Bad blood

4

“The sign on the door still says LADIES, doesn’t it?” I asked Mike.

The four stalls behind me were empty in the dingy gray-tiled bathroom around the corner from my eighth-floor office. I had filled a sink with ice-cold water and was splashing it on my face while he watched.

“I just came in to make sure you hadn’t flushed yourself out of the building. What the hell’s taking you so long?”

“I needed a quiet place to think. No Monday-morning quarterbacks, no phone calls from the boss, no excuses from Kate Meade. I’m trying to cool down.”

“It’s like a hot box in here.”

“I’m adjusting my temper, not my body heat. Keep that woman away from me or I’ll kill her.”

Judge Gertz had recessed the proceedings for lunch and I was trying to regroup after the shock of Meade’s testimony. I dried off and picked up my pale yellow suit jacket from the wooden table below the mirror.

“I thought broads don’t sweat.”

“We don’t. I perspired. I sat in front of those jurors while my star witness was eviscerated in silken-smooth form by Lem Howell, turned crimson from the top of my scalp to the soles of my feet, and willed the tears I was holding back not to fall so that they trickled out through every pore of my body instead.”

“I got lunch sitting on your desk. C’mon.”

“I’m too nauseous to eat.”

I had waited in the courtroom until the judge declared a recess and Artie Tramm had cleared it of all spectators. I called my paralegal, Maxine, from my cell phone and asked her to send Mike up with Mercer Wallace, the six-foot-six first-grade detective who was Mike’s closest friend and former partner.

They had flanked me as I walked down the long corridor to the elevator, past the more aggressive members of the press corps who wanted my reaction to the testimony.

I obeyed Mercer’s direction to walk on without turning my head, ignoring the questions reporters tossed at me about Kate Meade and whether the shocking information would affect the rest of my case.

“Hey, Alex-you look like you just got hit by a Mack truck. You call that leading off with your best shot or what?” one reporter yelled out as he tried, with no luck, to thrust a microphone past Mercer’s arm, while another asked if I expected to keep things as lively as this every day of the trial.

Mike opened the door of the restroom and walked me the short distance to my office. My secretary, Laura, would screen my calls while I’d try to regroup with the advice of the two detectives, who had as much experience in the courtroom as I did.

Mercer was standing in the doorway talking to Laura but grabbed my arm as I walked by. “I’ve got Kate in the conference room down the hall. You’ve got to see her.”

“What I really have to do is revise my strategy for the afternoon. This witness blew up in my face, taking her dignity-and all her credibility-with her. Lem stuck it to me right before we started this morning, and now I’ve got to think about the wisdom of using any of Amanda’s other friends on the stand. I need to get some forensics before this jury today. I’ve got to make them understand what a brutal killing this was. Kate Meade can take a hike.”

I picked up the phone and dialed the medical examiner’s office.

“You’ve got to calm her down, Coop,” Mike said. “You can’t just let her walk out the door to the wolves.”

I shook a finger at him. “I should take lessons in etiquette and interpersonal relationships from you? Forget it. You deal with her. You be the diplomat for a change.”

Jerome Genco, the pathologist who had autopsied Amanda Quillian, came on the line. “Sorry to do this to you, Jerry, but I need you in one hour. You’re going to have to testify this afternoon.”

“You told me next week. I have it on my calendar for Thursday.”

“Is there a body on the table?”

“No. I’m working up some frozen slides-”

“Jerry, I’ve got to have you today. Max is sending a patrol car from the Fifth Precinct to pick you up-lights and sirens. Put the slides back on ice and save me, okay? You’re going on right after the first cop who found the body.”

I hung up and headed for the file cabinet that held the rest of the medical evidence.

“Alex,” Mercer said, “Kate’s your witness. She’ll be wailing all afternoon.”

“A little time for reflection might be good for her conscience. I’ll put Genco on first and then you have to help me figure out something else that will make a strong impression before the end of the day.”

“Don’t be stubborn, now. She’s hysterical and she’s scared to death. Can’t even imagine facing her husband tonight.”

“She should have thought about that before she gave it up to Brendan Quillian.”

Mercer held out his hand to me. “Get it done.”

I followed him down the corridor, with Mike trailing us. The slim woman appeared to have shrunken even more inside her suit. Her chest was heaving between sobs, and the tears running down to her chin had streaked through her makeup.

“I hate you!” she shrieked as she looked up at me. “I hate all of you! You’ve destroyed my life. Why did you let that man do that to me?”

“Mrs. Meade, there was only one way for me to protect you from that-that piece of information. I told you from the outset,” I said, although the idea that she had been sexually involved with Quillian had never occurred to me, “that there was nothing more important in this case than your candor, your honesty.”

“But I told you the truth. I swear it’s all true.”

I put both my hands on the table, at the far end facing Kate. “I said that I needed to know every conversation you ever had with Brendan from the time Amanda first tried to leave him-the night he smacked her across the face. You never mentioned being alone with him, sipping wine in his den by the fireplace after the blizzard-not to mention-”

“That-that encounter had nothing to do with Amanda’s murder.”

“It had everything to do with Brendan, though, didn’t it? How could you possibly think he wouldn’t use that-what would you call it, Mercer?” I looked over at him before turning back to Kate. “Encounter just doesn’t nail it for me. That tryst? That betrayal of your best friend?”

I was trying to control my temper and hold my tongue. We ruined her life? How long had she been waiting, been thinking, about getting into bed with Quillian?

“Amanda didn’t love him anymore. I’ve told you that. Their entire reconciliation was an accommodation to keep Brendan in the Keating business. To stop Amanda from telling her father about the fact that she wanted to leave Brendan, while Mr. Keating was still alive. Then she had to keep the charade going after his death or Brendan would have walked off with half the Keating fortune.” Kate grimaced and barked out the last sentence. “It was all about the money.”

“And you? What was it about for you?” I tried to make eye contact with her, but she put her hands over her face.

“I was having my own problems at the time. And they are none of your business,” she said, pointing her finger at me and then repeating the gesture at Mike and Mercer. “And you, Ms. Cooper, why didn’t you get up when that-that-shyster was done and ask me to explain the circumstances of that evening? You should have-”

My eyes widened. “How could I possibly have known you had something to say that would have restored any credibility to your testimony when I didn’t even know that one-night stand had occurred? It was as though you handed Brendan Quillian a loaded gun, aimed to blow my case apart and take both of us out with it. Did you think for one minute he wouldn’t use that night to discredit you?”

“Never.”

“Whatever drugs you’re on, Mrs. Meade,” Mike said, “I’d like a handful.”

“There…are…rules, Detective,” she said in a clipped, angry voice. “There are just some things that one never-”

“Dream on, lady. Maybe they got regs in the Social Register that I don’t know about, but this scumbag’s on trial for friggin’ homicide. Quillian paid or hired or leaned on some bastard to kill his wife, and if you thought he was gonna let you sit there and nail him for all the world to see like you didn’t flop down on your back for him and throw your legs up in the air, you’re insane.”

Kate Meade had never been addressed that way, I was sure. She sat up straight and directed her venom at Mike. “I never asked for any of this. I never wanted to come here and talk about these things in a court of law. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t forced me to come down to this office that day in October. Now how am I supposed to go on with my life?”

“Mrs. Meade, you’re the one who called 911,” I said. “You’re the only person in the world who heard what Amanda said to her killer. You hurled yourself at me last fall, telling me you’d do anything in the world to help find the man who murdered her. Nobody forced you to do this.”

“I’m sorry I ever told any of you what I heard,” she said, dissolving into tears again.

“What I most need to know from you right now is whether every word you said in that courtroom is true.”

Her answer was smothered as she cradled her head in her folded arms.

“What did you say?”

“Why would I have lied?”

“Because it seems to me your feelings about Brendan Quillian are a bit complicated, at the very least. Mr. Howell is going to tell the jurors to disregard every single fact you gave to them because-trust me, he’ll think of a reason-because you hate Brendan for what he did to you that night or you hate him because he didn’t do enough for you after that night. He might even tell them you want to see him convicted because of your own guilt for betraying your best friend.”

She lifted her head, shaking it as though she had never thought of any of these things. “Why don’t they despise Brendan as much as I do? He’s the one who was unfaithful to Amanda, lots of times.”

Kate knew that I had other evidence of the defendant’s philandering. But I certainly hadn’t needed her to make that point so dramatically and so personally before the jury.

“And what do you get?” Mike asked, anticipating the next morning’s tabloid take on my first witness. “The Park Avenue Neighborhood Association Desperate Housewife of the Year award? You’ve cratered our whole case. There’s not a word you said today that the jury’ll give any weight to.”

Mike’s beeper went off and he opened the door to step out into the hallway.

I could hear Kate Meade draw breath. “You mean I’ve done this for nothing? I’ve-I’ve exposed myself to all this public humiliation for no reason?”

“You have something more serious to think about right now,” I said. “We’ve got to get you out of here by the back door so the photographers don’t ambush you. My paralegal will get police officers to take you home.”

“Photographers waiting for me? Why in the world would they-” The answer seemed to hit her as soon as she formed the question. She stood up and walked toward me. “You’ve got to come with me, Ms. Cooper. I can’t face my family alone.”

“I’m due back in court in forty-five minutes. I won’t be able to help you with this. I’m a prosecutor, Kate, not a social worker.”

“I’ll take you. I’ll stay till your husband gets home,” Mercer said. He had worked in the Special Victims Unit for almost ten years, one of the only African-American detectives in the NYPD to hold the rank of first grade. Like me, he thrived on the highly charged emotional connections in this category of crimes, which required extra sensitivity on the part of the investigator. Mike Chapman, on the other hand, worked best when there was no one to hand-hold, when the cold, hard facts were teased out of the victim’s remains and the physical evidence. He loved being a homicide cop.

Kate Meade tugged on Mercer’s sleeve like a child hoping not to get lost in a crowd. “You’ve got to make sure there are no pictures in the newspapers.”

“I’ll allow Detective Wallace to take you home, Mrs. Meade. But only on the condition that you tell him every detail-I don’t care how intimate, I don’t care how embarrassing-about what went on between you and your friend Brendan. By the time I see Mercer later tonight, if there is anything Lem Howell knows about you that I don’t, there’ll be hell to pay.”

I turned on my heels to go back to my office to wait for Jerry Genco.

“Slow down,” Mike said, pulling me into the alcove next to the conference room. “Do me a favor-don’t buy any lottery tickets today.”

“Now what? Genco’s stuck in traffic?”

“Someone got to Marley.”

“How? What do you mean? He’s on Rikers Island.” Mike had come up with a witness, a thirty-two-year-old burglar from the island of Jamaica who was awaiting trial on a string of break-ins when Amanda Quillian was murdered.

“Got out of jail free. Went directly to the operating room at Bellevue Hospital.”

“What for?” It had taken me weeks to negotiate a cooperation agreement with Marley’s lawyer, whose client would testify that six months before Amanda’s murder, Brendan Quillian had offered him twenty thousand dollars to kill his wife.

“Snitch fever.”

The only prisoners lower on the totem pole than pedophiles were rats. “He’s sick?”

“You would be, too, if someone stuck a shiv between your fifth and sixth thoracic vertebrae while you were working out in the yard.”

“You think it’s related to the case? Will he live?”

“It’s all about the case. Count on it. Critical but stable.”

I shook my head and continued on my way. “Yeah, maybe it’s just a jailhouse-”

“I mean they cut off a clump of Marley’s dreads and shoved them in his throat to try to choke him to death. The message was pretty clear that somebody doesn’t want him to talk.”