Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

willing to come with us to the police station where she would be interviewed and asked to look at some photographs. She said yes and we took her to Van Nuys.”
    “Did you first apprise her of her constitutional rights not to speak to you without an attorney present?”
    “Not at that time. She was not a suspect at this point. She was simply a person of interest whose name had come to the surface. I didn’t believe that we needed to give her the rights warning until we crossed that threshold. We weren’t close to being there yet. We had a discrepancy between what she told us and what a witness had told us. We needed to explore that further before anybody became a suspect.”
    Freeman was at it again. Trying to patch holes before I could tear them open. It was frustrating but there was nothing I could do about it. I was busy writing down questions I would later ask Kurlen, ones that Freeman wouldn’t anticipate.
    Skillfully Freeman led Kurlen back to Van Nuys station and the interview room where he had sat with my client. She used him to introduce the video of the session. It was played for the jury on two overhead screens. Aronson had ably argued against showing the interview but to no avail. Judge Perry had allowed it. We could appeal after conviction but success there was a long shot. I had to turn things now. I had to find a way to make the jury see it as an unfair process, a trap into which my innocent client had stumbled.
    The video was shot from an overhead angle and the defense scored a minor point right off the bat because Howard Kurlen was a big man and Lisa Trammel was small. Sitting across a table from Trammel, Kurlen looked like he was crowding her, cornering her, even bullying her. This was good. This was part of a theme I planned to put into my cross-examination.
    The audio was clear and the sound crisp. Over my objection, the jurors as well as the other players in the trial had been given transcripts with which to read along. I had objected because I didn’t want the jurors reading. I wanted them watching. I wanted them to see the big man bullying the little woman. There was sympathy to be gained there, but not in the words on the page.
    Kurlen started casually, announcing the names of those in the room and asking Trammel if she was there voluntarily. My client said that she was but the starkness and angle of the video belied her words. She looked like she was being held in a prison.
    “Why don’t we start with you telling us about your movements today?” Kurlen asked next.
    “Starting when?” Trammel responded.
    “How about with the moment you woke up?”
    Trammel outlined her early morning routine of waking and preparing her son for school, then driving him there. The boy attended a private school and the drive usually ranged from twenty to forty minutes depending on traffic. She said she stopped after the drop-off to get coffee and then she went back home.
    “You told us at your home you didn’t make any stops. Now you stopped for coffee?”
    “I guess I forgot.”
    “Where?”
    “A place called Joe’s Joe on Ventura.”
    A veteran interrogator, Kurlen abruptly went in a new direction, keeping his quarry off guard.
    “Did you go by WestLand National this morning?”
    “No. Is that what this is about?”
    “So if someone said they saw you there, they would be lying?”
    “Yes, who said that? I have not violated the order. You—”
    “Do you know Mitchell Bondurant?”
    “Know him? No. I know of him. I know who he is. But I don’t know him.”
    “Did you see him today?”
    Trammel paused here and this was detrimental to her cause. On the video, you could see the wheels working. She was considering whether to tell the truth. I glanced at the jury. I didn’t see one face that wasn’t turned up toward the screens.
    “Yes, I saw him.”
    “But you just said you didn’t go on WestLand property.”
    “I didn’t. Look, I don’t know who told you they saw me at the bank. And if it was him then he’s a liar. I wasn’t there. I saw him, yes, but that was at the coffee shop, not the—”
    “Why didn’t you tell us that this morning at your home?”
    “Tell you what? You didn’t ask.”
    “Have you changed clothes since this morning?”
    “What?”
    “Did you change clothes this morning after you got back home?”
    “Look, what is this? You asked me to come down to talk and this is some sort of setup. I have not violated the order. I—”
    “Did you attack Mitchell