House Rules

by Jodi Picoult

  I don't know what he was doing there--apparently it had to do with some kind of testing that was being administered at my school instead of his, and he was waiting with his aide for my mother to come pick him up. But the minute he saw me and called out my name, I knew I was screwed. At first I pretended I didn't hear him, but he ran right onto the field. --Friend of yours, Hunt?|| Tyler asked, and I just laughed it off. I whipped the Frisbee in his direction, extra hard.

  To my surprise, Jacob--who couldn't catch a freaking cold if he tried--nabbed the Frisbee and started to run with it. I froze, but Tyler took off after him. --Hey, retard,|| he yelled at Jacob. --I'm gonna kick your ass!||

  He was faster than Jacob, big surprise, and he tackled my brother to the ground. He lifted his hand to deck Jacob, but by then I was on his back, yanking him off and straddling his body as the Frisbee went spinning into the street. --You don't fucking touch him,|| I yelled into Tyler's face. --If anyone's going to beat up my brother, it's going to be me.||

  I left him in the dirt, coughing, and then took Jacob's hand and walked him to the front of the school, where I couldn't hear the girls whispering about me and my dork of a brother, where there were enough teachers milling around to keep Tyler and Wally from jumping me in revenge.

  --I wanted to play,|| Jacob said.

  --Well, they didn't want you to play,|| I told him.

  He kicked at the dirt. --I wish I could be the big brother.||

  Technically, he was, but he wasn't talking about age. He just didn't know how to say what he meant. --You could start by not stealing someone's goddamn Frisbee,|| I said.

  And then my mother drove up and rolled down the window. She was smiling a huge smile. --I thought I was only picking up Jacob, but look at that,|| she said. --You two found each other.||

  Oliver

  I am sure that the jury isn't absorbing anything that Marcy Allston, the CSI, is saying.

  She's so drop-dead gorgeous that I can practically imagine the dead bodies she stumbles across sitting up and panting.

  --The first time we came to the house, we dusted for fingerprints and found some on the computer and in the bathroom.||

  --Can you explain the process?|| Helen asks.

  --The skin of your fingers, the palms of your hands, and the soles of your feet aren't smooth--they are friction ridge skin, with lines that start, stop, and have certain contours or shapes. Along those lines of skin are a series of sweat pores, and if they become contaminated with sweat, blood, dirt, dust, and so on, they leave a reproduction of those lines on the object that's been touched. My job is to make that reproduction visible. Sometimes you need a magnifying glass to do it, sometimes you need a light source. Once I make the print visible, it can be photographed, and once it can be photographed I can preserve it and make a comparison against a known sample.||

  --Where do those known samples come from?||

  --The victim, the suspects. And from AFIS, a fingerprint database for all criminals in the United States who have been processed.||

  --How do you make the comparison?||

  --We look at specific areas and find patterns--deltas, whorls, arches, loops--and the core, the centermost part of the fingerprint. We make a visual comparison between the known fingerprint and the unknown one, looking for general shapes that match, and then we look at more specific details--ending ridges, or bifurcations where one line might split into two. If approximately ten to twelve similarities occur, a person trained in fingerprint identification will be able to determine whether the two fingerprints came from the same individual.||

  The prosecutor enters into evidence a chart that shows two fingerprints, side by side. Immediately, Jacob sits up a little straighter. --This fingerprint on the right was found on the kitchen counter. The one on the left is a known sample taken from Jacob Hunt during his arrest.||

  As she walks through the ten little red flags that show similarities between the prints, I look at Jacob. He is grinning like mad.

  --Based on your comparison, did you come to a conclusion?|| Helen asks.

  --Yes. That this was Jacob Hunt's fingerprint in the kitchen.||

  --Was there anything else of note during your processing of the house?||

  Marcy nods. --We found a kitchen window screen that had been cut from the outside, and the sash jimmied and broken. A screwdriver was found in the bushes below the window.||

  --Were there any fingerprints on the sash, or on the screwdriver?||

  --No, but the temperature that day was extremely cold, which often compromises fingerprint evidence.||

  --Did you find anything else?||

  --A boot print beneath the windowsill. We made a wax cast of the print and were able to match it to a boot on the premises.||

  --Do you know who that boot belonged to?||

  --Mark Maguire, the victim's boyfriend,|| Marcy said. --We determined that these were boots he kept at the house, since he often stayed there overnight.||

  --Did you find anything else in the house?||

  --Yes. Using a chemical called Luminol, we found significant traces of blood in the bathroom.||

  Jacob writes a note on the pad and gives it to me:

  Bleach + Luminol = false positive for blood.

  --At some point did you receive a 911 call from the victim's cell phone?|| Helen asks.

  --Yes. Early on January eighteenth, we responded to a culvert approximately three hundred yards from the home where Jess Ogilvy had been house-sitting, and found the victim's body.||

  --What was the position of the body?||

  --She was propped up with her back against the cement wall, and her arms were folded in her lap. She was fully clothed.||

  --Was there anything else noteworthy about how the body was found?||

  --Yes,|| Marcy replies. --The victim was wrapped in a distinctive, handmade quilt.||

  --Is this the quilt that you found with the victim that day?|| the prosecutor asks, and she offers Marcy a bulky roll of fabric in all the colors of the rainbow, the pattern marred by dark brown areas of dried blood.

  --That's the one,|| Marcy says, and as it is entered into evidence, I can hear Emma draw in her breath.

  Helen thanks her witness, and I stand up to cross-examine. --How long have you been a CSI?||

  --Four years,|| Marcy says.

  --So not that long, then.||

  She raises a brow. --How long have you been a lawyer?||

  --Have you seen a lot of dead bodies at crime scenes?||

  --Fortunately, not as many as I would if I worked in Nashua or Boston,|| Marcy says.

  --But enough to know what I'm doing.||

  --You said that you found a fingerprint at Jess Ogilvy's house, in the kitchen, that belongs to Jacob.||

  --That's right.||

  --Can you say that the presence of that fingerprint identifies him as a murderer?||

  --No. It only places him at the scene of the crime.||

  --Is it possible that Jacob might have left the fingerprint there at some other point?||

  --Yes.||

  --You also found Mark Maguire's boot prints beneath a window sash that had been jimmied and cut,|| I say. --Is that correct?||

  --Yes, we did.||

  --Did you find Jacob's boot prints anywhere outside?||

  --No,|| Marcy says.

  I take a deep breath. I hope you know what you're doing, I think silently, looking back once at Jacob. --And the blood in the bathroom--were you able to determine whether it belonged to the victim?||

  --No. We tried to run a DNA test, but the results were not conclusive. There were traces of bleach in the swabs, and bleach often compromises DNA tests.||

  --Isn't it true, Ms. Allston, that when sprayed on bleach, Luminol also gives a positive reading?||

  --Yes, sometimes.||

  --So the traces of blood you found might be traces of bleach instead.||

  --It's possible,|| she concedes.

  --And the alleged blood in the bathroom might simply ha
ve been Jess cleaning the tile floor with Clorox?||

  --Or,|| Marcy says, --your client cleaning blood off the tile floor with Clorox, after he murdered her.||

  I wince and immediately back off. --Ms. Allston, you can tell a lot about a body from the way that person is positioned at death, can't you?||

  --Yes.||

  --Was there anything that struck you about Jess Ogilvy's body when it was found?||

  Marcy hesitates. --She wasn't discarded. Someone had taken the time to sit her upright and to wrap her in a quilt, instead of dumping her.||

  --Someone who cared for her?||

  --Objection,|| Helen interrupts, and like I expect, it's sustained by the judge.

  --Do you know my client, Ms. Allston?||

  --Actually, I do.||

  --How?||

  --He's a crime scene junkie. He's been at a few I've been called to, and he starts giving us advice we don't particularly want or need.||

  --Have you ever let him help out at a crime scene?||

  --Absolutely not. But it's pretty clear he's fascinated by all that stuff.|| She shakes her head. --Only two kinds of people show up at crime scenes: the serial killers who are checking their handiwork, and the crazies who think police work is like the television shows and want to help solve the crime.||

  Great. Now she's got the jury wondering which of those two categories Jacob fits. I decide to cut my losses before I completely implode. --Nothing further,|| I say, and Helen gets up to redirect.

  --Ms. Allston, did Jacob Hunt show up at the culvert when you were processing the body?||

  --No,|| she says. --We didn't see him at all.||

  Helen shrugs. --I guess this time, there was nothing for him to solve.||

  Jacob

  If I do not become a crime scene investigator famous in my field, like Dr. Henry Lee, I am going to become a medical examiner. It is the same work, really, except that your canvas is smaller. Instead of processing an entire house or a stretch of woods to determine the story of the crime, you coax the story out of the dead person on your autopsy table.

  There are many things that make dead bodies preferable to live ones: 1. They don't have facial expressions, so there's no worry about mistaking a smile for a smirk, or any of that nonsense.

  2. They don't get bored if you're hogging the conversation.

  3. They don't care if you stand too close or too far away.

  4. They don't talk about you when you leave the room, or tell their friends how annoying you are.

  You can tell, from a dead body, the sequence of events that occurred: if the abdominal gunshot wound caused the peritonitis and septicemia; if those complications were the cause of death, or if it was the respiratory distress syndrome they led to that was the final blow.

  You can tell if the person died in a field or was left in the trunk of a car. You can tell if a person's been shot in the head before the body was set on fire or vice versa. (When the skull is removed, you can see the blood that has started seeping as a result of the brain being boiled, a thermal injury. If you don't see that, it usually means that execution was the cause of death, not the fire. Admit it: you wanted to know.) For all these reasons, I am very attentive when Dr. Wayne Nussbaum takes the stand to testify. I know him; I've seen him before at crime scenes. Once, I wrote him a letter and got his autograph.

  He lists his credentials: Yale University Medical School followed by rotations in pathology and emergency medicine before becoming an assistant medical examiner for the State of New York and, finally, twenty years as chief medical examiner in Vermont. --Did you perform an autopsy on Jess Ogilvy?|| asked Helen Sharp.

  --I did. On the afternoon of January eighteenth,|| he said. --The body was brought to my office in the morning but had to thaw.||

  --What was the temperature outside when she was found?||

  --Twelve degrees, which allowed for excellent preservation.||

  --How was she dressed?||

  --She was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt and a light jacket. She had on a bra, but her underwear was on backward. There was a tooth wrapped in toilet paper in a small front pocket of the sweatpants, and her cell phone was zipped into the pocket of her jacket.||

  Usually on CrimeBusters, when a medical examiner takes the stand, it is a five-minute testimony, tops. Helen Sharp, however, walks Dr. Nussbaum through his findings three times: once verbally, a second time with a diagram of a body while Dr.

  Nussbaum draws his findings in red marker; and finally with photographs he'd taken during the autopsy. Me, I'm loving every minute. I don't know about that lady on the jury, though, who looks like she is about to throw up.

  --You said, Doctor, that you took samples of Jess Ogilvy's urine, heart blood, and vitreous humor from her eyes for toxicology purposes?||

  --That's correct.||

  --What's the purpose of those exams?||

  --They let us know what foreign substances are in the victim's bloodstream. In the case of the heart blood and the vitreous humor, it's at the time of death.||

  --What were the results?||

  --Jessica Ogilvy did not have any drugs or alcohol in her system at the time of death.||

  --Did you take photographs of the body during the autopsy?||

  --Yes,|| he says. --It's routine procedure.||

  --Did you make any notations as to unusual marks or bruises on the body?||

  --Yes. The victim had bruises on her throat consistent with choking and bruises on her arms consistent with being restrained. The bruises were reddish violet and had sharp edges, which suggested that they occurred within twenty-four hours of death. In addition, the skin on her lower back had been scraped postmortem, most likely as a result of being dragged. You can see the difference in the photograph, here, between the two sorts of bruises. The postmortem one is yellowish and leathery.|| He pointed to another photograph, this one of Jess's face. --The victim was badly beaten. She had suffered a basal skull fracture, bruises around the eyes, and a broken nose. She was missing a front tooth.||

  --Were you able to tell if those injuries were pre-or postmortem?||

  --The fact that bruising occurred indicates the injury was prior to death. The tooth; well, that I can't say for sure, but it did seem to be the one tucked in her pocket.||

  --Can you punch someone so hard in the face that they lose a tooth?||

  --Yes, it's possible,|| Dr. Nussbaum says.

  --Would someone who had been punched hard in the face present with the same sorts of injuries you found on the victim's body?||

  --Yes.||

  --Doctor,|| Helen Sharp asks, --after having done the autopsy and studied the results from the toxicology labs, did you form an opinion within a reasonable degree of medical certainty about the manner of death?||

  --Yes, I ruled it a homicide.||

  --What was the cause of Jess Ogilvy's death?||

  --Blunt head trauma, which led to subdural hematoma--bleeding inside the skull, consistent with a blow or a fall.||

  --How long does it take to die from a subdural hematoma?||

  --It can be immediate, or it can take hours. In the victim's case, it was relatively soon after injury.||

  --Did the bruises you found on Jess Ogilvy's neck and arms contribute to her death?||

  --No.||

  --How about the tooth that was knocked out?||

  --No.||

  --And there were no drugs or alcohol in her system?||

  --No, there were not.||

  --So, Dr. Nussbaum,|| Helen Sharp says, --the sole cause of fatal injury to Jess Ogilvy that you found during the autopsy was a basal skull fracture that caused internal bleeding in the skull?||

  --That's correct.||

  --Your witness,|| the prosecutor says, and Oliver stands up.

  --All those injuries you found on Jess Ogilvy's body,|| he says. --You have any idea who caused them?||

  --No.||

  --And you said that a subdural hematoma could be caused by either a blow or a fall.||r />
  --Correct.||

  --Isn't it possible, Doctor,|| Oliver asks, --that Jess Ogilvy tripped and fell and suffered a subdural hematoma?||

  The medical examiner looks up and smiles a little.

  It's one of those smiles I hate, the kind that might mean You are so smart but might also mean You moron. --It's possible Jess Ogilvy tripped and fell and suffered a subdural hematoma,|| Dr. Nussbaum says. --But I highly doubt that she tried to strangle herself, or knocked out her own tooth, put on her underwear backward, dragged herself three hundred yards away, and wrapped herself in a quilt in a culvert.||

  I laugh out loud--that's such a great line it might have been scripted for CrimeBusters. My mother and Oliver both look at me, and that expression's easy to read. They're both one hundred percent pissed off.

  --Perhaps now's a good time for a serenity break?|| the judge asks.

  --Sensory!|| Oliver snaps. --It's a sensory break!||

  Judge Cuttings clears his throat. --I'll take that as a yes.||

  In the sensory break room, I lie underneath the weighted blanket. My mother's in the bathroom; Theo has his head on the vibrating pillow. He talks through his teeth and sounds like a robot. --Tickle me, Elmo,|| he says.

  --Jacob,|| Oliver says after a minute and thirty-three seconds of silence. --Your behavior in this courtroom is making me very angry.||

  --Well, your behavior in this courtroom is making me very angry,|| I say. --You still haven't told them the truth.||

  --You know it's not our turn yet. You've seen trials on television. The prosecution goes first, and then we get to undo the damage Helen Sharp's done. But Jacob, Jesus. Every time you have an outburst or you laugh at something a witness says, that adds to the damage.|| He looks at me. --Imagine you're a juror, and you've got a daughter about Jess's age, and then the defendant laughs out loud when the medical examiner talks about the gruesome way Jess died. What do you think that juror's saying to himself?||

  --I'm not a juror,|| I say, --so I don't really know.||

  --What the medical examiner said at the end was pretty amusing,|| Theo adds.

  Oliver frowns at him. --Did I ask you for your opinion?||

  --Did Jacob ask you for yours?|| Theo says, and then he tosses me the pillow. --Don't listen to him,|| Theo tells me, and he slips out of the sensory break room.

  I find Oliver staring at me. --Do you miss Jess?||

  --Yes. She was my friend.||