The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,126

time I had ever seen her. I was surprised, but not in a good way. She was diminutive and her hesitant walk and slight posture belied the picture of the scheming mercenary I had been building in the jury’s collective consciousness.

Minton was definitely learning as he was going. With Campo he seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that less was more. He economically led her through the testimony. He first started with personal background before moving on to the events of March 6.

Regina Campo’s story was sadly unoriginal and that was what Minton was counting on. She told the story of a young, attractive woman coming to Hollywood from Indiana a decade before with hopes of celluloid glory. There were starts and stops to a career, an appearance on a television show here and there. She was a fresh face and there were always men willing to put her in small meaningless parts. But when she was no longer a fresh face, she found work in a series of straight-to-cable films which often required her to appear nude. She supplemented her income with nude modeling jobs and slipped easily into a world of trading sex for favors. Eventually, she skipped the façade altogether and started trading sex for money. It finally brought her to the night she encountered Louis Roulet.

Regina Campo’s courtroom version of what happened that night did not differ from the accounts offered by all previous witnesses in the trial. But where it was dramatically different was in the delivery. Campo, with her face framed by dark, curly hair, seemed like a little girl lost. She appeared scared and tearful during the latter half of her testimony. Her lower lip and finger shook with fear as she pointed to the man she identified as her attacker. Roulet stared right back, a blank expression on his face.

“It was him,” she said in a strong voice. “He’s an animal who should be put away!”

I let that go without objection. I would get my chance with her soon enough. Minton continued the questioning, taking Campo through her escape, and then asked why she had not told the responding officers the truth about knowing who the man who attacked her was and why he was there.

“I was scared,” she said. “I wasn’t sure they would believe me if I told them why he was there. I wanted to make sure they arrested him because I was very afraid of him.”

“Do you regret that decision now?”

“Yes, I do because I know it might help him get free to do this again to somebody.”

I did object to that answer as prejudicial and the judge sustained it. Minton threw a few more questions at his witness but seemed to know he was past the apex of the testimony and that he should stop before he obscured the trembling finger of identification.

Campo had testified on direct examination for slightly less than an hour. It was almost 11:30 but the judge did not break for lunch as I had expected. She told the jurors she wanted to get as much testimony in as possible during the day and that they would go to a late, abbreviated lunch. This made me wonder if she knew something I didn’t. Had the Glendale detectives called her during the mid-morning break to warn of my impending arrest?

“Mr. Haller, your witness,” she said to prompt me and keep things going.

I went to the lectern with my legal pad and looked at my notes. If I was engaged in a defense of a thousand razors, I had to use at least half of them on this witness. I was ready.

“Ms. Campo, have you engaged the services of an attorney to sue Mr. Roulet over the alleged events of March sixth?”

She looked as though she had expected the question, but not as the first one out of the chute.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Have you talked to an attorney about this case?”

“I haven’t hired anybody to sue him. Right now, all I am interested in is seeing that justice is —”

“Ms. Campo,” I interrupted. “I didn’t ask whether you hired an attorney or what your interests are. I asked if you had talked to an attorney—any attorney—about this case and a possible lawsuit against Mr. Roulet.”

She was looking closely at me, trying to read me. I had said it with the authority of someone who knew something, who had the goods to back up the charge. Minton had probably schooled her on the most important aspect