“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “As soon as we are assigned to a judge, you go in and ask about that. If a judge tells me to turn it over, I’ll turn it all over. Otherwise, it’s mine and I ain’t sharing.”
“Thanks a lot.”
She smiled.
“You’re welcome.”
Her response to my request for cooperation and her smiling way of delivering it only served to underline a thought I had growing in the back of my mind since I had gotten word she was on the case. I had to find a way to make Freeman see the light.
Five
Michael Haller and Associates had a full staff meeting that afternoon in the living room of Lorna Taylor’s condo in West Hollywood. Attending were Lorna, of course, as well as my investigator, Cisco Wojciechowski-it was his living room, too-and the junior associate of the firm, Jennifer Aronson. I noticed that Aronson looked uncomfortable in the surroundings and I had to admit it was unprofessional. I had rented a temporary office the year before when I was engaged in the Jason Jessup case and it had worked out well. I knew that it would be best to have a real office, instead of two staff members’ living room, for the Trammel case. The only problem was it would add another expense I would have to eat until I manufactured fees out of the movie and book rights of the case-if I managed to make that happen. This had made me reluctant to pull the trigger, but seeing Aronson’s disappointment made the decision for me.
“Okay, let’s start,” I said after Lorna had served everybody soda or iced tea. “I know this is not the most professional way to run a law firm and we’ll be looking into getting some office space as soon as we can. In the mean-”
“Really?” Lorna said, clearly surprised by this information.
“Yes, I just sort of decided that.”
“Oh, well, I’m glad you like my place so much.”
“It’s not that, Lorna. I’ve just been thinking lately, you know, with taking on Bullocks here, it’s like we’ve got a real firm now and maybe we should have a legit address. You know, so clients can come in instead of us always going to them.”
“Fine with me. As long as I don’t have to open shop till ten and I can wear my bedroom slippers to work. I’m kind of used to that.”
I could tell I had insulted her. We had been married once for a short time and I knew the signs. But I would have to deal with it later. It was time to put the focus on the Lisa Trammel defense.
“So anyway, let’s talk about Lisa Trammel. I had my first sit-down with the prosecutor after first appearance this morning and it didn’t go so well. I’ve done the dance with Andrea Freeman before and she’s a give-no-quarter kind of prosecutor. If it’s something that can be argued then she’s going to argue it. If it’s discoverable material that she can sit on until the judge orders her to give it up, then she’ll do that, too. In a way, I admire her but not when we’re on the same case. The bottom line is that getting discovery out of her is going to be like pulling teeth.”
“Well, is there even going to be a trial?” Lorna asked.
“We have to assume so,” I answered. “In my brief discussions with our client she has expressed only a desire to fight this thing. She says she didn’t do it. So for now that means no plea agreement. We plan on a trial but remain open to other possibilities.”
“Wait a minute,” Aronson said. “You e-mailed me last night saying you wanted me to look at the video you got of the interrogation. That’s discovery. Didn’t that come from the prosecution?”
Aronson was a petite twenty-five-year-old with short hair that was carefully made to look stylishly unkempt. She wore retro-style glasses that partially hid brilliant green eyes. She came from a law school that didn’t turn any heads in the silk-stocking firms downtown but when I interviewed her I sensed that she had a drive that was fueled by negative motivation. She was out to prove those silk-stocking assholes wrong. I hired her on the spot.
“The video disc came from the lead detective, and the prosecutor wasn’t happy about it at all. So don’t be expecting anything else. We want something, we go to the judge or we go out and get it ourselves. Which brings us to Cisco. Tell us what you’ve got so far, Big Man.”
All eyes turned to my investigator, who sat on a leather swivel chair next to a fireplace that was filled with potted plants. He was dressed up today, meaning he had sleeves on his T-shirt. Still, the shirt did little to hide the tats and the gun show. His bulging biceps made him look more like a strip club bouncer than a seasoned investigator with a lot of finesse in his kit.
It had taken me a long time to get over the idea of this giant beef dish being my replacement with Lorna. But I had worked through it and, besides, I knew of no better defense investigator. Early in his life, when he was cruising with the Road Saints, the cops had tried to set him up twice on drug raps. It built a lasting distrust of the police in him. Most people give the police the benefit of the doubt. Cisco didn’t and that made him very good at what he did.
“Okay, I am going to break this into two reports,” he said. “The crime scene and the client’s house, which was searched by police for several hours yesterday. First the crime scene.”
Without using any notes, he proceeded to detail all of his findings from WestLand National’s headquarters. Mitchell Bondurant had been surprised by his attacker while getting out of his car to report for work. He was struck at least twice on the head with an unknown object. Most likely attacked from behind. There were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms, indicating he was incapacitated almost immediately. A spilled cup of Joe’s Joe coffee was found on the ground next to him along with his briefcase, which was open, beside the back tire of his car.
“So what about the gunshots somebody said they heard?” I asked.
Cisco shrugged.
“I think they’re looking at that as car backfire.”
“Two backfires?”
“Or one and an echo. Either way, there was no gunplay involved.”
He went back to his report. The autopsy results were not yet in but Cisco was betting on blunt-force trauma being the cause of death. At the moment, time of death was listed as between 8:30 and 8:50 A.M. There was a receipt in Bondurant’s pocket from a Joe’s Joe four blocks away. It was time-stamped 8:21 A.M. and investigators figured the fastest he could have gotten from the coffee shop to his parking space in the bank garage was nine minutes. The 911 call from the bank employee who found his body was logged at 8:52 A.M.
So estimated time of death had an approximate twenty-minute swing. It wasn’t a lot of time but when it came to things like documenting a defendant’s movements for the purpose of alibi, it was an eternity.
Police interviewed everyone who was parking on the same level as well as all of those who worked in Bondurant’s department at the bank. Lisa Trammel’s name came up early and often during these interviews. She was named as an individual Bondurant had reportedly felt threatened by. His department kept a threat-assessment file and she was number one on the list. As we all knew, she had been served with a restraining order keeping her away from the bank.
The police hit the jackpot when one bank employee reported seeing Lisa Trammel walking away from the bank on Ventura Boulevard within minutes of the murder.
“Who is this witness?” I asked, zeroing in on the most damaging part of his report.
“Her name is Margo Schafer. She’s a bank teller. According to my sources she’s never had contact with Trammel. She works in the bank, not the loan operation. But Trammel’s photo was circulated to staff after they got the TRO against her. Everybody was told to be aware of her and to report it if she was seen. So she recognized her.”
“And was this on bank property?”
“No, it was on the sidewalk a half block away. She was supposedly walking east on Ventura, away from the bank.”