The Lincoln Lawyer

and Booker stepped out of the elevator and joined Sobel. They turned and started walking toward us.
    “Then we’ll leave you to it,” Dobbs said, his back to the approaching detectives. “We have a reservation at Orso and I’m afraid we’re already going to be late getting back over the hill.”
    “Okay,” I said, still looking down the hall.
    Dobbs, Windsor and Roulet turned to walk away just as the four detectives got to us.
    “Louis Roulet,” Kurlen announced. “You are under arrest. Turn around, please, and place your hands behind your back.”
    “No!” Mary Windsor shrieked. “You can’t -”
    “What is this?” Dobbs cried out.
    Kurlen didn’t answer or wait for Roulet to comply. He stepped forward and roughly turned Roulet around. As he made the forced turn, Roulet’s eyes came to mine.
    “What’s going on, Mick?” he said in a calm voice. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
    Mary Windsor moved toward her son.
    “Take your hands off of my son!”
    She grabbed Kurlen from behind but Booker and Lankford quickly moved in and detached her, handling her gently but strongly.
    “Ma’am, step back,” Booker commanded. “Or I will put you in jail.”
    Kurlen started giving Roulet the Miranda warning. Windsor stayed back but was not silent.
    “How dare you? You cannot do this!”
    Her body moved in place and she looked as though unseen hands were keeping her from charging at Kurlen again.
    “Mother,” Roulet said in a tone that carried more weight and control than any of the detectives.
    Windsor ’s body relented. She gave up. But Dobbs didn’t.
    “You’re arresting him for what?” he demanded.
    “Suspicion of murder,” Kurlen said. “The murder of Martha Renteria.”
    “That’s impossible!” Dobbs cried. “Everything that witness Corliss said in there was proven to be a lie. Are you crazy? The judge dismissed the case because of his lies.”
    Kurlen broke from his recital of Roulet’s rights and looked at Dobbs.
    “If it was all a lie, how’d you know he was talking about Martha Renteria?”
    Dobbs realized his mistake and took a step back from the gathering. Kurlen smiled.
    “Yeah, I thought so,” he said.
    He grabbed Roulet by an elbow and turned him back around.
    “Let’s go,” he said.
    “Mick?” Roulet said.
    “Detective Kurlen,” I said. “Can I talk to my client for a moment?”
    Kurlen looked at me, seemed to measure something in me and then nodded.
    “One minute. Tell him to behave himself and it will all go a lot easier for him.”
    He shoved Roulet toward me. I took him by one arm and walked him a few paces away from the others so we would have privacy if we kept our voices down. I stepped close to him and began in a whisper.
    “This is it, Louis. This is good-bye. I got you off. Now you’re on your own. Get yourself a new lawyer.”
    The shock showed in his eyes. Then his face clouded over with a tightly focused anger. It was pure rage and I realized it was the same rage Regina Campo and Martha Renteria must have seen.
    “I won’t need a lawyer,” he said to me. “You think they can make a case off of what you somehow fed to that lying snitch in there? You better think again.”
    “They won’t need the snitch, Louis. Believe me, they’ll find more. They probably already have more.”
    “What about you, Mick? Aren’t you forgetting something? I have -”
    “I know. But it doesn’t matter anymore. They don’t need my gun. They’ve already got all they need. But whatever happens to me, I’ll know that I put you down. At the end, after the trial and all the appeals, when they finally stick that needle in your arm, that will be me, Louis. Remember that.”
    I smiled with no humor and moved in closer.
    “This is for Raul Levin. You might not go down for him but make no mistake, you are going down.”
    I let that register for a moment and then stepped back and nodded to Kurlen. He and Booker came up on either side of Roulet and took hold of his upper arms.
    “You set me up,” Roulet said, somehow maintaining his calm. “You aren’t a lawyer. You work for them.”
    “Let’s go,” Kurlen said.
    They started moving him but he shook them off momentarily and put his raging eyes right back into mine.
    “This isn’t the end, Mick,” he said. “I’ll be out by tomorrow morning. What will you do then? Think about it. What are you going to do then? You can’t protect everybody.”
    They took a tighter hold of him and roughly turned him