The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,31

you out? She didn’t say anything, yell anything, just sort of came up behind and bang.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay, then what? What do you remember next?”

“It’s still pretty foggy. I remember waking up and these two guys are sitting on me. Holding me down. And then the police came. And the paramedics. I was sitting up against the wall and my hands were cuffed and the paramedic put that ammonia or something under my nose and that’s when I really came out of it.”

“You were still in the apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“Where was Reggie Campo?”

“She was sitting on the couch and another paramedic was working on her face and she was crying and telling the other cop that I had attacked her. All these lies. That I had surprised her at the door and punched her, that I said I was going to rape her and then kill her, all these things I didn’t do. And I moved my arms so I could look down at my hands behind my back. I saw they had my hand in like a plastic bag and I could see blood on my hand, and that’s when I knew the whole thing was a setup.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She put blood on my hand to make it look like I did it. But it was my left hand. I’m not left-handed. If I was going to punch somebody, I’d use my right hand.”

He made a punching gesture with his right hand to illustrate this for me in case I didn’t get it. I got up from my spot and paced over to the window. It now seemed like I was higher than the sun. I was looking down at the sunset. I felt uneasy about Roulet’s story. It seemed so far-fetched that it might actually be true. And that bothered me. I was always worried that I might not recognize innocence. The possibility of it in my job was so rare that I operated with the fear that I wouldn’t be ready for it when it came. That I would miss it.

“Okay, let’s talk about this for a second,” I said, still facing the sun. “You’re saying that she puts blood on your hand to set you up. And she puts it on your left. But if she was going to set you up, wouldn’t she put the blood on your right, since the vast majority of people out there are right-handed? Wouldn’t she go with the numbers?”

I turned back to the table and got blank stares from everyone.

“You said she opened the door a crack and then let you in,” I said. “Could you see her face?”

“Not all of it.”

“What could you see?”

“Her eye. Her left eye.”

“So did you ever see the right side of her face? Like when you walked in.”

“No, she was behind the door.”

“That’s it!” Levin said excitedly. “She already had the injuries when he got there. She hid it from him, then he steps in and she clocks him. All the injuries were to the right side of her face and that dictated that she put the blood on his left hand.”

I nodded as I thought about the logic of this. It seemed to make sense.

“Okay,” I said, turning back to the window and continuing to pace. “I think that’ll work. Now, Louis, you’ve told us you had seen this woman around the bar scene before but had never been with her. So, she was a stranger. Why would she do this, Louis? Why would she set you up like you say she did?”

“Money.”

But it wasn’t Roulet who answered. It had been Dobbs. I turned from the window and looked at him. He knew he had spoken out of turn but didn’t seem to care.

“It’s obvious,” Dobbs said. “She wants money from him, from the family. The civil suit is probably being filed as we speak. The criminal charges are just the prelude to the suit, the demand for money. That’s what she’s really after.”

I sat back down and looked at Levin, exchanging eye contact.

“I saw a picture of this woman in court today,” I said. “Half her face was pulped. You are saying that’s our defense, that she did that to herself?”

Levin opened his file and took out a piece of paper. It was a black-and-white photocopy of the evidence photograph Maggie McPherson had showed me in court. Reggie Campo’s swollen face. Levin’s source was good but not good enough to get him actual photos. He slid the photocopy across the table