Michael Connelly: The Lincoln Lawyer

I let it go and focused on what was at hand.

“There’s only one thing the DA’s office hates worse than losing a verdict,” I said. “That’s getting embarrassed by a judge with a directed verdict, especially after a finding of prosecutorial misconduct. Minton went down to talk to his boss and he’s a guy who is very political and always has his finger in the wind. We might know something in a few minutes.”

Roulet was directly in front of me. I looked over his shoulder to see that Sobel was still standing in the hallway. She was talking on a cell phone.

“Listen,” I said. “All of you just sit tight. If I don’t hear from the DA, then we go back into court in twenty minutes to see what the judge wants to do. So stay close. If you will excuse me, I’m going to go to the restroom.”

I stepped away from them and walked down the hallway toward Sobel. But Roulet broke away from his mother and her lawyer and caught up to me. He grabbed me by the arm to stop me.

“I still want to know how Corliss got that shit he was saying,” he demanded.

“What does it matter? It’s working for us. That’s what matters.”

Roulet brought his face in close to mine.

“The guy calls me a murderer on the stand. How is that working for us?”

“Because no one believed him. And that’s why the judge is so pissed, because they used a professional liar to get up there on the stand and say the worst things about you. To put that in front of the jury and then have the guy revealed as a liar, that’s the misconduct. Don’t you see? I had to heighten the stakes. It was the only way to push the judge into pushing the prosecution. I am doing exactly what you wanted me to do, Louis. I’m getting you off.”

I studied him as he computed this.

“So let it go,” I said. “Go back to your mother and Dobbs and let me go take a piss.”

He shook his head.

“No, I’m not going to let it go, Mick.”

He poked a finger into my chest.

“Something else is going on here, Mick, and I don’t like it. You have to remember something. I have your gun. And you have a daughter. You have to -”

I closed my hand over his hand and finger and pushed it away from my chest.

“Don’t you ever threaten my family,” I said with a controlled but angry voice. “You want to come at me, fine, then come at me and let’s do it. But if you ever threaten my daughter again, I will bury you so deep you will never be found. You understand me, Louis?”

He slowly nodded and a smile creased his face.

“Sure, Mick. Just so we understand each other.”

I released his hand and left him there. I started walking toward the end of the hallway where the restrooms were and where Sobel seemed to be waiting while talking on a cell. I was walking blind, my thoughts of the threat to my daughter crowding my vision. But as I got close to Sobel I shook it off. She ended her call when I got there.

“Detective Sobel,” I said.

“Mr. Haller,” she said.

“Can I ask why you are here? Are you going to arrest me?”

“I’m here because you invited me, remember?”

“Uh, no, I don’t.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“You told me I ought to check out your trial.”

I suddenly realized she was referring to the awkward conversation in my home office during the search of my house on Monday night.

“Oh, right, I forgot about that. Well, I’m glad you took me up on it. I saw your partner earlier. What happened to him?”

“Oh, he’s around.”

I tried to read something in that. She had not answered the question about whether she was going to arrest me. I gestured back up the hallway toward the courtroom.

“So what did you think?”

“Interesting. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the judge’s chambers.”

“Well, stick around. It ain’t over yet.”

“Maybe I will.”

My cell phone started to vibrate. I reached under my jacket and pulled it off my hip. The caller ID readout said the call was coming from the district attorney’s office.

“I have to take this,” I said.

“By all means,” Sobel said.

I opened the phone and started walking back up the hallway toward where Roulet was pacing.

“Hello?”

“Mickey Haller, this is Jack Smithson in the DA’s office. How’s your day going?”

“I’ve had better.”

“Not after you hear what I’m offering to do for you.”

“I’m listening.”

The judge did not come out of chambers for fifteen minutes on top of the thirty she had promised. We were all waiting, Roulet and I at the defense table, his mother and Dobbs behind us in the first row. At the prosecution table Minton was no longer flying solo. Next to him sat Jack Smithson. I was thinking that it was probably the first time he had actually been inside a courtroom in a year.

Minton looked downcast and defeated. Sitting next to Smithson, he could have been taken as a defendant with his attorney. He looked guilty as charged.

Detective Booker was not in the courtroom and I wondered if he was working on something or simply if no one had bothered to call him with the bad news.

I turned to check the big clock on the back wall and to scan the gallery. The screen for Minton’s PowerPoint presentation was gone now, a hint of what was to come. I saw Sobel sitting in the back row, but her partner and Kurlen were still nowhere to be seen. There was nobody else but Dobbs and Windsor, and they didn’t count. The row reserved for the media was empty. The media had not been alerted. I was keeping my side of the deal with Smithson.

Deputy Meehan called the courtroom to order and Judge Fullbright took the bench with a flourish, the scent of lilac wafting toward the tables. I guessed that she’d had a cigarette or two back there in chambers and had gone heavy with the perfume as cover.

“In the matter of the state versus Louis Ross Roulet, I understand from my clerk that we have a motion.”

Minton stood.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

He said nothing further, as if he could not bring himself to speak.

“Well, Mr. Minton, are you sending it to me telepathically?”

“No, Your Honor.”

Minton looked down at Smithson and got the go-ahead nod.

“The state moves to dismiss all charges against Louis Ross Roulet.”

The judge nodded as though she had expected the move. I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me and knew it was from Mary Windsor. She knew what was going to happen but had held her emotions in check until she had actually heard it in the courtroom.

“Is that with or without prejudice?” the judge asked.

“Dismiss with prejudice.”

“Are you sure about that, Mr. Minton? That means no comebacks from the state.”

“Yes, Your Honor, I know,” Minton said with a note of annoyance at the judge’s need to explain the law to him.

The judge wrote something down and then looked back at Minton.

“I believe for the record the state needs to offer some sort of explanation for this motion. We have chosen a jury and heard more than two days of testimony. Why is the state doing this at this stage, Mr. Minton?”

Smithson stood. He was a tall and thin man with a pale complexion. He was a prosecutorial specimen. Nobody wanted a fat man as district attorney and that was exactly what he hoped one day to be. He wore a charcoal gray suit with what had become his trademark: a maroon bow tie with matching handkerchief peeking from the suit’s breast pocket. The word among the defense pros was that a political advisor had told him to start building a recognizable media image so that when the time came to run, the voters would think they already knew him. This was one situation where he didn’t want the media carrying his image to the voters.