Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

preliminary checking and that may lead to the letter. We’re not sending these out scattershot. We know what we’re doing.”
    “Did you or your partner or anyone from the task force speak with Mitchell Bondurant in regard to the practices of ALOFT?”
    “No, we didn’t. Nobody did.”
    “Would he have been someone you would’ve talked to?”
    Freeman objected, calling the question vague. The judge sustained the objection. I decided to leave the question floating out there unanswered in front of the jury.
    “Thank you, Agent Vasquez.”
    Freeman went back to her scheduled rollout of the case after Vasquez, calling the gardener who found the hammer in the bushes of the home a block and a half from the scene of the murder. His testimony was quick and uneventful, by itself unimportant until it would be tied in later with testimony from the state’s forensic witnesses. I did score a minor point by getting the gardener to acknowledge that he had worked in and around the bushes at least twelve different times before he found the hammer. It was a little seed to plant for the jury, the idea that maybe the hammer itself had been planted long after the murder.
    After the gardener, the prosecution followed with a few quick hits of testimony from the home owner and the cops who carried the chain of custody of the hammer to the forensic lab. I didn’t even bother with cross-examination. I was not going to contest chain of custody or the fact that the hammer was the murder weapon. My plan was to agree not only that it was the weapon that killed Mitchell Bondurant but also that it belonged to Lisa Trammel.
    It would be an unexpected move, but the only one that worked with the defense theory of a setup. The lead through Jeff Trammel that the hammer might be in the back of the BMW he’d left behind when he disappeared to Mexico didn’t pan out. Cisco was able to locate that car, still in use at the dealership where Jeff Trammel had worked, but there was no hammer in the trunk and the man in charge of fleet management said there never was. I dismissed Jeff Trammel’s story as an effort to get paid off for information that might be helpful to his estranged wife’s case.
    The murder weapon sequence brought us to lunch, and the judge, as was beginning to be his custom, broke fifteen minutes early. I turned to my client and invited her to go to lunch with me.
    “What about Herb?” she said. “I promised him I would go to lunch with him.”
    “Herb can come, too.”
    “Really?”
    “Sure, why not?”
    “Because I thought you didn’t… Never mind, I’ll tell him.”
    “Good. I’ll drive.”
    I had Rojas pick us up and we went down Van Nuys to the Hamlet near Ventura. The place had been there for decades and while it had classed itself up since the days it was called Hamburger Hamlet, the food was just the same. Because the judge had gotten us out early, we avoided the noon lineup and were immediately shown to a booth.
    “I love this place,” Dahl said. “But I haven’t been here in ages.”
    I sat across from Dahl and my client. I didn’t respond to his enthusiasm for the restaurant. I was too busy working out how I was going to play the lunch.
    We ordered quickly because even with the early start our time window was small. Our conversation was focused on the case and how Lisa perceived things to be going. She was pleased so far.
    “You get something that helps me from every witness,” she said. “It’s quite remarkable.”
    “But the question is, do I get enough?” I responded. “And what you have to remember is that the mountain gets steeper with each witness. Do you know the piece Boléro? It’s classical music. I think it was composed by Ravel.”
    Lisa gave me a blank stare.
    “Bo Derek, in Ten,” Dahl said. “Love it!”
    “Right. Anyway, the point is it’s a long piece, maybe fifteen minutes or so, and it starts off slow with just a few quiet instruments and then it gathers momentum and builds and builds into a crescendo, a big finish with all the instruments in the orchestra coming in together. And at the same time, the emotions of the listeners build and come together at the same moment. And that’s what the prosecutor is doing here. She’s building sound and momentum. Her best stuff is still to come because she’s going to bring everything together with drums and strings and horns by the time she’s finished. You understand, Lisa?”
    She nodded reluctantly.
    “I’m not trying to