The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,125

was impossible.”

“So again we have Ms. Campo’s word that the knife was held to her throat by Mr. Roulet.”

“I had no reason to doubt her then. I have none now.”

“Now without any explanation for it, I guess you would consider the knife with the defendant’s initials on it to be a highly important piece of evidence of guilt, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Even with explanation, I would say. He brought that knife in there with one purpose in mind.”

“You are a mind reader, are you, Detective?”

“No, I’m a detective. And I am just saying what I think.”

“Accent on think.”

“It’s what I know from the evidence in the case.”

“I’m glad you are so confident, sir. I have no further questions at this time. I reserve the right to recall Detective Booker as a witness for the defense.”

I had no intention of calling Booker back to the stand but I thought the threat might sound good to the jury.

I returned to my seat while Minton tried to bandage up Booker on redirect. The damage was in perceptions and there wasn’t a lot that he could do with that. Booker had only been a setup man for the defense. The real damage would come later.

After Booker stepped down, the judge called for the mid-morning break. She told the jurors to be back in fifteen minutes but I knew the break would last longer. Judge Fullbright was a smoker and had already faced highly publicized administrative charges for sneaking smokes in her chambers. That meant that for her to take care of her habit and avoid further scandal, she had to take the elevator down and leave the building and stand in the entry port where the jail buses come in. I figured I had at least a half hour.

I went out into the hallway to talk to Mary Alice Windsor and work my cell phone. It looked like I would be putting on witnesses in the afternoon session.

I was first approached by Roulet, who wanted to talk about my cross-examination of Booker.

“It looked to me like it went really well for us,” he said.

“Us?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You can’t tell whether it’s gone well until you get the verdict. Now leave me alone, Louis. I have to make some calls. And where is your mother? I am probably going to need her this afternoon. Is she going to be here?”

“She had an appointment this morning but she’ll be here. Just call Cecil and he’ll bring her in.”

After he walked away Detective Booker took his place, walking up to me and pointing a finger in my face.

“It’s not going to fly, Haller,” he said.

“What’s not going to fly?” I asked.

“Your whole bullshit defense. You’re going to crash and burn.”

“We’ll see.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. You know, you have some balls trying to trash Talbot with this. Some balls. You must need a wheelbarrow to carry them around in.”

“I’m just doing my job, Detective.”

“And some job it is. Lying for a living. Tricking people from looking at the truth. Living in a world without truth. Let me ask you something. You know the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?”

“No, what’s the difference?”

“One’s a bottom-feeding, shit-eating scum sucker. The other’s a fish.”

“That’s a good one, Detective.”

He left me then and I stood there smiling. Not because of the joke or the understanding that Lankford had probably been the one to elevate the insult from defense attorneys to all of lawyerdom when he had retold the joke to Booker. I smiled because the joke was confirmation that Lankford and Booker were in communication. They were talking and it meant that things were moving and in play. My plan was still holding together. I still had a chance.

THIRTY-FOUR

Every trial has a main event. A witness or a piece of evidence that becomes the fulcrum upon which everything swings one way or the other. In this case the main event was billed as Regina Campo, victim and accuser, and the case would seem to rest upon her performance and testimony. But a good defense attorney always has an understudy and I had mine, a witness secretly waiting in the wings upon whom I hoped to shift the weight of the trial.

Nevertheless, when Minton called Regina Campo to the stand after the break, it was safe to say all eyes were on her as she was led in and walked to the witness box. It was the first time anyone in the jury had seen her in person. It was also the first