Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

fell face forward to the ground during the attack. He was unconscious if not already dead before he hit the garage floor. There were no defensive wounds listed.
    Part of the autopsy protocol contained color photocopies of the crime scene photos provided to the examiner by the LAPD. It was not a complete set but just six shots that showed the body’s orientation in situ—meaning situated as it had been found. I would’ve rather had a full set of prints of the actual photographs, but I wouldn’t get those until I got a judge to ease the discovery embargo placed on the case by Andy Freeman.
    The crime scene photos showed Bondurant’s body from numerous angles. It was sprawled between two cars in the garage. The driver’s side door of a Lexus SUV was open. There was a Joe’s Joe coffee cup on the ground and a pool of spilled coffee. Nearby was an open briefcase.
    Bondurant was facedown on the ground, the back and top of his head matted with blood. His eyes were open and appeared to be staring at concrete.
    In the photos there were evidence markers next to blood drips on the concrete. There was no analysis to determine if this was blood spatter from the attack itself or drippings from the murder weapon.
    I found the briefcase to be a curious thing. Why was it open? Had anything been taken? Had the murderer taken the time to rifle through the case after killing Bondurant? If so, this would seem to be a cold and calculated move. The garage was filling with employees coming to work at the bank. To take the time to go through a briefcase while the body of your victim lies nearby seemed like an extreme risk but not the sort of move a killer fueled by emotion and vengeance would make. It was not the move of an amateur.
    I wrote a few more notes in regard to these questions and then a final reminder. I would have Cisco find out if there was assigned parking in the garage. Did Bondurant have his name on the wall at the front of the stall? The lying-in-wait tag added to the murder charge indicated the prosecution believed Trammel knew where Bondurant would be, and when. They would have to prove that at trial.
    I closed the Trammel files and wrapped a rubber band around them and the legal pad.
    “You doing okay?” I asked Hayley.
    “Sure.”
    “Are you almost finished?”
    “My food or my homework?”
    “Both.”
    “I’m finished eating but I still have social studies and English. But we can go if you want.”
    “I still have a few other files to look at. I have court tomorrow.”
    “For the murder case?”
    “No, other cases.”
    “Like where you’re trying to let people stay in their houses?”
    “That’s right.”
    “How come there are so many cases like that?”
    Out of the mouths of babes.
    “Greed, honey. It all comes down to greed on everybody’s part.”
    I looked at her to see if that would suffice but she didn’t go back to her homework. She looked at me expecting more, a fourteen-year-old who was interested in what most of the country was not.
    “Well, what happens is that it takes a lot of money to buy a house or a condo most of the time. That’s why so many people rent their homes instead. Most people who buy a home put down a big chunk of money, but they almost never have enough to buy the whole house, so they go to the bank for a loan. The bank decides if they have enough money and make enough money to pay back the loan, which is called a mortgage. So if everything looks good, they buy the home they want and pay back the mortgage with monthly payments for many years. Does this make sense?”
    “You mean like they pay rent to the bank.”
    “Sort of. But when you rent from a landlord you don’t get any ownership. There is supposed to be ownership involved when you have a mortgage. It is your home and they say the American dream is to own your own home.”
    “Do you own yours?”
    “I do. And your mom owns hers.”
    She nodded but I wasn’t so sure we were talking at a level understandable to a fourteen-year-old. She didn’t see much of the American dream in her parents having separate mortgages to go with their separate addresses.
    “Okay, so a while back they started making it easier to buy a home. And soon practically anybody who walked into a bank or went to see a mortgage broker was being given a loan on a home. There was a lot of fraud and corruption and there were a lot of loans given to people who shouldn’t have been given them. Some people lied to get loans and sometimes