Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

down Sylmar. I must’ve been quite a sight, a man in his nicest Corneliani suit pushing a Harley down the street, briefcase propped on the handlebars.
    When I finally got back to the office it was only four thirty, a half hour before Herb Dahl was scheduled to come in for a briefing. I called for a staff meeting and tried plugging back into the case as a means of pushing out thoughts about the conversation with Maggie. I told Cisco where I had parked his bike and I asked for an update on the list of our client’s Facebook friends.
    “First of all, why the hell didn’t I know about her Facebook account?” I asked.
    “It’s my fault,” Aronson said quickly. “Like I told you earlier, I knew about it and even accepted her friend request. I just didn’t realize the significance of it.”
    “I missed it, too,” Cisco said. “She friended me, too. I looked and didn’t see anything. I should’ve looked harder.”
    “Me, too,” Lorna added.
    I looked at their faces. It was a unified front.
    “Great,” I said. “I guess all four of us missed it and our client didn’t bother to tell us. So the bunch of us, I guess we’re all fired.”
    I paused for effect.
    “Now, what about this name you came up with? This Don Driscoll, where did that come from and do we know anything more? Freeman could’ve unwittingly dropped the key to the whole case in our laps this morning, people. What’ve we got?”
    Bullocks looked at Cisco, deferring.
    “As you know,” he said, “ALOFT was sold in February to the LeMure Fund with Opparizio still in place to run it. Because LeMure is a publicly traded company, everything about the deal was monitored by the Federal Trade Commission and made public to shareholders. Including a list of employees that would remain at ALOFT following the transition. I have the list, dated December fifteenth.”
    “So we started cross-referencing the ALOFT employees to the list of Lisa’s Facebook friends,” Bullocks said. “Luckily Donald Driscoll was early in the alphabet. We came up with him pretty quickly.”
    I nodded, impressed.
    “So who is Driscoll?”
    “In the FTC docs his name was in a group listed under information technology,” Cisco said. “So what the hell, I called IT at ALOFT and asked for him. I was told that Donald Driscoll used to work there but his employment contract expired on February first and it wasn’t extended. He’s gone.”
    “You’ve started the trace?” I asked.
    “We have. But it’s a common name and that’s slowing us down. As soon as we have something, you’ll be the first to know.”
    Running names from the private sector always took time. It wasn’t as easy as being a cop and simply typing a name into one of the many law enforcement databases.
    “Don’t let up,” I said. “This could be the whole game right here.”
    “Don’t worry, Boss,” Cisco said. “Nobody’s letting up.”

Forty-four
    Donald Driscoll, thirty-one, formerly employed by ALOFT, lived in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach. On Sunday morning I rode down with Cisco to tag Driscoll with a subpoena, the hope being that he would talk to me before I had to put him on the witness stand blind.
    Rojas agreed to work on his day off to help make up for his misdeeds. He drove the Lincoln and we sat in the back, Cisco updating me on his conclusions regarding his latest investigations of the Bondurant murder. There was no doubt that the defense case was coming together and Driscoll just might be the witness who could cap it all off.
    “You know,” I said, “we could actually win this thing if Driscoll cooperates and says what I think he’s going to say.”
    “That’s a big if,” Cisco replied. “And look, we have to be prepared for anything with this guy. For all we know, he could be the guy. Do you know how tall he is? Six four. Has it on his driver’s license.”
    I looked over at him.
    “Which I wasn’t supposed to see but happened to get access to,” he said.
    “Don’t tell me about any crimes, Cisco.”
    “I’m just saying I saw the info on his license, that’s all.”
    “Fine. Leave it at that. So what do you suggest we do when we get down there? I thought we were just going to knock on the door.”
    “We are. But you still have to be careful.”
    “I’ll be standing behind you.”
    “Yeah, you’re a true friend.”
    “I am. And by the way, if I put you on the stand tomorrow you’re going to have to come up with a shirt that has sleeves and a