Page 118 of The Lincoln Lawyer

“She flat out said she was a working girl. She didn’t try to hide it.”

“Did anything she said to you differ from the accounts of the attack you had already gathered at the crime scene?”

“No, not at all. She told me she opened the door to the defendant and he immediately punched her in the face and drove her backwards into the apartment. He 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?”