for pancakes. And that was worth treasuring, too.
But on this night it was just Hayley and me. My casework involved my review of the protocol from the autopsy of Mitchell Bondurant. It included photos of the procedure as well as the body where it was found in the bank’s garage. So I was leaning back in the booth and trying to make sure neither Hayley nor anybody else in the restaurant saw the gruesome images. They wouldn’t go well with pancakes.
Meantime, Hayley was doing her science homework, studying changes in matter and the elements of combustion.
Cisco had been right. The autopsy concluded that Bondurant had died from brain hemorrhaging caused by multiple points of blunt-force trauma to the head.
Three points exactly. The protocol contained a line drawing of the top of the victim’s head. Three points of impact were delineated on the crown in a grouping so tight that all three could have been covered with a teacup.
Seeing this drawing got me excited. I flipped to the front page of the protocol where the body being examined was described. Mitchell Bondurant was described as six foot one and 180 pounds. I did not have Lisa Trammel’s dimensions handy so I called the number of the cell phone Cisco had dropped off to her that morning—since her own phone had been seized by the police. It was always a priority to make sure a client could be contacted at any time.
“Lisa, it’s Mickey. Real quick, how tall are you?”
“What? Mickey, I’m in the middle of dinner with—”
“Just tell me how tall you are and I’ll let you go. Don’t lie. What’s it say on your driver’s license?”
“Um, five three, I think.”
“Is that accurate?”
“Yes. What is—”
“Okay, that’s all I needed. You can go back to dinner. Have a good night.”
“What—”
I hung up and wrote her height on the legal pad I had on the table. Next to it I wrote Bondurant’s height. The exciting point was that he had ten inches on his suspected killer and yet the impacts that punctured his skull and killed him were delivered to the crown of his head. This raised what I called a question of physics. The kind of question a jury can puzzle over and decide for themselves. The kind of question a good defense attorney can make something with. This was if-the-glove-doesn’t-fit-you-must-acquit stuff. The question here was, how did diminutive Lisa Trammel hit six-foot-one Mitchell Bondurant on the top of the head?
Of course, the answer depended on the dimensions of the weapon as well as a few other things, such as the victim’s position. If he was on the ground when attacked then none of this would matter. But it was something to grab on to at the moment. I quickly went to one of the files on the table and pulled out the search-warrant return.
“Who was that you called?” Hayley asked.
“My client. I had to find out how tall she was.”
“How come?”
“Because it might have something to do with whether she could do what they’re saying she did.”
I checked the list of items seized. As Cisco had reported, only one pair of shoes was on it and they were described as gardening shoes taken from the garage. No high heels, no platform sandals or any other footwear. Of course, the detectives conducted the search prior to the autopsy and before they knew its findings. I considered all of this and concluded that gardening shoes probably didn’t have much of a heel on them. If they were suggesting the shoes were worn during the killing then Bondurant still probably had ten inches on my client—if he was standing when attacked.
This was good. I underlined the notes on heights three times on my legal pad. But then I also started thinking about the seizure of only one pair of shoes. The search-warrant return did not say why the gardening shoes were taken but the warrant gave the police authority to seize anything that could have been used in the commission of the crime. They had zeroed in on the gardening shoes and I was at a loss to explain why.
“Mom said you have a really big case now.”
I looked at my daughter. She rarely talked to me about my work. I believed that this was because at her young age she still saw things as black and white and without any gray areas. People were either good or bad, and I represented the bad ones for a living. So there was nothing to talk about.
“Did she? Yeah, well, it’s getting a lot of attention.”
“It’s the lady who killed the man taking away her house, right? Was that her you just talked to?”
“She’s accused of killing the man. She hasn’t been convicted of anything. But, yes, that was her.”
“How come you need to know how tall she is?”
“You really want to know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, they’re saying she killed a man who was a lot taller than her by hitting him on the top of the head with some kind of a tool or something. So I’m just wondering if she’s tall enough to have done it.”
“So Andy will have to prove that she was, right?”
“Andy?”
“Mom’s friend. She’s the prosecutor on your case, Mom said.”
“You mean Andrea Freeman? Tall black lady with real short hair?”
“Yeah.”
So it was “Andy” now, I thought. Andy who said she knew my ex-wife only in passing.
“So she and Mom are pretty good friends? I didn’t know that.”
“They do yoga and sometimes Andy comes by when I have Gina and they go out. She lives in Sherman Oaks, too.”
Gina was the sitter my ex used when I wasn’t available or when she didn’t want me to know about her social activities. Or when we went out together.
“Well, do me a favor, Hay. Don’t tell anybody what we are talking about or what you heard me saying on the phone. It’s sort of private stuff and I don’t want
it getting back to Andy. I probably shouldn’t have made that call in front of you.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Thanks, sweetie.”
I waited to see if she would say more about the case but she went back to the science workbook.
I turned back to the autopsy protocol and the photos of the fatal wounds on Bondurant’s head. The medical examiner had shaved the victim’s head in the vicinity of the wounds. A ruler had been placed in the photo to give dimension. On the skin the impacts were pinkish and circular. The skin was broken but the blood had been washed away to show the wounds. Two overlapped and the third was only an inch away.
The circular shape of the weapon’s impact surface led me to think that Bondurant had been attacked with a hammer. I’m not much of a home fix-it man but I know my way around a toolbox and I knew that the striking surface of many hammers was circular, sometimes ovoid. I was sure this would be confirmed by the coroner’s tool-mark expert, but it was always good to be a step ahead and anticipate their moves. I noticed that there was a small V-shaped notch in each of the impact marks and wasn’t sure what it meant.
I checked the search-warrant return again and saw that the police had not listed a hammer among the tools seized from Lisa Trammel’s garage. This was curious because so many other, less common, tools were seized. Again, it may have been because the search was carried out before the autopsy was conducted and such facts were known. The police took all tools rather than a specific tool. It still left the question, though.
Where was the hammer?
Was there a hammer?
This, of course, was the case’s first double-edged sword. The prosecution would hold that the lack of a hammer in a fully stocked workbench was an indication of culpability. The defendant used the hammer to strike and kill the victim, then discarded it to hide her involvement in the crime.
The defense’s side of that argument was that the missing hammer was exculpatory. You have no murder weapon, you have no connection to the defendant, you have no case.
On paper, it should be a wash. But not always. Jurors typically leaned toward the prosecution in such questions. Call it the home-field advantage. The prosecution is always the home team.
Still, I made a note to tell Cisco to chase down the hammer as best he could. Talk to Lisa Trammel, see what she knew. Track down her husband, if only to ask if there ever was a hammer and what had happened to it.
The next photos from the autopsy were of the shattered skull itself after the scalp had been pulled back over the cranium. The damage was extensive, the skull having been punctured by all three of the blows and fractured in almost wavelike patterns emanating from the impact areas. The wounds were described as unsurvivable and the photos completely backed this conclusion.
The autopsy listed several other lacerations and abrasions on the body and even a fracture as well as three broken teeth, but the examiner interpreted all of these as injuries sustained when Bondurant fell face forward to the ground during the attack. He was unconscious if not already dead before he hit the garage floor. There were no defensive wounds listed.
Part of the autopsy protocol contained color photocopies of the crime scene photos provided to the examiner by the LAPD. It was not a complete set but just six shots that showed the body’s orientation in situ—meaning situated as it had been found. I would’ve rather had a full set of prints of the actual photographs, but I wouldn’t get those until I got a judge to ease the discovery embargo placed on the case by Andy Freeman.
The crime scene photos showed Bondurant’s body from numerous angles. It was sprawled between two cars in the garage. The driver’s side door of a Lexus SUV was open. There was a Joe’s Joe coffee cup on the ground and a pool of spilled coffee. Nearby was an open briefcase.
Bondurant was facedown on the ground, the back and top of his head matted with blood. His eyes were open and appeared to be staring at concrete.
In the photos there were evidence markers next to blood drips on the concrete. There was no analysis to determine if this was blood spatter from the attack itself or drippings from the murder weapon.
I found the briefcase to be a curious thing. Why was it open? Had anything been taken? Had the murderer taken the time to rifle through the case after killing Bondurant? If so, this would seem to be a cold and calculated move. The garage was filling with employees coming to work at the bank. To take the time to go through a briefcase while the body of your victim lies nearby seemed like an extreme risk but not the sort of move a killer fueled by emotion and vengeance would make. It was not the move of an amateur.
I wrote a few more notes in regard to these questions and then a final reminder. I would have Cisco find out if there was assigned parking in the garage. Did Bondurant have his name on the wall at the front of the stall? The lying-in-wait tag added to the murder charge indicated the prosecution believed Trammel knew where Bondurant would be, and when. They would have to prove that at trial.
I closed the Trammel files and wrapped a rubber band around them and the legal pad.
“You doing okay?” I asked Hayley.
“Sure.”
“Are you almost finished?”
“My food or my homework?”
“Both.”
“I’m finished eating but I still have social studies and English. But we can go if you want.”
“I still have a few other files to look at. I have court tomorrow.”
“For the murder case?”
“No, other cases.”
“Like where you’re trying to let people stay in their houses?”
“That’s right.”
“How come there are so many cases like that?”
Out of the mouths of babes.
“Greed, honey. It all comes down to greed on everybody’s part.”
I looked at her to see if that would suffice but she didn’t go back to her homework. She looked at me expecting more, a fourteen-year-old who was interested in what most of the country was not.
“Well, what happens is that it takes a lot of money to buy a house or a condo most of the time. That’s why so many people rent their homes instead. Most people who buy a home put down a big chunk of money, but they almost never have enough to buy the whole house, so they go to the bank for a loan. The bank decides if they have enough money and make enough money to pay back the loan, which is called a mortgage. So if everything looks good, they buy the home they want and pay back the mortgage with monthly payments for many years. Does this make sense?”
“You mean like they pay rent to the bank.”
“Sort of. But when you rent from a landlord you don’t get any ownership. There is supposed to be ownership involved when you have a mortgage. It is your home and they say the American dream is to own your own home.”
“Do you own yours?”
“I do. And your mom owns hers.”
She nodded but I wasn’t so sure we were talking at a level understandable to a fourteen-year-old. She didn’t see much of the American dream in her parents having separate mortgages to go with their separate addresses.
“Okay, so a while back they started making it easier to buy a home. And soon practically anybody who walked into a bank or went to see a mortgage broker was being given a loan on a home. There was a lot of fraud and corruption and there were a lot of loans given to people who shouldn’t have been given them. Some people lied to get loans and sometimes it was the loan makers who lied. We’re talking about millions of loans, Hay, and when you have that much going on, there are not enough people or rules to control it all.”
“Was it like nobody made anybody pay?”
“There was some of that but it was mostly that people were taking on more than they could handle. And these loans had interest rates that changed. These rates dictated how much the home owner had to pay each month and they could go up by a lot. Sometimes they had what’s called a balloon payment where you have to pay it all back at the end of five years. To make a long and compli
cated story short, the country’s economy went down and the values of the homes went down with it. It became a crisis because millions of people in the country couldn’t pay for the houses they bought and they couldn’t sell them because they were worth less than what was owed on them. But the banks and other lenders and these investment syndicates that held all the mortgages didn’t really care about that. They just wanted their money back. So when people couldn’t pay they started taking their houses.”
“So those people hire you.”
“Some of them do. But there are millions of foreclosures going on. These lenders all want their money back and so some of them do bad things and some of them hire people to do bad things. They lie and cheat and they take away people’s houses without doing it fairly or under the law. And that’s where I come in.”
I looked at her. I had probably lost her already. I pulled over the second stack of files I had on the table and opened the top one. I spoke as I read.
“Okay, now here’s one. This family bought a house six years ago and the monthly payment was nine hundred dollars. Two years later when the shit started to hit the—”
“Dad!”
“Sorry. Two years later when things started going wrong in this country their interest rate went up and so did their payment. At the same time, the husband lost his job as a school bus driver because he had an accident. So the husband and wife went to the bank and said, ‘Hey, we have a problem. Can we change or restructure our loan so we can still pay for our house?’ This is called loan modification and it’s pretty much a joke. These people did the right thing, going in like that, but the bank led them on and said, ‘Yes, we’ll work with you. You keep paying what you can while we go to work on this.’ So they paid what they could but it wasn’t enough. They waited and waited but they never heard anything from the bank. That is, until they got the notice in the mail that they were being foreclosed on. So it’s this kind of stuff that is wrong and I try to do something about it. It’s David and Goliath stuff, Hay. The giant financial institutions are running roughshod over people and they don’t have too many guys like me standing up for them.”
The Fifth Witness: A Novel Page 7