“Right. Of course. Anyway, I’m going to be doing criminal defense work for them. And I thought you should hear it from me: I’m defending Rudy Drysdale. Defending him—and invoking Hicks.”
“You want to go to trial within a hundred eighty days?”
“Yes. Jail is hard on Rudy. Every day he’s inside is an eternity for him. By the way, I also want a hearing on bond reduction. Rudy’s original counsel was, uh, somewhat over her head. I don’t know how your office got him locked up with no bail.”
“Because he’s a homeless man with no fixed address. But, hey, go for it. Even if you can get him bail, it’s going to be pretty high. Who’s paying for all this? Did you take this on pro bono?”
Fred laughs. “No, Howard & Howard made it quite clear that hiring me as a potential partner did not mean I was free from the burden of contributing to the bottom line, not yet. Maybe down the road I’ll have the luxury of cases that don’t pay. Rudy Drysdale is paying full freight.”
“How?” Lu asks. “He’s on SSI, and he can’t even stretch his check for a month. That’s why he broke into Mary McNally’s apartment, right?”
Fred lets that pass. “Arrangements have been made, don’t worry.”
“Aren’t you going to request a competency hearing?”
“I brought it up, but you know and I know he’s not going to meet the standard, so it’s a waste of time. My client’s only concern is that whatever happens needs to happen as soon as possible. Jail is physically painful to him and erodes his mental state. He needs to be outdoors. Do you know he walks, every day, all day, in all kinds of weather?”
Lu has no intention of telling Fred what she knows about Rudy Drysdale. Fred has some kind of ace in the hole. She needs to flush it out.
“Absent a new development,” she says, “I don’t see a deal on this one. So how fast do you want to go?”
“I can go as fast as you can. This will be the only thing on my plate for a while.”
So it’s a grudge match, pure and simple. Fred is going to try and show Lu that it wasn’t his fault that he pulled away from trials, that the state’s attorney has too much other stuff to do and can’t focus effectively on trial work. And it’s not a bad case for a good defense attorney. She wonders if he will argue that Rudy was in the apartment pre-or postmortem. Which would she argue, as a defense attorney? She runs through the possible scenarios. Premortem. He breaks in, then leaves, never even sees Mary McNally. Then why does he touch the thermostat upon departing? No, he’s going to stick to the postmortem discovery. Fred’s going to argue that Rudy didn’t adjust the thermostat, only that he touched it for some bullshit reason. He’s going to introduce a phantom third party, one who didn’t leave prints. He can spin whatever fairy tales he wants to spin. That’s the advantage of being a defense attorney.
“Fine,” she says. “My secretary will be in touch with the schedule. I’m really glad you landed on your feet, Fred. It’s nice to see you enthusiastic about a case. How did Rudy’s parents even know to contact you?”
“I didn’t say it was Rudy’s parents who contacted me,” he says.
“Who else would it be?” Lu asks.
He’s determined to have the last word: “By the way, even though I’m not challenging his competency, I am considering a ‘not criminally responsible’ plea.”
“He’ll still do time. He might do it at Patuxent”—Maryland’s facility with a unit for offenders with psychiatric problems—“but he’ll still be inside.”
“True. And in the end, I have to do what he wants to do. Rudy says he’s innocent. That’s good enough for me.”