Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

shoes?”
    “Yes. You can see one of the forensic techs collecting them there.”
    “So you are saying that the fact that they were so clean but stored in a dirty box made them suspicious?”
    I objected, stating she was leading the witness. I won the point but the message got to the jury. Freeman moved on.
    “What made you think the shoes were Lisa Trammel’s?”
    “Because they were small, obviously a woman’s shoes, and because we found a framed photograph in the house that depicted Lisa working in the garden. She was wearing the shoes.”
    “Thank you, Detective. What became of the shoes and the spot on the one shoelace that initially tested as showing blood?”
    “The shoelace was turned over to the regional crime lab at Cal State for DNA testing.”
    “Why didn’t you use the private lab for this?”
    “The sample of blood was quite small. We decided not to risk that we might lose the sample in an outside lab. My partner and I actually hand-delivered it to the Cal State lab. We also sent along other exemplars for comparison.”
    “Other exemplars for comparison—what does that mean?”
    “Blood from the victim was sent under separate delivery to the lab as well so that it could be compared to what was found on the shoe.”
    “Why separate delivery?”
    “So there would be no chance of cross-contamination.”
    “Thank you, Detective Longstreth. I have no further questions at this time.”
    The judge called for the mid-afternoon break before cross-examination would begin. My client, unaware of the true purpose of my lunch invitation, invited me to join her and Dahl for coffee. I declined, saying I had to write out my questions for cross. The truth was I already had my questions ready. While before the trial I had thought Freeman would use Kurlen to introduce and testify about the hammer, the shoes and the search of Lisa Trammel’s home, I was nonetheless ready because the direct examination had gone exactly as I had expected it would.
    Instead, I spent the break on the phone with Cisco, preparing him for the meeting with Dahl at seven. I told him to clue in Bullocks and have Tommy Guns and Bam Bam outside the Victory Building for security. I wasn’t sure whether Dahl was going to play it straight or not, but I was going to be ready either way.

Thirty-five
    After the break, Detective Longstreth retook the stand and the judge turned it over to me. I threw no softballs and got right to the points I wanted to make in front of the jury. Primarily, this was testimony that informed the jury that the neighborhood surrounding WestLand was searched by police on the day of the murder. This included the house and presumably the landscaping where the hammer was eventually found.
    “Detective,” I asked, “did it trouble you that this hammer was found so long after the murder and yet so close to the murder scene and in a spot that was inside a rather intense search perimeter?”
    “No, not really. After the hammer was found I went out and looked at the bushes in front of that house. They were big and very dense. It didn’t surprise me or trouble me at all that a hammer could have been in there all that time. In fact, I thought we had been pretty lucky that it had been found at all.”
    Good answer. I was beginning to see why Freeman had broken things up between Kurlen and Longstreth. Longstreth was damn good on the stand, maybe even better than her veteran partner. I moved on. One of the rules of the game was to distance yourself from mistakes. Don’t compound things by dwelling.
    “Okay, let’s move to the house in Woodland Hills now. Detective, wouldn’t you agree that the search of the house was a bust?”
    “A bust? I’m not sure I would call it a bust. I—”
    “Did you find the defendant’s bloody clothes?”
    “No, we did not.”
    “Did you find the victim’s blood in the shower or bathtub drains?”
    “No, we did not.”
    “What about in the washing machine?”
    “No.”
    “What evidence has the state presented during this trial that was obtained from inside the defendant’s home? I am not talking about the garage. Just the home.”
    It took Longstreth a few long moments of silence as she conducted an internal inventory. Finally, she shook her head.
    “I can’t recall anything at the moment. But that still doesn’t mean the search was a bust. Sometimes not finding evidence is just as useful as finding it.”
    I paused. She was baiting me. She wanted me to ask her to explain.