Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

sorry you got caught and that’s all. Just go! I can’t believe I just gave you a second chance. I must be a fucking idiot.”
    Rojas retreated like a dog with its tail between its legs. After he was gone I slowly lowered the bed and tried not to think about his betrayal or who had sent the two men in black gloves or anything else to do with the case. I looked up at the bag of clear liquid hanging up there overhead and waited for the blessed boost that would make at least some of the pain go away.

Thirteen
    As expected, Lisa Trammel was held to answer and ordered to stand trial for murder by Judge Dario Morales at the end of a daylong preliminary hearing in Van Nuys Superior Court. Using Detective Howard Kurlen as her primary carrier of evidence, Prosecutor Andrea Freeman deftly presented a net of circumstantial evidence that quickly enclosed Lisa. Freeman took the case across the preponderance threshold like a hundred-meter sprinter and the judge was equally swift in rendering his ruling. It was routine. Matter-of-fact. Chop-chop and Lisa was held to answer.
    My client was there at the defense table for the hearing but I was not. Jennifer Aronson held forth for the defense as best she could in a one-sided game. The judge had allowed the hearing to proceed only after questioning Lisa exhaustively to assure himself that her decision to go forward without me there was knowing, voluntary and strategic. Lisa acknowledged in open court that she was aware of Aronson’s lack of courtroom experience and waived any claim to the argument of ineffective counsel as grounds for an appeal of the judge’s eventual determination.
    I watched most of it from the confines of my home where I was continuing to recover from my injuries. KTLA Channel 5 had carried the morning session live in lieu of other local programming before flipping back to the usual slate of insipid afternoon talk shows. This meant I missed only the last two hours of the hearing. But that was okay because by that point I knew how it would go. There were no surprises and the only disappointment was in not getting any sort of new read on how the prosecution would unfurl the flag at trial, when it all counted.
    As decided during our prep sessions in my room at Holy Cross, Aronson presented no witnesses or any affirmative defense. We chose to reserve any indication of our hypothesis of innocence for trial, when the threshold of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt raised the game to almost an even match. Aronson used cross-examination of the state’s witnesses sparingly. These were all seasoned veterans of courtroom testimony—Kurlen, a forensic expert and the medical examiner among them. Freeman chose not to put Margo Schafer on the stand, using Kurlen to recount his interview with the eyewitness who placed Lisa Trammel a block from the murder. There wasn’t much to get from the state’s lineup and so our strategy was to observe and wait. To bide our time. We would simply go at them at trial where we stood the best chance.
    At the end of the hearing Lisa was ordered to stand trial before Judge Coleman Perry on the sixth floor of the courthouse. Perry was yet another judge I had never stood before. But since I knew his courtroom was one of four possible destinations for my client, I had done some checking with other members of the defense bar. The overall report I got was that Perry was a straight shooter with a short temper. He was fair until you crossed him and then he was prone to hold a grudge that might last an entire trial. It was good knowledge to have as the case progressed to its final stage.
    Two days later, I finally felt ready to return to the fray. My broken fingers were bound tightly in a form-fitted plaster cast and my bruised torso was losing the shadings of deep blue and purple for a sickly tone of yellow. My scalp stitches had been removed and I was able to delicately comb my hair back over the shaved wound as if I was hiding a bald spot. Best of all, my formerly twisted testicle, which the doctor had ultimately chosen not to remove, was improving a little bit every day, according to the doctor and his powers of observation and palpation. It was left to see whether it would resume normal activity and function, or die on the vine like an unpicked Roma tomato.
    By previous arrangement, Rojas had the Lincoln at the bottom of the front steps at eleven o’clock sharp. I slowly made my way down, walking cane firmly in hand. Rojas was there to help me