Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

entertain it.”
    No one said anything. It was hard to believe it had come to this. The end of the case in sight. And things falling just as planned.
    “That means you can all leave now,” Perry added. “I’ll tell the deputy that Mr. Opparizio is relieved as a witness. He probably has the whole media throng in the hallway waiting to devour him. And he probably blames you for that, Mr. Haller. You might want to steer clear of him while he’s in the courthouse.”
    “Yes, Your Honor.”
    Perry picked up the phone to call the deputy as we headed toward the door. I followed Freeman out and down the hallway to the courtroom. I was expecting it when she turned on me with nothing but pure and piercing anger in her eyes.
    “Now I know, Haller.”
    “Now you know what?”
    “Why you and Maggie will never get back together again.”
    That put a pause in my step and Aronson walked right into me from behind. Freeman turned back around and kept going.
    “That was a low blow, Mickey,” Aronson said.
    I watched Freeman go through the door to the courtroom.
    “No,” I said. “It wasn’t.”

Fifty-one
    My last witness was my trusty investigator. Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski took the witness stand after lunch, after the judge told the jurors that all of Louis Opparizio’s testimony was stricken from the record. Cisco had to spell his last name twice for the clerk but that was expected. He was indeed wearing the same shirt from the day before, but no jacket and no tie. The fluorescent lighting in the courtroom made the black ink chains that wrapped his biceps clearly visible through the stretched sleeves of the pale blue shirt.
    “I’m just going to call you Dennis, if that is okay,” I said. “It will be easier on the court reporter.”
    Polite laughter rolled through the courtroom.
    “That’s fine with me,” the witness said.
    “Okay, now, you work for me handling investigations for the defense, is that correct, Dennis?”
    “Yes, that’s what I do.”
    “And you worked extensively for the defense on the Mitchell Bondurant murder investigation, correct?”
    “Correct. You could say that I piggybacked my investigation on the police investigation, checking to see if they missed anything or maybe got something wrong.”
    “Did you work from investigative materials that were turned over to the defense by the prosecution?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “Included in that material was a list of license plate numbers, correct?”
    “Yes, the garage at WestLand National had a camera positioned over the drive-in entrance. Detectives Kurlen and Longstreth studied the recording from the camera and wrote down the plate number of every car that entered the garage between seven, when the garage opened, and nine, when it was determined that Mr. Bondurant was already dead. They then ran the plates through the law enforcement computer to see if any of the owners had criminal records or should be further investigated for other reasons.”
    “And were any further investigations generated from this list?”
    “According to their investigative records, no.”
    “Now, Dennis, you mentioned you piggybacked on their investigation. Did you take this list and check these plate numbers out yourself?”
    “I did. All seventy-eight of them. As best I could without access to law enforcement computers.”
    “And did any merit further attention or did you reach the same conclusion as detectives Kurlen and Longstreth?”
    “Yes, one car merited more attention, in my opinion, and so I followed up on it.”
    I asked permission to give the witness a copy of the seventy-eight license plate numbers. The judge allowed it. Cisco pulled his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on.
    “Which license plate did you want to further check out?”
    “W-N-U-T-Z-nine.”
    “Why were you interested in that one?”
    “Because at the time I looked at this list we were already far down the road in our other avenues of investigation. I knew that Louis Opparizio was part owner in a business called Wing Nuts. I thought maybe there was a connection to the vehicle that carried that plate.”
    “So what did you find out?”
    “That the car was registered to Wing Nuts, a courier service that is partially owned by Louis Opparizio.”
    “And, again, why was that worthy of attention?”
    “Well, as I said, I had the benefit of time. Kurlen and Longstreth put this list together on the day of the murder. They did not know all the key