“Yes, Your Honor,” Minton said meekly.
The jury had now seen the prosecutor slapped down twice and we weren’t even past openers. I took this as a good sign and it fed my momentum. I looked back at the jury and noticed that the scorekeeper was still writing.
“Finally, you will receive testimony from many of the state’s own witnesses that will provide a perfectly acceptable explanation for much of the physical evidence in this case. I am talking about the blood and about the knife Mr. Minton mentioned. Taken individually or as a whole, the prosecution’s own case will provide you with more than reasonable doubt about the guilt of my client. You can mark it down in your notebooks. I guarantee you will find that you have only one choice at the end of this case. And that is to find Mr. Roulet not guilty of these charges. Thank you.”
As I walked back to my seat I winked at Lorna Taylor. She nodded at me as if to say I had done well. My attention was then drawn to the two figures sitting two rows behind her. Lankford and Sobel. They had slipped in after I had first surveyed the gallery.
I took my seat and ignored the thumbs-up gesture given me by my client. My mind was on the two Glendale detectives, wondering what they were doing in the courtroom. Watching me? Waiting for me?
The judge dismissed the jury for lunch and everyone stood while the scorekeeper and her colleagues filed out. After they were gone Minton asked the judge for another sidebar. He wanted to try to explain his objection and repair the damage but not in open court. The judge said no.
“I’m hungry, Mr. Minton, and we’re past that now. Go to lunch.”
She left the bench, and the courtroom that had been so silent except for the voices of lawyers then erupted in chatter from the gallery and the court workers. I put my pad in my briefcase.
“That was really good,” Roulet said. “I think we’re already ahead of the game.”
I looked at him with dead eyes.
“It’s no game.”
“I know that. It’s just an expression. Listen, I am having lunch with Cecil and my mother. We would like you to join us.”
I shook my head.
“I have to defend you, Louis, but I don’t have to eat with you.”
I took my checkbook out of my briefcase and left him there. I walked around the table to the clerk’s station so that I could write out a check for five hundred dollars. The money didn’t hurt as much as I knew the bar review that follows any contempt citation would.
When I was finished I turned back to find Lorna waiting for me at the gate with a smile. We planned to go to lunch and then she would go back to manning the phone in her condo. In three days I would be back in business and needed clients. I was depending on her to start filling in my calendar.
“Looks like I better buy you lunch today,” she said.
I threw my checkbook into the briefcase and closed it. I joined her at the gate.
“That would be nice,” I said.
I pushed through the gate and checked the bench where I had seen Lankford and Sobel sitting a few moments before.
They were gone.
Twenty-nine
The prosecution began presenting its case to the jury in the afternoon session and very quickly Ted Minton’s strategy became clear to me. The first four witnesses were a 911 dispatch operator, the patrol officers who responded to Regina Campo’s call for help and the paramedic who treated her before she was transported to the hospital. In anticipation of the defense strategy, it was clear that Minton wanted to firmly establish that Campo had been brutally assaulted and was indeed the victim in this crime. It wasn’t a bad strategy. In most cases it would get the job done.
The dispatch operator was essentially used as the warm body needed to introduce a recording of Campo’s 911 call for help. Printed transcripts of the call were handed out to jurors so they could read along with a scratchy audio playback. I objected on the grounds that it was prejudicial to play the audio recording when the transcript would suffice but the judge quickly overruled me before Minton even had to counter. The recording was played and there was no doubt that Minton had started out of the gate strong as the jurors sat raptly listening to Campo scream and beg for help. She sounded genuinely distraught and scared. It was exactly what Minton wanted the jurors to hear and they certainly got it. I didn’t dare question the dispatcher on cross-examination because I knew it might give Minton the opportunity to play the recording again on redirect.
The two patrol officers who followed offered different testimony because they did separate things upon arriving at the Tarzana apartment complex in response to the 911 call. One primarily stayed with the victim while the other went up to the apartment and handcuffed the man Campo’s neighbors were sitting on-Louis Ross Roulet.
Officer Vivian Maxwell described Campo as disheveled, hurt and frightened. She said Campo kept asking if she was safe and if the intruder had been caught. Even after she was assured on both questions, Campo remained scared and upset, at one point telling the officer to unholster her weapon and have it ready in case the attacker broke free. When Minton was through with this witness, I stood up to conduct my first cross-examination of the trial.
“Officer Maxwell,” I asked, “did you at any time ask Ms. Campo what had happened to her?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What exactly did you ask her?”
“I asked what had happened and who did this to her. You know, who had hurt her.”
