Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

of that letter, please?”
    “January tenth, this year.”
    “And that letter was delivered to Mr. Opparizio by certified mail, correct?”
    “It was sent certified. I cannot tell you if Mr. Opparizio received it or ever saw it. It has someone else’s name listed as signing for it.”
    “But no matter who signed for it, it is a certainty that it was sent on January tenth, correct?”
    “I think that’s correct.”
    “And the second letter we’ve talked about here, the target letter from the Secret Service agent, was sent by certified mail as well, am I right?”
    “That’s right.”
    “So the date of January eighteenth is certified as to when it was mailed.”
    “Correct.”
    “So let me see if I have this right. Mr. Bondurant sends Louis Opparizio a certified letter that threatens to expose alleged fraudulent practices in his company and then eight days later a federal task force sends Mr. Opparizio another certified letter, this one saying he is the target of an investigation into foreclosure fraud. Do I have this time line right, Detective Kurlen?”
    “As far as I know, yes.”
    “And then less than two weeks later Mr. Bondurant is brutally murdered in the garage at WestLand, right?”
    “That’s right.”
    I paused and rubbed my chin like a deep thinker. I really wanted to hold the jury with this. I wanted to look at their faces but knew it would reveal my play. So I went with the deep thinker pose.
    “Detective, you have testified about your wealth of experience as a homicide detective, correct?”
    “I have a lot of experience, yes.”
    “Hypothetically speaking, do you wish you knew then what you know now?”
    Kurlen squinted like he was confused, even though he knew exactly what I was doing and where I was going.
    “I’m not sure I understand,” he said.
    “Put it this way, would it have been good for you to have those letters in hand on the first day of the murder investigation?”
    “Sure, why not? I’d take all evidence and information on the first day anytime. But that never happens.”
    “Hypothetically speaking, if you knew that your victim, Mitchell Bondurant, had sent a letter threatening to expose another man’s criminal behavior just eight days before that man learned he was the target of a criminal investigation, wouldn’t that be a significant avenue of investigation for you?”
    “It is hard to say.”
    Now I looked at the jury. Kurlen was waffling, refusing to acknowledge what common sense dictated he should own up to. You didn’t need to be a detective to understand that.
    “Hard to say? Are you saying that if you had this information and these letters on the day of the murder it would be hard to say if you would follow up on them as a significant lead?”
    “I’m saying that we don’t have all the details so it is hard to say how significant it was or wasn’t. But as a general answer, all leads are followed up. It’s as simple as that.”
    “As simple as that, yet you never pursued this angle of investigation, did you?”
    “I didn’t have this letter. How could I have followed it up?”
    “You had the victim’s letter and you did nothing with it, did you?”
    “Not true at all. I checked it out and determined it had nothing to do with the murder.”
    “But isn’t it true that by that time you already had your supposed murderer and you weren’t going to let anything change your mind or make you deviate from that path?”
    “No, not true. Not true at all.”
    I stared at Kurlen for a long time, hoping that my face showed my disgust.
    “No further questions at this time,” I finally said.

Thirty-three
    Freeman kept Kurlen on the stand for another fifteen minutes of redirect and did her best to resculpt his account of the investigation into a sterling effort of crime fighting. When she was through I passed on another crack at him because I was convinced that I was already ahead on Kurlen. My effort had been to sell the investigation as an exercise in tunnel vision and I believed I had succeeded.
    Freeman apparently felt that the need to address the federal target letter was urgent. Her next witness was the Secret Service agent, Charles Vasquez. He had not even been known to her twenty-four hours earlier but had now been interjected into her carefully orchestrated lineup of witnesses and evidence. I could have objected to his testimony on the grounds that I had not had the opportunity to question or prepare for Vasquez but I thought that would be