The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel by Michael Connelly

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
    I t 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