“You ready?” he asked me.
“Trying to be,” I said. “Are you?”
“I’m ready. But I wanted to tell you something before we began.”
I looked at him. He was too close to me. It would have been invasive even if I loved him and not hated him. I leaned back.
“What?”
He followed me, leaning back next to me.
“You’re my lawyer, right?”
I leaned forward, trying to get away.
“Louis, what is this? We’ve been together on this more than two months and now we’re sitting here with a jury picked and ready for trial. You have paid me more than a hundred and fifty grand and you have to ask if I’m your lawyer? Of course I’m your lawyer. What is it? What is wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
He leaned forward and continued.
“I mean, like, if you’re my lawyer, I can tell you stuff and you have to hold it as a secret, even if it’s a crime I tell you about. More than one crime. It’s covered by the attorney-client relationship, right?”
I felt the low rumbling of upset in my stomach.
“Yes, Louis, that’s right—unless you are going to tell me about a crime about to be committed. In that case I can be relieved of the code of ethics and can inform the police so they can stop the crime. In fact, it would be my duty to inform them. A lawyer is an officer of the court. So what is it that you want to tell me? You just heard we got the two-minute warning. We’re about to start here.”
“I’ve killed people, Mick.”
I looked at him for a moment.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He was right. I had heard him. And I shouldn’t have acted surprised. I already knew he had killed people. Raul Levin was among them and he had even used my gun—though I hadn’t figured out how he had defeated the GPS bracelet on his ankle. I was just surprised he had decided to tell me in such a matter-of-fact manner two minutes before his trial was called to order.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “I’m about to try to defend you in this thing and you —”
“Because I know you already know. And because I know what your plan is.”
“My plan? What plan?”
He smiled slyly at me.
“Come on, Mick. It’s simple. You defend me on this case. You do your best, you get paid the big bucks, you win and I walk away. But then, once it’s all over and you’ve got your money in the bank, you turn against me because I’m not your client anymore. You throw me to the cops so you can get Jesus Menendez out and redeem yourself.”
I didn’t respond.
“Well, I can’t let that happen,” he said quietly. “Now, I am yours forever, Mick. I am telling you I’ve killed people, and guess what? Martha Renteria was one of them. I gave her just what she deserved, and if you go to the cops or use what I’ve told you against me, then you won’t be practicing law for very long. Yes, you might succeed in raising Jesus from the dead. But I’ll never be prosecuted because of your misconduct. I believe it is called ‘fruit of the poisonous tree,’ and you are the tree, Mick.”
I still couldn’t respond. I just nodded again. Roulet had certainly thought it through. I wondered how much help he had gotten from Cecil Dobbs. He had obviously had somebody coach him on the law.
I leaned toward him and whispered.
“Follow me.”
I got up and walked quickly through the gate and toward the rear door of the courtroom. From behind I heard the clerk’s voice.
“Mr. Haller? We’re about to start. The judge —”
“One minute,” I called out without turning around.
I held one finger up as well. I then pushed through the doors into the dimly lit vestibule designed as a buffer to keep hallway sounds from the courtroom. A set of double doors on the other side led to the hallway. I moved to the side and waited for Roulet to step into the small space.
As soon as he came through the door I grabbed him and spun him into the wall. I held him pressed against it with both of my hands on his chest.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing?”
“Take it easy, Mick. I just thought we should know where we both —”
“You son of a bitch. You killed Raul and all he was doing was working for you! He was trying to help you!”
I wanted to bring my hands up to his neck and choke him out on the spot.
“You’re right about one thing. I am a son of a bitch. But you are wrong about everything else, Mick. Levin wasn’t trying to help me. He was trying to bury me and he was getting too close. He got what he deserved for that.”
I thought about Levin’s last message on my phone at home. I’ve got Jesus’s ticket out of the Q. Whatever it was that he had found, it had gotten him killed. And it had gotten him killed before he could deliver the information to me.
“How did you do it? You’re confessing everything to me here, then I want to know how you did it. How’d you beat the GPS? Your bracelet showed you weren’t even near Glendale.”
He smiled at me, like a boy with a toy he wasn’t going to share.
“Let’s just say that is proprietary information and leave it at that. You never know, I may have to pull the old Houdini act again.”
In his words I heard the threat and in his smile I saw the evil that Raul Levin had seen.
“Don’t get any ideas, Mick,” he said. “As you probably know, I do have an insurance policy.”
I pressed harder against him and leaned in closer.
“Listen, you piece of shit. I want the gun back. You think you have this thing wired? You don’t have shit. I’ve got it wired. And you won’t make it through the week if I don’t get that gun back. You got that?”
Roulet slowly reached up, grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands off his chest. He started straightening his shirt and tie.
“Might I suggest an agreement,” he said calmly. “At the end of this trial I walk out of the courtroom a free man. I continue to maintain my freedom, and in exchange for this, the gun never falls into, shall we say, the wrong hands.”
Meaning Lankford and Sobel.
“Because I’d really hate to see that happen, Mick. A lot of people depend on you. A lot of clients. And you, of course, wouldn’t want to go where they are going.”
I stepped back from him, using all my will not to raise my fists and attack. I settled for a voice that quietly seethed with all of my anger and hate.
“I promise you,” I said, “if you fuck with me you will never be free of me. Are we clear on that?”
Roulet started to smile. But before he could respond the door from the courtroom opened and Deputy Meehan, the bailiff, looked in.
“The judge is on the bench,” he said sternly. “She wants you in here. Now.”
I looked back at Roulet.
“I said, are we clear?”
“Yes, Mick,” he said good-naturedly. “We’re crystal clear.”
I stepped away from him and entered the courtroom, striding up the aisle to the gate. Judge Constance Fullbright was staring me down every step of the way.
“So nice of you to consider joining us this morning, Mr. Haller.”
Where had I heard that before?
“I am sorry, Your Honor,” I said as I came through the gate. “I had an emergency situation with my client. We had to conference.”
“Client conferences can be handled right at the defense table,” she responded.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“I don’t think we are starting off correctly here, Mr. Haller. When my clerk announces that we will be in session in two minutes, then I expect everyone—including defense attorneys and their clients—to be in place and ready to go.”
“I apologize, Your Honor.”
“That’s not good enough, Mr. Haller. Before the end of court today I want you to pay a visit to my clerk with your checkbook. I am fining you five hundred dollars for contempt of court. You are not in charg
e of this courtroom, sir. I am.”
“Your Honor —”
“Now, can we please have the jury,” she ordered, cutting off my protest.
The bailiff opened the jury room door and the twelve jurors and two alternates started filing into the jury box. I leaned over to Roulet, who had just sat down, and whispered.
“You owe me five hundred dollars.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
T ed Minton’s opening statement was a by-the-numbers model of prosecutorial overkill. Rather than tell the jurors what evidence he would present and what it would prove, the prosecutor tried to tell them what it all meant. He was going for a big picture and this was almost always a mistake. The big picture involves inferences and suggestions. It extrapolates givens to the level of suspicions. Any experienced prosecutor with a dozen or more felony trials under his belt will tell you to keep it small. You want them to convict, not necessarily to understand.
“What this case is about is a predator,” he told them. “Louis Ross Roulet is a man who on the night of March sixth was stalking prey. And if it were not for the sheer determination of a woman to survive, we would be here prosecuting a murder case.”
I noticed early on that Minton had picked up a scorekeeper. This is what I call a juror who incessantly takes notes during trial. An opening statement is not an offer of evidence and Judge Fullbright had so admonished the jury, but the woman in the first seat in the front row had been writing since the start of Minton’s statement. This was good. I like scorekeepers because they document just what the lawyers say will be presented and proved at trial and at the end they go back to check. They keep score.
I looked at the jury chart I had filled in the week before and saw that the scorekeeper was Linda Truluck, a homemaker from Reseda. She was one of only three women on the jury. Minton had tried hard to keep the female content to a minimum because, I believe, he feared that once it was established in trial that Regina Campo had been offering sexual services for money, he might lose the females’ sympathy and ultimately their votes on a verdict. I believed he was probably correct in that assumption and I worked just as diligently to get women on the panel. We both ended up using all of our twenty challenges and it was probably the main reason it took three days to seat a jury. In the end I got three women on the panel and only needed one to head off a conviction.
“Now, you are going to hear testimony from the victim herself about her lifestyle being one that we would not condone,” Minton told the jurors. “The bottom line is she was selling sex to the men she invited to her home. But I want you to remember that what the victim in this case did for a living is not what this trial is about. Anyone can be a victim of a violent crime. Anyone. No matter what someone does for a living, the law does not allow for them to be beaten, to be threatened at knifepoint or to be put in fear of their lives. It doesn’t matter what they do to make money. They enjoy the same protections that we all do.”
It was pretty clear to me that Minton didn’t even want to use the word prostitution or prostitute for fear it would hurt his case. I wrote the word down on the legal pad I would take with me to the lectern when I made my statement. I planned to make up for the prosecutor’s omissions.
Minton gave an overview of the evidence. He spoke about the knife with the defendant’s initials on the blade. He talked about the blood found on his left hand. And he warned the jurors not to be fooled by the defense’s efforts to confuse or muddle the evidence.
“This is a very clear-cut and straightforward case,” he said as he was winding up. “You have a man who attacked a woman in her home. His plan was to rape and then kill her. It is only by the grace of God that she will be here to tell you the story.”
With that he thanked them for their attention and took his seat at the prosecution table. Judge Fullbright looked at her watch and then looked at me. It was 11:40 and she was probably weighing whether to go to a break or let me proceed with my opener. One of the judge’s chief jobs during trial is jury management. The judge’s duty is to make sure the jury is comfortable and engaged. Lots of breaks, short and long, is often the answer.
I had known Connie Fullbright for at least twelve years, since long before she was a judge. She had been both a prosecutor and defense lawyer. She knew both sides. Aside from being overly quick with contempt citations, she was a good and fair judge—until it came to sentencing. You went into Fullbright’s court knowing you were on an even level with the prosecution. But if the jury convicted your client, be prepared for the worst. Fullbright was one of the toughest sentencing judges in the county. It was as if she were punishing you and your client for wasting her time with a trial. If there was any room within the sentencing guidelines, she always went to the max, whether it was prison or probation. It had gotten her a telling sobriquet among the defense pros who worked the Van Nuys courthouse. They called her Judge Fullbite.
“Mr. Haller,” she said, “are you planning to reserve your statement?”
“No, Your Honor, but I believe I am going to be pretty quick.”
“Very good,” she said. “Then we’ll hear from you and then we’ll take lunch.”
The truth was I didn’t know how long I would be. Minton had been about forty minutes and I knew I would take close to that. But I had told the judge I’d be quick simply because I didn’t like the idea of the jury going to lunch with only the prosecutor’s side of the story to think about as they chewed their hamburgers and tuna salads.
I got up and went to the lectern located between the prosecution and defense tables. The courtroom was one of the recently rehabbed spaces in the old courthouse. It had twin jury boxes on either side of the bench. Everything was done in a blond wood, including the rear wall behind the bench. The door to the judge’s chambers was almost hidden in the wall, its lines camouflaged in the lines and grain of the wood. The doorknob was the only giveaway.
Fullbright ran her trials like a federal judge. Attorneys were not allowed to approach witnesses without permission and never allowed to approach the jury box. They were required to speak from the lectern only.
Standing now at the lectern, the jury was in the box to my right and closer to the prosecution table than to the defense’s. This was fine with me. I didn’t want them to get too close a look at Roulet. I wanted him to be a bit of a mystery to them.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I began, “my name is Michael Haller and I am representing Mr. Roulet during this trial. I am happy to tell you that this trial will most likely be a quick one. Just a few more days of your time will be taken. In the long run you will probably see that it took us longer to pick all of you than it will take to present both sides of the case. The prosecutor, Mr. Minton, seemed to spend his time this morning telling you about what he thinks all the evidence means and who Mr. Roulet really is. I would advise you to simply sit back, listen to the evidence and let your common sense tell you what it all means and who Mr. Roulet is.”
I kept my eyes moving from juror to juror. I rarely looked down at the pad I had placed on the lectern. I wanted them to think I was shooting the breeze with them, talking off the top of my head.
“Usually, what I like to do is reserve my opening statement. In a criminal trial the defense always has the option of giving an opener at the start of the trial, just as Mr. Minton did, or right before presenting the defense’s case. Normally, I would take the second option. I would wait and make my statement before trotting out all the defense’s witnesses and evidence. But this case is different. It’s different because the prosecution’s case is also going to be the defense’s case. You’ll certainly hear from some defense witnesses, but the heart and soul of this case is going to be the prosecution’s evidence and witnesses and how you decide to interpret them. I guarantee you that a version of the events and evidence far different from what Mr. Minton just outlined is going to emerge in this courtroom. And when it comes time to present the defense’s case, it probably won’t even be necessary.”
I checke
d the scorekeeper and saw her pencil moving across the page of her notebook.
“I think that what you are going to find here this week is that this whole case will come down to the actions and motivations of one person. A prostitute who saw a man with outward signs of wealth and chose to target him. The evidence will show this clearly and it will be shown by the prosecution’s own witnesses.”
Minton stood up and objected, saying I was going out of bounds in trying to impeach the state’s main witness with unsubstantiated accusations. There was no legal basis for the objection. It was just an amateurish attempt to send a message to the jury. The judge responded by inviting us to a sidebar.
We walked to the side of the bench and the judge flipped on a sound neutralizer which sent white noise from a speaker on the bench toward the jury and prevented them from hearing what was whispered in the sidebar. The judge was quick with Minton, like an assassin.
“Mr. Minton, I know you are new to felony trial work, so I see I will have to school you as we go. But don’t you ever object during an opening statement in my courtroom. This isn’t evidence he’s presenting. I don’t care if he says your own mother is the defendant’s alibi witness, you don’t object in front of my jury.”
“Your Hon—”
“That’s it. Go back.”
She rolled her seat back to the center of the bench and flicked off the white noise. Minton and I returned to our positions without further word.
“Objection overruled,” the judge said. “Continue, Mr. Haller, and let me remind you that you said you would be quick.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. That is still my plan.”
I referred to my notes and then looked back at the jury. Knowing that Minton would have been intimidated to silence by the judge, I decided to raise the rhetoric up a notch, go off notes and get directly to the windup.
“Ladies and gentlemen, in essence, what you will be deciding here is who the real predator was in this case. Mr. Roulet, a successful businessman with a spotless record, or an admitted prostitute with a successful business in taking money from men in exchange for sex. You will hear testimony that the alleged victim in this case was engaged in an act of prostitution with another man just moments before this supposed attack occurred. And you will hear testimony that within days of this supposedly life-threatening assault, she was back in business once again, trading sex for money.”