Michael Connelly: The Fifth Witness

Mitchell Bondurant was a senior vice president at WestLand. He headed up the mortgage loan division. His name was on the loan documents relating to Lisa Trammel’s house. As such his name was on all of my filings. I had also written him a letter, outlining what I described as indications of fraudulent practices by the foreclosure mill WestLand had contracted with to carry out the dirty work of taking the homes and other properties of their default customers.

Lisa was entitled to see all documents arising from her case. She was copied on the letter and everything else. Despite being the human face of the effort to take her home away, Bondurant remained above the fray, hiding behind the bank’s legal team. He never responded to my letter and I never met him. I had no knowledge that Lisa Trammel had ever met or spoken with him either. But now he was dead and the police had Lisa in custody.

We exited the 101 at Van Nuys Boulevard and headed north. The civic center was a plaza surrounded by two courthouses, a library, City Hall North and the Valley Bureau police complex, which included the Van Nuys Division. Various other government agencies and buildings were clustered around the main grouping. Parking was always a problem but it wasn’t my worry. I pulled my phone and called my investigator, Dennis Wojciechowski.

“Cisco, it’s me. You close?”

In his early years Wojciechowski was associated with the Road Saints motorcycle club but there was already a member named Dennis. Nobody could pronounce Wojciechowski so they called him the Cisco Kid because of his dark looks and mustache. The mustache was now gone but the name had stuck.

“Already here. I’ll meet you on the bench by the front stairs to the PD.”

“I’ll be there in five. Have you talked to anyone yet? I’ve got nothing.”

“Yeah, your old pal Kurlen’s running lead on this. The victim, Mitchell Bondurant, was found in the parking garage at WestLand’s headquarters on Ventura about nine this morning. He was on the ground between two cars. Not clear how long he was down but he was dead on scene.”

“Do we know the cause yet?”

“There it gets a little hinky. At first they put out that he’d been shot because an employee who was on another level of the garage told responding police she had heard two popping sounds, like shots. But when they examined the body on the scene it looked like he had been beaten to death. Hit with something.”

“Was Lisa Trammel arrested there?”

“No, from what I understand, she was picked up at her home in Woodland Hills. I still have some calls out but that’s about the extent of what I’ve got so far. Sorry, Mick.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll know everything soon enough. Is Kurlen at the scene or with the suspect?”

“I was told he and his partner picked up Trammel and took her in. The partner’s a female named Cynthia Longstreth. She’s a D-one. I’ve never heard of her.”

I had never heard of her either but since she was a detective one, my guess was that she was new to the homicide beat and paired with the veteran Kurlen, a D-3, to get some seasoning. I looked out the window. We were passing a BMW dealership and it made me think of the missing husband who had sold Beemers before pulling the plug on the marriage and disappearing. I wondered if Jeff Trammel would show up now that his wife was arrested for murder. Would he take custody of the son he had abandoned?

“You want me to get Valenzuela over here?” Cisco asked. “He’s only a block away.”

Fernando Valenzuela was a bail bondsman I used on Valley cases. But I knew he wouldn’t be needed this time.

“I’d wait on that. If they’ve tagged her with murder she isn’t going to make bail.”

“Right, yeah.”

“Do you know if a DA’s been assigned yet?”

I was thinking about my ex-wife who worked for the district attorney’s office in Van Nuys. She might be a useful source of back-channel information-unless she had been put on the case. Then there would be a conflict of interest. It had happened before. Maggie McPherson wouldn’t like that.

“I’ve got nothing on that.”

I considered what little we knew and what might be the best way to proceed. My feeling was that once the police understood what they had in this case-a murder that could draw wide attention to one of the great financial catastrophes of the time-they would quickly go to lockdown, putting a lid on all sources of information. The time to make moves was now.

“Cisco, I changed my mind. Don’t wait for me. Go over to the scene and see what you can find out. Talk to people before they get locked down.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll handle the PD and I’ll call if I need anything.”

“Got it. Good luck.”

“You too.”

I closed the phone and looked at the back of my driver’s head.

“Rojas, turn right at Delano and take me up Sylmar.”

“No problem.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be. I want you to drop me and then go back up Van Nuys Boulevard and find a body shop. See if they can get the paint off the back of the car.”

Rojas looked at me in the rearview mirror.

“What paint?”

The Van Nuys police building is a four-story structure serving many purposes. It houses the Van Nuys police division as well as the Valley Bureau command offices and the main jail facility serving the northern part of the city. I had been here before on cases and knew that as with most LAPD stations large or small, there would be multiple obstacles standing between my client and me.

I have always had the suspicion that officers assigned to front desk duty were chosen by cunning supervisors because of their skills in obfuscation and disinformation. If you doubt this, walk into any police station in the city and tell the desk officer who greets you that you wish to make a complaint against a police officer. See how long it takes him to find the proper form. Desk cops are usually young and dumb and unintentionally ignorant, or old and obdurate and completely deliberate in their actions.

At the front desk at Van Nuys station I was met by an officer with the name CRIMMINS printed on his crisp uniform. He was a silver-haired veteran and therefore highly accomplished when it came to the dead-eyed stare. He showed this to me when I identified myself as a defense attorney with a client waiting to see me in the detective squad. His response consisted of pursing his lips and pointing to a row of plastic chairs where I was supposed to meekly go to wait until he deemed it time to call upstairs.

Guys like Crimmins are used to a cowering public: people who do exactly as he says because they are too intimidated to do anything else. I wasn’t part of that public.

“No, that’s not how this works,” I said.

Crimmins squinted. He hadn’t been challenged by anybody all day, let alone a criminal defense attorney-emphasis on criminal. His first move was to fire up the sarcasm responders.

“Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right. So pick up the phone and call upstairs to Detective Kurlen. Tell him Mickey Haller is on the way up and that if I don’t see my client in the next ten minutes I’ll just walk across the plaza to the courthouse and go see Judge Mills.”

I paused to let the name register.

“I’m sure you know of Judge Roger Mills. Lucky for me, he used to be a criminal defense attorney before he got elected to the bench. He didn’t like being jacked around by the police back then and doesn’t like it much when he hears about it now. He’ll drag both you and Kurlen into court and make you explain why you were playing this same old game of stopping a citizen from exercising her constitutional rights to consult an attorney. Last time it went down like that Judge Mills didn’t like the answers he got and fined the guy who was sitting where you are five hundred bucks.”