Page 31 of The Lincoln Lawyer

“She was sitting on the couch and another paramedic was working on her face and she was crying and telling the other cop that I had attacked her. All these lies. That I had surprised her at the door and punched her, that I said I was going to rape her and then kill her, all these things I didn’t do. And I moved my arms so I could look down at my hands behind my back. I saw they had my hand in like a plastic bag and I could see blood on my hand, and that’s when I knew the whole thing was a setup.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“She put blood on my hand to make it look like I did it. But it was my left hand. I’m not left-handed. If I was going to punch somebody, I’d use my right hand.”

He made a punching gesture with his right hand to illustrate this for me in case I didn’t get it. I got up from my spot and paced over to the window. It now seemed like I was higher than the sun. I was looking down at the sunset. I felt uneasy about Roulet’s story. It seemed so far-fetched that it might actually be true. And that bothered me. I was always worried that I might not recognize innocence. The possibility of it in my job was so rare that I operated with the fear that I wouldn’t be ready for it when it came. That I would miss it.

“Okay, let’s talk about this for a second,” I said, still facing the sun. “You’re saying that she puts blood on your hand to set you up. And she puts it on your left. But if she was going to set you up, wouldn’t she put the blood on your right, since the vast majorityof people out there are right-handed? Wouldn’t she go with the numbers?”

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 ablack-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.