The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel (41 page)

“Mr. Minton, anything else?” the judge asked, a not so well disguised note of sarcasm in her voice.

“One moment, Your Honor,” Minton said.

Minton gathered himself, reviewed his notes and tried to salvage something.

“Mrs. Windsor, did you or your son call the police after he found you?”

“No, we didn’t. Louis wanted to but I did not. I thought that it would only further the trauma.”

“So we have no official police documentation of this crime, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

I knew that Minton wanted to carry it further and ask if she had sought medical treatment after the attack. But sensing another
trap, he didn’t ask the question.

“So what you are saying here is that we only have your word that this attack even occurred? Your word and your son’s, if he
chooses to testify.”

“It did occur. I live with it each and every day.”

“But we only have you who says so.”

She looked at the prosecutor with deadpan eyes.

“Is that a question?”

“Mrs. Windsor, you are here to help your son, correct?”

“If I can. I know him as a good man who would not have committed this despicable crime.”

“You would be willing to do anything and everything in your power to save your son from conviction and possible prison, wouldn’t
you?”

“But I wouldn’t lie about something like this. Oath or no oath, I wouldn’t lie.”

“But you want to save your son, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And saving him means lying for him, doesn’t it?”

“No. It does not.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Windsor.”

Minton quickly returned to his seat. I had only one question on redirect.

“Mrs. Windsor, how old were you when this attack occurred?”

“I was fifty-four.”

I sat back down. Minton had nothing further and Windsor was excused. I asked the judge to allow her to sit in the gallery
for the remainder of the trial, now that her testimony was concluded. Without an objection from Minton the request was granted.

My next witness was an LAPD detective named David Lambkin, who was a national expert on sex crimes and had worked on the Real
Estate Rapist investigation. In brief questioning I established the facts of the case and the five reported cases of rape
that were investigated. I quickly got to the five key questions I needed to bolster Mary Windsor’s testimony.

“Detective Lambkin, what was the age range of the known victims of the rapist?”

“These were all professional women who were pretty successful. They tended to be older than your average rape victim. I believe
the youngest was twenty-nine and the oldest was fifty-nine.”

“So a woman who was fifty-four years old would have fallen within the rapist’s target profile, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell the jury when the first reported attack occurred and when the last reported attack occurred?”

“Yes. The first was October one, two thousand, and the last one was July thirtieth of two thousand and one.”

“So June ninth of two thousand and one was well within the span of this rapist’s attacks on women in the real estate business,
correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“In the course of your investigation of this case, did you come to a conclusion or belief that there were more than five rapes
committed by this individual?”

Minton objected, saying the question called for speculation. The judge sustained the objection but it didn’t matter. The question
was
what was important and the jury seeing the prosecutor keeping the answer from them was the payoff.

Minton surprised me on cross. He recovered enough from the misstep with Windsor to hit Lambkin with three solid questions
with answers favorable to the prosecution.

“Detective Lambkin, did the task force investigating these rapes issue any kind of warning to women working in the real estate
business?”

“Yes, we did. We sent out fliers on two occasions. The first went to all licensed real estate businesses in the area and the
next mail-out went to all licensed real estate brokers individually, male and female.”

“Did these mail-outs contain information about the rapist’s description and methods?”

“Yes, they did.”

“So if someone wished to concoct a story about being attacked by this rapist, the mail-outs would have provided all the information
needed, correct?”

“That is a possibility, yes.”

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Minton proudly sat down and Lambkin was excused when I had nothing further. I asked the judge for a few minutes to confer
with my client and then leaned in close to Roulet.

“Okay, this is it,” I said. “You’re all we have left. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you’re clean and there
isn’t much Minton can come back at you with. You should be safe up there unless you let him get to you. Are you still cool
with this?”

Roulet had said all along that he would testify and deny the charges. He had reiterated his desire again at lunch. He demanded
it. I always viewed the risks of letting a client testify as evenly split. Anything he said could come back to haunt him if
the prosecution could bend it to the state’s favor. But I also knew that no matter what admonishments were given to a jury
about a defendant’s right to remain silent, the jury always wanted to hear the defendant say
he didn’t do it. You take that away from the jury and they might hold a grudge.

“I want to do it,” Roulet whispered. “I can handle the prosecutor.”

I pushed my chair back and stood up.

“The defense calls Louis Ross Roulet, Your Honor.”

L
ouis Roulet moved toward the witness box quickly, like a basketball player pulled off the bench and sent to the scorer’s table
to check into the game. He looked like a man anxious for the opportunity to defend himself. He knew this posture would not
be lost on the jury.

After dispensing with the preliminaries, I got right down to the issues of the case. Under my questioning Roulet freely admitted
that he had gone to Morgan’s on the night of March 6 to seek female companionship. He said he wasn’t specifically looking
to engage the services of a prostitute but was not against the possibility.

“I had been with women I had to pay before,” he said. “So I wouldn’t have been against it.”

He testified that he had no conscious eye contact with Regina Campo before she approached him at the bar. He said that she
was the aggressor but at the time that didn’t bother him. He said the solicitation was open-ended. She said she would be free
after ten and he could come by if he was not otherwise engaged.

Roulet described efforts made over the next hour at Morgan’s and then at the Lamplighter to find a woman he would not have
to pay but said he was unsuccessful. He then drove to the address Campo had given him and knocked on the door.

“Who answered?”

“She did. She opened the door a crack and looked out at me.”

“Regina Campo? The woman who testified this morning?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Could you see her whole face through the opening in the door?”

“No. She only opened up a crack and I couldn’t see her. Only her left eye and a little bit of that side of her face.”

“How did the door open? Was this crack through which you could see her on the right or left side?”

“As I was looking at the door the opening would have been on the right.”

“So let’s make sure we make this clear. The opening was on the right, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So if she were standing behind the door and looking through the opening, she would be looking at you with her left eye.”

“That is correct.”

“Did you see her right eye?”

“No.”

“So if she had a bruise or a cut or any damage on the right side of her face, could you have seen it?”

“No.”

“Okay. So what happened next?”

“She saw it was me and she said come in. She opened the door wider but still sort of stood behind it.”

“You couldn’t see her?”

“Not completely. She was using the edge of the door as sort of a block.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, it was kind of like an entry area, a vestibule, and she pointed through an archway to the living room. I went the way
she pointed.”

“Did this mean that she was then behind you?”

“Yes, when I turned toward the living room she was behind me.”

“Did she close the door?”

“I think so. I heard it close.”

“And then what?”

“Something hit me on the back of my head and I went down. I blacked out.”

“Do you know how long you were out?”

“No. I think it was a while but none of the police or anybody ever told me.”

“What do you remember when you regained consciousness?”

“I remember having a hard time breathing and when I opened my eyes, there was somebody sitting on me. I was on my back and
he was sitting on me. I tried to move and that was when I realized somebody was sitting on my legs, too.”

“What happened next?”

“They took turns telling me not to move and one of them told me they had my knife and if I tried to move or escape he would
use it on me.”

“Did there come a time that the police came and you were arrested?”

“Yes, a few minutes later the police were there. They handcuffed me and made me stand up. That was when I saw I had blood
on my jacket.”

“What about your hand?”

“I couldn’t see it because it was handcuffed behind my back. But I heard one of the men who had been sitting on me tell the
police officer that there was blood on my hand and then the officer put a bag over it. I felt that.”

“How did the blood get on your hand and jacket?”

“All I know is that somebody put it on there because I didn’t.”

“Are you left-handed?”

“No, I am not.”

“You didn’t strike Ms. Campo with your left fist?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you threaten to rape her?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you tell her you were going to kill her if she didn’t cooperate with you?”

“No, I did not.”

I was hoping for some of the fire I had seen on that first day in C. C. Dobbs’s office but Roulet was calm and controlled.
I decided that before I finished with him on direct I needed to push things a little to get some of that anger back. I had
told him at lunch I wanted to see it and wasn’t sure what he was doing or where it had gone.

“Are you angry about being charged with attacking Ms. Campo?”

“Of course I am.”

“Why?”

He opened his mouth but didn’t speak. He seemed outraged that I would ask such a question. Finally, he responded.

“What do you mean, why? Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do and there’s nothing you can do about it but
wait? Just wait for weeks and months until you finally get a chance to go to court and say you’ve been set up. But then you
have to wait even longer while the prosecutor puts on a bunch of liars and you have to listen to their lies and just wait
your chance. Of course it makes you angry. I am innocent! I did not do this!”

It was perfect. To the point and playing to anybody who had ever been falsely accused of anything. There was more I could
ask but I reminded myself of the rule: get in and get out. Less is always more. I sat down. If I decided there was anything
I had missed I would clean it up on redirect.

I looked at the judge.

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Minton was up and ready before I even got back to my seat. He moved to the lectern without breaking his steely glare away
from Roulet. He was showing the jury what he thought of this man. His eyes were like lasers shooting across the room. He gripped
the sides of the lectern so hard his knuckles were white. It was all a show for the jury.

“You deny touching Ms. Campo,” he said.

“That’s right,” Roulet retorted.

“According to you she just punched herself or had a man she had never met before that night punch her lights out for her as
part of this setup, is that correct?”

“I don’t know who did it. All I know is that I didn’t.”

“But what you are saying is that this woman, Regina Campo, is lying. She came into this courtroom today and flat out lied
to the judge and the jury and the whole wide world.”

Minton punctuated the sentence by shaking his head with disgust.

“All I know is that I did not do the things she said I did. The only explanation is that one of us is lying. It’s not me.”

“That will be for the jury to decide, won’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And this knife you supposedly got for your own protection. Are you telling this jury that the victim in this case somehow
knew you had a knife and used it as part of the setup?”

“I don’t know what she knew. I had never shown the knife to her or in a bar where she would have been. So I don’t see how
she could have known about it. I think that when she went into my pocket for the money she found the knife. I always keep
my knife and money in the same pocket.”

“Oh, so now you have her stealing money out of your pocket as well. When does this end with you, Mr. Roulet?”

“I had four hundred dollars with me. When I was arrested it was gone. Someone took it.”

Rather than try to pinpoint Roulet on the money, Minton was wise enough to know that no matter how he handled it, he would
be facing a break-even proposition at best. If he tried to make a case that Roulet never had the money and that his plan was
to attack and rape Campo rather than pay her, then he knew I would trot out Roulet’s tax returns, which would throw serious
doubt on the idea that he couldn’t afford to pay a prostitute. It was an avenue of testimony commonly referred to by lawyers
as a “cluster fuck” and he was staying away. He moved on to his finish.

In dramatic style Minton held up the evidence photo of Regina Campo’s beaten and bruised face.

“So Regina Campo is a liar,” he said.

“Yes.”

“She had this done to her or maybe even did it herself.”

“I don’t know who did it.”