The Fifth Witness: A Novel

by Michael Connelly

  “Lisa, did you kill Mr. Bondurant?”

  “No! Of course not!”

  “Did you sneak up behind him with a hammer from your garage and hit him on the head so hard that he was dead before he hit the ground?”

  “No, I did not!”

  “Did you hit him two more times when he was on the ground?”

  “No!”

  I paused as if to study my notes. I wanted her denials to echo in the courtroom and in each juror’s mind.

  “Lisa, you made quite a name for yourself fighting the foreclosure of your home, didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to keep my home for myself and my son. I did what I thought was right. It ended up getting a lot of attention.”

  “It wasn’t good attention for the bank, was it?”

  Freeman objected, arguing that I was asking Trammel a question she would not have the knowledge to answer. The judge agreed and told me to ask something else.

  “There came a time when the bank sought to stop your protests and other activities, correct?”

  “Yes, they took me to court and got a restraining order against me. I couldn’t have any more protests at the bank. So I had them at the courthouse.”

  “And did people join your cause?”

  “Yes, I started a website and hundreds of people—a lot of them like me, losing their homes—joined in.”

  “You became quite visible as the leader of this group, didn’t you?”

  “I guess so. But it was never about getting attention for myself. It was about what they were doing, the frauds they were committing when they took away people’s houses and condos and everything.”

  “How many times do you think you were on the television news or in the newspaper?”

  “I didn’t keep count but a few times I went national. I was on CNN and Fox.”

  “By the way, speaking of going national, Lisa, on the morning of the murder, did you walk by WestLand National in Sherman Oaks?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “That wasn’t you on the sidewalk, just a half block away?”

  “No, it was not.”

  “So the woman who testified she saw you was lying under oath?”

  “I don’t want to call anyone a liar but it wasn’t me. Maybe she just made a mistake.”

  “Thank you, Lisa.”

  I looked down at my notes and shifted direction. By seemingly keeping my own client off guard with changing subjects and questions I was in effect keeping the jury off guard, which is what I wanted to do. I didn’t want them thinking ahead of me. I wanted their undivided attention and I wanted to feed them the story in pieces and in an order of my choosing.

  “Do you normally keep your garage door locked?” I asked.

  “Yes, always.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, it’s not attached to the house. You have to go outside the house to go into the garage. So I always have the door locked. I have mostly junk in there but some stuff is valuable. My husband always treated the tools like they were precious and I have the helium tank for balloons and parties and I don’t want any of the older kids in the neighborhood to get into that. And, well, I once read about somebody who had a detached garage like mine and she never locked her door. And then one day she went into the garage and a man was in there stealing stuff. He raped her. So I always keep the door locked.”

  “Do you have any idea why it was unlocked when the police searched your home on the day of the murder?”

  “No, I always kept it locked.”

  “When was the last time before this trial that you saw the hammer from your workbench in its place in the garage?”

  “I don’t remember ever seeing it. My husband was the one who had all the tools set up in there. I’m not really good with tools.”

  “What about gardening tools?”

  “Well, I take that back if you mean tools like that. I do the gardening and those are my tools.”

  “Do you have any idea how a micro-dot of blood from Mr. Bondurant ended up on one of your gardening shoes?”

  Lisa stared forward with a troubled look on her face. Her chin wavered slightly as she spoke.

  “I don’t know. There’s no explanation. I hadn’t worn those shoes in a long time and I didn’t kill Mr. Bondurant.”

  Her last line was spoken almost as a plea. It carried a sense of desperation and truth. I paused to savor it and hoped the jurors had noted it as well.

  After that I spent another half hour with her, working mostly the same themes and denials. I got into more detail about her coffee-shop encounter with Bondurant as well as the foreclosure process and the hopes she had of winning the case.

  Her purpose in the defense case was threefold. I needed her denial and explanations on record. I needed her personality to engender sympathy from the jury and put a human face on a case about murder. And finally, I needed to have the jurors start to wonder if this diminutive and seemingly fragile woman could lie in wait and then forcefully swing a hammer at a man’s head. Three times.

  By the time I came to the end of the direct examination, I felt I had gone a long way toward accomplishing all three of these goals. I tried to go out with a little crescendo of my own.

  “Did you hate Mitchell Bondurant?” I asked.

  “I hated what he and his bank were doing to me and others like me. But I didn’t hate him personally. I didn’t even know him.”

  “But you had lost your marriage and you had lost your job and now you were in danger of losing your house. Didn’t you wish to lash out at the forces you believed were hurting you?”

  “I was already lashing out. I was protesting my mistreatment. I had hired a lawyer and was fighting the foreclosure. Yes, I was angry. But I wasn’t violent. I am not a violent person. I’m a schoolteacher. I was lashing out, if you have to use those words, in the only way I knew. Peacefully protesting something that was wrong. Very definitely wrong.”

  I glanced at the jury and thought I caught a woman in the back row wiping away a tear. I hoped to God she was. I turned back to my client and moved in for the big closing.

  “I ask you once again, Lisa, did you kill Mitchell Bondurant?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you take a hammer and strike him with it in the garage at the bank?”

  “No, I wasn’t there. It wasn’t me.”

  “Then how was the hammer from your garage used to kill him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How was his blood found on your shoes?”

  “I don’t know! I didn’t do it. I was set up!”

  I paused for a moment and calmed my voice before finishing.

  “One last question, Lisa. How tall are you?”

  She looked confused, like a rag doll that had been pulled one way and then the other.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just tell us how tall you are.”

  “I’m five three.”

  “Thank you, Lisa. I have nothing further.”

  Freeman had her work cut out for her. Lisa Trammel had been a solid witness and the prosecutor wasn’t going to break her. She tried in a few places to get contradictory responses but Lisa more than held her own. After a half hour of Freeman trying to break down a door with a toothpick I began to think my client was going to sail through. But it never pays to think you’re safe until your client is off the stand and sitting next to you. Freeman had at least one card up her sleeve and she eventually played it.

  “When Mr. Haller asked you a little while ago if you had committed this crime, you said you were not violent. You said you were a schoolteacher and that you weren’t violent, do you remember that?”

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “But isn’t it true that you were forced to change schools and undergo anger-management treatment four years ago when you struck a student with a three-sided ruler?”

  I quickly stood and objected and asked for a sidebar. The judge allowed us to approac
h.

  “Judge,” I whispered before Perry even asked, “there’s nothing in any of the discovery about a three-sided ruler. Where’s this coming from?”

  “Judge,” Freeman whispered before Perry even asked, “it’s new information that just came to us late last week. We had to verify it.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “You’re going to say you didn’t have her full teaching record from the get-go? You expect us to believe that?”

  “You can believe whatever you want,” Freeman responded. “We didn’t offer it in discovery because I had no intention of bringing it up until your client started testifying about her nonviolent history. This obviously puts a lie to that and has become fair game.”

  I turned my attention back to Perry.

  “Judge, her excuse doesn’t matter. She’s not playing by the rules of discovery. The question should be stricken and she should not be allowed to pursue this line of questioning.”

  “Judge, this is—”

  “Counsel is right, Ms. Freeman. You can save it for rebuttal, provided you come up with the witnesses, but you’re not going to bring it in here. It should have been part of discovery.”

  We returned to our positions. I would now have to put Cisco on the incident because no doubt Freeman would be bringing it up again later. This annoyed me because one of the first assignments I had given Cisco when we got the case was to completely vet our client. This event had somehow been missed.

  The judge instructed the jury to disregard the prosecutor’s question and then told Freeman to proceed with a different line of questioning. But I knew that bell had been rung loud and clear for the jury. The question might have been wiped from the record but not from their minds.

  Freeman went on with her cross-examination, potshotting Trammel here and there but not penetrating the armor of her direct testimony. My client could not be shaken from her contention that she was not walking near WestLand National on the morning of the murder. With the exception of the three-sided ruler, it was a damn good start because it put the jury on immediate notice that we were engaged in an affirmative defense. We would not be going down without a fight.

  The prosecutor took it right on up to five o’clock, thus preserving the ability to come up with something overnight and hit Trammel with it in the morning. The judge recessed for the evening and everybody was sent home. Except for me. I was heading back to the office. There was still more to do.

  Before leaving the courtroom I huddled with my client at the defense table and whispered angrily to her.

  “Thanks for telling me about the three-sided ruler. What else don’t I know?”

  “Nothing, that was stupid.”

  “What was stupid? That you hit a kid with a ruler or that you didn’t tell me?”

  “It was four years ago and he deserved it. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  “It’s not going to be your choice. Freeman can still bring it up on rebuttal, so you better start thinking about what you’re going to say.”

  A look of concern creased her face.

  “How can she? The judge told the jury to forget it was brought up.”

  “She can’t bring it up on cross but she’ll find a way to bring it up later. There are different rules about rebuttal. So you’d better tell me all about it and anything else I should know but you’ve neglected to tell me.”

  She glanced over my shoulder and I knew she was looking for Herb Dahl. She had no idea what Dahl had revealed to me or about the double-agent work he was doing.

  “Dahl isn’t here,” I said. “Talk to me, Lisa. What else should I know?”

  When I got back to the office I found Cisco in the reception area, hands in his pockets and chatting up Lorna, who was behind the front desk.

  “What going on?” I demanded. “I thought you were going to the airport to get Shami.”

  “I sent Bullocks,” Cisco said. “She got her and is on the way back.”

  “She should have stayed here preparing for her testimony, which will probably come tomorrow. You’re the investigator, you should’ve gone to the airport. Both of them together probably can’t carry the dummy.”

  “Relax, Boss, they got it covered. And they’re fine together. Bullocks just called from the road. So you keep your cool and we’ll do the rest.”

  I stared hard at him. I didn’t care if he was six inches taller and seventy-five more pounds of muscle. I’d had it. I’d been carrying everything and I’d had it.

  “You want me to relax? You want me to be cool? Fuck you, Cisco. We just started the defense and the problem is we don’t have a defense. I have a lot of talk and a dummy. The problem is, unless you get your hands out of your fucking pockets and find me something, I’m the one who is going to look like the dummy. So don’t tell me to be cool, okay? I’m the one who’s standing in front of the jury every fucking day.”

  First Lorna burst out laughing and soon Cisco followed.

  “You think this is funny?” I said in full outrage. “It’s not funny. What the fuck makes it so fucking funny?”

  Cisco held up his hands in a calming gesture until he could contain himself.

  “Sorry, Boss, it’s just that when you get yourself worked up… and that thing about the dummy.”

  This made Lorna start another cycle of laughter. I made a mental note to fire her after the trial. In fact, I’d fire them both. That would really be funny.

  “Look,” Cisco said, apparently sensing I wasn’t picking up on the humor of the situation. “Go into your office, take your tie off and sit down in the big chair. I’ll go get my stuff and I’ll show you what I’ve got working. I’ve been dealing with Sacramento all day so the going is slow but I’m getting close.”

  “Sacramento? The state crime lab?”

  “No, corporate records. Bureaucrats, Mickey. That’s why it’s taking forever. But you don’t have to worry. You do your job and I’ll do mine.”

  “Kind of hard to do my job when I’m waiting on you to do yours.”

  I headed toward my office. I threw a baleful look at Lorna as I went by. It only served to make her laugh again.

  Forty

  I was uninvited and unexpected. But having not seen my daughter in a week—I’d had to cancel Wednesday night pancakes because of the trial—and leaving things last time on a rough note with Maggie, I felt compelled to drop by the home they shared in Sherman Oaks. Maggie opened the door with a frown, apparently after seeing me through the peephole.

  “Bad night for surprise visitors, Haller,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll just visit Hayley for a bit, if that’s okay.”

  “She’s the one having the bad night.”

  She stepped back and to the side to allow me to enter.

  “Really?” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “She’s got a ton of homework and she doesn’t want to be bothered by anyone, even me.”

  I looked from the entry area into the living room but didn’t see my daughter.

  “She’s in her room with the door closed. Good luck. I’ll be cleaning up in the kitchen.”

  She left me there and I looked up the stairs. Hayley’s bedroom was up there and all at once the climb looked forbidding. My daughter was a teenager and subject to all the mood swings that come with that designation. You never knew what you were going to get.

  I made the journey anyway and my polite knock on her bedroom door was greeted with a “What?”

  “It’s Dad. Can I come in?”

  “Dad, I have a ton of homework!”

  “So that means I can’t come in?”

  “Whatever.”

  I opened the door and stepped in. She was in the bed and under the covers. She was surrounded by binders, books and a laptop.

  “And you can’t kiss me. I have zit cream on.”

  I came to the side of the bed and leaned down. I managed to kiss her on the top of the head before the arm came up to push me away.

  “How much more have you got?�
��

  “I told you, tons.”

  The math book was open and facedown so she wouldn’t lose her place. I picked it up to see what the lesson was.

  “Don’t lose my spot!”

  Sheer panic, end-of-the-world angst in her voice.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve been handling books going on forty years now.”

  As far as I could tell, the lesson was about equations assigning values to X and Y and I was completely lost. They were teaching her things beyond my reach. It was too bad it was stuff she’d never use.

  “Boy, I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to.”

  “I know, neither can Mom. I’m all alone in the world.”

  “Aren’t we all.”

  I realized that she hadn’t looked up at me once since I’d been in the room. It was depressing.

  “Well, I just wanted to say hi. I’ll leave now.”

  “Bye. I love you.”

  Still no eye contact.

  “Good night.”

  I closed the door behind me and went down to the kitchen. The other female who seemed to be able to control my mood at her whim was sitting on a stool at the breakfast counter. She had a glass of chardonnay in front of her and an open file.

  She at least looked up at me. She didn’t smile but she made eye contact and I took that as a victory in this home. Her eyes then went back to the file.

  “What are you working on?”

  “Oh, just refreshing. I have a prelim tomorrow on a strong arm and I haven’t really looked at it since I filed it.”

  The usual grind of the justice system. She didn’t offer me a glass of wine because she knew I didn’t drink. I leaned against the counter opposite the breakfast bar.

  “So I’m thinking of running for district attorney,” I said.

  Her head shot up and she looked at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, just trying to get somebody’s attention around here.”

  “Sorry, but it’s a busy night. I’ve got to work.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll go. Your pal Andy’s probably burning the oil, too.”

  “I think so. I was supposed to meet her for a drink after work but she canceled. What did you do to her, Haller?”