Michael Connelly: The Fifth Witness

“So are we good? I don’t want to be spinning my wheels on this if you’re going to be looking for a believer to take my place.”

“We’re good, I guess.”

“All right, then I’ll be by to see you tomorrow to discuss the case and what direction we are going to be moving in. I am hoping that my investigator will have a preliminary take on what the evidence is showing by then. He’s-”

“Can I ask you a question, Mickey?”

“Of course you can.”

“Could you lend me the money for the bail?”

I was not taken aback. I long ago lost track of how many clients hit me up for bail money. This might have been the highest amount so far, but I doubted it would be the last time I was asked.

“I can’t do that, Lisa. Number one, I don’t have that kind of money, and number two, it’s a conflict of interest for an attorney to provide bail for his own client. So I can’t help you there. What I think you need to do is get used to the idea that you are going to be incarcerated at least through your trial. The bail is set at two million and that means you would need at least two hundred thousand just to get a bond. It’s a lot of money, Lisa, and if you had it, I’d want half of it to pay for the defense. So either way you’d still be in jail.”

I smiled but she didn’t see any humor in what I was telling her.

“When you put up a bond like that, do you get it back after the trial?” she asked.

“No, that goes to the bail bondsman to cover his risk because he’d be the one on the hook for the whole two million if you were to flee.”

Lisa looked incensed.

“I’m not going to flee! I am going to stay right here and fight this thing. I just want to be with my son. He needs his mother.”

“Lisa, I was not referring to you specifically. I was just telling you how bail and bonds work. Anyway, the deputy behind you has been very patient. You need to go with him and I need to get back to work on your defense. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

I nodded to the deputy and he moved in to take Lisa back to the courthouse lockup. As they went through the steel door off the side of the custody pen Lisa looked back at me with scared eyes. There was no way she could know what lay ahead, that this was only the start of what would be the most harrowing ordeal of her life.

Andrea Freeman had stopped to talk with a fellow prosecutor and that allowed me to catch up with her as she was leaving the courtroom.

“Do you want to grab a cup of coffee and talk?” I asked as I came up beside her.

“Don’t you need to talk to your people?”

“My people?”

“All the people with cameras. They’ll be lined up outside the door.”

“I’d rather talk to you and we could even discuss media guidelines if you would like.”

“I think I can spare a few minutes. You want to go down to the basement or come back with me to the office for some DA coffee?”

“Let’s hit the basement. I’d be looking over my shoulder too much in your office.”

“Your ex-wife?”

“Her and others, though my ex and I are in a good phase right now.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You know Maggie?”

There were at least eighty deputy DAs working out of Van Nuys.

“In passing.”

We left the courtroom and stood side by side in front of the assembled media to announce that we would not be commenting on the case at this early stage. As we headed to the elevators at least six reporters, most of them from out of town, shoved business cards into my hand- New York Times, CNN, Dateline, Salon, and the holy grail of them all, 60 Minutes. In less than twenty-four hours I had gone from scrounging $250-a-month foreclosure cases in South L.A. to being lead defense attorney on a case that threatened to be the signature story of this financial epoch.

And I liked it.

“They’re gone,” Freeman said once we were on the elevator. “You can wipe the shit-eating grin off your face.”

I looked at her and really smiled.

“That obvious, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. All I can say is, enjoy it while you can.”

That was a not-so-subtle reminder of what I was facing with this case. Freeman was an up-and-comer in the DA’s office and some said she would someday run for the top job herself. The conventional wisdom was to attribute her rise and rep in the prosecutor’s office to her skin color and to internal politics. To suggest she got the good cases because she was a minority who was the protégée of another minority. But I knew this was a deadly mistake. Andrea Freeman was damn good at what she did and I had the winless record against her to prove it. When I got the word the night before that she had been assigned the Trammel case, I had felt it like a poke in the ribs. It hurt but there was nothing I could do about it.

In the basement cafeteria we poured cups of coffee from the urns and found a table in a quiet corner. She took the seat that allowed her to see the entrance. It was a law enforcement thing that extended from patrol officers to detectives to prosecutors. Never turn your back on a potential point of attack.

“So…,” I said. “Here we are. You’re in the position of having to prosecute a potential American hero.”

Freeman laughed like I was insane.

“Yeah, right. Last I heard, we don’t make heroes out of murderers.”

I could think of an infamous case prosecuted locally that might challenge that statement but I let it go.

“Maybe that is overreaching a bit,” I said. “Let’s just say that I think public sympathy is going to be running high on the defendant’s side of the aisle on this one. I think fanning the media flames will only heighten it.”

“For now, sure. But as the evidence gets out there and the details become known, I don’t think public sympathy is going to be an issue. At least not from my standpoint. But what are you saying, Haller? You want to talk about a plea before the case is even a day old?”

I shook my head.

“No, not at all. I don’t want to talk about anything like that. My client says she is innocent. I brought up the sympathy angle because of the attention the case is already getting. I just picked up a card from a producer at Sixty Minutes. So I’d like to set up some guidelines and agreements on how we proceed with the media. You just mentioned the evidence and how it gets out there into the public domain. I hope you are talking about evidence presented in court and not selectively fed to the L.A. Times or anybody else in the fourth estate.”

“Hey, I’d be happy to call it a no-fly zone right now. Nobody talks to the media under any circumstances.”

I frowned.

“I’m not ready to go that far yet.”

She gave me the knowing nod.

“I didn’t think so. So all I’ll say then is be careful. Both of us. I for one won’t hesitate to go to the judge if I think you’re trying to taint the jury pool.”

“Then same here.”

“Good. Then that’s settled for now. What else?”

“When am I going to start seeing some discovery?”

She took a long draw on her coffee before answering.

“You know from prior cases how I work. I’m not into I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. That’s always a one-way street because the defense doesn’t show dick. So I like to keep it nice and tight.”

“I think we need to come to an accommodation, Counselor.”

“Well, when we get a judge you can talk to the judge. But I’m not playing nice with a murderer, no matter who her lawyer is. And just so you know, I already came down hard on your buddy Kurlen for giving you that disc yesterday. That should not have happened and he’s lucky I didn’t have him removed from the case. Consider it a gift from the prosecution. But it’s the only one you’ll be getting… Counselor.”