The Lincoln Lawyer

assaulted her further and produced a knife. He told her he was going to rape her and then kill her.”
    Minton continued to probe the investigation in more detail and to the point of boring the jury. When I was not writing down questions to ask Booker during cross, I watched the jurors and saw their attention lag under the weight of so much information.
    Finally, after ninety minutes of direct examination it was my turn with the police detective. My goal was to get in and get out. While Minton performed the whole case autopsy, I only wanted to go in and scrape cartilage out of the knees.
    “Detective Booker, did Regina Campo explain why she lied to the police?”
    “She didn’t lie to me.”
    “Maybe not to you but she told the first officers on the scene, Maxwell and Santos, that she did not know why the suspect had come to her apartment, didn’t she?”
    “I wasn’t present when they spoke to her so I can’t testify to that. I do know that she was scared, that she had just been beaten and threatened with rape and death at the time of the first interview.”
    “So you are saying that under those circumstances it is acceptable to lie to the police.”
    “No, I did not say that.”
    I checked my notes and moved on. I wasn’t going for a linear continuum of questions. I was potshotting, trying to keep him off balance.
    “Did you catalog the clothing you found in the bedroom you said Ms. Campo used for her prostitution business?”
    “No, I did not. It was just an observation I made. It was not important to the case.”
    “Would any of the outfits you saw in the closet have been appropriate to sadomasochistic sexual activities?”
    “I wouldn’t know that. I am not an expert in that field.”
    “How about the pornographic videos? Did you write down the titles?”
    “No, I did not. Again, I did not believe that it was pertinent to the investigation of who had brutally assaulted this woman.”
    “Do you recall if the subject matter of any of the videos involved sadomasochism or bondage or anything of that nature?”
    “No, I do not.”
    “Now, did you instruct Ms. Campo to get rid of those tapes and the clothing from the closet before members of Mr. Roulet’s defense team could view the apartment?”
    “I certainly did not.”
    I checked that one off my list and moved on.
    “Have you ever spoken to Mr. Roulet about what happened in Ms. Campo’s apartment that night?”
    “No, he lawyered up before I got to him.”
    “Do you mean he exercised his constitutional right to remain silent?”
    “Yes, that’s exactly what he did.”
    “So, as far as you know, he never spoke to the police about what happened.”
    “That is correct.”
    “In your opinion, was Ms. Campo struck with great force?”
    “I would say so, yes. Her face was very badly cut and swollen.”
    “Then please tell the jury about the impact injuries you found on Mr. Roulet’s hands.”
    “He had wrapped a cloth around his fist to protect it. There were no injuries on his hands that I could see.”
    “Did you document this lack of injury?”
    Booker looked puzzled by the question.
    “No,” he said.
    “So you had Ms. Campo’s injuries documented by photographs but you didn’t see the need to document Mr. Roulet’s lack of injuries, correct?”
    “It didn’t seem to me to be necessary to photograph something that wasn’t there.”
    “How do you know he wrapped his fist in a cloth to protect it?”
    “Ms. Campo told me she saw that his hand was wrapped right before he punched her at the door.”
    “Did you find this cloth he supposedly wrapped his hand in?”
    “Yes, it was in the apartment. It was a napkin, like from a restaurant. It had her blood on it.”
    “Did it have Mr. Roulet’s blood on it?”
    “No.”
    “Was there anything that identified it as belonging to the defendant?”
    “No.”
    “So we have Ms. Campo’s word for it, right?”
    “That’s right.”
    I let some time pass while I scribbled a note on my pad. I then continued to question the detective.
    “Detective, when did you learn that Louis Roulet denied assaulting or threatening Ms. Campo and that he would be vigorously defending himself against the charges?”
    “That would have been when he hired you, I guess.”
    There was a murmur of laughter in the courtroom.
    “Did you pursue other explanations for Ms. Campo’s injuries?”
    “No, she told me what happened. I believed her. He beat her and was going to -”
    “Thank you,