Wilde Lake(66)

The medical record from the ER was entered into evidence.

“There are marks on both shoulders, but the bruises were only on the right side of your face. Does that sound right to you?”

“Yeah.”

The boys were asked if they were right-handed or left-handed. Each one said he was right-handed.

Nita’s father was left-handed. Her father, Al Flood, who was the reason that Bash and Noel had left Nita on her steps and fled, not even bothering to ring the bell. If the Flood brothers were famous for being raucous, their father was more so. Randy had told me he was the one who had punched a hole in the Nairns’ living room wall, during a particularly rowdy poker game.

Boiled down to the testimony before the grand jury, it all seems so obvious, even thirty-five years later. A jealous girl felt she had been spurned. She wanted revenge. Or she feared the wrath of her father, who probably did beat her when he discovered her drunk on the doorstep. She said she had been raped. It was easier than telling the truth. The kindest interpretation was that she had lied to end the beating, that she hadn’t set out to punish Davey at all. Or that she was confused, the next day, unclear on the events of the night before. She didn’t remember vomiting in Bash’s car, didn’t even remember getting into Bash’s car.

It was possible, in 1979, for such things to happen and not make the news. If we’re honest, I think we know it’s possible today, as long as no one pulls out a phone and begins taking photos or video. Again, they were all minors. Under any circumstances, Nita Flood’s name would have been protected. But the initial police report, taken at the Howard County ER, was never made public. The accused was seventeen. It could—and should—have remained confidential.

Yet it didn’t. The story got out, traveling through that octagon of a school with such speed and ferocity, it was as if lightning had struck the metal railings that circled the hallways. Within a week, all the students seemed to know the story and they favored the vengeance version. Nita Flood had lied. She had tried to ruin Davey’s life, torpedo his chances for Stanford and medical school. I heard about the stories from Randy, whose sisters brought home the high school gossip. Nita lived just three houses down from them.

“They said she pulled a train,” Randy reported to me, his eyes wide.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

“You don’t know.”

“I do.”

“Then tell me.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“You don’t know.”

We were walking around the lake. It was a blustery January day, but we couldn’t figure out anything else to do. Teensy was waxing the floors and said we couldn’t stay inside unless we wanted to help.

“It’s when you do a bunch of guys, one after another.”

“That’s not possible,” I said. “You can only have sex when you’re in love. Besides, my brother was there and he’s never had sex.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

And I couldn’t imagine Noel, either, doing such a thing. It was hard enough to imagine Davey had done it. Bash, of course, I could envision. But only with Lynne.

Lynne, it turned out, was the source of the stories. She and Bash had broken up again and she was angry with him. She told people that Bash and Nita had sex that night when he took her home, which seems unlikely, given the vomit. Yet the rumor grew and grew. Four boys, eight boys, sixteen boys. Her brothers, her father. Nita Flood would have sex with anyone.

At the end of the semester, Nita Flood transferred to Centennial High School, where she finished her senior year, the first Flood to earn a real high school diploma, as opposed to a GED. But she didn’t show up on graduation night. She took a bottle of pills the week before and ended up in the ER again, this time needing her stomach pumped.

And that’s when her brothers decided to go looking for Davey Robinson and his friends. Did they intend to kill them? Did they understand what it meant to take a knife and shove it into another person? Were they any wiser than I was the day I stood next to the culvert, ready to hit Randy Nairn across the back of his head with a stick? Certainly, Ben Flood never anticipated falling on his own knife when AJ tackled him from behind. Perhaps AJ did save Davey’s life that night. But Ben Flood lost his. As I understand AJ’s quite personal definition of karma, he broke even at best.





APRIL 1


Jury selection is a misnomer. It is more properly jury elimination: the lawyers, prosecution and defense alike, meet in circuit court to select the people they don’t want to serve. For a first-degree murder charge, Lu will have a large pool from which to choose, including a good number of recidivists in the bunch, as she thinks of them, people who have served before. Her staff investigator has already pored over the list of citizens called today, checking to see who had experience in the jury pool—and what that experience was.

Howard County is a good place to be a prosecutor. Law-abiding citizens, concerned with their quality of life, with warm fuzzies for the people paid to protect and serve them. Murder is shocking here, and the federal investigation into possible gang activity distressed some old-timers, who never thought “urban” problems could find their way to Howard County. Advantage: Lu.

But one determined contrarian can infect eleven law-and-order types. Lu will pay particular attention to anyone who brings a book to jury duty, which indicates someone who expects to spend at least a day in court. If it’s a crime novel, so much the better. But there are outliers, respectable citizens happy to serve, who end up being enormous pains in the ass. Lu distrusts early Columbia “settlers,” despite the fact that her family was among them. That first generation of Columbia homeowners, now in their seventies and eighties, skew bleeding-heart liberal. Rudy’s status as one of them, along with his mental health issues, could win him sympathy with that crowd. And there are crotchety libertarians scattered throughout the county, people who think that North Laurel doesn’t belong in Howard County, that Prince George’s County should be forced to annex it. If people “down there” want to kill one another—that’s their problem.