House Rules (13 page)

This is where I go, when I go:

To a country where everyone‘s face looks different from mine, and the language is the act of not speaking, and noise is everywhere in the air we breathe. I am doing what the Romans do in Rome; I am trying to communicate, but no one has bothered to tell me that these people cannot hear.

This is where I go, when I go:

Somewhere completely, unutterably orange.

This is where I go, when I go:

To the place where my body becomes a piano, full of black keys only the sharps and the flats, when everyone knows that to play a song other people want to hear, you need some white keys.

This is why I come back:

To find those white keys.

I am not exaggerating when I say that my mother has been staring at me for fifteen minutes.

Shouldn‘t you be doing something else? I finally ask.

Right. You‘re right, she says, flustered, but she doesn‘t actually leave.

Mom, I groan. There has got to be something more fascinating than watching me eat. There‘s watching paint dry, for example. Or watching the laundry cycle.

I know that I‘ve given her a scare today, because of what happened this morning.

It‘s apparent in (a) her inability to leave my side for more than three seconds and (b) her willingness to cook me Ore-Ida Crinkles fries for breakfast. She even forced Theo to take the bus today, instead of being driven into school like usual, because she didn‘t want to leave me at home alone and had already decided that I was going to have a sick day.

Frankly, I don‘t understand why she‘s so upset, when I am the one who went missing.

Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.

I‘m going to take a shower, I announce. Are you coming, too?

That, finally, shocks her into moving. You‘re sure you feel all right?

Yes.

I‘ll come up and check on you in a few minutes, then.

As soon as she is gone, I put the plate with the French fries on the nightstand. I am going to take a shower; I just have something to do first.

I have my own fuming chamber. It used to be the home of my pet fish, Arlo, before he died. The empty fish tank sits on the top of my dresser now, inverted. Underneath the fish tank is a coffee cup warmer. I used to use a Sterno, but my mother wasn‘t very enthusiastic about fire (even one burning at low level) in my room, hence the electric warmer. On top of this I make a little boat out of aluminum foil, and then I squeeze in a small nickel-size dollop of Krazy Glue. I take the mug of cocoa (nondairy, of course) my mother brought me and stick it in the chamber, too it will provide humidity in the air, even though I won‘t want to drink it after the fuming, when white scum is floating around on its surface. Finally, I place inside the drinking glass that has a known sample on it my test fingerprint to make sure everything is working.

There‘s only one thing left to do, but it makes my stomach clench.

I have to force myself to sort through the clothes I was wearing yesterday to find the item I want to fume, the one I took home from her house. And that of course makes me think of everything else, which means the corners of my mind go black.

I have to actively work to not be sucked into that hole again.

Even through the latex glove I‘ve slipped on I can feel how cold the metal is. How cold everything was, last night.

In the shower, I scrub really hard, until my skin is too pink and my eyes are raw from staring into the stream of water. I remember everything.

Even when I don‘t want to.

Once, when I was in third grade, a boy made fun of the way I talked. I didn‘t understand why his impression of me, with words falling flat as pancakes, would be funny to anyone. I didn‘t understand why he kept saying things like
Take me to your leader.
All I knew was that he followed me around on the playground, and everywhere he went, people would laugh at me.
What is your problem?
I finally asked, turning around to find him right on my heels.

What is your problem?
he parroted.

I‘d really prefer it if you could find something else to do,
I said.

I‘d really prefer it if you could find something else to do.

And before I knew what I was really planning, my fingers closed into a fist and punched him square in the face.

There was blood everywhere. I didn‘t like having his blood on my hand. I didn‘t like having it on my shirt, which was supposed to be yellow.

The boy, meanwhile, was knocked unconscious, and I was dragged to the principal‘s office and suspended for a week.

I don‘t like to talk about that day, because it makes me feel like I am full of broken glass.

I never thought I‘d see that much blood again on my hands, but I was wrong.

It only takes ten minutes for the cyanoacrylate the Krazy Glue to properly work. The monomers in its vapors polymerize in the presence of water, amines, amides, hydroxyl, and carboxylic acid all of which happen to be found in the oils left by fingerprints. They stick to those oils, creating a latent image, which can be made more visible by dusting with powder. Then, the image can be photographed and resized and compared to the known sample.

There‘s a knock on my door. You okay in there?

No, I‘m hanging from a closet rod, I say.

This is not the truth.

That‘s not funny, Jacob, my mother replies.

Fine, I‘m getting dressed.

This is not the truth, either. I am actually wearing my underwear and a T-shirt right now.

Okay, she says. Well, give a holler when you‘re done.

I wait until her footsteps fade down the hall, and then I remove the glass from beneath the fish tank. Sure enough, there are several prints. I dust them with a dual-use powder, which has contrast on both white and black surfaces. Then I dust the prints on the second item, too.

I photograph them at close range with the digital camera I got for Christmas two years ago and load the images into my computer. It‘s always a good idea to photograph your latent prints prior to lifting them, just in case you destroy them during the process.

Later, in Adobe Photoshop, I can invert the colors of the ridges and resize the prints. I can begin an analysis.

I carefully tape over the print to preserve it, intending to hide what I took away from her house in a place where no one will ever find it.

My mother, by then, is tired of waiting. She opens the door. Jacob, put on a pair of pants!

She holds her hand over her eyes but enters my bedroom all the same.

No one told you to come in, I say.

She sniffs. You‘ve been using Krazy Glue again, haven‘t you? I told you I don‘t want you fuming while you‘re in the room that can‘t be good for you. She pauses. Then again, if you‘re fuming, you must be feeling better.

I don‘t say anything.

Is that your cocoa in there?

Yes, I say.

She shakes her head. Come on downstairs, my mother sighs. I‘ll make you a fresh cup.

Here are some facts about forensics:

1. Forensics is defined as the scientific methods and techniques used in connection with the detection of crime.

2. The word
forensic
comes from the Latin
forensis,
which means before the forum. In Roman times, a criminal charge was presented in front of a public group in the forum. The accused and the victim would give testimony, and the one who had the best argument would win.

Episode sixty-seven. The one where a mutilated woman is found in a shopping cart outside a box store.

I remember that one. Keep an eye on the store manager, Jacob finishes. I‘ve seen it already, too.

He walks me to the door, his mother trailing behind. Thanks, Jacob. And Emma?

I wait until she glances up. Say it when you wake them up in the morning, instead.

* * *

When I reach Jess Ogilvy‘s place, the two CSIs who have been processing the house are standing outside in the freezing cold, staring at a cut window screen.

No prints? I say, my breath fogging in the cold.

But I already know the answer. So would Jacob, for that matter. The chances of prints being preserved in temperatures as low as these are pretty slim.

No, the first investigator says. Marcy‘s a bombshell with a knockout figure, a 155

IQ, and a girlfriend who could probably knock my teeth out. But we did find the window jimmied to break the lock, too, and a screwdriver in the bushes.

Nice. So the question is, was this a B and E gone bad? Or was the screen cut to make us think that?

Basil, the second investigator, shakes his head. Nothing inside screams breaking and entering.

Yeah, well, that‘s not necessarily true. I just interviewed a witness who says otherwise and who, um, cleaned up.

Marcy looks at Basil. So he‘s a suspect, not a witness.

No. He‘s an autistic kid. Long story. I look at the edge of the screen. What kind of knife was used?

Probably one from the kitchen. We‘ve got a bunch to take back to the lab to see if any of them have traces of metal on the blade.

You get any prints inside?

Yeah, in the bathroom and off the computer, plus a few partials around the kitchen.

But in this case, Mark Maguire‘s prints won‘t raise a red flag; he‘s admitted to living here part-time with Jess.

We also got a partial boot print, Basil says. The silver lining to it being crap weather for prints on the sill is that it‘s perfect for footwear impressions. Underneath the overhang of the gutter I can see the red splotch of spray wax he‘s used to make a cast. He‘s lucky to have found a protected ledge; there‘s been a dusting of fresh snow since Tuesday.

It‘s the heel, and there‘s a star in the center, surrounded by what look like the spokes of a compass. Once Basil photographs it, we can enter it into a database to see what kind of boot it is.

The sound of a car driving down the street is punctuated by the slam of a door. Then footsteps approach, crunching on the snow. If that‘s the press, I say to Marcy, shoot first.

But it‘s not the press. It‘s Mark Maguire, looking like he hasn‘t slept since I last saw him. It‘s about fucking time you got around to looking for my girlfriend, he shouts, and even from a few feet away, the fumes of alcohol on his breath reach me.

Mr. Maguire, I say, moving slowly toward him. You happen to know if this screen‘s always been cut?

I watch him carefully to see his reaction. But the truth is, I can amass all the evidence I want against Mark Maguire and I still have nothing to arrest him for unless a body is recovered.

He squints at the window, but the sun is in his eyes, as well as the brilliant reflection of snow on the ground. As he moves a little closer, Basil steps behind him and shoots a jet of spray wax on the boot print he left behind.

Even from this far away I can make out the star, and the spokes of a compass.

Mr. Maguire, I say, we‘re going to have to take your boots.

Jacob

The first time I saw a dead person was at my grandfather‘s funeral.

It was after the service, where the minister had read aloud from the Bible, even though my grandfather did not routinely go to church or consider himself religious. Strangers got up and talked about my grandfather, calling him Joseph and telling stories about parts of his life that were news to me: his service during the Korean War, his childhood on the Lower East Side, his courtship of my grandmother at a high school carnival kissing booth. All of their words landed on me like hornets, and I couldn‘t make them go away until I could see the grandfather I knew and remembered, instead of this impostor they were all discussing.

My mother was not crying so much as dissolving; that is the one way I can describe the fact that tears had become so normal for her it looked strange to see her face smooth and dry.

It should be noted that I do not always understand body language. That‘s quite normal, for someone with Asperger‘s. It‘s pointless to expect me to look at someone and know how she is feeling simply because her smile is too tight and she is hunched over and hugging her arms to herself, just as it would be pointless to expect a deaf person to hear a voice. Which means that when I asked to have my grandfather‘s coffin opened, I shouldn‘t be blamed for not realizing it would upset my mother even more.

I just wanted to see if the body inside was still my grandfather, or maybe the man all those speakers had known, or something entirely different. I am skeptical about lights and tunnels and afterlives, and this seemed the most logical way to test my theories.

Here is what I learned: Dead isn‘t angels or ghosts. It‘s a physical state of breakdown, a change in all those carbon atoms that create the temporary house of a body so that they can return to their most elemental stage.

I don‘t really see why that freaks people out, since it‘s the most natural cycle in the world.

The body in the coffin still looked like my grandfather. When I touched his cheek, though, with its crosshatched wrinkles, the skin no longer felt like human skin. It was cold, and slightly firm, like pudding that‘s been left too long in the refrigerator and has developed a virtual hide as a surface crust.

I may not understand emotion, but I can feel guilt about not understanding it. So when I finally cornered my mother, hours after she ran sobbing from the sight of me poking The-Thing-That-Used-to-Be-My-Grandfather‘s cheek, I tried to explain why she shouldn‘t be crying. He‘s not Grandpa, I told her. I checked.

Remarkably, this did not make her feel better at all. That doesn‘t mean I miss him any less, my mother said.

Pure logic suggests that if the entity in the coffin is not fundamentally the person you used to know, you cannot miss him. Because that‘s not a loss; that‘s a change.

My mother had shaken her head. Here‘s what I miss, Jacob. I miss the fact that I won‘t get to ever hear his voice again. And that I can‘t talk to him anymore.

This wasn‘t really true. We had Grandpa‘s voice immortalized on old family videos that I sometimes liked to watch when I couldn‘t sleep at night. And it wasn‘t that she couldn‘t talk to him that was hard for her to accept; it was that he could no longer talk back.

My mother had sighed. You‘ll get it, one day. I hope.

I would like to be able to tell her that, yes, now I get it. When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.

I am headed to my meeting with Jess.

I‘m late. It‘s 3:00 A.M., which is really Monday, not Sunday. But there‘s no other time for me to go, with my mother watching over me. And although she will probably argue that I broke a house rule, technically, I didn‘t. This isn‘t sneaking out to a crime scene. The crime scene is three hundred yards away from where I‘m headed.

My backpack is full of necessities; my bike whispers on the pavement as I pedal fast. It‘s easier not being on foot this time, not having to support more than my own weight.

Directly behind the yard of the house into which Jess had moved is a small, scraggly forest. And directly behind that is Route 115. It runs across a bridge over the culvert that siphons the runoff from the woods in the spring, when the water level is high. I noticed it last Tuesday when I took the bus from school to Jess‘s new residence.

My mind is full of maps from social flowcharts
(Person is frowning →Person
keeps trying to interrupt → Person takes step backward = Person wants to leave this
conversation, desperately
) to grids of relativity, like an interpersonal version of Google Earth.
(Kid says to me, You play baseball? What position? Left out? and gets a big laugh
from the rest of the class. Kid is one person out of 6.792 billion humans on this planet. This
planet is only one-eighth of the solar system, whose sun is one of two billion stars in the
Milky Way galaxy. Put that way, the comment loses its importance.
) But my mind also functions geographically and topographically, so that at any given moment I can locate myself (this shower stall is on the upper level of the house at 132

Birdseye Lane, Townsend, Vermont, United States, North America, Western Hemisphere, Planet Earth). So by the time I got to Jess‘s new house last Tuesday, I completely understood where it lay in relation to everywhere else I‘d ever been.

Jess is just where I left her five days ago, propped against the damp stone wall.

I lean my bike against the far end of the culvert and squat down, shining a flashlight into her face.

Jess is dead.

When I touch her cheek with the backs of my knuckles, it feels like marble. That reminds me, and so I open up my backpack and pull out the blanket. It is a silly thing, I know, but so is leaving flowers on a grave, and this seems to make more sense. I tuck it around Jess‘s shoulders and make sure it covers her feet.

Then I sit down beside her. I put on a pair of latex gloves and I hold Jess‘s hand for a moment before taking out my notebook. In it, I begin to write down the physical evidence.

The bruises underneath her eyes.

The missing tooth.

The contusions on her upper arms, which are, of course, covered up by her sweatshirt right now.

The leathery yellow scrapes on her lower back, which are also covered by that sweatshirt.

To be honest, I‘m a little disappointed. I would have expected the police to be able to read the clues I left behind. But they haven‘t found Jess, and so I have to take the next step.

Her phone is still in my pocket. I have carried it everywhere with me, although I‘ve only turned it on five times. Detective Matson would have subpoenaed Jess‘s cell phone records by now; they‘ll see the instances when I called her residence to listen to her voice on the answering machine, but they will assume it was Jess herself who made the call.

He‘s probably tried to locate her by GPS, too, which nearly all phones have now and which can be accessed by the FBI using a computer program that will pinpoint an active phone within a range of a few feet. This was first piloted in emergency response programs, namely, the 911 call. As soon as dispatch picks up on the other end, they begin to track, just in case an officer or an ambulance has to be sent out.

I decide to make it easy for them. I sit down next to Jess again, so that our shoulders are touching. You are the best friend I ever had, I tell her. I wish this had never happened.

Jess, of course, does not respond. I cannot say whether she has ceased to be or if this is just her body and the thing that makes Jess Jess has gone somewhere else. It makes me think of my meltdown of the room with no windows, no doors, the country where nobody speaks to each other, the piano with only black keys. Maybe this is why funeral dirges are always in a minor key; being on the other side of dead isn‘t that different from having Asperger‘s.

It would be incredible to stay and watch. There is nothing I would like more than to see the police swarm in to rescue Jess. But that would be too risky; and so I know I‘ll just get on my bike and be safe and sound in my bed before the sun or my mother rises for the day.

First, though, I power up her pink Motorola. It feels like I should recite something, a tribute or a prayer.
E.T., phone home,
I finally say, and then I press 911 and place the little receiver on the stone beside her.

Through the speakers I can hear the voice of the dispatcher.
What is your
emergency?
she says.
Hello? Is anybody there?

I am halfway through the woods when I see the flashing lights in the distance on Route 115, and I smile to myself the whole rest of the way home.