“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 ab
out 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.
The Fifth Witness: A Novel Page 17