Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

the past year and often the three of us did things together. On Christmas we had dinner as a family. Sometimes my ex-wife even joined us for pancakes. And that was worth treasuring, too.
    But on this night it was just Hayley and me. My casework involved my review of the protocol from the autopsy of Mitchell Bondurant. It included photos of the procedure as well as the body where it was found in the bank’s garage. So I was leaning back in the booth and trying to make sure neither Hayley nor anybody else in the restaurant saw the gruesome images. They wouldn’t go well with pancakes.
    Meantime, Hayley was doing her science homework, studying changes in matter and the elements of combustion.
    Cisco had been right. The autopsy concluded that Bondurant had died from brain hemorrhaging caused by multiple points of blunt-force trauma to the head.
    Three points exactly. The protocol contained a line drawing of the top of the victim’s head. Three points of impact were delineated on the crown in a grouping so tight that all three could have been covered with a teacup.
    Seeing this drawing got me excited. I flipped to the front page of the protocol where the body being examined was described. Mitchell Bondurant was described as six foot one and 180 pounds. I did not have Lisa Trammel’s dimensions handy so I called the number of the cell phone Cisco had dropped off to her that morning—since her own phone had been seized by the police. It was always a priority to make sure a client could be contacted at any time.
    “Lisa, it’s Mickey. Real quick, how tall are you?”
    “What? Mickey, I’m in the middle of dinner with—”
    “Just tell me how tall you are and I’ll let you go. Don’t lie. What’s it say on your driver’s license?”
    “Um, five three, I think.”
    “Is that accurate?”
    “Yes. What is—”
    “Okay, that’s all I needed. You can go back to dinner. Have a good night.”
    “What—”
    I hung up and wrote her height on the legal pad I had on the table. Next to it I wrote Bondurant’s height. The exciting point was that he had ten inches on his suspected killer and yet the impacts that punctured his skull and killed him were delivered to the crown of his head. This raised what I called a question of physics. The kind of question a jury can puzzle over and decide for themselves. The kind of question a good defense attorney can make something with. This was if-the-glove-doesn’t-fit-you-must-acquit stuff. The question here was, how did diminutive Lisa Trammel hit six-foot-one Mitchell Bondurant on the top of the head?
    Of course, the answer depended on the dimensions of the weapon as well as a few other things, such as the victim’s position. If he was on the ground when attacked then none of this would matter. But it was something to grab on to at the moment. I quickly went to one of the files on the table and pulled out the search-warrant return.
    “Who was that you called?” Hayley asked.
    “My client. I had to find out how tall she was.”
    “How come?”
    “Because it might have something to do with whether she could do what they’re saying she did.”
    I checked the list of items seized. As Cisco had reported, only one pair of shoes was on it and they were described as gardening shoes taken from the garage. No high heels, no platform sandals or any other footwear. Of course, the detectives conducted the search prior to the autopsy and before they knew its findings. I considered all of this and concluded that gardening shoes probably didn’t have much of a heel on them. If they were suggesting the shoes were worn during the killing then Bondurant still probably had ten inches on my client—if he was standing when attacked.
    This was good. I underlined the notes on heights three times on my legal pad. But then I also started thinking about the seizure of only one pair of shoes. The search-warrant return did not say why the gardening shoes were taken but the warrant gave the police authority to seize anything that could have been used in the commission of the crime. They had zeroed in on the gardening shoes and I was at a loss to explain why.
    “Mom said you have a really big case now.”
    I looked at my daughter. She rarely talked to me about my work. I believed that this was because at her young age she still saw things as black and white and without any gray areas. People were either good or bad, and I represented the bad ones for a living. So there was nothing to talk