Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

asked.
    “You’re not on the clock,” I said. “I just thought we should put in an appearance.”
    “I want to stay,” Lorna said, probably just to spite him. “Maybe some Hollywood people will show up.”
    A few minutes later the main attraction of the day came out the back door, followed by a reporter and a cameraman. They picked a location with the crowd in the background and Lisa Trammel stood for a quick interview. I didn’t bother to try to listen. I’d heard and seen the same interview enough over the past two days.
    After Lisa finished the interview she broke away from the media, shook some hands and posed for some photos. Eventually, she made her way to our table, stopping to ruffle her son’s hair on the way.
    “There they are. The victors! How’s my team doing today?”
    I managed to smile.
    “We’re good, Lisa. And you look fine, too. Where’s Herb?”
    She looked around as if searching for Dahl in the crowd.
    “I don’t know. He was supposed to be here.”
    “Too bad,” Cisco said. “We’ll miss him.”
    Lisa didn’t seem to register the sarcasm.
    “You know I need to talk to you later, Mickey,” she said. “I need your advice on which show to do. Good Morning America or Today? They both want me next week but I have to pick one because neither will take seconds.”
    I flipped my hand as if the answer didn’t matter.
    “I don’t know. Herb can probably help you with that. He’s the media guy.”
    Lisa looked back at the gathering of children and started to smile.
    “Oh, I have just the thing for those children. Excuse me, everybody.”
    She hurried off and went around the corner of the house.
    “She’s sure loving it, isn’t she?” Cisco said.
    “I would be, too,” Lorna said.
    I looked at Aronson.
    “Why so quiet?”
    She shrugged.
    “I don’t know. I’m not so sure I like criminal defense anymore. I think if you take on some of those people who have been calling, I’ll stick with the foreclosures. If you don’t mind.”
    I nodded.
    “I think I know what you’re feeling. You can do the foreclosure work if you want to. There’s going to be plenty of that for a while, especially with guys like Opparizio still in business. But that feeling you’ve got does go away. Believe me, Bullocks, it does.”
    She didn’t respond to the return of her nickname or anything else I had said. I turned to look across the yard. Lisa was back and she had rolled out the helium tank from the garage. She told the children to gather around and started filling balloons. The TV cameraman moved in to get the shot. It would be perfect for the six o’clock news.
    “Now, is she doing that for the kids or for the camera?” Cisco asked.
    “You really have to ask?” Lorna responded.
    Lisa pulled a blue balloon off the tank and expertly tied it off with a string. She handed it to a girl of about six, who grabbed the string and let the balloon shoot six feet above her head. The girl smiled and turned her face up to gaze at her new toy. And in that moment I knew what Mitchell Bondurant was looking up at when Lisa hit him with the hammer.
    “She did it,” I whispered under my breath.
    I felt the burn of a million synapses firing down my neck and across my shoulders.
    “What did you say?” Aronson asked me.
    I looked at her but didn’t answer and then looked back at my client. She filled another balloon with gas, tied the knot and handed it to a boy. The same thing happened again. The boy held the string and turned his cheery face up to look at the red balloon. An instinctive, natural response. To look up at the balloon.
    “Oh, my God,” Aronson said.
    She had put it together, too.
    “That’s how she did it.”
    Now Cisco and Lorna had turned.
    “The witness said she was carrying a big shopping bag on the sidewalk,” Aronson said. “Big enough to hold a hammer, yes, but also big enough to hold balloons.”
    I took it from there.
    “She sneaks into the garage and puts the balloons up over Bondurant’s parking space. Maybe there’s a note on the end of each string so he’s sure to see them.”
    “Yeah,” Cisco said. “Like, here’s your balloon payment.”
    “She hides behind the pillar and waits,” I said.
    “And when Bondurant looks up at the balloons,” Cisco concluded, “bang, right on the back of the head.”
    I nodded.
    “And the two pops somebody thought were gunshots but were dismissed as backfire were neither,” I said. “She popped the balloons on the way