Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

Playing the tape was an overly dramatic and unneeded maneuver but the judge had allowed it over a pretrial objection from me. Freeman played forty seconds of the tape after handing out transcripts to the jurors as well as to the judge and the defense.
    GAINES: Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?SANCHEZ: There’s a man here. I think he’s dead! He’s all bloody and he won’t move.GAINES: What is your name, ma’am?SANCHEZ: Riki Sanchez. I’m in the parking garage at WestLand National in Sherman Oaks.(pause) GAINES: Is that the Ventura Boulevard location?SANCHEZ: Yes, are you sending someone?GAINES: Police and paramedics have been dispatched.SANCHEZ: I think he’s already dead. There’s a lot of blood.GAINES: Do you know who he is?SANCHEZ: I think it’s Mr. Bondurant but I’m not sure. Do you want me to turn him over?GAINES: No, just wait for the police. Are you in any danger, Ms. Sanchez?(pause)SANCHEZ: Uh, I don’t think so. I don’t see anybody around.GAINES: Okay, wait for the police and keep this line open.
    I didn’t bother asking any questions on cross-examination. There was nothing to be gained for the defense.
    Freeman threw her first curveball after Gaines was excused. I expected her to go with the first responding officer next. Have him testify about arriving and securing the scene, and get the crime scene photos to the jury. But instead she called Margo Schafer, the eyewitness who put Trammel close to the crime scene. I immediately saw the strategy Freeman was employing. Instead of sending the jury to lunch with crime scene photos in their minds, send them out with the first ah-ha moment of the trial. The first piece of testimony that connected Trammel to the crime.
    It was a good plan but Freeman didn’t know what I knew about her witness. I just hoped I got to her before lunch.
    Schafer was a petite woman who looked nervous and pale as she took the witness stand. She had to pull the stemmed microphone down from the position Gaines had left it in.
    Under direct questioning, Freeman drew from Schafer that she was a bank teller who had returned to work four years earlier after raising a family. She had no corporate aspirations. She just enjoyed the responsibility that came with the job and the interaction with the public.
    After a few more personal questions designed to create a rapport between Schafer and the jury, Freeman moved on to the meat of her testimony, asking the witness about the morning of the murder.
    “I was running late,” Schafer said. “I am supposed to be in place at my window at nine. I first go to get my bank out of the vault and sign it out. So usually I am there by quarter of. But on that day I hit traffic on Ventura Boulevard because of an accident and was very late.”
    “Do you remember exactly how late, Ms. Schafer?” Freeman asked.
    “Yes, ten minutes exactly. I kept looking at the clock on the dashboard. I was running exactly ten minutes behind schedule.”
    “Okay, and when you got close to the bank did you see anything out of the ordinary or that caused you concern?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “And what was that?”
    “I saw Lisa Trammel on the sidewalk walking away from the bank.”
    I stood and objected, saying that the witness would have no idea where the person she claimed was Trammel was walking from. The judge agreed and sustained.
    “What direction was Ms. Trammel walking in?” Freeman asked.
    “East.”
    “And where was she in relation to the bank?”
    “She was a half a block east of the bank, also walking east.”
    “So she was walking in a direction away from the bank, correct?”
    “Yes, correct.”
    “And how close were you when you saw her?”
    “I was going west on Ventura and was in the left lane so that I could move into the turning lane to turn into the entrance to the bank’s garage. So she was three lanes across from me.”
    “You had your eyes on the road, though, didn’t you?”
    “No, I was stopped at a traffic light when I first saw her.”
    “So was she at a right angle to you when you saw her?”
    “Yes, directly across the street from me.”
    “And how was it that you knew this woman to be the defendant, Lisa Trammel?”
    “Because her photo is posted in the employee lounge and in the vault. Plus her photo was shown to bank employees about three months before.”
    “Why was that done?”
    “Because the bank had been granted a restraining order prohibiting her from coming within a hundred feet of the bank. We were