He smiled at me, like a boy with a toy he wasn’t going to share.

“Let’s just say that is proprietary information and leave it at that. You never know, I may have to pull the old Houdini act again.”

In his words I heard the threat and in his smile I saw the evil that Raul Levin had seen.

“Don’t get any ideas, Mick,” he said. “As you probably know, I do have an insurance policy.”

I pressed harder against him and leaned in closer.

“Listen, you piece of shit. I want the gun back. You think you have this thing wired? You don’t have shit. I’ve got it wired. And you won’t make it through the week if I don’t get that gun back. You got that?”

Roulet slowly reached up, grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands off his chest. He started straightening his shirt and tie.

“Might I suggest an agreement,” he said calmly. “At the end of this trial I walk out of the courtroom a free man. I continue to maintain my freedom, and in exchange for this, the gun never falls into, shall we say, the wrong hands.”

Meaning Lankford and Sobel.

“Because I’d really hate to see that happen, Mick. A lot of people depend on you. A lot of clients. And you, of course, wouldn’t want to go where they are going.”

I stepped back from him, using all my will not to raise my fists and attack. I settled for a voice that quietly seethed with all of my anger and hate.

“I promise you,” I said, “if you fuck with me you will never be free of me. Are we clear on that?”

Roulet started to smile. But before he could respond the door from the courtroom opened and Deputy Meehan, the bailiff, looked in.

“The judge is on the bench,” he said sternly. “She wants you in here. Now.”

I looked back at Roulet.

“I said, are we clear?”

“Yes, Mick,” he said good-naturedly. “We’re crystal clear.”

I stepped away from him and entered the courtroom, striding up the aisle to the gate. Judge Constance Fullbright was staring me down every step of the way.

“So nice of you to consider joining us this morning, Mr. Haller.”

Where had I heard that before?

“I am sorry, Your Honor,” I said as I came through the gate. “I had an emergency situation with my client. We had to conference.”

“Client conferences can be handled right at the defense table,” she responded.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I don’t think we are starting off correctly here, Mr. Haller. When my clerk announces that we will be in session in two minutes, then I expect everyone-including defense attorneys and their clients-to be in place and ready to go.”

“I apologize, Your Honor.”

“That’s not good enough, Mr. Haller. Before the end of court today I want you to pay a visit to my clerk with your checkbook. I am fining you five hundred dollars for contempt of court. You are not in charge of this courtroom, sir. I am.”

“Your Honor -”

“Now, can we please have the jury,” she ordered, cutting off my protest.

The bailiff opened the jury room door and the twelve jurors and two alternates started filing into the jury box. I leaned over to Roulet, who had just sat down, and whispered.

“You owe me five hundred dollars.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ted Minton’s opening statement was a by-the-numbers model of prosecutorial overkill. Rather than tell the jurors what evidence he would present and what it would prove, the prosecutor tried to tell them what it all meant. He was going for a big picture and this was almost always a mistake. The big picture involves inferences and suggestions. It extrapolates givens to the level of suspicions. Any experienced prosecutor with a dozen or more felony trials under his belt will tell you to keep it small. You want them to convict, not necessarily to understand.

“What this case is about is a predator,” he told them. “Louis Ross Roulet is a man who on the night of March sixth was stalking prey. And if it were not for the sheer determination of a woman to survive, we would be here prosecuting a murder case.”

I noticed early on that Minton had picked up a scorekeeper. This is what I call a juror who incessantly takes notes during trial. An opening statement is not an offer of evidence and Judge Fullbright had so admonished the jury, but the woman in the first seat in the front row had been writing since the start of Minton’s statement. This was good. I like scorekeepers because they document just what the lawyers say will be presented and proved at trial and at the end they go back to check. They keep score.

I looked at the jury chart I had filled in the week before and saw that the scorekeeper was Linda Truluck, a homemaker from Reseda. She was one of only three women on the jury. Minton had tried hard to keep the female content to a minimum because, I believe, he feared that once it was established in trial that Regina Campo had been offering sexual services for money, he might lose the females’ sympathy and ultimately their votes on a verdict. I believed he was probably correct in that assumption and I worked just as diligently to get women on the panel. We both ended up using all of our twenty challenges and it was probably the main reason it took three days to seat a jury. In the end I got three women on the panel and only needed one to head off a conviction.

“Now, you are going to hear testimony from the victim herself about her lifestyle being one that we would not condone,” Minton told the jurors. “The bottom line is she was selling sex to the men she invited to her home. But I want you to remember that what the victim in this case did for a living is not what this trial is about. Anyone can be a victim of a violent crime. Anyone. No matter what someone does for a living, the law does not allow for them to be beaten, to be threatened at knifepoint or to be put in fear of their lives. It doesn’t matter what they do to make money. They enjoy the same protections that we all do.”

It was pretty clear to me that Minton didn’t even want to use the word prostitution or prostitute for fear it would hurt his case. I wrote the word down on the legal pad I would take with me to the lectern when I made my statement. I planned to make up for the prosecutor’s omissions.

Minton gave an overview of the evidence. He spoke about the knife with the defendant’s initials on the blade. He talked about the blood found on his left hand. And he warned the jurors not to be fooled by the defense’s efforts to confuse or muddle the evidence.

“This is a very clear-cut and straightforward case,” he said as he was winding up. “You have a man who attacked a woman in her home. His plan was to rape and then kill her. It is only by the grace of God that she will be here to tell you the story.”

With that he thanked them for their attention and took his seat at the prosecution table. Judge Fullbright looked at her watch and then looked at me. It was 11:40 and she was probably weighing whether to go to a break or let me proceed with my opener. One of the judge’s chief jobs during trial is jury management. The judge’s duty is to make sure the jury is comfortable and engaged. Lots of breaks, short and long, is often the answer.

I had known Connie Fullbright for at least twelve years, since long before she was a judge. She had been both a prosecutor and defense lawyer. She knew both sides. Aside from being overly quick with contempt citations, she was a good and fair judge-until it came to sentencing. You went into Fullbright’s court knowing you were on an even level with the prosecution. But if the jury convicted your client, be prepared for the worst. Fullbright was one of the toughest sentencing judges in the county. It was as if she were punishing you and your client for wasting her time with a trial. If there was any room within the sentencing guidelines, she always went to the max, whether it was prison or probation. It had gotten her a telling sobriquet among the defense pros who worked the Van Nuys courthouse. They called her Judge Fullbite.