House Rules

by Jodi Picoult

  Helen packs herself up. --Enjoy your reprieve,|| she tells me. --This one's a slam dunk for my side.||

  --Only because you're a giant,|| I mutter.

  --I beg your pardon?||

  --I said you haven't met my client.||

  She narrows her eyes and stalks out of the courtroom.

  Behind me, Emma is locked in an embrace with Moon Murano. She looks up at me.

  --Thank you so much,|| she says, her voice breaking like waves over the syllables.

  I shrug, as if I do this all the time. In reality, I've sweated through my dress shirt.

  --Anytime,|| I reply.

  I lead Emma to the clerk's office to fill out paperwork and pick up the sheets that Jacob has to sign. --I'll meet you in the lobby,|| I say.

  Although Jacob was not in court, he had to be here while we deliberated on his behalf. And now, he needs to sign the conditions of his release and the waiver of extradition.

  I haven't seen him yet. In all honesty, I'm a little scared to do so. The testimony from his mother, and from Moon Murano, made him out to be a vegetable.

  When I approach the holding cell, he's lying on the floor, knees curled to his chest.

  On his head, he's sporting a bandage. The skin around his eyes is black and blue, and his hair is matted.

  Christ, if I'd had him in the courtroom, he would have gotten out of jail in ten seconds flat. --Jacob,|| I say quietly. --Jacob, it's me, Oliver. Your lawyer.||

  He doesn't move. His eyes are wide open, but they don't flicker as I come closer. I motion for the deputy to open the door of the cell and squat down beside him. --I have some papers I need you to sign,|| I tell him.

  He whispers something, and I lean in.

  --One?|| I repeat. --Actually, it's several. But hey, you don't have to go back to jail, buddy. That's the good news.||

  For now, anyway.

  Jacob wheezes. It sounds like one, two, three, five.

  --You're counting. You're down for the count?|| I stare at him. This is like playing charades with someone who has no arms and no legs.

  --Ate,|| Jacob says, loud and clear.

  He's hungry. Or was hungry?

  --Jacob.|| My voice is firmer. --Come on already.|| I start to reach for him but see his whole body tense an inch before my hand makes contact.

  So I back off. I sit down on the floor beside him.

  --One,|| I say.

  His eyelids blink once.

  --Two.||

  He blinks three times.

  That's when I realize that we're having a conversation. We're just not using words.

  One, one, two, three. Why five, and not four?

  I take my pen out of my pocket and write the numbers on my hand until I see the pattern. It's not ate, it's eight. --Eleven,|| I say, staring at Jacob. --Nineteen.||

  He rolls over. --Sign these,|| I say, --and I will take you to your mother.|| I push the papers toward him on the floor. I roll the pen in his direction.

  At first Jacob doesn't move.

  And then, very slowly, he does.

  Jacob

  Once Theo asked me if there was an antidote for Asperger's, would I take it?

  I told him no.

  I am not sure how much of me is wrapped up in the part that's Asperger's. What if I lost some of my intelligence, for example, or my sarcasm? What if I could be afraid of ghosts on Halloween instead of the color of the pumpkins? The problem is that I do not remember who I was without Asperger's, so who knows what would remain? I liken it to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that you peel apart. You can't really get rid of the peanut butter without taking some of the jelly as well, can you?

  I can see my mother. It's like the sun when you're underwater, and brave enough to open your eyes. She's unfocused and slightly runny and too bright to see clearly. I am that far below the surface.

  I have a sore throat from screaming so loud; I have bruises that reach to the bone.

  The few times I fell asleep, I woke up crying. All I wanted was someone who understood what I had done, and why. Someone who gave a damn as much as I did.

  When they gave me that injection at the jail, I dreamed that my heart had been cut out of my chest. The doctors and the correctional officers passed it around in a game of Hot Potato and then tried to sew it back into place, but it only made me look like the Frankenstein monster. See, they all exclaimed, you can't even tell, and since that was a lie, I could trust nothing they said anymore.

  I would not take the jelly without the peanut butter, but sometimes, I wonder why I could not have been lunch meat, which everyone prefers.

  There used to be a theory that autistic brains didn't work right because of the gaps between the neurons, the lack of connectivity. Now there's a new theory that autistic brains work too well, that there is so much going on in my head at once I have to work overtime to filter it out, and sometimes the ordinary world becomes the baby tossed out with the bathwater.

  Oliver--who says he is my lawyer--spoke to me in the language of nature. That's all I've ever wanted: to be as organic as the whorl of seeds in a sunflower or the spiral of a shell. When you have to try so hard to be normal, that means you're not.

  My mother walks forward. She's crying, but there's a smile on her face. For God's sake, is it any wonder I can't ever understand what you people are feeling?

  Usually, when I go where I go, it's a room with no doors and no windows. But in jail, that was the world, and so I had to go somewhere else. It was a metal capsule, sunk to the bottom of the sea. If anyone tried to come for me, with a knife or a chisel or a crust of hope, the ocean would sense the change and the metal would implode.

  The problem was the same rules applied to me, trying to get out.

  My mother is five steps away. Four. Three.

  When I was very small, I watched a Christian television program on a Sunday morning geared to kids. It was about a special-needs boy playing hide-and-seek with some other children in a junkyard. The other kids forgot about him, and a day later, the police found him suffocated in an old refrigerator. I did not get a religious message out of that, like the Golden Rule or eternal salvation. I got: Do not hide in old refrigerators.

  This time, when I went where I went, I thought I'd gone too far. There was no more pain and nothing mattered, sure. But no one would find me, and they'd eventually stop looking.

  Now, though, my head is starting to hurt again, and my shoulders ache. I can smell my mother: vanilla and freesia and the shampoo she uses that comes in a green bottle. I can feel the heat of her, like asphalt in the summer, the minute before she wraps her arms around me. --Jacob,|| she says. My name rises on the roller coaster of a sob. My knees give with relief, with the knowledge that I have not faded away after all.

  CASE 6: BITE ME

  You probably know who Ted Bundy is--a notorious serial killer who was linked to the murder of thirty-six victims, although many experts believe that number is closer to one hundred. He would approach a woman in a public place, gain trust by feigning injury or impersonating an authority figure, and then abduct her. Once the victim was in his car, he'd hit her in the skull with a crowbar. He strangled all but one of his victims. Many bodies were driven miles away from where they disappeared. While on death row, Bundy admitted that he decapitated over a dozen of his victims and kept their heads for a while.

  He visited the bodies and applied makeup to the corpses or engaged in sexual acts. He kept souvenirs: photos, women's clothing. To this day, many of his victims remain unknown.

  It is widely believed that the expert testimony by Dr. Richard Souviron, a forensic dentist, was what secured Bundy's conviction and eventual execution. Bite marks were found on the buttocks of the victim Lisa Levy. The first was a complete bite mark. The second was rotated so that there were two impressions of the lower teeth. This gave authorities more places to compare dental records against the mark, which increased the odds of a match.

  The analysis of the bite marks was possible only bec
ause a particularly savvy crime scene investigator who was taking pictures at the scene included a ruler in the photo of the bite mark, in order to show scale. Without this photograph, Bundy might have been acquitted. The bite mark had degraded past identifiable by the time the case was presented in court, so the only useful evidence of its original size and shape was that photograph.

  6

  Rich

  --Care to do the honors?|| Basil asks me.

  We are crowded into Jessica Ogilvy's bathroom--me and the pair of CSIs who have been combing the house for evidence. Marcy's taped up the windows with black paper and is standing ready with her camera. Basil has mixed the Luminol to spray all over the tub, the floor, the walls. I flip the light switch and plunge us into darkness.

  Basil sprays the solution, and suddenly the bathroom lights up like a Christmas tree, the grout between the tiles glowing a bright, fluorescent blue.

  --Hot damn,|| Marcy murmurs. --I love it when we're right.||

  Luminol glows when it meets the correct catalyst--in this case, the iron in hemoglobin. Jacob Hunt might have been smart enough to clean up the mess he'd left behind after murdering Jess Ogilvy, but there were still traces of blood that would go far toward convincing a jury of his guilt.

  --Nice work,|| I say, as Marcy takes a furious run of photographs. Assuming the blood matches the victim's, this latest piece of the puzzle helps me map out the crime.

  --Jacob Hunt comes for his appointment with the victim,|| I muse, thinking aloud. --They argue, maybe knocking over the CD rack and the mail and a few stools, and he corners her--right here, apparently--beating her up and eventually striking a blow that kills her.||

  As the Luminol loses its glow, I flip on the lights. --He cleans up the bathroom, and then he cleans up the victim, dressing her and dragging her to the culvert.||

  I glance down at the floor. In full light, you can't see the chemical, and you can't see the blood at all. --But Jacob's a CSI buff,|| I say.

  Basil grins. --I read this article in Esquire about how women find us sexier than firemen--||

  --Not all women,|| Marcy qualifies.

  --And so,|| I continue, ignoring them, --he comes back to the scene of the crime and decides to cover his tracks. The thing is, he's smart--he wants to pin this on Mark Maguire.

  So he thinks to himself, If Mark did this, how would he try to cover it up? As a kidnapping.

  So he puts on Mark Maguire's boots and stomps around outside, and then cuts the screens in the windows. He cleans up the CDs and the mail and the overturned stools. But he also knows Mark would be sharp enough to want to throw investigators off the trail a little, so he types up the note for the mailman and packs a bag full of the victim's clothes and takes it with him--both hints that Jess left of her own accord.||

  --You're losing me,|| Marcy says.

  --Jacob Hunt doctored his crime scene to look like it had been committed by someone else--someone who would doctor a crime scene to hide his involvement. It's fucking brilliant.|| I sigh.

  --So what are you thinking?|| Basil asks. --Lovers' quarrel?||

  I shake my head. --I don't know.|| Yet.

  Marcy shrugs. --Too bad perps never seem inclined to talk.||

  --Good thing victims do,|| I say.

  Wayne Nussbaum is up to his elbows in the chest cavity of a dead man from Swanton when I snap on a mask and booties and enter the room. --I can't hang around anymore,|| I say. For the past forty-five minutes I've been cooling my heels in Wayne's office.

  --Neither can he,|| Wayne replies, and I notice the ligature marks around the guy's neck.

  --Look, it's not like I could have predicted a murder-suicide would throw me off schedule.||

  He lifts a gleaming red organ in his palm, his eyes dancing. --Come on, Detective. Have a heart.||

  I don't crack a smile. --That the kind of stuff you learn at clown college?||

  --Yeah. It comes after Pie Throwing 101.|| He turns to his diener, a young woman who assists him during autopsies. Her name is Lila, and she once tried to hit on me by inviting me to a rave in South Burlington. Instead of flattering me, it just made me feel really old.

  --Lila,|| he says, --give me ten minutes.||

  He strips off his gloves and jacket and booties as soon as we're out of the sterile atmosphere and walks beside me down the hall to his office. He shuffles files on his desk until I see one with Jess Ogilvy's name on the tab. --I don't know what else I can tell you that my report didn't already spell out, crystal clear,|| Wayne says, sitting down. --The cause of death was a subdural hematoma, due to a basilar skull fracture. He popped her so hard he drove her skull into her brain and killed her.||

  I knew that. But it wasn't really why Jess Ogilvy had died. That was because she'd said something to Jacob Hunt that had set him off. Or maybe she had refused to say something to him--such as I feel the same way about you.

  It would be simple enough to assume that a boy who fell for his tutor--and was rebuffed--might lash out at her.

  Wayne skims through his report. --The lacerations on her back--drag marks--were made postmortem. I'd assume they occurred when the body was moved. There were bruises, however, that were made premortem. The facial ones, of course. And a few on her upper arms and throat.||

  --No semen?||

  Wayne shook his head. --Nada.||

  --Could he have worn a condom?||

  --Highly unlikely,|| the medical examiner says. --We didn't get any pubic hairs or any other physical evidence concurrent with rape.||

  --But her underwear was on backward.||

  --Yeah, but that only proves that your perp hasn't shopped for lingerie--not that he's a rapist.||

  --Those bruises,|| I say. --Can you tell how old they are?||

  --Within a day or so,|| Wayne replies. --There's not really a reliable technique to determine the age of a bruise beyond color and immunohistochemical methods. Bottom line is, people heal at different rates, so although I could look at two bruises and say one occurred a week before the other, I can't look at two bruises and say one occurred at nine A.M. and the other occurred at noon.||

  --So conceivably, the choke marks around her throat--and the fingerprint bruises on her arms--those could have happened minutes before she died?||

  --Or hours.|| Wayne tosses the folder to a pile on the side of his desk. --He could have threatened her and then come back to beat her to death.||

  --Or it could have been two different people at two different times.|| My gaze meets his.

  --Then Jessica Ogilvy truly did have the shittiest day on record,|| the coroner says. --I suppose you could charge the boyfriend with assault. It seems like an unnecessary complication, though, if your perp already confessed to moving the body.||

  --Yeah. I know.|| I just didn't understand why that bothered me so much. --Can I ask you something?||

  --Sure.||

  --Why did you stop being a clown?||

  --It wasn't fun anymore. Kids screaming in my face, barfing their birthday cake in my lap ...|| Wayne shrugs. --My clients here are much more predictable.||

  --I guess.||

  The coroner looks at me for a long moment. --You know the hardest case I ever did?

  Motor vehicle accident. Woman rolls her SUV on the highway, and her baby pops right out of the car seat and suffers severe spinal injuries and dies. They brought the whole car seat into the morgue. I had to put that dead baby back into the seat and show how the mother didn't buckle it the right way, which is why the kid fell out.|| Wayne stands up. --Sometimes you have to keep reminding yourself that you're in this for the victim.||

  I nod. And wonder why that label makes me think not of Jess Ogilvy but of Jacob Hunt.

  The boy who answers the door at the Hunt household looks nothing like his brother, but the minute I show my badge, the color drains from his face. --I'm Detective Matson,|| I say. --Is your mother home?||

  --I, uh ... I plead the Fifth,|| the kid says.

  --That's great,|| I tell him. --But i
t wasn't a particularly probing question.||

  --Who's at the door?|| I hear, and then Emma Hunt steps into my line of sight. The minute she recognizes me, her eyes narrow. --Did you come to check up on me? Well, I'm here, with the boys, just like the judge ordered. Close the door, Theo. And you, || she says,

  --can talk to our lawyer.||

  I manage to wedge my foot in the door just before it closes. --I have a search warrant.|| I hold up the piece of paper that will allow me to comb through Jacob's bedroom and take away what might constitute evidence.

  She takes the paper out of my hand, scans it, and then lets the door swing open again. Without speaking, she turns on her heel. I follow her into the house, pausing when she picks up the phone in the kitchen and calls her baby-faced lawyer. --Yes, he's here now,|| she says, cupping her hand around the receiver. --He gave the paper to me.||

  She hangs up a moment later. --Apparently I don't have a choice.||

  --I could have told you that,|| I say cheerfully, but she turns away and walks upstairs.

  I keep a few steps behind until she opens a door. --Jacob? Baby?|| I stand in the hallway and let her talk softly to her son. I hear words like required and legal, and then she reappears with Jacob at her side.

  It takes me by surprise. The kid's whole face is black and blue; a butterfly bandage disappears into his hairline. --Jacob,|| I say. --How are you doing?||

  --How does it look like he's doing?|| Emma snaps.

  I'd been told by Helen Sharp that Jacob was released into his mother's custody pending the competency hearing. She had said that, apparently, Jacob couldn't handle jail well. We had laughed about it. Who can handle jail well?

  My job, as a detective, is to go behind the scenes and see what strings are controlling the puppets. Sometimes that means collecting evidence, or swearing out arrest warrants, or getting background information, or conducting interrogations. But it usually also means I miss what is going on onstage. It was one thing to arrest Jacob and send him off to his arraignment; it is another thing entirely to see this boy in front of me again in this condition.

  He doesn't look like the kid I interviewed a week ago. No wonder his mother wants my head.

  She takes Jacob's hand to lead him down the hallway, but we are all stopped by the thin, reedy sound of the boy's voice. --Wait,|| Jacob whispers.