Thirty-five years ago, I would have had no chance to have children with a biological link to their father; Penelope and Justin would not exist. How can I long for that world? Thirty-five years ago, people I loved made disastrous decisions that made perfect sense within the context of the world they knew, the moment in which they had to act. They were men of their times. How can I fault them?
Then again, people died, people were hurt, however indirectly, because of those decisions.
You can argue people died because of my decisions. Some people blame me for Rudy Drysdale’s death. But I regret his death only because I will never know exactly what happened, despite my best efforts. To be clear: Rudy Drysdale was guilty of murder and he killed himself. He hit his head against the wall of his cell over and over again. Do you know how determined you have to be to kill yourself that way? Determined and stoic. And stealthy. He beat his own brains out with a steady, persistent drumming on the wall. If he had miscalculated, he might have ended up in a coma. Maybe he wouldn’t have minded that. And maybe you’re a step ahead of me, or have been all along, but I understood, when I got that phone call, why Rudy had attacked me in court. He was counting on being shot. Suicide by cop is a glib term, but it’s real, it happens. That’s why Rudy hesitated at the courthouse doors. It wasn’t my imagination or a case of blurred vision brought on by being slammed to the floor. He wanted to be shot. Yearned to be shot. It was April 2015. Police were obligingly shooting young men everywhere. Four weeks later, Baltimore would burn in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, his body broken on a classic Baltimore bounce, an unsecured rough ride in a police van.
But Howard County is not Baltimore. Or Ferguson or North Charleston or Cleveland or—you get the point. Rudy Drysdale was a middle-aged white man in a suit that his mother had bought from JCPenney only a week earlier. Now she would bury him in it. Did that mean I got the win, even if I never made it to opening statements? I decided it did.
It was a victory that cost me almost everything I hold dear.
PART THREE
APRIL 7
Lu debates visiting the funeral home where Rudy Drysdale’s body was taken after the autopsy. Pro: She will appear magnanimous. Con: She will seem calculated and insincere. It is hard to know how such a move will play and she is—at heart, in her marrow, in her DNA—a politician. If you don’t care about what people think about you, then don’t run for public office.
So far, the media attention has helped her more than harmed her, raising her profile considerably. One Beacon-Light columnist tried to make hay out of Drysdale’s mental illness, harping on the absence of a competency hearing. “I think that’s for his attorney to speak to,” Lu demurred. “My office was open to discussing a plea of not criminally responsible.”
She then sat back and gritted her teeth as the columnist spun his story out of the most convenient details, whipping up something with about as much structural integrity as cotton candy. The piece, published two days ago, allowed Fred to suggest that Rudy’s suicide was a desperate reaction to his severe claustrophobia. So what would the columnist do with claustrophobic killers? Construct prisons with vast parks, like the fake savannahs of more progressive zoos? Seriously, Lu harrumphs to herself. But only to herself. Her father would commiserate, maybe even AJ, who is more upset about the attack than anyone. In this case, she does get a kick out of his protective big-brother side. Plus, he seems to feel a retroactive guilt about ever suggesting that Drysdale deserved more compassionate treatment.
But the column makes her feel it’s obligatory to visit the funeral home. “Paying one’s respects” is the correct and felicitous phrase. I have victim status, too, Lu reminds herself. She is still sore from that initial hit. Strange—that night, when Drysdale was still alive as far as she knew, she wasn’t particularly traumatized by the incident. It is only since his death that she sees his face whenever she closes her eyes. Expressionless, utterly impersonal. Did she really see him or is the memory manufactured, the usual attempt to project meaning backward onto a moment that made no sense at the time? And even if she did see his face, did it really tell her anything? No, he was impassive. He was doing what he had to do to achieve an end. It was about as detached as an attack could be.
Why me? But she knows why he chose her. Because she was the smallest, because he wanted to trigger the protective impulses of the armed men who might then shoot him. In that room, it had to be her or the judge, and the judge was too far away. Rudy Drysdale was trying to commit suicide by cop. When he failed, he did the job himself.
The funeral home is in Baltimore, on the long avenue that dead-ends at Fort McHenry, the military installation that was under attack when Francis Scott Key dubbed a still young country as the home of the free and the land of the brave. Twenty years ago, this was a working-class neighborhood, but now Under Armour crouches near one end of Fort Avenue, while a luxury high-rise to be known as Anthem House is under construction a few blocks to the west. AJ keeps telling Lu that Baltimore has become a magnet for millennials, spiking rents in the neighborhoods around the harbor. In this part of Baltimore, artisanal cocktails and new spins on softshell crabs are in demand, while in the “other” Baltimore an estimated one to four people live in food deserts. These are AJ’s facts, AJ’s stats, AJ’s rhetoric. Lu likes a good cocktail.
But while Lu realizes it is a markedly different city from the one she left only five years ago, she feels its working-class character is as intractable as kudzu. Parking her car, she notices a man with his T-shirt rolled up to his armpits—the better to expose his remarkably tanned barrel of a belly—kneel and pray before a shrine of Mary outside the local parish. The temperature will barely top seventy today, but in Baltimore, that’s a reason to dig out your shorts and flip-flops. There aren’t enough high-rises or Starbucks or Chipotles to eradicate Baltimore’s eccentrics.
There is only one visitor in the room assigned to Rudy’s wake—Fred, in a hushed, urgent conversation with the Drysdales.
“I’m truly sorry for your loss,” Lu says, offering her hand to both parents. Neither one takes it. “This is not what anyone wanted.”
Mr. Drysdale all but rolls his eyes: “Guess he saved the state some money, didn’t he?”
Oh, the words, the taunts that spring to mind. Saved you some money, I guess. Your son was well on his way to being the state’s paid guest for the rest of his life. But a politician must be politic, even in a room with three people who are guaranteed never to vote for her.
“I’ll always regret that he didn’t have his day in court. That doesn’t mean I don’t think he was guilty. But I also believe he was entitled to a fair trial. And that Mary McNally’s family deserved answers, a sense that justice had prevailed.”
She leans hard on the victim’s name, just as her father taught her. Another family lost someone. I won’t let you forget that.
“They didn’t even bother to show up for the trial,” Mrs. Drysdale says.
“It would have been expensive for them to be here throughout the trial. We talked about it and decided that they should save their money, come to court for the sentencing phase, when they would have been allowed to give impact statements.” In an attempt to appear modest, she adds: “Assuming, of course, there was a sentencing phase.”
“Oh, we know he did it,” Mr. Drysdale says. “But your kid is your kid. Even when he’s in his fifties. For better or worse. It’s funny that you say those words when you make your wedding vows. They should make you recite that oath the day your kid is born.”
“Arthur.” Mrs. Drysdale almost squeaks in her fury. “We do not know that Rudy did any such thing. We will never know.”
Sure, Lu thinks. If, by knowing, you mean you require some unimpeachable primary source—a video demonstrating the deed, a confession. But, by those standards, we would know almost nothing. What happened on 9/11? How do you know?
She says nothing. No one says anything. The silence should be uncomfortable, but it’s not, not for Lu. The c
asket is closed, inevitable given the circumstances of his death. She isn’t faking her sympathy. She’s genuinely sorry for the Drysdales’ loss. This is not where a parent’s journey should end, ever. Did you wash his clothes, Mrs. Drysdale? Did he come to you that night, tell you he was in trouble? What do you “know”?
“A lot of our family still lives around here, so we came back to the neighborhood to bury him,” Mrs. Drysdale says, offering an explanation for a question Lu hasn’t asked. “They’ll probably come later.”
“Oh.”
“They told us we were crazy.” The unfortunate word hangs in the air. “When we moved to Columbia. They said it was for hippies and—well, they said it was for hippies.”
“Almost forty years ago? I suppose a lot of people did think that about Columbia.”
“We did it for Rudy. He was smart, but he wasn’t the right kind of smart, not for a regular high school. We thought Wilde Lake could help him. And he did really well there and then he got into Bennington. But, even there, people were mean to him. College, high school. Almost everyone was mean to him. Columbia was supposed to be all kumbaya, or whatever, but kids are kids. We tried to do what we could to help him fit in. We let him work at the mall. We bought him a car. He thought it would make him popular, if he had a car.”
“I’m sorry,” Lu says for the second time. What else is there to say? Despite what people think, “I’m sorry” is more than adequate. When Gabe died, that’s all Lu wanted to hear. I’m sorry. She didn’t want to be told that God wouldn’t give her anything harder than she could handle. That she would be happy one day. Or that Gabe wanted her to be happy. She certainly didn’t want to answer any questions. What exactly happened? Who found his body? What was the cause of death? Were there any warning signs? Given the other choices, “I’m sorry” is really underrated.
She stands to go. Fred does, too. “I’ll walk you to your car.” She starts to protest that it’s early, the neighborhood perfectly safe, but maybe Fred needs an excuse to go. Or maybe he wants to reproach her for the passive-aggressive jab in the column.
“I liked him,” he says once on the sidewalk.
“Who?” she asks, her mind still on the Beacon-Light.
“Rudy. I offered to pay for the funeral, but his parents said a good Samaritan had stepped forward. They’re pretty strapped. I don’t know how they were going to afford the trial. I guess I didn’t want to think too hard about how they were managing this.”
Well, the trial did get cut short and there won’t be any appeals.
Fred seems to pick up on her unspoken snark.
“As I got to know Rudy, I would have been happy to do this case pro bono, not that it was my choice. Once he trusted a person—he could be good company. Funny, self-deprecating, smart. You know, he did pretty well, getting as far as he did in the world, given that no one figured out he was depressive and dyslexic until after he dropped out of college.”
Dyslexia? This is the first Lu has heard of it and her office pored over reams of medical documents about Drysdale, all provided by Fred.
“How could no one have noticed that?” Lu asks.
“It was never an official diagnosis, but it’s so clear to me that was part of his problem. People had these very narrow ideas about dyslexia a generation ago. They thought it meant you couldn’t read at all, and Rudy’s good grades helped mask his problems. Rudy had this genius for coping. He had this—not exactly photographic memory, but his memory was very visual. He taught himself to see the page, whole, and somehow, that allowed him to fake it. He was a good listener—I mean, really good, in a way almost no one is. Plus, at that crazy high school you all attended, you could take tests over, right? Rudy told me that. If you flunked, you were allowed to take the test again. And it was the same test. He could memorize the answers, the second time. I’m not describing it right, his condition. But you get what I’m saying.”
“I was years behind him at Wilde Lake. And by then, it was a totally conventional school. A good one, too.” Lu has always been a little defensive about her high school, which now has a less-than-stellar reputation. “You know, you didn’t provide any of this information. In discovery. Was dyslexia going to be a part of his defense?”
“I don’t want to talk about what might have been.”
She yearns to ask Fred if he thinks Rudy did it. Not because she has doubts. She doesn’t. She just wants Fred to admit she would have beaten him like a drum in that courtroom.
“People think dyslexia is all about reading,” he repeats. Lu tries to hide her impatience. Lord, once a man goes to the trouble of acquiring new information, he can’t let it go. What’s the point of learning something if you can’t bore others to death with the subject. “And that’s the core. But there are other issues. For Rudy, the biggest problem was spatial. He got so confused, about left and right. I thought that was why he hesitated at the courtroom door, at first. He was trying to remember which way he would have to turn when he ran out.”
So, no, she hadn’t imagined Rudy stopping at the door.
“I think it was an attempted suicide by cop.”
“Yeah, I think that, too. Now. But left and right was a huge problem for him. Sometimes, he wrote the letters on his wrist. L, R, so he would remember. I thought you should know.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t part of my case. I’m not breaching privilege here. I observed this on my own, and then his mom filled me in. I could still see the ‘R’ and ‘L’ on his wrists, the day I visited him in lockup. I thought the ‘R’ was for Rudy. But the letters were fresh that day.”
“Fred, what the hell are you talking about?”
He smiles. There’s a sense of payback here, as if he needs to tear her down because she didn’t win fair. Gee, Fred, sorry your client attacked me and committed suicide. I’m sorry, too, I didn’t get my day in court. Because I would have destroyed you.
“See you, Lu. Who knows when our paths will cross again?”
She stews all the way back to Columbia, mired in rush-hour traffic, an unpleasant novelty for her, given how early and late her days run. What the hell was Fred talking about? Right, left, who cares? She goes back to the office, cursing the Drysdales for the three hours her kindness has cost her, resigned to working late. No good deed, etc. etc.
Dusk has fallen by the time Lu thinks to glance out the window. She sees her reflection in the glass. The glass makes her think of sliding doors, a woman walking into her bedroom, discovering a strange man.
Then she thinks of the man, standing outside the apartment in the dark, choosing his point of entry.
He didn’t know right from left. He didn’t know right from left.
If Rudy had gone to the other apartment, his victim would have been Jonnie Forke, the state’s witness, the woman who saw him lurking around the complex the week before Mary McNally was killed.
Okay, so what? What difference did it make if Drysdale killed the woman behind door number 1 or the woman behind door number 2? If Jonnie Forke had any connection to Rudy Drysdale, she would have mentioned it to Mike Hunt or Andi. They would have told her over and over again to be candid, to reveal anything that might come up in court. If she knew him, recognized him from somewhere, it only would have strengthened the ID.
Lu Googles “Jonnie Forke”—nothing. Literally, nothing, which is bizarrely impressive. She plugs “Jonnie Forke” in Facebook, finds an entry for Juanita Forke. Graduated Centennial High School. No overlap with Drysdale there. Relationship status, single. She has only seventy-four friends, so she’s one of those people who actually uses Facebook for friends, yet doesn’t think to opt for the highest-security settings. To be fair, the site changes its privacy policy so often, some well-intentioned people don’t realize their fences are down. Lu can even look at all of Jonnie Forke’s friends.
Nine of whom have the surname Flood.
Jonnie Forke.
Juanita Forke.
Jonnie Flood Forke.
Juan
ita Flood Forke.
Had she given her full name at the grand jury proceeding, the syllables sliding past Lu’s ear because she was so full of adrenaline she couldn’t be bothered to note that a witness’s legal name was different from the one she used? But “Juanita” didn’t mean anything to Lu, and there was no reason for Jonnie Forke to use her maiden name.
Juanita Flood Forke.
Juanita Flood.
Nita Flood.
APRIL 8
The apartment doors at the Grove—still THE G OVE on the sign, perhaps forever THE G OVE now—have fisheyes. Did they always, or were they an add-on, a concession to the modern age and the changing nature of the people who lived here? Not that a fisheye would have saved anyone from Rudy Drysdale, no matter which door he chose. Lu stands in front of Jonnie Forke’s door for one, two, three minutes, waiting to be examined and deemed worthy of entrance. She definitely heard footsteps in the apartment after she knocked. Didn’t she? She takes a few steps backward, just in case the person on the other side of the door can’t see her. Can’t blame the woman for being extra careful. After all, a tenant was killed here not that long ago.
Killed by someone who might have been looking for the woman across the hall.
Go figure, Fred finally went the extra mile. But he didn’t share the information about Drysdale’s dyslexia with the state’s attorney’s office because there was no gain for him to advance the theory that Rudy Drysdale meant to kill Jonnie Forke. That’s ethical. Fred is not obligated to help the prosecution do its job. And it’s possible that Fred knows only that the intended victim was one of the prosecution’s key witnesses. He may not have figured out that she has a complicated history with the Brant family.
“Hi” is all Jonnie—Nita—says when she finally opens the door. Of course Lu has seen her several times since Mary McNally’s body was discovered, but only now is she seeing Nita Flood, the teenage girl she glimpsed perhaps two or three times. If anyone knows sausage, it’s Nita Flood. That was Lynne, throwing shade long before the term existed. Lu never cared for Lynne. She remembers Ariel, flushing bright red, embarrassed by her friends. The others had laughed. Had Davey laughed? Lu has never thought to connect that scrap of memory to what happened later that fall and then on graduation night. Or the time she and Randy—what was his last name?—saw Davey on the path near where Randy lived, but also where the Floods lived. I see him around all the time, Randy said. Suddenly, a bright line is shining in her mind, connecting so many isolated events. What else will be connected before she’s through?
Wilde Lake: A Novel Page 23