Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

this information. I will hold the state responsible for being totally cooperative in this matter and in getting the biological material to the defense without delay. All parties will be prepared to begin jury selection two weeks from today. Court is adjourned.”
    The judge quickly left the bench. I looked down at the empty page on my legal pad. I had just been eviscerated.
    Slowly I started packing my briefcase.
    “What do we do?” Aronson asked.
    “I don’t know yet,” I said.
    “Run the test,” Lisa Trammel said urgently. “They’ve got it wrong. It can’t be his blood on my shoes. This is unreal.”
    I looked at her. Her brown eyes fervent and believable.
    “Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”
    The optimism tasted sour in my mouth. I glanced over at Freeman. She was looking through files in her briefcase. I sauntered over and she gave me a dismissive look. She wasn’t interested in hearing my tale of woe.
    “You look like things just went exactly the way you wanted them to go,” I said.
    She showed nothing. She closed her case and headed toward the gate. Before pushing through she looked back at me.
    “You want to play hardball, Haller?” she said. “Then you have to be ready to catch.”

Nineteen
    The next two weeks went by quickly but not without progress. The defense rethought and retooled. I had an independent lab confirm the state’s DNA findings—at a rush cost of four grand—and then assimilated the devastating evidence into a view of the case that allowed for the science to be correct as well as my client’s innocence to be possible, if not probable. The classic setup defense. It would be an additional and natural dimension to the straw-man gambit. I began to believe it could work and my confidence began to rebuild. By the time delayed jury selection finally started, I had some momentum going and rolled it into the effort, actively looking for the jurors who might lend themselves to believing the new story I was going to spin for them.
    It wasn’t until the fourth day of jury selection that yet one more Freeman fastball came whistling at my head. We were nearing completion of the panel and it was one of those rare times when both prosecution and defense were happy with the jury’s makeup, but for different reasons. The panel was well stocked with working-class men and women. Home owners who came from two-income households. Few had college diplomas and none had advanced degrees. Real salt-of-the-earth people and this was a perfect composition for me. I was going for people who lived close to the edge in the tough economy, who felt the threat of foreclosure at all times, and would have a hard time looking at a banker as a sympathetic victim.
    On the other hand, the prosecution asked detailed financial questions of each prospective juror and was looking for hard workers who wouldn’t see someone who stopped paying her mortgage as a victim, either. The result, until the morning of the fourth day, was a panel full of jurors neither side objected to and who we each thought we could mold into our own soldiers of justice.
    The fastball came when Judge Perry called for the midmorning break. Freeman immediately stood up and asked the judge if counsel could meet in chambers during the break to discuss an evidentiary issue that had just come up. She asked if Detective Kurlen could join the meeting. Perry granted the request and doubled the break time to a half hour. I then followed Freeman, who followed the court reporter and the judge into chambers. Kurlen came in last and I noticed that he was carrying a large manila envelope with red evidence tape on it. It was bulky and appeared to have something heavy inside. The paper envelope was the real giveaway, though. Biological evidence was always wrapped in paper. Plastic evidence bags trapped air and humidity and could damage biologicals. So I knew going in that Freeman was about to drop another DNA bomb on me.
    “Here we go again,” I said under my breath as I entered the chambers.
    The judge moved behind his desk and sat down, his back to a window that looked south toward the hills over Sherman Oaks. Freeman and I took side-by-side seats opposite the desk. Kurlen pulled a chair over from a nearby table and the court reporter sat on a stool to the judge’s right. Her steno machine was on a tripod in front of her.
    “We’re on the record here,” the judge said. “Ms. Freeman?”
    “Judge, I wanted to meet with you and counsel