NOTE: this post contains spoilers for The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 9, "The Fifth Witness."
Lisa (Lana Parrilla) takes to the stand to testify, but despite starting out strong she winds up getting torn to shreds by Andrea (Yaya DaCosta) during the cross-examination. Thankfully, Mickey (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) has a major trick up his sleeve that bolsters Lisa's defense. Then as the trial comes to a close, a surprising new suspect emerges in the murder of Bondurant.
Here's what happened.
Lisa's testimony turns sour
On the stand, Lisa shares that when Bondurant proposed to purchase her restaurant and home, she declined. Shortly after, she alleges Bondurant started causing problems for her, blaming him for construction crews making excessively loud noise early in the morning, shutting down local streets during her restaurant's dinner rush and kicking up dust, making it almost impossible for guests to eat on the patio.
When prompted by Mickey, Lisa also states she and her husband didn't argue more than any other couple and didn't have violent fights, they just grew apart. Furthermore, while she meant the words heard in the podcast recording, the clip played for the court was perhaps her seventh take making that statement, revealing Henry (Matt Angel) had coached her to sound more passionate. While Lisa certainly didn't like Bondurant, she didn't actually want to kill him.
Unfortunately for the defense, Lisa's testimony starts to hurt her case as Andrea cross-examines her. Andrea attacks the fact Lisa led a protest against Bondurant 23 times. Additionally, Andrea lobbies several shady remarks about Lisa's temper and the chef being the reason her husband left her, which prompts Lisa to angrily lash out, "That piece of shit was lucky to have me." The judge immediately demands order in the court. Andrea also revealed that Lisa is technically still married to Jeff.
Andrea goes after Mickey's other witnesses
Mickey rolls out the rest of his witnesses, first with René (Ryan W. Garcia), a longtime employee of Lisa's restaurant. René paints his boss as an upstanding person who isn't abnormally short-fused or prone to violence. However, as Andrea questions him, she brings up his old social media post in which he vented about working for Lisa and even talked about a particular incident where he claimed, "She's crazy when she gets like this, you can't talk to her."
Next to the stand is Mickey's expert witness, Dr. Arslanian (Anna Khaja). Through a demonstration involving Lorna (Becki Newton) failing to reach the top of a mannequin replica of Bondurant, Dr. Arslanian testifies it was physically impossible for someone of Lisa's size to reach high enough to hit Bondurant on the top of the head with a hammer.
Andrea literally and figuratively took a hammer to this expert opinion by taking off her shoes, tilting the head back of the mannequin and hitting the mannequin on the top of the head with a hammer, arguing it's possible something caught Bondurant's attention the day of the murder and he looked up, therefore making the top of his head within reach to Lisa.
Alex Grant's bombshell testimony
When it comes time to question Alex Grant (Michael A. Goorjian), Mickey first strokes the witness' ego, mentioning Alex's extensive business portfolio, including the construction business, a production company and the courier service, Eagle Couriers.
Mickey then brings up the infamous email. Alex asserts Bondurant essentially just sent the threat to report Alex out of desperation. He said Bondurant was millions of dollars in debt, largely because of the stalled Terrazo building project and its failed inspections. Alex was clear to mention though, that while he was working on the project, the building passed all of the inspections.
Things heat up as Mickey brings up that Alex Grant is really Alex Kazarian, son of Sasha Kazarian, a boss in the Armenian criminal underworld who is currently serving time. Mickey goes further, bringing up Alex's uncle, who was formerly in prison but now owns a piece of Eagle Couriers and a bakery, which Alex routinely visits after he visits his dad in prison. Mickey implies Alex is carrying criminal messages between his dad and uncle, which prompts Alex to invoke the Fifth Amendment.
In the judge's chambers, Andrea blasts Mickey for purposefully planning to get Alex to plead the fifth, which now makes it impossible for her to cross-examine him. The judge is just as furious, declaring Alex's entire testimony will be thrown out. She also warns Mickey that if she finds out he planned this he'll be in trouble. Mickey of course covered his tracks as he definitely did this intentionally.
With Alex's testimony itself tossed, Mickey calls Cisco (Angus Sampson) to testify about what he found in his investigation of Alex and his family. Cisco states a building across the street from Bondurant's office has a security camera that captures footage of the side of Bondurant's building. On the day of the murder, within the timeframe of the murder, sitting outside of Bondurant's office was an Eagle Couriers' van. The implication is that Alex Grant or his associates could have committed the crime.
A new suspect emerges in the murder of Bondurant
As Mickey and Lorna review the case again to form a closing argument, René pops by with food from Lisa's restaurant. Before he leaves, René eyes a picture of Walter Kim (Keong Sim). René is curious about what the "restaurant inspector" has to do with the case. Mickey ensures him that Walter does building inspections for the city.
René finds it odd as Walter stopped by Lisa's restaurant the day before the murder, claiming he was there to do a surprise inspection of the place. Coincidentally, the ruse gave Walter access to Lisa's home property and time to plant the gloves.
With this information, Mickey, Lorna and Cisco look through the city inspection paperwork for Bonderant's Terrazo project and see Walter signed off as the inspector. Mickey and company deduce that Walter was taking bribes from Alex to initially make sure the building was passing inspections. When Bondurant sent the email to Alex, the former was by default threatening to expose Walter for taking bribes and Walter alone, or working with Alex, killed Bondurant to cover up the illegal activity.
Cisco goes to search for Walter to add some credibility to this theory, but he runs into a brick wall when finds out Walter has been missing for two days.
The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 part 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
More Lincoln Lawyer season 2 stories
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 1 recap
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 2 recap
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 3 recap
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 4 recap
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 5 recap
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 6 recap
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 7 recap
- The Lincoln Lawyer season 2 episode 8 recap
