The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connelly [60]
“I didn’t lie,” Roulet yelled back. “I tried to tell you. I said it wasn’t my knife. I said it twice but nobody listened to me.”
“Then you should have clarified what you meant. Just saying it wasn’t your knife was like saying you didn’t do it. You should have said, ‘Hey, Mick, there might be a problem with the knife because I did have a knife but this picture isn’t it.’ What did you think, that it was just going to go away?”
“Please, can you keep it down,” Roulet protested. “There might be customers out there.”
“I don’t care! Fuck your customers. You’re not going to need customers anymore where you’re going. Don’t you see that this knife trumps everything we’ve got? You took a murder weapon to a meeting with a prostitute. The knife was no plant. It was yours. And that means we no longer have the setup. How can we claim she set you up when the prosecutor can prove you had that knife with you when you walked through the door?”
He didn’t answer but I didn’t give him a lot of time to.
“You fucking did this thing and they’ve got you,” I said, pointing at him. “No wonder they didn’t bother with any follow-up investigation at the bar. No follow-up needed when they’ve got your knife and your fingerprints in blood on it.”
“I didn’t do it! It’s a setup. I’m TELLING YOU! It was—”
“Who’s yelling now? Look, I don’t care what you’re telling me. I can’t deal with a client who doesn’t level, who doesn’t see the percentage in telling his own attorney what is going on. So the DA has made an offer to you and I think you better take it.”
Roulet sat up straight and grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the table. He took one out and lit it off the one he already had going.
“I’m not pleading guilty to something I didn’t do,” he said, his voice suddenly calm after a deep drag off the fresh smoke.
“Seven years. You’ll be out in four. You have till court time Monday and then it disappears. Think about it, then tell me you want to take it.”
“I won’t take it. I didn’t do this thing and if you won’t take it to trial, then I will find somebody who will.”
Levin was holding the discovery file. I reached down and rudely grabbed it out of his hands so I could read directly from the weapon report.
“You didn’t do it?” I said to Roulet. “Okay, if you didn’t do it, then would you mind telling me why you went to see this prostitute with a custom-made Black Ninja knife with a five-inch blade, complete with your initials engraved not once, but twice on both sides of the blade?”
Finished reading from the report, I threw it back to Levin. It went through his hands and slapped against his chest.
“Because I always carry it!”
The force of Roulet’s response quieted the room. I paced back and forth once, staring at him.
“You always carry it,” I said, not a question.
“That’s right. I’m a realtor. I drive expensive cars. I wear expensive jewelry. And I often meet strangers alone in empty houses.”
Again he gave me pause. As hyped up as I was, I still knew a glimmer when I saw one. Levin leaned forward and looked at Roulet and then at me. He saw it, too.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “You sell homes to rich people.”
“How do you know they are rich when they call you up and say they want to see a place?”
I stretched my hands out in confusion.
“You must have some sort of system for checking them out, right?”
“Sure, we can run a credit report and we can ask for references. But it still comes down to what they give us and these kind of people don’t like to wait. When they want to see a piece of property, they want to see it. There are a lot of realtors out there. If we don’t act quickly, there will be somebody else who will.”
I nodded. The glimmer was getting brighter. There might be something here I could work with.
“There have been murders, you know,” Roulet said. “Over the years. Every realtor knows the danger exists when you go to some of these places alone. For a while there was somebody out there called the Real Estate Rapist. He attacked and robbed women in empty houses. My mother…”
He didn’t finish. I waited. Nothing.
“What