The Victim (51 page)

“
Ms. Brandt,” Sylvia said, angling away from the podium toward the defense table. “Have you ever known a man named Bryan Avery?”

She leaned in until her lips were almost touching the microphone. “Yes.”

Her muffled voice resonated throughout the room.

“
How did you come to know Mr. Avery?”

A short-lived smile spread across her face. “I was a freshman at FIU. I met him at a party off campus.” She shrugged, gazing awkwardly at Sylvia as if trying to figure out how else to answer the question. She giggled nervously. “Thought he was cute.”

“
Did you and Mr. Avery begin a relationship?”

“
Somewhat.”

“
What does ‘somewhat’ mean?”

Vicki summoned the unspoken courage found by those seated in the witness box. She looked right at Bryan, their first eye contact in nine years.

“‘
Somewhat’ means he would call me when he wanted, you know…”

Sylvia beckoned her to answer further. “When he wanted what, Ms. Brandt?”

“
Sex. He would call me to come pick him up from the bars or from some house party. Or to come over to his apartment at like three in the morning.”

Sylvia feigned shock. “You mean he never took you out for dinner, or to a movie?”

Anton stood. “Objection, Your Honor. Relevance.”

Morales pondered the objection. She could have allowed Sylvia some leeway, but she knew that her question was designed to make the jury think he was less than a gentleman. It didn’t go to the heart of the matter.

“
Sustained.”

“
How long did your relationship, if you can call it that, last with Mr. Avery?”

“
Three months, give or take.”

“
Did that relationship come to a definite end?”

Her eyes began to well. “Yes it did.”

Sylvia softened her voice. “Can you tell the jury about how your relationship ended?”

Anton felt dizzy. He could feel the momentum shifting as Vicki began to explain the night that Bryan strangled her in her dorm room. He had gained so much ground with his cross of Officer Villarreal that was now being lost to his client’s past misdeeds.

Vicki struggled with the words, a crimson flush spreading on her round cheeks. It was hurt and humiliation and anger, all bottled up and stewing inside her for nine years, the kind of deep-seated pain that manifests itself as cancer.

One night, a severely drunk Bryan had called Vicki asking her to pick him up from a friend’s apartment off campus. She had been asleep but knew, when she heard her cell phone buzzing on her nightstand at a quarter to eleven, who it was and what he wanted. It wasn’t that she was opposed to an after-hours relationship. It was just that she was hoping that it would eventually lead to more.

In her pajama pants and halter-top, she drove to the address he had provided. She recognized the building. She had picked him up there before. She waited for him outside, spotting a shadowy figure in her headlights. She recognized him from a hundred yards away, if only by his sloppy gait.

He got into the passenger seat of her Camry, stinking of cigarettes and cheap vodka. The drive back to campus would have been quicker than the drive back to Bryan’s apartment. It was her intention just to drop him off but his wandering hands and fingers, probing her body as she tried to drive, implied that he had other plans.

Halfway back to campus Bryan’s cell phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket, flipping it open. Vicki admitted that she was suspicious when she saw him trying to shield the screen with his body. She had heard rumors that he was seeing a friend of hers on the sly.

Anton half-stood. “Objection, hearsay.”

“
Sustained.”

“
Try to tell us what happened without telling the jury what someone else may have told you,” Sylvia instructed the witness.

She closed her eyes and took a slow, measured breath. “We got back to my dorm. I figured he could come in, you know? Sleep it off. My roommate had driven back to St. Pete for the weekend so I had the room to myself. So we’re walking down the hall. He’s stumbling all over the place, being real loud and obnoxious. It’s late and I’m nervous that he’s going to wake the RA. But that was his way. He was a senior in a freshman dorm so he felt all invincible, I guess.”

She explained how just a few feet from her door, he tried to quietly check his phone. Drunk and clumsy, he dropped it on the floor. When Vicki knelt down to pick it up for him, her suspicions were confirmed.

“
It was my friend, Sarah, calling him. He thought he was being slick so he had her in his phone as ‘S Cell,’ but I knew. We all knew. Everyone told me he was sneaking around on me. So I get upset, right? I snatch the phone away and demand to know how long he’s been messing around on me. He’s not answering me, just trying to grab his phone back. So I decide I’m not going to give it back to him.” She shook her head, acknowledging now how her melodramatic eighteen-year-old self might have felt that her life was over. “I unlock my door and only open it just enough to squeeze through. I’m thinking he’s going to try to come in and get it. So I’m pushing hard against the door to close it, but he’s a guy so he’s like totally stronger than me and he pushes it right open.”

She stopped, reaching for the cup of water the bailiff had poured for her. Tears ran down her cheeks, leaving purple makeup trails.

Vicki recounted the scene for the jury as if it were yesterday. In true college fashion, her room was in a state of disarray. Jeans balled up on the floor. A spread of books on her comforter. The belt she had worn out the night before for a friend’s birthday hanging over the back of her desk chair.

“
His mood…it was like a switch. One minute he’s drunk and stupid. The next, he’s kind of annoyed. Then he was pissed. You can tell, you know? His face turned red and he was like biting down real hard. His eyes looked crazy. It was like he was quickly looking around the room for something and he sees the belt. He grabs me and puts…” She paused, clamping her eyes shut and holding her breath, trying to let it pass. “He slips the belt around my neck and he tugs. I thought he was going to break my neck.”

She described the way the stressed leather rubbed her skin raw. How she tried to pull away but he just tugged harder, bringing her to her knees.

The intensity of her tears grew until the hysteria muddled her words. Judge Morales asked her if she needed to take a break.

Anton couldn’t look at the jury. He was too afraid to assess their reaction.

Vicki composed herself and continued.

“
He was just yelling; he kept on yelling. Told me I was a dumb little freshman slut and that he could see anyone he wanted. He told me he could kill me and nobody would care because I was just poor white trash and his dad had the money and connections to get away with it.”

Sylvia didn’t ask a follow-up question immediately. She wrote Vicki’s response on the legal pad at the podium, in all likelihood reminding herself to repeat it, verbatim, to the jury during her closing argument.

Sylvia rushed her through a few questions about why she chose not to prosecute. Vicki’s testimony was authentic enough that a jury could understand how an eighteen-year-old girl in love with an older guy wouldn’t want to hurt him legally, even after he’d hurt her physically. It’s a common symptom of domestic violence.
He hits me because he loves me
.

“
Were any financial arrangements made that may have influenced your decision not to press charges against the defendant?”

“
Yes,” Vicki said, staring daggers at Bryan through her makeup-stained eyes. “His father paid my tuition in full.”

Sylvia smiled and thanked the witness. Knowing that proving the payment of Vicki’s tuition by Bryan’s father required proper documents and witness authentication, Anton presumed that the custodian of records from Florida International University was waiting out in the hallway. Sylvia would call him next. It would be brief and technical testimony. The emotional component had already been satisfied.

“
Cross, Mr. Mackey?” Judge Morales asked.

Anton stood slowly, hoping to delay the inevitable. He carried his legal pad and a copy of the FIU Police incident report dated February 13, 2005.

He set the documents side-by-side on the podium for quick reference.

He took a breath, calming himself. She was a victim, a witness who had to be handled delicately. He could easily lose the jury if he let his trial rage get the best of him.

“
Good morning, Ms. Brandt.”

She smiled but only because it was a conditioned response. There was nothing sincere about it. She dabbed her eyes with a handful of Kleenex.

“
Good morning.”

“
Ms. Brandt, when you and Bryan went to school together, it was no secret that he was known as the rich kid on campus.”

She sniffled. “I dunno. I mean, yeah, it was pretty obvious that he had money.”

“
You noticed that he drove a Cadillac Escalade.”

“
Yeah, the thing was huge.”

“
A twenty-one-year-old kid, driving a sixty-five thousand-dollar car.”

“
I didn’t know how much it cost.”

“
He dressed nicely.”

She nodded. “He did.”

“
Had a very nice apartment off campus.”

“
Yeah.”

“
And you, through no fault of your own, were living on student loans.”

“
Yeah. Look, my dad’s a bus driver; my mom works housekeeping at the Fontainebleau. I don’t come from money. Neither of them went to college so it was important to me. They just couldn’t pay for it.”

Anton looked down at his legal pad, taking a few seconds to reevaluate his cross. She was already a sympathetic enough witness. He didn’t need to belabor the point. There was enough there to argue in closing that she had fabricated the story in an effort to get paid.

Anton turned to the FIU police report. “On the night the police came to your room, you had been drinking.”

“
Yes.”

“
In fact, the responding officer noted that you were showing signs of impairment.”

Melissa Rhodes stood. “Objection as to what the officer may have observed, Your Honor.”

“
Sustained as to the form of the question.”

Anton reworded. “When the officer arrived in your dorm room, you were exhibiting signs of impairment.”

Vicki shrugged, confusion etched into her face. “Uh…I guess?”

“
You guess?”

“
I suppose. Are you asking me was I drunk?”

“
Yes, I am.”

“
I mean, I think I had been drinking earlier, but then I went to bed. Bryan called me to come pick him up. I was already asleep.”

“
Were you drunk?”

“
I don’t remember.”

“
But you were showing signs of impairment when the cop arrived!”

“
I might have been a little buzzed.”

“
A little buzzed before you got up, got behind the wheel of your car, and drove to go pick up Bryan?”

Vicki huffed. “Maybe.”

“
So you exercised poor judgment that night, driving after getting drunk.”

She scraped the peeling paint off of her thumbnail. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Confidence edged its way back into his voice. He crafted a quick roadmap in his mind and knew where he would take her.

“
So it’s safe to say that your decision-making on the night of this alleged incident in your dorm was questionable.”

She looked at Bryan, raising her eyebrows with sass. “In more ways than one.”