The Fifth Witness

The Fifth Witness

Author	Michael Connelly
Language	English
Series	Mickey Haller, No. 4
Genre	crime fiction, mystery novels
Publisher	Little, Brown
Publication date	April 5, 2011
Publication place	USA
Media type	Print (hardback)
Preceded by	The Reversal
Followed by	The Drop

The Fifth Witness is the 23rd novel by American author Michael Connelly and features the fourth starring appearance of Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Michael "Mickey" Haller. The Fifth Witness was released in the United States on April 5, 2011.

Plot

Because of a shortage of paying clients for criminal defense work, attorney Mickey Haller's practice has focused on defending civil cases about mortgage foreclosures. Haller's marketing of his services in both English and Spanish has provided him with enough work that he has hired his first associate, first-year lawyer Jennifer "Bullocks" Aronson. However, his very first foreclosure client, Lisa Trammel, is arrested and charged with the murder of the senior vice-president of WestLand Financial who has been in charge of the foreclosure on her property, in WestLand's parking garage. Trammel, who had fallen behind on her mortgage when her husband abandoned her and their nine-year-old son, had become the leader of an anti-foreclosure group, and the case was sufficiently high-profile for Haller to agree to do her criminal defense and plan to get paid by selling the movie rights. According to the forensic evidence, the victim, who was six-foot-two, had been murdered with a surprise hammer blow from behind, on the very top of his head, while standing up.

Haller and his staff – his office manager and ex-wife, Lorna Taylor; his investigator and Lorna's husband, Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski; and Aronson – work on various elements of Trammel's defense, while Haller spars with prosecutor Andrea Freeman, against whom Haller has never won. Among the discovery documents provided by Freeman is a letter from the victim to Louis Opparizio, owner of ALOFT, a foreclosure mill, threatening to pull all of WestLand's business from ALOFT due to discrepancies and fraud uncovered by Haller and Aronson in the Trammel foreclosure paperwork. At the time, ALOFT was about to be sold to a public company, with Opparizio about to receive over $60 million in the deal, which Haller thinks provides Opparizio with a motive for murder. Trammel's runaway husband visits Haller and asks to be paid off to provide exculpatory evidence, but Haller refuses.

Opparizio contests Haller's subpoena to testify in the murder case, with the implicit support of Freeman. The subpoena hearing is held in open court with the media present, and the public attention influences Opparizio to withdraw his challenge and to agree to testify. Then, right on the eve of trial, Freeman produces two pivotal pieces of DNA evidence: a trace of blood from the victim on a pair of Trammel's shoes and a hammer with a trace of blood from the victim that was the murder weapon (and could be circumstantially linked to Trammel), both of which the court agrees to admit despite the late disclosure, gutting most of Haller's planned defense. Meanwhile, Haller learns that a person close to Trammel was keeping tabs on the defense for Opparizio and uses him to mislead Opparizio about the defense strategy. Haller believes that Opparizio really might be behind the murder and so should have stated that he would "take the Fifth" if asked about the letter from the victim, which may have resulted in the judge blocking his trial testimony. Cisco and Aronson focus on Opparizio.

Freeman's case introduces the evidence for the maximum impact, with the circumstantial assumptions early (such as Trammel's link to the hammer) and the DNA evidence last. Haller's case begins with four witnesses: Trammel, who proclaims her innocence; a forensics expert, who testifies as to how difficult it would have been for Trammel, who was five-foot-three, to have landed a surprise fatal blow from behind on the top of the victim's head while he was standing; Aronson, who testifies to the several irregularities found in the foreclosure documents and that Trammel was in no immediate danger of losing her home; and a former ALOFT employee, who testifies about his former job, which involved tracking Trammel and others, although his testimony is largely offset by introduction of evidence that he was fired from ALOFT for theft and dishonesty. In Haller's opinion, although each is helpful, none of them offset the DNA evidence.

Haller's case thus comes down to the next witness, Opparizio, whom he wants to take the Fifth Amendment on the witness stand, thus creating a plausible alternate killer for the jury (making him both the fifth witness in sequence and the "Fifth" witness). Although Opparizio claims that the letter from the victim had no impact on ALOFT, Haller turns out to know more than Opparizio had expected, including Opparizio's name change, Opparizio's family's membership in the Gambino crime family and a Department of Justice report naming Opparizio as a "sleeper" member of organized crime (which Haller shows to the judge to justify his line of questioning). Before Haller can detail Opparizio's crime connections in open court, Opparizio takes the Fifth, ending his testimony. The judge instructs the jury to disregard Opparizio's entire testimony, but Haller's last witness, Cisco, shows that a car owned by one of Opparizio's businesses (the business Haller was asking about when Opparizio took the Fifth) had entered the WestLand parking lot prior to the murder and had left shortly after the murder but before WestLand opened for business. The jury quickly acquits Trammel.

At Trammel's victory party that weekend, she uses her helium tank to make balloons for kids. Watching her, first Haller and then Aronson realize that Trammel actually had committed the murder, by leaving balloons in the victim's reserved parking space to cause him to look up at the ceiling, enabling her to sneak up on him and to hit him with the hammer on the top of his head. The sound that some witnesses had thought were gunshots (no shots having been fired) was Trammel popping the balloons before leaving. Haller also realizes that his meeting with Trammel's runaway husband was a fake, since the husband wasn't at the party looking to cash in on Trammel's new fame. He confronts her, and is shaken by her indifferent response.

Three weeks later, Haller's law practice is booming. He then gets a call from Trammel, in which she both accuses him of tipping off the police to dig up her garden (where her husband's body is apparently buried) and begs him to represent her. He refuses, telling her that he has just filed to run for Los Angeles County district attorney because he no longer wishes to associate with people like her.

External links

• Official Michael Connelly Website