The Lincoln Lawyer Collection

by Connelly, Michael

  He testified that on the night of March 6 he had been working night duty out of Valley Bureau in Van Nuys. He was called to Regina Campo’s apartment by the West Valley Division watch commander, who believed, after being briefed by his patrol officers, that the attack on Campo merited immediate attention from an investigator. Booker explained that the six detective bureaus in the Valley were only staffed during daytime hours. He said the night-duty detective was a quick-response position and often assigned cases of a pressing nature.

  “What made this case of pressing nature, Detective?” Minton asked.

  “The injuries to the victim, the arrest of a suspect and the belief that a greater crime had probably been averted,” Booker answered.

  “That greater crime being what?”

  “Murder. It sounded like the guy was planning to kill her.”

  I could have objected but I planned to exploit the exchange on cross-examination, so I let it go.

  Minton walked Booker through the investigative steps he took at the crime scene and later while interviewing Campo as she was being treated at a hospital.

  “Before you got to the hospital you had been briefed by Officers Maxwell and Santos on what the victim had reported had happened, correct?”

  “Yes, they gave me an overview.”

  “Did they tell you that the victim was engaged in selling sex to men for a living?”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “When did you find that out?”

  “Well, I was getting a pretty good sense of it when I was in her apartment and I saw some of the property she had there.”

  “What property?”

  “Things I would describe as sex aids, and in one of the bedrooms, there was a closet that only had negligees and clothing of a sexually provocative nature in it. There was also a television in that room and a collection of pornographic tapes in the drawers beneath it. I had been told that she did not have a roommate but it looked to me like both bedrooms were in active use. I started to think that one room was hers, like it was the one she slept in when she was alone, and the other was for her professional activities.”

  “A trick pad?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “Did it change your opinion of her as a victim of this attack?”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because anybody can be a victim. Prostitute or pope, doesn’t matter. A victim is a victim.”

  Spoken just as rehearsed, I thought. Minton made a check mark on his pad and moved on.

  “Now, when you got to the hospital, did you ask the victim about your theory in regard to her bedrooms and what she did for a living?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She flat out said she was a working girl. She didn’t try to hide it.”

  “Did anything she said to you differ from the accounts of the attack you had already gathered at the crime scene?”

  “No, not at all. She told me she opened the door to the defendant and he immediately punched her in the face and drove her backwards into the apartment. He assaulted her further and produced a knife. He told her he was going to rape her and then kill her.”

  Minton continued to probe the investigation in more detail and to the point of boring the jury. When I was not writing down questions to ask Booker during cross, I watched the jurors and saw their attention lag under the weight of so much information.

  Finally, after ninety minutes of direct examination it was my turn with the police detective. My goal was to get in and get out. While Minton performed the whole case autopsy, I only wanted to go in and scrape cartilage out of the knees.

  “Detective Booker, did Regina Campo explain why she lied to the police?”

  “She didn’t lie to me.”

  “Maybe not to you but she told the first officers on the scene, Maxwell and Santos, that she did not know why the suspect had come to her apartment, didn’t she?”

  “I wasn’t present when they spoke to her so I can’t testify to that. I do know that she was scared, that she had just been beaten and threatened with rape and death at the time of the first interview.”

  “So you are saying that under those circumstances it is acceptable to lie to the police.”

  “No, I did not say that.”

  I checked my notes and moved on. I wasn’t going for a linear continuum of questions. I was potshotting, trying to keep him off balance.

  “Did you catalog the clothing you found in the bedroom you said Ms. Campo used for her prostitution business?”

  “No, I did not. It was just an observation I made. It was not important to the case.”

  “Would any of the outfits you saw in the closet have been appropriate to sadomasochistic sexual activities?”

  “I wouldn’t know that. I am not an expert in that field.”

  “How about the pornographic videos? Did you write down the titles?”

  “No, I did not. Again, I did not believe that it was pertinent to the investigation of who had brutally assaulted this woman.”

  “Do you recall if the subject matter of any of the videos involved sadomasochism or bondage or anything of that nature?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Now, did you instruct Ms. Campo to get rid of those tapes and the clothing from the closet before members of Mr. Roulet’s defense team could view the apartment?”

  “I certainly did not.”

  I checked that one off my list and moved on.

  “Have you ever spoken to Mr. Roulet about what happened in Ms. Campo’s apartment that night?”

  “No, he lawyered up before I got to him.”

  “Do you mean he exercised his constitutional right to remain silent?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he did.”

  “So, as far as you know, he never spoke to the police about what happened.”

  “That is correct.”

  “In your opinion, was Ms. Campo struck with great force?”

  “I would say so, yes. Her face was very badly cut and swollen.”

  “Then please tell the jury about the impact injuries you found on Mr. Roulet’s hands.”

  “He had wrapped a cloth around his fist to protect it. There were no injuries on his hands that I could see.”

  “Did you document this lack of injury?”

  Booker looked puzzled by the question.

  “No,” he said.

  “So you had Ms. Campo’s injuries documented by photographs but you didn’t see the need to document Mr. Roulet’s lack of injuries, correct?”

  “It didn’t seem to me to be necessary to photograph something that wasn’t there.”

  “How do you know he wrapped his fist in a cloth to protect it?”

  “Ms. Campo told me she saw that his hand was wrapped right before he punched her at the door.”

  “Did you find this cloth he supposedly wrapped his hand in?”

  “Yes, it was in the apartment. It was a napkin, like from a restaurant. It had her blood on it.”

  “Did it have Mr. Roulet’s blood on it?”

  “No.”

  “Was there anything that identified it as belonging to the defendant?”

  “No.”

  “So we have Ms. Campo’s word for it, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  I let some time pass while I scribbled a note on my pad. I then continued to question the detective.

  “Detective, when did you learn that Louis Roulet denied assaulting or threatening Ms. Campo and that he would be vigorously defending himself against the charges?”

  “That would have been when he hired you, I guess.”

  There was a murmur of laughter in the courtroom.

  “Did you pursue other explanations for Ms. Campo’s injuries?”

  “No, she told me what happened. I believed her. He beat her and was going to — ”

  “Thank you, Detective Booker. Just try to answer the qu
estion I ask.”

  “I was.”

  “If you looked for no other explanation because you believed the word of Ms. Campo, is it safe to say that this whole case relies upon her word and what she said occurred in her apartment on the night of March sixth?”

  Booker deliberated a moment. He knew I was leading him into a trap of his own words. As the saying goes, there is no trap so deadly as the one you set for yourself.

  “It’s not just her word,” he said after thinking he saw a way out. “There is physical evidence. The knife. Her injuries. More than just her word on this.”

  He nodded affirmatively.

  “But doesn’t the state’s explanation for her injuries and the other evidence begin with her telling of what happened?”

  “You could say that, yes,” he said reluctantly.

  “She is the tree on which all of these fruits grow, is she not?”

  “I probably wouldn’t use those words.”

  “Then what words would you use, Detective?”

  I had him now. Booker was literally squirming in his seat. Minton stood up and objected, saying I was badgering the witness. It must have been something he had seen on TV or in a movie. He was told to sit down by the judge.

  “You can answer the question, Detective,” the judge said.

  “What was the question?” Booker asked, trying to buy some time.

  “You disagreed with me when I characterized Ms. Campo as the tree from which all the evidence in the case grows,” I said. “If I am wrong, how would you describe her position in this case?”

  Booker raised his hands in a quick gesture of surrender.

  “She’s the victim! Of course she’s important because she told us what happened. We have to rely on her to set the course of the investigation.”

  “You rely on her for quite a bit in this case, don’t you? Victim and chief witness against the defendant, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who else saw the defendant attack Ms. Campo?”

  “Nobody else.”

  I nodded, to underline the answer for the jury. I looked over and exchanged eye contact with those in the front row.

  “Okay, Detective,” I said. “I want to ask you about Charles Talbot now. How did you find out about this man?”

  “Uh, the prosecutor, Mr. Minton, told me to find him.”

  “And do you know how Mr. Minton came to know about his existence?”

  “I believe you were the one who informed him. You had a videotape from a bar that showed him with the victim a couple hours before the attack.”

  I knew this could be the point to introduce the video but I wanted to wait on that. I wanted the victim on the stand when I showed the tape to the jury.

  “And up until that point you didn’t think it was important to find this man?”

  “No, I just didn’t know about him.”

  “So when you finally did know about Talbot and you located him, did you have his left hand examined to determine if he had any injuries that could have been sustained while punching someone repeatedly in the face?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Is that because you were confident in your choice of Mr. Roulet as the person who punched Regina Campo?”

  “It wasn’t a choice. It was where the investigation led. I didn’t locate Charles Talbot until more than two weeks after the crime occurred.”

  “So what you are saying is that if he’d had injuries, they would have been healed by then, correct?”

  “I’m no expert on it but that was my thinking, yes.”

  “So you never looked at his hand, did you?”

  “Not specifically, no.”

  “Did you question any coworkers of Mr. Talbot about whether they saw bruising or other injuries on his hand around the time of the crime?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “So you never really looked beyond Mr. Roulet, did you?”

  “That is wrong. I come into every case with an open mind. But Roulet was there and in custody from the start. The victim identified him as her attacker. He was obviously a focus.”

  “Was he a focus or the focus, Detective Booker?”

  “He was both. At first he was a focus and later — after we found his initials on the weapon that had been held to Reggie Campo’s throat — he became the focus, you could say.”

  “How do you know that knife was held to Ms. Campo’s throat?”

  “Because she told us and she had the puncture wound to show for it.”

  “Are you saying there was some sort of forensic analysis that matched the knife to the wound on her neck?”

  “No, that was impossible.”

  “So again we have Ms. Campo’s word that the knife was held to her throat by Mr. Roulet.”

  “I had no reason to doubt her then. I have none now.”

  “Now without any explanation for it, I guess you would consider the knife with the defendant’s initials on it to be a highly important piece of evidence of guilt, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes. Even with explanation, I would say. He brought that knife in there with one purpose in mind.”

  “You are a mind reader, are you, Detective?”

  “No, I’m a detective. And I am just saying what I think.”

  “Accent on think.”

  “It’s what I know from the evidence in the case.”

  “I’m glad you are so confident, sir. I have no further questions at this time. I reserve the right to recall Detective Booker as a witness for the defense.”

  I had no intention of calling Booker back to the stand but I thought the threat might sound good to the jury.

  I returned to my seat while Minton tried to bandage up Booker on redirect. The damage was in perceptions and there wasn’t a lot that he could do with that. Booker had only been a setup man for the defense. The real damage would come later.

  After Booker stepped down, the judge called for the mid-morning break. She told the jurors to be back in fifteen minutes but I knew the break would last longer. Judge Fullbright was a smoker and had already faced highly publicized administrative charges for sneaking smokes in her chambers. That meant that for her to take care of her habit and avoid further scandal, she had to take the elevator down and leave the building and stand in the entry port where the jail buses come in. I figured I had at least a half hour.

  I went out into the hallway to talk to Mary Alice Windsor and work my cell phone. It looked like I would be putting on witnesses in the afternoon session.

  I was first approached by Roulet, who wanted to talk about my cross-examination of Booker.

  “It looked to me like it went really well for us,” he said.

  “Us?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You can’t tell whether it’s gone well until you get the verdict. Now leave me alone, Louis. I have to make some calls. And where is your mother? I am probably going to need her this afternoon. Is she going to be here?”

  “She had an appointment this morning but she’ll be here. Just call Cecil and he’ll bring her in.”

  After he walked away Detective Booker took his place, walking up to me and pointing a finger in my face.

  “It’s not going to fly, Haller,” he said.

  “What’s not going to fly?” I asked.

  “Your whole bullshit defense. You’re going to crash and burn.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see. You know, you have some balls trying to trash Talbot with this. Some balls. You must need a wheelbarrow to carry them around in.”

  “I’m just doing my job, Detective.”

  “And some job it is. Lying for a living. Tricking people from looking at the truth. Living in a world without truth. Let me ask you something. You know the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?”

  “No, what’s the difference?”

  “One’s a bottom-feeding, shit-eating scum sucker. The other’s a fish.”

  “That’s a good on
e, Detective.”

  He left me then and I stood there smiling. Not because of the joke or the understanding that Lankford had probably been the one to elevate the insult from defense attorneys to all of lawyerdom when he had retold the joke to Booker. I smiled because the joke was confirmation that Lankford and Booker were in communication. They were talking and it meant that things were moving and in play. My plan was still holding together. I still had a chance.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Every trial has a main event. A witness or a piece of evidence that becomes the fulcrum upon which everything swings one way or the other. In this case the main event was billed as Regina Campo, victim and accuser, and the case would seem to rest upon her performance and testimony. But a good defense attorney always has an understudy and I had mine, a witness secretly waiting in the wings upon whom I hoped to shift the weight of the trial.

  Nevertheless, when Minton called Regina Campo to the stand after the break, it was safe to say all eyes were on her as she was led in and walked to the witness box. It was the first time anyone in the jury had seen her in person. It was also the first time I had ever seen her. I was surprised, but not in a good way. She was diminutive and her hesitant walk and slight posture belied the picture of the scheming mercenary I had been building in the jury’s collective consciousness.

  Minton was definitely learning as he was going. With Campo he seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that less was more. He economically led her through the testimony. He first started with personal background before moving on to the events of March 6.

  Regina Campo’s story was sadly unoriginal and that was what Minton was counting on. She told the story of a young, attractive woman coming to Hollywood from Indiana a decade before with hopes of celluloid glory. There were starts and stops to a career, an appearance on a television show here and there. She was a fresh face and there were always men willing to put her in small meaningless parts. But when she was no longer a fresh face, she found work in a series of straight-to-cable films which often required her to appear nude. She supplemented her income with nude modeling jobs and slipped easily into a world of trading sex for favors. Eventually, she skipped the façade altogether and started trading sex for money. It finally brought her to the night she encountered Louis Roulet.