“Did you talk with him then?”
She shook her head from side to side before she answered. “Only to say good-bye to Amanda as they left.”
I took Kate Meade through four more years of Amanda’s sudden visits, at least one every six months. The episodes of tearful nocturnal flights made little sense without the substance of the revelations that my victim had made to her best friend over the years, but the pattern of conduct established before the jury the profound unhappiness in her relationship with her husband.
I tried to lay the foundation for the expert witness whom I planned to call later in the case, the one who would explain some of the dynamics of domestic violence. I expected her to be able to answer the question of why Amanda Quillian did not simply leave Brendan, the question I had been asked about my spousal-abuse victims more times than I could possibly count.
Kate Meade had been responding to my queries for more than ninety minutes by the time I caught her up to the last lunch the two women had together on October 3 of the previous year.
“You told us that you snapped this photograph-People’s two in evidence-at about two o’clock in the afternoon?”
“Yes, just before we paid the check.”
“And for the record, it’s fair to say that Amanda is smiling, am I right?”
“She was very happy that day.” Kate nodded to the jurors.
“If you know, Mrs. Meade, where was Brendan Quillian on October third?”
“He was in Boston, Ms. Cooper.”
Lem Howell didn’t mind that tidbit of hearsay. It helped him to have his client as far away from the scene of the crime as possible.
“Do you know why Amanda was so happy?”
“Yes, I do. I certainly do. She had made some decisions about her future, about ending her marriage. She told me that-”
“Objection.”
“Sustained. You can’t tell us what she said.”
“Sorry, Your Honor. I gave her a business card-the name and phone number of a locksmith. It was a man I’d used when my children’s nanny lost her keys the week before. I made an appointment for him to change the locks at Amanda’s house the next morning, before Brendan was due back in town.”
Kate Meade had blurted out the sentences in rapid-fire sequence, then slumped back in her chair as though satisfied she had done her best for her friend without a chance of interruption from Howell.
“What time did you and Amanda Quillian leave each other on the corner of Madison Avenue and Ninety-second Street?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes after I took this photograph.” Kate Meade lifted a handkerchief embroidered with pink flowers out of her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. Then balling it up in her hand, she pointed at the life-size picture of her friend on the easel beside her.
“Did you speak to Amanda Quillian again after that?”
“Yes, I called her shortly before three o’clock. Preston suggested to me that we invite her to dinner that evening since she was alone, and so I called to tell her what time to come over.”
“At what number did you call her?”
“On her cell phone. I called on her cell because I wasn’t sure whether she would have reached home yet.”
“Did she answer?”
“It went to voice mail. She picked it up a few minutes later and called me back.”
“Was that the last time you heard from Amanda Quillian?”
Kate Meade’s fingernails clipped each other more loudly than before. “No, ma’am.”
“What happened next?”
“I was opening the door to our apartment when my own cell phone rang again,” Kate said, tearing up as she hung her head. “She must have hit redial, it was so fast.”
“Objection, Your Honor. This speculation, this guesswork, this ‘must have,’ ‘should have,’ ‘could have’ business is-”
“Sustained. Keep your voice up, will you, madam?”
Kate Meade lifted her head, picked out her favorite juror-the teacher-and locked eyes with her. “I flipped open my phone and I could hear Amanda screaming. Just a long, terrifying scream.”
“Did she say anything, any words you could understand?” This excited utterance, as the law called it, was an exception to the hearsay rule. I was confident that the judge would allow Kate’s testimony about this last call.
“First Amanda screamed. That’s the only awful noise I could hear. Then she started crying and speaking to someone at the same time.”
I lowered my voice and waited for Kate Meade to stop hyper-ventilating a bit. “Do you have any idea with whom she was speaking?”
Kate shook her head.
“Did you hear what she said?”
“Very clearly. She said, ‘Brendan sent you, didn’t he? Brendan sent you to kill me.’ They’re the last words I ever heard Amanda say.”
“Did the other person ever speak while your phone line was open?”
“He didn’t speak, Ms. Cooper. He just laughed. Amanda screamed one more time and the man just laughed.”
I paused, letting the jury absorb the impact of the image Kate Meade had just re-created. “Was there anything distinctive about the laugh? Anything that you recognized or can describe to us, Mrs. Meade?”
“I remember he had a deep, gruff voice. He sounded like a madman, like he was enjoying the fact that he was torturing poor Amanda,” she said, again pressing the handkerchief to her eyes. “I could still hear her screaming- more muffled at the end. And then the phone line went dead.”
3
“I’m Lemuel Howell, Mrs. Meade. I’m sorry we haven’t had the opportunity to meet before today, but I have some questions to ask you as well,” he said to the witness, following a twenty-minute break given the jurors to refresh themselves. Howell wanted to make it clear to them that I had an advantage he had been denied.
He was polite and charming to Kate Meade, but whatever brief period of comfort she had achieved in recalling her friendship with Amanda during the first part of the direct examination had been wiped out by the last. Her body tensed up, and she wrung the handkerchief in her hands as her eyes darted back and forth between Brendan Quillian and his lawyer.
“So you’ve known Brendan for more than half your life, haven’t you?” Howell had been standing behind his client, hands resting on his broad shoulders, and patted him on the back before walking closer to the jury box. He was telling the panel that he not only represented Quillian, but liked him, too.
Kate smiled wanly and nodded.
“You’ll have to speak up, for the record,” Judge Gertz said.
“Yes. Yes, sir. I’m thirty-four now. I met him when I was sixteen.”
“Spent time with him during your high school days, did you?”
“Yes.”
“Saw him often throughout your college years?”
“Occasionally.”
Howell ticked off a litany of social events at which Kate Meade and the Quillians had spent time together. There were intimate family gatherings and celebrations of every variety, countless business functions in which the Meades had participated, and enough philanthropic work that both couples had engaged in that might have allowed the defendant to call on Mother Teresa as a character witness.
