Page 77 of The Lincoln Lawyer

“How do you know what she looks like?” I demanded.

He stopped and I stopped. He looked down at the knife in my hand and then at my face. He spoke calmly.

“The picture of her on your desk.”

I had forgotten about the photo. A small framed shot of her in a teacup at Disneyland.

“Oh,” I said.

He smiled, knowing what I had been thinking.

“Good night, Mick. Enjoy your daughter tomorrow. You probably don’t get to see her enough.”

He turned and crossed the living room and opened the front door. He looked back at me before stepping out.

“What you need is a good lawyer,” he said. “One that will get you custody.”

“No. She’s better off with her mother.”

“Good night, Mick. Thanks for the conversation.”

“Good night, Louis.”

I stepped forward to close the door.

“Nice view,” he said from out on the front porch.

“Yeah,” I said as I closed and locked the door.

I stood there with my hand on the knob, waiting to hear hissteps going down the stairs to the street. But a few moments later he knocked on the door. I closed my eyes, held the knife at the ready and opened it. Roulet raised his hand out. I took a step back.

“Your key,” he said. “I figured you should have it.”

I took the key off his outstretched palm.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I closed the door and locked it once again.

Twenty-two

Tuesday, April 12

The day started better than any defense attorney could ask for. I had no courtroom to be in, no client to meet. I slept late, spent the morning reading the newspaper cover to cover and had a box ticket to the home opener of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball season. It was a day game and a time-honored tradition among those on the defense side of the aisle to attend. My ticket had come from Raul Levin, who was taking five of the defense pros he did work for to the game as a gesture of thanks for their business. I was sure the others would grumble and complain at the game about how I was monopolizing Levin as I prepared for the Roulet trial. But I wasn’t going to let it bother me.

We were in the outwardly slow time before trial, when the machine moves with a steady, quiet momentum. Louis Roulet’s trial was set to begin in a month. As it was growing nearer I was taking on fewer and fewer clients. I needed the time to prepare and strategize. Though the trial was weeks away it would likely be won or lost with the information gathered now. I needed to keep my schedule clear for this. I took cases from repeat customers only—and only if the money was right and it came up front.

A trial was a slingshot. The key was in the preparation. Pretrial is when the sling is loaded with the proper stone and slowly the elastic is pulled back and stretched to its limit. Finally, at trialyou let it go and the projectile shoots forward, unerringly at the target. The target is acquittal. Not guilty. You only hit that target if you have properly chosen the stone and pulled back carefully on the sling, stretching it as far as possible.

Levin was doing most of the stretching. He had continued to dig into the lives of the players in both the Roulet and Menendez cases. We had hatched a strategy and plan we were calling a “double slingshot” because it had two intended targets. I had no doubt that when the trial began in May, we would be stretched back to the limit and ready to let go.

The prosecution did its part to help us load the slingshot, as well. In the weeks since Roulet’s arraignment the state’s discovery file grew thicker as scientific reports filtered in, further police investigations were carried out and new developments occurred.

Among the new developments of note was the identification of Mr. X, the left-handed man who had been with Reggie Campo at Morgan’s the night of the attack. LAPD detectives, using the video I had alerted the prosecution to, were able to identify him by showing a frame taken off the video to known prostitutes and escorts when they were arrested by the Administrative Vice section. Mr. X was identified as Charles Talbot. He was known to many of the sex providers as a regular. Some said that he owned or worked at a convenience store on Reseda Boulevard.

The investigative reports forwarded to me through discovery requests revealed that detectives interviewed Talbot and learned that on the night of March 6 he left Reggie Campo’s apartment shortly before ten and went to the previously mentioned twenty-four-hour convenience store. Talbot owned the business. He went to the store so that he could check on things and open a cigarette storage cabinet that only he carried the key for. Tape from surveillance cameras in the store confirmed that he was there from 10:09 to 10:51P.M.restocking the cigarette bins beneath the front counter. The investigator’s summary dismissed Talbot as having no bearing or part in the events that occurred after he left Campo’s apartment. He was just one of her customers.