Wilde Lake(49)

Still, she is uncharacteristically jittery. She’s gilding the lily, going for a grand jury indictment when he’s already been charged. What if the grand jury decides it’s not a murder one case? Maybe she shouldn’t have risked this.

But it’s a good trial run for the neighbor, Jonnie Forke, who can place Rudy Drysdale at the scene during the week that Mary McNally was killed. Lu has to be hard on her because she’s sure Fred is going to go after her in court. He’ll be right to do so. In her heart of hearts, Lu has trouble with anything that relies on a person’s ability to remember another person’s face. Maybe that’s her own personal bias, born of her particular inability to remember names and faces. But as the science on memory advances, she wonders how it will affect the future of criminal trials that rely on eyewitnesses. What if criminal attorneys start to use “memory experts,” the way, say, medical trials present experts on both sides of malpractice cases? Then again, the average person is reluctant to admit to a less-than-stellar memory until a certain age, although Lu knows lots of women who will cop to “mom brain” during pregnancy and menopause. The fear of dementia is part of this culture of denial, Lu believes, but she also thinks memory is part of the holy trinity of self. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you: they have a good memory, good taste, and a good sense of humor. Oh, make it the holy quartet: everyone, everyone Lu has ever met, considers themselves superb judges of character.

Jonnie Forke hangs tough on the stand, though. Too tough. They need to sand down her edges a little bit before the trial. She looks fine—in fact, she’s more attractive than Lu realized—but her personality is spiky. She’s sort of the looking-glass version of the victim, according to Lu’s investigator. A waitress at a late-night restaurant at the casino at Arundel Mills, extremely outgoing, divorced, but with grown kids and a lot of family. The night Mary McNally was killed—assuming it was December thirty-first—Jonnie Forke was at her daughter’s house for a family party, seeing in the New Year with three generations. This woman’s death would never go undiscovered for a week.

Lu asks her: “The man you saw that week—was he clean-shaven?”

Trick question. Lu knows Drysdale did not have a beard at the time. But does Jonnie?

“He didn’t have a beard, if that’s what you mean,” she says. “I didn’t get close enough to see how recent his shave was, but he didn’t have a full beard.”

Oh, she’s good.

“How close did you get?”

“Maybe ten feet. He was on the edge of the parking lot, just standing there. I noticed him because he had a big puffy coat. And it wasn’t that kind of cold that day, it was in the forties.”

“So you noticed his coat?”

“And his face. He didn’t have the hood up. So I saw his face and his hair.” A pause. “His hair was longer then.”

She’s really good. Credit Andi, who helped prepare her. Rudy Drysdale does have a fresh haircut, although the suit he’s wearing is almost greenish with age. Fred probably told his parents they didn’t need to splurge on a new suit for a grand jury proceeding.

“Still, he’s not an unusual-looking man, right? Brown hair, brown eyes. It would be easy to confuse him with someone else.”

“Not for me. People in my job, you pay attention to faces, make eye contact. It’s the difference between a decent tip and a good one.”

“And where do you work, Ms. Forke?”

“Luk Fu.” She grimaces. “It’s not like I named it. It’s a noodle bar. It’s pretty good, for the price. Those critics on Yelp can—” Lu’s eyes beseech the witness to get back on message. “They can go somewhere else if they don’t like it.”

Lu toys with her a little longer, but she’s rock-solid. Then she lets the jurors ask her questions. They, too, are curious about how she can be so certain of the ID. She’s almost too adamant, a person who never admits to being wrong. She’s certain that she never forgets a face. An unflattering thought flits through Lu’s mind: probably better with men’s faces than women’s. She just gives off that vibe to Lu. But then, Lu always feels as if she has to overtip extravagantly to make up for people’s biases about women.

Drysdale takes the Fifth, of course. Fred has instructed him not to lock in his testimony. Anything he says here can’t be contradicted in court and who knows what discovery still might bring?

They’re done by midmorning, and the grand jury hands up its indictment before lunch. Murder one.



The courthouse is theoretically within walking distance from the office—but not in January and never in four-inch heels. It’s a two-lane road with no shoulder, risky enough in daytime, dangerous at dusk. Lu drives the scant mile back to the office, parking in the permit spaces. She has no designated space here or at the courthouse, a security measure for the judges and other officers of the court. Back inside the Carroll Building, she shuts herself up in her office. This isn’t the kind of situation in which one does a victory lap. She has to act as if she never doubted she would win. Grand juries are supposed to be slam dunks for prosecutors.

She spends the afternoon attacking the usual raft of phone messages, then tries to put a dent in the e-mail. She tells Della she’s available for media calls, but there are no media calls. Mary McNally’s murder received maybe four paragraphs in the big newspapers, while Rudy Drysdale’s arrest and initial charge were considered only slightly more newsworthy. The Howard County Times, now owned by the Beacon-Light, is content to use the press release put out on the HoCoGov’s Twitter feed and Facebook page.