I turned back to the table and got blank stares from everyone.
“You said she opened the door a crack and then let you in,” I said. “Could you see her face?”
“Not all of it.”
“What could you see?”
“Her eye. Her left eye.”
“So did you ever see the right side of her face? Like when you walked in.”
“No, she was behind the door.”
“That’s it!” Levin said excitedly. “She already had the injuries when he got there. She hid it from him, then he steps in and she clocks him. All the injuries were to the right side of her face and that dictated that she put the blood on his left hand.”
I nodded as I thought about the logic of this. It seemed to make sense.
“Okay,” I said, turning back to the window and continuing to pace. “I think that’ll work. Now, Louis, you’ve told us you had seen this woman around the bar scene before but had never been with her. So, she was a stranger. Why would she do this, Louis? Why would she set you up like you say she did?”
“Money.”
But it wasn’t Roulet who answered. It had been Dobbs. I turned from the window and looked at him. He knew he had spoken out of turn but didn’t seem to care.
“It’s obvious,” Dobbs said. “She wants money from him, from the family. The civil suit is probably being filed as we speak. The criminal charges are just the prelude to the suit, the demand for money. That’s what she’s really after.”
I sat back down and looked at Levin, exchanging eye contact.
“I saw a picture of this woman in court today,” I said. “Half her face was pulped. You are saying that’s our defense, that she did that to herself?”
Levin opened his file and took out a piece of paper. It was a black-and-white photocopy of the evidence photograph Maggie McPherson had showed me in court. Reggie Campo’s swollen face. Levin’s source was good but not good enough to get him actual photos. He slid the photocopy across the table to Dobbs and Roulet.
“We’ll get the real photos in discovery,” I said. “They look worse, a lot worse, and if we go with your story, then the jury-that is, if this gets to a jury-is going to have to buy that she did that to herself.”
I watched Roulet study the photocopy. If it had been he who attacked Reggie Campo, he showed no tell while studying his handiwork. He showed nothing at all.
“You know what?” I said. “I like to think I’m a good lawyer and a good persuader when it comes to juries. But even I’m having trouble believing myself with that story.”
NINE
It was now Raul Levin’s turn in the conference room. We’d spoken while I had been riding into Century City and eating bites of roast beef sandwich. I had plugged my cell into the car’s speaker phone and told my driver to put his earbuds in. I’d bought him an iPod his first week on the job. Levin had given me the basics of the case, just enough to get me through the initial questioning of my client. Now Levin would take command of the room and go through the case, using the police and evidence reports to tear Louis Roulet’s version of events to shreds, to show us what the prosecution would have on its side. At least initially I wanted Levin to be the one to do this because if there was going to be a good guy/bad guy aspect to the defense, I wanted to be the one Roulet would like and trust. I wanted to be the good guy.
Levin had his own notes in addition to the copies of the police reports he had gotten through his source. It was all material the defense was certainly entitled to and would receive through the discovery process, but usually it took weeks to get it through court channels instead of the hours it had taken Levin. As he spoke he held his eyes down on these documents.
“At ten-eleven last night the LAPD communications center received a nine-one-one emergency call from Regina Campo of seventeen-sixty White Oak Boulevard, apartment two-eleven. She reported an intruder had entered her home and attacked her. Patrol officers responded and arrived on the premises at ten-seventeen. Slow night, I guess, because that was pretty quick. Better than average response to a hot shot. Anyway, the patrol officers were met in the parking lot by Ms. Campo, who said she had fled the apartment after the attack. She informed the officers that two neighbors named Edward Turner and Ronald Atkins were in her apartment, holding the intruder. Officer Santos proceeded to the apartment, where he found the suspect intruder, later identified as Mr. Roulet, lying on the floor and in the command and control of Turner and Atkins.”
“They were the two faggots who were sitting on me,” Roulet said.
I looked at Roulet and saw the flash of anger quickly fade.
“The officers took custody of the suspect,” Levin continued, as if he had not been interrupted. “Mr. Atkins -”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Where was he found on the floor? What room?”
“Doesn’t say.”
I looked at Roulet.
“It was the living room. It wasn’t far from the front door. I never got that far in.”
Levin wrote a note to himself before continuing.
“Mr. Atkins produced a folding knife with the blade open, which he said had been found on the floor next to the intruder. The officers handcuffed the suspect, and paramedics were called to treat both Campo and Roulet, who had a head laceration and slight concussion. Campo was transported to Holy Cross Medical Center for continued treatment and to be photographed by an evidence technician. Roulet was taken into custody and booked into Van Nuys jail. The premises of Ms. Campo’s apartment were sealed for crime scene processing and the case was assigned to Detective Martin Booker of Valley Bureau detectives.”
Levin spread more photocopies of the police photos of Regina Campo’s injuries out on the table. There were front and profile shots of her face and two close-ups of bruising around her neck and a small puncture mark under her jaw. The copy quality was poor and I knew the photocopies weren’t worthy of serious study. But I did notice that all the facial injuries were on the right side of Campo’s face. Roulet had been correct about that. She had either been repeatedly punched by someone’s left hand-or possibly her own right hand.
“These were taken at the hospital, where Ms. Campo also gave a statement to Detective Booker. In summary, she said she came home about eight-thirty Sunday night and was home alone when there was a knock at her door at about ten o’clock. Mr. Roulet represented himself as someone Ms. Campo knew and so she opened the door. Upon opening the door she was immediately struck by the intruder’s fist and driven backwards into the apartment. The intruder entered and closed and locked the door. Ms. Campo attempted to defend herself but was struck at least twice more and driven to the floor.”
“This is such bullshit!” Roulet yelled.
He slammed his fists down on the table and stood up, his seat rolling backwards and banging loudly into the glass window behind him.
“Hey, easy now!” Dobbs cautioned. “You break the window and it’s like a plane. We all get sucked out of here and go down.”
No one smiled at his attempt at levity.
“Louis, sit back down,” I said calmly. “These are police reports, nothing more or less. They are not supposed to be the truth. They are one person’s view of the truth. All we are doing here is getting a first look at the case, seeing what we are up against.”
Roulet rolled his chair back to the table and sat down without further protest. I nodded to Levin and he continued. I noted that Roulet had long stopped acting like the meek prey I had seen earlier in the day in lockup.
“Ms. Campo reported that the man who attacked her had his fist wrapped in a white cloth when he punched her.”
I looked across the table at Roulet’s hands and saw no swelling or bruising on the knuckles or fingers. Wrapping his fist could have allowed him to avoid such telltale injuries.