Wilde Lake(41)

“Rudy’s public defender. We told her we had—come into some money, that we were going to take a mortgage on the house, said we wanted to hire someone. At least, I think that was the sequence of events. Things have happened—so fast. Ten days ago, we didn’t even know Rudy was sleeping rough again.”

“Isn’t that a British term?”

“It is.” Mrs. Drysdale is allowed to speak to this at least. “But Rudy liked it. He said it was more like the way he lived. He wasn’t homeless. Our door was always open to him. Always.”

“As long as he was willing to abide by a few house rules,” Mr. Drysdale mutters.

“Our door was always open to him. He is our son.” The second part of Mrs. Drysdale’s comment, made under her breath, seems directed more at her husband than at Lu.

“When was the last time you saw him?” No answer. “Christmas? Thanksgiving?” Lu, who feels herself in danger of sinking into the rump-sprung sofa, leans forward. “I mean, when was the last time he stayed with you?”

Mrs. Drysdale’s eyes dart back and forth. Arthur Drysdale has his arms crossed on his chest. Something happened here. Lu’s mind races through the possibilities. Her eyes sweep over Mrs. Drysdale, but it’s Mr. Drysdale who has uncrossed his arms and started to rub his right thigh about midway up on the outside, kneading it with his knuckles.

“I’m sorry, I’m so scattered—when was the last time Rudy lived with you,” she repeats while standing, so the question will feel tossed off, conversational, something said to fill the silence of departure.

“It was 2013,” Mrs. Drysdale says swiftly. “For the summer. He was with us all summer back in 2013.”

“Not a single night since then?”

“Not a single night.” But it’s Mr. Drysdale who says this.



Medical records are private, but some ambulance records are public. It takes much of the afternoon, but by 5 P.M., Lu has found what she needs: a private ambulance transported someone from the house on Rain Dream Hill to Howard County Hospital on August 5, 2013. No 911 call, but the emergency room would have informed the police if they had any suspicions it was a criminal matter. Working backward, Lu finds a police report for the address, made three days later, but no mention of Rudy Drysdale—who, as his mother just told her, lived with them the summer of 2013. Arthur Drysdale had come into the emergency room with a stab wound to his right thigh. He blamed the attack on a mysterious intruder, a home invasion in which nothing was taken. He said he came home to find a strange man in the house and the man grabbed a pair of scissors and jammed them into his leg. No arrest was ever made. Lu, bureaucracy lifer that she is, can decode the flat, seemingly nonjudgmental language of a police report. The police knew Arthur Drysdale was lying and probably wrote it off as a man trying to save pride after a “domestic.” If he didn’t want to rat his wife out for attacking him with a pair of scissors, what did they care? The incident was listed as an assault. But an attack in a home invasion should have carried a far more serious charge. And why no call to 911? Because the Drysdales were trying to avoid the authorities altogether. Whatever innocuous story they came up with didn’t pass muster at the hospital and the cops were called. OK, fine, would you believe an attack by a stranger?

Mr. Drysdale walked in, surprising Rudy, and he was attacked. Or maybe they had a quarrel. Whatever. It all works for Lu. That’s a violent episode, within the past eighteen months.

Oh, the Drysdales might try to bluster through a grand jury hearing without confirming this, but they won’t. They don’t have the balls to carry this lie, now that the stakes are so high. True, Lu will have a hard time introducing this information during trial unless Rudy testifies, but it’s key. No criminal record for violence? Sure. But Fred can’t get away with claiming that Rudy has no history of violence, and if that day comes, she’ll put Mr. Drysdale on the stand. She should tell Mike and his team to canvass the shelters in the city, just in case Rudy ever had to cave and stay in one when the weather was particularly bitter, as it’s been for the past several winters. If he’s ever behaved violently or erratically there, the staff might remember. She rubs the bruise from yesterday, thinks of Mr. Drysdale, his hand reaching for the spot where his son stabbed him. He’s lucky to be alive.

Luckier than Mary McNally, that’s for sure.

Lu had thought that Mr. Drysdale ruled the roost. Now she sees that Mrs. Drysdale does, at least when it comes to Rudy. He was allowed to come home as long as he followed a few rules. Rudy, stop stabbing your father. Lu remembers those piles and piles of things in the alcove off the kitchen, the animal scent on the cushions, which also seemed to smell like the outdoors. That’s where Rudy slept. Continues to sleep, without his father’s knowledge. There was that sliding patio door right there, leading to a deck off the back of the house, another door below. How easy it would be for a mother to leave one of those unlocked, how accustomed a man could become to sliding in late at night and leaving before daybreak. Lu imagines her own Justin as an adult, broken by life or some not-yet-understood brain chemistry. Could she ever turn her back on him? No, no, she couldn’t. She, too, would leave a door unlocked, make sure that her son never had to sleep outside, even if he had hurt someone else in the family.

So assuming that option was available to Rudy Drysdale, why was he in Mary McNally’s apartment?