Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

stuck with me since the beginning, had given me hope that maybe my client didn’t do it. That is, until the last two evidentiary rulings by the judge.
    “So still no report on the briefcase contents and if anything was missing?” I asked.
    “Not that we’ve gotten,” Aronson said.
    I had put her in charge of the first review of discovery materials as they had come in.
    “So the guy’s briefcase was left wide open and they never tried to see if there was anything missing?”
    “They inventoried the contents. We have that. I just don’t think they made a report on what was possibly not in it. Kurlen’s cagey. He wasn’t going to create an opening for us.”
    “Yeah, well, he might be walking around with that briefcase shoved up his ass after I’m through with him on the stand.”
    Aronson blushed. I pointed at my investigator.
    “Cisco, the briefcase. We’ve got the list of contents. Talk to Bondurant’s secretary. Find out if anything was taken.”
    “I already tried. She wouldn’t talk to me.”
    “Try again. Give her the gun show. Win her over.”
    He flexed his arms. Aronson continued to blush. I stood up.
    “I’m going home to work on my opener.”
    “You sure you want to give it tomorrow?” Aronson asked. “If you defer until the defense phase you’ll know what Cisco’s been able to find.”
    I shook my head.
    “I got the weekend because I told the judge I want to give it at the start of the trial. I go back on that and he’s going to blame me for losing Friday. He’s already a judge with a grudge because I lost it in chambers with him.”
    I moved around from behind the desk. I handed the photo of the briefcase to Cisco.
    “Make sure you guys lock up.”
    No Rojas on Sundays. I drove the Lincoln home alone. There was light traffic and I got back quickly, even stopping to pick up a pizza at the little Italian joint under the market at the bottom of Laurel Canyon. When I got to the house I didn’t bother edging the big Lincoln into the garage next to its fleet twin. I parked at the bottom of the steps, locked it and went on up to the front door. It wasn’t until I got up to the deck that I saw that I had someone waiting for me.
    Unfortunately, it wasn’t Maggie McFierce. Rather, a man I had never seen before sat in one of the director’s chairs at the far end of the deck. He was slightly built and disheveled, a week’s worth of beard on his cheeks. His eyes were closed and his head tilted back. He was asleep.
    I wasn’t concerned for my safety. He was alone and he wasn’t wearing black gloves. Still, I quietly put the key into the lock and opened the door without a sound. I stepped in, closed the door silently and put the pizza down on the kitchen counter. I then moved back to my bedroom and into the walk-in closet. Off the upper shelf—too high for my daughter to get to—I took down the wooden box that held the Colt Woodsman I’d inherited from my father. It had a tragic history and I hoped not to add to it now. I loaded a full magazine of ammunition into it, then headed back to the front door.
    I took the other director’s chair and moved it over until it faced the sleeping man. Only after I sat down, holding the gun casually in my lap, did I reach out with my foot and tap him on the knee.
    He startled awake, his eyes wide and darting about until they finally landed on my face then dropped to the gun.
    “Whoa, wait a minute, man!”
    “No, you wait a minute. Who are you and what do you want?”
    I didn’t point the gun. I kept things casual. He raised his hands, palms out in surrender.
    “Mr. Haller, right? I’m Jeff, man. Jeff Trammel. We talked on the phone, remember?”
    I stared at him for a moment and realized I had not recognized him because I had never seen a photograph of him. During the times I had been in Lisa Trammel’s home there were no framed photos of him. She had excised his presence from the house after he had chosen to hightail it.
    Now here he was. Haunted eyes and hangdog look. I thought I knew just what he was looking for.
    “How did you know where I live? Who told you to come here?”
    “Nobody told me. I just came. I looked your name up on the California Bar website. There was no office listed but this was the correspondence address. I came and saw it was a house and figured you live here. I didn’t mean nothing by it. I need to talk to you.”
    “You could’ve called.”
    “That phone ran out of juice. I gotta buy another one.”
    I