Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

three of these goals. I tried to go out with a little crescendo of my own.
    “Did you hate Mitchell Bondurant?” I asked.
    “I hated what he and his bank were doing to me and others like me. But I didn’t hate him personally. I didn’t even know him.”
    “But you had lost your marriage and you had lost your job and now you were in danger of losing your house. Didn’t you wish to lash out at the forces you believed were hurting you?”
    “I was already lashing out. I was protesting my mistreatment. I had hired a lawyer and was fighting the foreclosure. Yes, I was angry. But I wasn’t violent. I am not a violent person. I’m a schoolteacher. I was lashing out, if you have to use those words, in the only way I knew. Peacefully protesting something that was wrong. Very definitely wrong.”
    I glanced at the jury and thought I caught a woman in the back row wiping away a tear. I hoped to God she was. I turned back to my client and moved in for the big closing.
    “I ask you once again, Lisa, did you kill Mitchell Bondurant?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Did you take a hammer and strike him with it in the garage at the bank?”
    “No, I wasn’t there. It wasn’t me.”
    “Then how was the hammer from your garage used to kill him?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How was his blood found on your shoes?”
    “I don’t know! I didn’t do it. I was set up!”
    I paused for a moment and calmed my voice before finishing.
    “One last question, Lisa. How tall are you?”
    She looked confused, like a rag doll that had been pulled one way and then the other.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Just tell us how tall you are.”
    “I’m five three.”
    “Thank you, Lisa. I have nothing further.”
    Freeman had her work cut out for her. Lisa Trammel had been a solid witness and the prosecutor wasn’t going to break her. She tried in a few places to get contradictory responses but Lisa more than held her own. After a half hour of Freeman trying to break down a door with a toothpick I began to think my client was going to sail through. But it never pays to think you’re safe until your client is off the stand and sitting next to you. Freeman had at least one card up her sleeve and she eventually played it.
    “When Mr. Haller asked you a little while ago if you had committed this crime, you said you were not violent. You said you were a schoolteacher and that you weren’t violent, do you remember that?”
    “Yes, it’s true.”
    “But isn’t it true that you were forced to change schools and undergo anger-management treatment four years ago when you struck a student with a three-sided ruler?”
    I quickly stood and objected and asked for a sidebar. The judge allowed us to approach.
    “Judge,” I whispered before Perry even asked, “there’s nothing in any of the discovery about a three-sided ruler. Where’s this coming from?”
    “Judge,” Freeman whispered before Perry even asked, “it’s new information that just came to us late last week. We had to verify it.”
    “Oh, come on,” I said. “You’re going to say you didn’t have her full teaching record from the get-go? You expect us to believe that?”
    “You can believe whatever you want,” Freeman responded. “We didn’t offer it in discovery because I had no intention of bringing it up until your client started testifying about her nonviolent history. This obviously puts a lie to that and has become fair game.”
    I turned my attention back to Perry.
    “Judge, her excuse doesn’t matter. She’s not playing by the rules of discovery. The question should be stricken and she should not be allowed to pursue this line of questioning.”
    “Judge, this is—”
    “Counsel is right, Ms. Freeman. You can save it for rebuttal, provided you come up with the witnesses, but you’re not going to bring it in here. It should have been part of discovery.”
    We returned to our positions. I would now have to put Cisco on the incident because no doubt Freeman would be bringing it up again later. This annoyed me because one of the first assignments I had given Cisco when we got the case was to completely vet our client. This event had somehow been missed.
    The judge instructed the jury to disregard the prosecutor’s question and then told Freeman to proceed with a different line of questioning. But I knew that bell had been rung loud and clear for the jury. The question might have been wiped from the record but not from their minds.
    Freeman went on with her