Wilde Lake(3)

The headline in the next day’s Light was: STATE’S ATTORNEY’S SON SAVES FRIEND’S LIFE IN BRUTAL REVENGE PLOT.

So my brother made news on graduation night, after all.

Credit the Floods points for patience: it had been almost seven months since their sister had claimed Davey had raped her. The story had fallen apart quickly, a vengeful tale told by a spiteful girl. Given that both were under eighteen, the accuser and the falsely accused, my father had tried to be discreet. “For both of their sakes,” he said. But it was one thing to shield the facts from the newspapers, another to keep it from the mouths of gossipy teenagers. Everyone soon learned that this sad, acne-scarred girl had tried to destroy Davey’s life. Was AJ also an intended target that night? Tom, charged as an accomplice to attempted murder, insisted not. Ben didn’t live long enough to say anything. When AJ tackled him in the woods a second time, his knife thrust upward into his heart. AJ, sobbing, led the EMTs to the body, but they couldn’t save Ben Flood.

After a mistrial, Tom pleaded out to a lesser charge and served only four years. As for AJ—they called in a special prosecutor for the grand jury probe, at my father’s insistence, and asked a state’s attorney from an adjoining county to oversee it. As our father had told AJ, there would be no special treatment for the prosecutor’s son. My brother was found to have acted in self-defense, and he left for Yale in September, happy for the anonymity that came with college, especially one where a movie star was in his class, a movie star who would be caught up in an attempted presidential assassination not even six months later. It was common then not to speak of traumatic things, to assume that a firm silence would lead to the fastest healing. So we never spoke about that night, and I assumed AJ’s friends also let it go, to the extent that they could. It was harder for some than others. But to my knowledge, the subject never came up. Not with my father and AJ, not with AJ and his friends, and no one would discuss it with me at all. Most of what I know about that night is from reading old court documents and press accounts over the past few months.

I do remember that sometimes, on cold mornings, AJ would complain of pain at the elbow joint. “The frost is on the pumpkin, Lu,” he would say to me, and his knobby elbow did look like a puny, discolored squash from certain angles. And if you knew where to look, you could see that his left arm did not hang as straight as his right. He took up yoga, in part, to combat the pain and stiffness. But most people never noticed that, and over time, I forgot as well. But it was there, if you knew where to look. My brother’s arm was crooked.





JANUARY 5, 2015


“No hard feelings?” Luisa Brant asks.

“None,” says Fred Hollister. Always Fred, Call-me-Fred, except on the nameplate he must have packed over the weekend, on which he had been identified as Frederick C. Hollister III.

Lu assumes her former boss is lying, but considers that a mark in his favor. Lies can be kind, and this one shows more character than Fred demonstrated throughout the fall, when he spoke what he believed to be unvarnished truths. Fred means that he hopes there will be no hard feelings eventually, that one day he will be able to forgive her for taking his job. Otherwise, why stop by at all? If he were truly angry, he wouldn’t show his face. Maryland politics is rife with stories of ousted state’s attorneys who purged computer files or persuaded the remaining deputies to undermine the new boss. Since Election Night Fred has been a class act.

“My family is going to Iron Bridge for dinner,” Lu says. “If you want to stop by and have a drink with us.”

“Your family?”

“Dad, my kids. AJ’s out of town again.”

He pretends to consider her offer.

“It would be nice,” Lu presses.

“It would look nice,” Fred says.

“That, too.”

Fred’s smile is genuine, if a touch wistful. “We’ll raise a glass. Soon, Lu.”

“Dad would love to see you. He thinks the world of you.” Even after the crappy things you insinuated about his daughter.

“And I’d love to see him. Only—not tonight. I’m happy for you. But I reserve the right to be a little unhappier for myself.”

“Hell, Fred, you must be awash in offers. I know at least two firms have tried to hire you since November and some of the big lobbyists in Annapolis are probably after you as well.”

“I’m not worried about finding work,” Fred says. “But, right now, I’m going to take a little time off. To spend time with my family.”

It takes her a beat to realize he’s consciously wielding that old cliché as a joke, so maybe she laughs a little too hard when she does catch on. Fred is a decent man at heart and an old friend. Lu started out with him in the Baltimore City state’s attorney office, was genuinely pleased for him when he moved out here and made the leap to top dog. Five years ago, at the lowest point in her life, he persuaded her to come out to Howard County and work for him, promising the flexibility she needed, a rare thing in the life of a prosecutor. Fred was a good state’s attorney, too, conscientious and passionate, and an excellent boss. But something happened in his second term. He did less and less trial work. He fumbled a case against a serial rapist, became gun-shy, refused to take on anything but dunkers. He was the boss, no one would have begrudged him the big trials. But his insistence on doing as little as possible in court—that had been galling to Lu on principle, even if it allowed her to flourish professionally. Fred lost his appetite for trial work. If he had been one of his own assistants, he would have fired himself long ago.