Michael Connelly: The Fifth Witness

I checked my watch under the defense table and saw I had taken only twenty-five minutes. I started to settle in for the second part of the state’s closer when Freeman asked the judge to have me remove the mannequin from the courtroom. The judge told me to do so and I got back up.

I carried the mannequin to the gate, where I was met by Cisco, who had been in the audience.

“I got it, Boss,” he whispered. “I’ll take him outside.”

“Thanks.”

“You did good.”

“Thanks.”

Freeman moved to the well to deliver the second part of her summation. She wasted no time in attacking the contentions of the defense.

“I don’t need any props to try to mislead you. I don’t need any conspiracies or unnamed or unknown killers. I have the facts and the evidence that prove well beyond any reasonable doubt that Lisa Trammel murdered Mitchell Bondurant.”

And it went from there. Freeman used her entire allotment of time hammering the defense case while bolstering the evidence the state had shown. It was a fairly routine Joe Friday closing. Just the facts, or the supposed facts, delivered like a steady drumbeat. Not bad but not all that good either. I saw the attention of some of the jurors wandering through parts of it, which could be taken two ways. One, they weren’t buying it, or two, they had already bought it and didn’t need to hear it again.

Freeman steadily amped it up until her big finish, a standard summing of the power and might of the state to cast judgment and exact justice.

“The facts of this case are unalterable. The facts do not lie. The evidence clearly shows that the defendant waited behind the pillar in the garage for Mitchell Bondurant. The evidence clearly shows that when he stepped out of his car, the defendant attacked. It was his blood on her hammer and his blood on her shoe. These are facts, ladies and gentlemen. These are undisputed facts. These are the building blocks of evidence. Evidence that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Lisa Trammel killed Mitchell Bondurant. That she came up behind him and brutally struck him with her hammer. That she even hit him again and again after he was down and dead. We don’t know exactly what position he was in or she was in. She is the only one who knows that. But we do know that she did it. The evidence in this case points to one person.”

And of course Freeman had to point the finger at my client.

“Her. Lisa Trammel. She did it and now through the tricks of her attorney she asks you to let her go. Don’t do it. Give Mitchell Bondurant justice. Find his killer guilty of this crime. Thank you.”

Freeman took her seat. I gave her closing a B but I had already awarded myself an A-egotist that I am. Still, usually all it took was a C for the prosecution to triumph. It’s always a stacked deck for the state and often the defense attorney’s very best work is simply not good enough to overcome the power and the might.

Judge Perry moved directly into the jury charge, reading his final instructions to them. These were not only the rules of deliberations but also instructions specific to the case. He gave great attention to Louis Opparizio and warned again that his testimony was not to be considered during the deliberations.

The charge ended up being nearly as long as my closing but finally, just after three, the judge sent the twelve jurors back to the assembly room to begin their task. As I watched them file through the door I was at least relaxed, if not confident. I had put the best case forward that I could. I had certainly bent some rules and pushed some boundaries. I had even put myself at risk. At risk based on the law but also something more dangerous. I had risked myself by believing in the possibility of my client’s innocence.

I looked over at Lisa as the door to the deliberations room closed. I saw no fear in her eyes and once again I bought in. She was already sure of the verdict. There wasn’t a doubt on her face.

“What do you think?” Aronson whispered to me.

“I think we’ve got a fifty-fifty shot at this and that’s better than we usually get, especially on a murder. We’ll see.”

The judge recessed court after making sure the clerk had contact numbers for all parties and urging us to stay somewhere no more than fifteen minutes away, should a verdict come in. My office was in that range so we decided to head back there. Feeling optimistic and magnanimous, I even told Lisa she could invite Herb Dahl along. I felt it would be my obligation to eventually inform her of her guardian angel’s treachery, but that conversation would be saved for another day.

As the defense party walked out into the hallway the media started to gather around us, clamoring for a statement from Lisa or at least me. Behind the crowd I saw Maggie leaning against a wall, my daughter sitting on a bench next to her while texting away on her phone. I told Aronson to handle the reporters and I started to slip away.

“Me?” Aronson said.

“You know what to say. Just don’t let Lisa talk. Not till we have a verdict.”

I waved off a couple of trailing reporters and got to Maggie and Hayley. I made a quick feint one way and then went the other, kissing my daughter on the cheek before she could duck.

“ Daaaaddd! ”

I straightened up and looked at Maggie. She had a small smile on her face.

“You pulled her out of school for me?”

“I thought she should be here.”

It was a major concession.

“Thank you,” I said. “So what did you think?”

“I think you could sell ice in Antarctica,” she said.

I smiled.

“But that doesn’t mean you’re going to win,” she added.

I frowned.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Well, what do you want from me? I’m a prosecutor. I don’t like to see the guilty go free.”

“Well, that won’t be a problem in this case.”

“I guess you have to believe what you have to believe.”

I was back to smiling. I checked my daughter and saw she was back to texting, oblivious to our conversation as usual.

“Did Freeman talk to you yesterday?”

“You mean about you pulling the Fifth witness move? Yes. You don’t play fair, Haller.”

“It’s not a fair game. Did she tell you what she said to me after?”

“No, what did she say?”

“Never mind. She was wrong.”

She knitted her eyebrows. She was intrigued.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “We’re all going to walk over to my office to wait. You two want to come?”

“No, I think I need to get Hayley home. She’s got homework.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it and took a look. The screen said

L.A. Superior Court

I took the call. It was Judge Perry’s clerk. I listened and then hung up. I looked around to make sure Lisa Trammel was still nearby.

“What is it?” Maggie asked.

I looked back at her.

“We already have a verdict. A five-minute verdict.”

PART FIVE.The Hypocrisy of Innocence

They came in droves, pouring in from all over Southern California, all brought by the siren song of Facebook. Lisa Trammel had announced the party the morning after the verdict and now on Saturday afternoon they were ten deep at the cash bars. They waved the Stars and Stripes and wore red, white and blue. Fighting foreclosure with the nearly martyred leader of the cause was now more American than ever before. At every door to the house and spaced at intervals in the front and back yards were ten-gallon buckets for donations to defray Trammel’s expenses and keep the fight going. FLAG pins for a buck, cheap cotton T-shirts for ten. And posing with Lisa for a photo required a minimum twenty-dollar donation.

But nobody complained. Fired in the kiln of false accusation, Lisa Trammel had emerged unscathed and appeared to be about to make the jump from activist to icon. And she wasn’t unhappy about it. The rumor was that Julia Roberts was in talks to play the part in the movie.