The Victim (25 page)

“
In fact, Bryan hadn’t called you all night, had he?”

She looked up at the ceiling, her bottom lip pressed between her teeth. “Not that I recall.”

“
In fact, Bryan hadn’t called you all day.”

“
Um…I’d have to check my phone. But I don’t think we had spoken that day.”

“
Would it be safe to say that the last time Bryan called you was three days prior to the night you guys went to Blue Room?”

Her shoulders rose and fell. “Beats me.”

“
It would be safe to say that, Ms. Avery. Bryan called you on Friday the 10th to tell you that you had some mail at the house.”

She crossed her jaw, glancing down in contemplation. “I think it was that Friday. Yeah.”

“
So from Friday until you texted him and asked him out for drinks, you two had no communication.”

“
That’s right.”

Anton scribbled down some notes to comment on during argument. The State was trying to portray Bryan as a jilted husband who couldn’t stand being separated from his wife, so much so that he was willing to kill her. Anton planned to highlight the lack of communication as evidence that Bryan respected the separation and while he understandably wanted to reconcile, he was okay with giving her space.

“
So had you not texted Bryan to meet for drinks on the night of the 13th, then you probably wouldn’t have spoken to him at all, right?”

“
Objection. Speculation.”

“
Sustained. You don’t have to answer that, Ms. Avery.”

The questions came with a rhythm. He was building steam, steadily undoing the damage that had been done on direct. He was firm but even-keeled, not flying off the handle or doing anything to provoke the witness. His questions were direct and called for affirmative answers. He was locking in her testimony.

Fifty-six jury trials, over thirty Arthur Hearings, he was in the zone. He could handle her, despite her lies. He could beat her at her own game without sacrificing himself. She was just a witness. He didn’t imagine her naked or the taste of the vodka on her tongue. That side of her was entirely removed from the equation. Liar or not, she had to commit to a story. But Anton knew he could outplay the deception through good lawyering.

He made checkmarks next to the bullet-points he’d written on his legal pad. He was crafting his defense through the testimony of a state witness.
Bryan was just a regular guy who had had, like so many, a few hiccups in his marriage.

“
Ms. Avery,” he said, his voice teeming with confidence. “After having drinks with Bryan, you agreed to go back to your apartment.”

“
He didn’t want me to walk home alone that late at night.”

“
But you were the one who drove him back to your apartment in his car, right?”

“
He had had two drinks and he didn’t want to risk a DUI.” She glared at him. “Very dangerous to drink and drive, as I’m sure you know. You could kill someone out there.”

He swallowed hard. His heart thumped in his chest. “And once you got back to the Templeton, you allowed him to come in with you.”

“
He insisted on walking me to my door. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that.”

“
You signed him in as your guest.”

“
Yes.”

“
And then you rode up thirty-six floors in an elevator with him.”

“
Yes.”

Anton stepped away from the podium, began pacing back and forth across the floor. “He just stood there in the elevator. He didn’t try to put his hands on you.”

“
Not there he didn’t.”

“
And he walked you down the hallway to your apartment.”

“
Yes.”

Anton stopped there. He wasn’t ready to engage her about the details of the crime itself. On direct her story had been believable. Her tone and delivery had been authentic. But the content of the story was only worth as much as the credibility of the person telling it.

He cleared his throat. “You don’t work, do you, Ms. Avery?” Daniella looked to Sylvia for some sort of guidance. “Don’t look to the prosecutor for the answer, Ms. Avery. Please, just tell this court. Do. You. Work?”

She bit her lip, letting out a quiet huff. He was getting under her skin.

“
No. I haven’t worked since just before I got married.”

“
So we’re talking about over a year.”

“
Yes.”

“
So if your separation were to lead to a divorce, you would probably have to go back to work?”

“
Objection.” Sylvia stood. “Your Honor, I’m not seeing the relevance here.”

“
Overruled. Ms. Avery, please answer.”

“
Uh…I suppose. I hadn’t really thought of it.”

“
Oh you hadn’t?” Anton took long measured strides across the floor. “You’re accustomed to a certain way of living, am I right?”

She bared her teeth before gaining control. She sipped her water if only to distract herself.

“
I guess.”

“
You guess?” He threw up his hands for dramatic effect. “You drive a fifty thousand-dollar Mercedes SUV.” He counted on his fingers. “You live in an apartment that must cost you what, forty-five hundred a month? Before that you lived in a house in Coconut Grove that at last appraisal was worth over one-point-four million. You’ve spent the last year of your life married to a man who’s the president of a company worth seventy-five million. And you expect this court to believe that the thought of being alone and having to fend for yourself didn’t cross your mind?”

Sylvia wanted to leap up and object but she knew that the subject was ripe for cross-examination.

“
You think I made this all up to get money out of him?”

I know you made this all up
, he thought. But he wasn’t going to sacrifice himself. Not when he had her backed into a corner.

“
Well, you have to admit, if you two divorced you were looking at taking a step down in terms of your lifestyle. Is it beyond reason to think that you wrapped a belt around your own neck and made this story up in the hopes that Bryan would pay you off?”

Daniella’s face strained with frustration. She rubbed her wrist, nervously fiddling with her watch. “That’s ridiculous.”

“
Is it? Is it really? Considering there are no independent witnesses to this alleged break-in and attempted murder. Of all things, Ms. Avery, is it beyond reason to think that a person can’t wrap a belt around their own neck and pull
really
hard to cause the kind of marks that those photographs in evidence depict?”

“
It isn’t beyond reason, Mr. Mackey. But that’s not what happened here. Bryan practically broke down my door and almost choked me to death with his belt!” Her creamy skin flushed red.

“
And why would he do that, Ms. Avery? After not speaking to you for three days and presumably giving you the space you wanted, why would he accept
your
invitation to go out and let you drive him back to
your
apartment and accompany you up the elevator and down the hall to
your
door? Was this all done with the plan of coming into your apartment uninvited and trying, as you and the prosecutor seem to believe, to kill you?”

“
I don’t know what was on his mind, Mr. Mackey. I only know what I experienced. But then again,” she sneered, “I wasn’t surprised. This is what Bryan does.”

Anton felt his insides churning. He set his hand on the podium for balance.

What did she mean,
This is what Bryan does?

The most basic rule of cross-examination is never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer. But this required follow-up.

“
What does that mean?”

Daniella turned and looked at Bryan. Their first eye contact in over three weeks.

“
I dunno, Mr. Mackey. Why don’t you ask him about Vicki Brandt?”

CHAPTER 27

Sylvia shot off a quick text to her secretary. Within fifteen minutes, a stocky Hispanic woman in her mid-fifties walked into the courtroom holding a stack of stapled documents.

Judge Morales had agreed to a recess upon the joint request of both parties. Anton had to speak with his client while Sylvia had her staff look into the matter. Who was Vicki Brandt? Within fifteen minutes, they had clearly found out.

“
Here,” Sylvia said, shoving three stapled pages into Anton’s hand. She could barely contain the excitement in her voice. “Offense incident report from FIU police, February 13, 2005. Victim was a freshman girl named Victoria Brandt. Why don’t you take a few moments to go over it with your client? Obviously he forgot to mention that Daniella Avery is the
second
woman he’s decided to choke with a belt.”

Anton scanned the first page. “It’s just an incident report, Sylvia. He was never arrested or charged with any crime.”

“
Probably why your client never mentioned it to you.”

“
How do you know he never mentioned it?”

“’
Cause…you’d be pretty stupid to ask Daniella those questions if he had. Then again, it was a little foolish to ask her without knowing considering what we’ve now discovered. Oh well, just the veteran prosecutor in me trying to offer some helpful insight. Anyway, I hope you know that whether the crime resulted in an arrest or not, I fully intend to locate Victoria Brandt and list her as a witness. This is textbook
Williams
Rule evidence.”

Anton walked into the jury room, situated directly behind the jury box. Anton had asked Corrections to bring his client in there so they could speak in private. Bryan was seated at the conference table, his shackled legs close together.

He looked up at Anton as he stepped in the room and shut the door. “Anton, I swear. I completely forgot about—”

“
Shut the fuck up!”
He could hear a cease in the murmur of the courtroom through the door. But he didn’t care who heard him. Anton took a seat across from his client and flung the incident report at him. “Now.” Anton took a breath and steadied his nerves. “I’m your attorney. It’s my job to unravel the mess that you’re in. You’re accused of strangling a woman using a belt. That’s very specific. Don’t you think it would have been to your benefit to tell me that back in college, you were accused of barging into some freshman girl’s dorm room and choking her…
with a belt?
”

Bryan looked down at the report, clutching the edge of the pages with his cuffed hands. He gave it a cursory once-over but it seemed redundant, at the very least implied by the disinterest in his face. He knew what he had done. He didn’t need a report to confirm it.

“
I was a senior. She was a freshman. Nothing serious, just hooking up. One night we were both drunk. She thought I was messing around with her friend and she starting screaming at me, right there in the hallway of her dorm. I just wanted to get out of there but she snatched my phone outta my hand. She wanted to look through my call log. I wasn’t committed to this girl or nothing. She totally goes psycho bitch on me, all possessive and shit. She takes my phone into her room and tries to slam the door on me. I stop it with my foot and push it open and demand my phone back. She tries to keep it from me. I…I lost my cool. She had a belt dangling over the back of her chair and I grabbed it and…well…I was just trying to scare her, that’s all.”