Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

Pickett and called for the afternoon break of fifteen minutes. As people stood to leave the courtroom, my client leaned into me at the table.
    “Why didn’t you go after her?” she whispered.
    “Who? Pickett? I didn’t want to make it worse by asking the wrong thing.”
    “Are you kidding me? You needed to destroy her like you did Schafer.”
    “The difference was I had something to work with on Schafer. I didn’t have it on Pickett and going after somebody with nothing to go after her with is potential disaster. I left it alone.”
    I could see anger darkening her eyes.
    “Well, you should’ve gotten something on her.”
    It came out as a hiss through what I believed were clenched teeth.
    “Look, Lisa, I’m your attorney and I decide—”
    “Never mind. I have to go.”
    She stood up and hurried through the gate and toward the courtroom exit. I glanced over to Freeman to see if she had caught the display of attorney-client disagreement. She gave me a knowing smile, indicating she had.
    I decided to go out into the hall to see why my client had so abruptly needed to leave. I stepped out and was immediately drawn by the cameras to one of the benches that ran along the hallway between courtroom doors. The focus was on Lisa, who was sitting on the bench hugging her son, Tyler. The boy looked extremely uncomfortable in the camera lights.
    “Jesus Christ,” I whispered.
    I saw Lisa’s sister standing on the periphery of the group and walked over.
    “What is this, Jodie? She knows the judge ruled she can’t have the kid in court.”
    “I know. He’s not going into the courtroom. He had a half day at school and she wanted me to bring him by. She thought if the media saw her with Ty that it might help things, I guess.”
    “Yeah, well, the media’s got nothing to do with this. Don’t bring him back. I don’t care what she says, don’t bring him back.”
    I looked around for Herb Dahl. This had to be his move and I wanted to deliver the same message to him. But there was no sign of the erstwhile Hollywood player. He had probably been smart enough to stay clear of me.
    I headed back into the courtroom. I still had ten minutes of the break left and planned to use it brooding about working for a client I didn’t like and was beginning to despise.

Twenty-five
    After the break Freeman moved on to what I call the hunter-gatherer stage of the prosecution’s case. The crime scene technicians. Their testimony would be the platform on which she would present Detective Howard Kurlen, the lead investigator.
    The first hunter-gatherer was a coroner’s investigator named William Abbott who had responded to the crime scene and was charged with the body’s documentation and transport to the medical examiner’s office, where the autopsy would be conducted.
    His testimony covered his observations of the crime scene, the head wounds sustained by the victim and the personal property found on the body. This included Bondurant’s wallet, watch, loose change and a money clip containing $183 in currency. There was also the receipt from the Joe’s Joe franchise that had helped investigators set the time of death.
    Abbott, like Covington before him, was very matter-of-fact in his testimony. Being at the scene of a violent crime was routine for him. When it was my turn to ask the questions, I zeroed in on this.
    “Mr. Abbott, how long have you been a coroner’s investigator?”
    “I’m going on twenty-nine years now.”
    “All with L.A. County?”
    “That’s right.”
    “How many murder scenes do you estimate you have been to in that time?”
    “Oh, gee, probably a couple thousand. A lot.”
    “I bet. And I assume many were scenes where great violence was involved.”
    “That’s the nature of the beast.”
    “What about this scene? You examined and photographed the wounds on the victim, correct?”
    “Yes, I did. That is part of the protocol we follow before transporting the body.”
    “You have a crime scene report in front of you that was admitted into evidence by pretrial agreement. Could you read the second paragraph of the summary to the jury?”
    Abbott turned the page on his report and found the paragraph.
    “ ‘There are three distinct impact wounds on the crown of the head noted for their violence and damage. Positioning of the body indicates immediate loss of consciousness before impact on the ground.’ Then in parentheses I have the word ‘overkill.’ ”
    “Yes, I’m curious about