house on Monday night.
“Oh, right, I forgot about that. Well, I’m glad you took me up on it. I saw your partner earlier. What happened to him?”
“Oh, he’s around.”
I tried to read something in that. She had not answered the question about whether she was going to arrest me. I gestured back up the hallway toward the courtroom.
“So what did you think?”
“Interesting. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the judge’s chambers.”
“Well, stick around. It ain’t over yet.”
“Maybe I will.”
My cell phone started to vibrate. I reached under my jacket and pulled it off my hip. The caller ID readout said the call was coming from the district attorney’s office.
“I have to take this,” I said.
“By all means,” Sobel said.
I opened the phone and started walking back up the hallway toward where Roulet was pacing.
“Hello?”
“Mickey Haller, this is Jack Smithson in the DA’s office. How’s your day going?”
“I’ve had better.”
“Not after you hear what I’m offering to do for you.”
“I’m listening.”
FORTY-THREE
The judge did not come out of chambers for fifteen minutes on top of the thirty she had promised. We were all waiting, Roulet and I at the defense table, his mother and Dobbs behind us in the first row. At the prosecution table Minton was no longer flying solo. Next to him sat Jack Smithson. I was thinking that it was probably the first time he had actually been inside a courtroom in a year.
Minton looked downcast and defeated. Sitting next to Smithson, he could have been taken as a defendant with his attorney. He looked guilty as charged.
Detective Booker was not in the courtroom and I wondered if he was working on something or simply if no one had bothered to call him with the bad news.
I turned to check the big clock on the back wall and to scan the gallery. The screen for Minton’s PowerPoint presentation was gone now, a hint of what was to come. I saw Sobel sitting in the back row, but her partner and Kurlen were still nowhere to be seen. There was nobody else but Dobbs and Windsor, and they didn’t count. The row reserved for the media was empty. The media had not been alerted. I was keeping my side of the deal with Smithson.
Deputy Meehan called the courtroom to order and Judge Fullbright took the bench with a flourish, the scent of lilac wafting toward the tables. I guessed that she’d had a cigarette or two back there in chambers and had gone heavy with the perfume as cover.
“In the matter of the state versus Louis Ross Roulet, I understand from my clerk that we have a motion.”
Minton stood.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
He said nothing further, as if he could not bring himself to speak.
“Well, Mr. Minton, are you sending it to me telepathically?”
“No, Your Honor.”
Minton looked down at Smithson and got the go-ahead nod.
“The state moves to dismiss all charges against Louis Ross Roulet.”
The judge nodded as though she had expected the move. I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me and knew it was from Mary Windsor. She knew what was going to happen but had held her emotions in check until she had actually heard it in the courtroom.
“Is that with or without prejudice?” the judge asked.
“Dismiss with prejudice.”
“Are you sure about that, Mr. Minton? That means no comebacks from the state.”
“Yes, Your Honor, I know,” Minton said with a note of annoyance at the judge’s need to explain the law to him.
The judge wrote something down and then looked back at Minton.
“I believe for the record the state needs to offer some sort of explanation for this motion. We have chosen a jury and heard more than two days of testimony. Why is the state doing this at this stage, Mr. Minton?”
Smithson stood. He was a tall and thin man with a pale complexion. He was a prosecutorial specimen. Nobody wanted a fat man as district attorney and that was exactly what he hoped one day to be. He wore a charcoal gray suit with what had become his trademark: a maroon bow tie with matching handkerchief peeking from the suit’s breast pocket. The word among the defense pros was that a political advisor had told him to start building a recognizable media image so that when the time came to run, the voters would think they already knew him. This was one situation where he didn’t want the media carrying his image to the voters.
“If I may, Your Honor,” he said.
“The record will note the appearance of Assistant District Attorney John Smithson, head of the Van Nuys Division. Welcome, Jack. Go right ahead, please.”
“Judge Fullbright, it has come to my attention that in the interest of justice, the charges against Mr. Roulet should be dropped.”
He pronounced Roulet’s name wrong.
“Is that all the explanation you can offer, Jack?” the judge asked.
Smithson deliberated before answering. While there were no reporters present, the record of the hearing would be public and his words viewable later.
“Judge, it has come to my attention that there were some irregularities in the investigation and subsequent prosecution. This office is founded upon the belief in the sanctity of our justice system. I personally safeguard that in the Van Nuys Division and take it very, very seriously. And so it is better for us to dismiss a case than to see justice possibly compromised in any way.”
“Thank you, Mr. Smithson. That is refreshing to hear.”
The judge wrote another note and then looked back down at us.
“The state’s motion is granted,” she said. “All charges against Louis Roulet are dismissed with prejudice. Mr. Roulet, you are discharged and free to go.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said.
“We still have a jury returning at one o’clock,” Fullbright said. “I will gather them and explain that the case has been resolved. If any of you attorneys wish to come back then, I am sure they will have questions for you. However, it is not required that you be back.”
I nodded but didn’t say I would be back. I wouldn’t be. The twelve people who had been so important to me for the last week had just dropped off the radar. They were now as meaningless to me as the drivers going the other way on the freeway. They had gone by and I was finished with them.
The judge left the bench and Smithson was the first one out of the courtroom. He had nothing to say to Minton or me. His first priority was to distance himself from this prosecutorial catastrophe. I looked over and saw Minton’s face had lost all color. I assumed that I would soon see his name in the yellow pages. He would not be retained by the DA and he would join the ranks of the defense pros, his first felony lesson a costly one.
Roulet was at the rail, leaning over to hug his mother. Dobbs had a hand on his shoulder in a congratulatory gesture, but the family lawyer had not recovered from Windsor ’s harsh rebuke in the hallway.
