The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,100

I asked.

“Not a lot. Not a lot that I can share with you. We are sort of organizing the evidence we have. We got some ballistics back and —”

“They already did an autopsy?” I said. “That was quick.”

“No, the autopsy won’t be until tomorrow.”

“Then how’d you get ballistics already?”

She didn’t answer but then I figured it out.

“You found a casing. He was shot with an automatic that ejected the shell.”

“You’re good, Mr. Haller. Yes, we found a cartridge.”

“I’ve done a lot of trials. And call me Mickey. It’s funny, the killer ransacked the place but didn’t pick up the shell.”

“Maybe that’s because it rolled across the floor and fell into a heating vent. The killer would have needed a screwdriver and a lot of time.”

I nodded. It was a lucky break. I couldn’t count the number of times clients had gone down because the cops had caught a lucky break. Then again, there were a lot of clients who walked because they caught the break. It all evened out in the end.

“So, was your partner right about it being a twenty-two?”

She paused before answering, deciding whether to cross some threshold of revealing case information to me, an involved party in the case but the enemy—a defense lawyer—nonetheless.

“He was right. And thanks to the markings on the cartridge, we even know the exact gun we are looking for.”

I knew from questioning ballistics experts and firearms examiners in trials over the years that marks left on bullet casings during the firing process could identify the weapon even without the weapon in hand. With an automatic, the firing pin, breech block, ejector and extractor all leave signature marks on the bullet casing in the split second the weapon is fired. Analyzing the four markings in unison can lead to a specific make and model of the weapon being identified.

“It turns out that Mr. Levin owned a twenty-two himself,” Sobel said. “But we found it in a closet safe in the house and it’s not a Woodsman. The one thing we have not found is his cell phone. We know he had one but we —”

“He was talking to me on it right before he was killed.”

There was a moment of silence.

“You told us yesterday that the last time you spoke to him was Friday night.”

“That’s right. But that’s why I am calling. Raul called me yesterday morning at eleven-oh-seven and left me a message. I didn’t get it until today because after I left you people yesterday I just went out and got drunk. Then I went to sleep and didn’t realize I had a message from him till right now. He called about one of the cases he was working on for me sort of on the side. It’s an appellate thing and the client’s in prison. A no-rush thing. Anyway, the content of the message isn’t important but the call helps with the timing. And get this, while he’s leaving the message, you hear the dog start to bark. It did that whenever somebody came to the door. I know because I’d been there before and the dog always barked.”

Again she hit me with some silence before responding.

“I don’t understand something, Mr. Haller.”

“What’s that?”

“You told us yesterday you were at home until around noon before you left for the game. And now you say that Mr. Levin left a message for you at eleven-oh-seven. Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

“Because I was on it and I don’t have call waiting. You can check my records, you’ll see I got a call from my office manager, Lorna Taylor. I was talking to her when Raul called. Without call waiting I didn’t know. And of course he thought I had already left for the game so he just left a message.”

“Okay, I understand. We’ll probably want your permission in writing to look at those records.”

“No problem.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at home.”

I gave her the address and she said that she and her partner were coming.

“Make it soon. I have to leave for court in about an hour.”

“We’re coming right now.”

I closed the phone feeling uneasy. I had defended a dozen murderers over the years and that had brought me into contact with a number of homicide investigators. But I had never been questioned myself about a murder before. Lankford and now Sobel seemed to be suspicious of every answer I could give. It made me wonder what they knew that I didn’t.

I straightened up things on the desk and closed my briefcase. I