House Rules (32 page)

For these reasons and a dozen more I haven‘t thought of yet, I close my door and lock it, so that when Detective Matson passes by again, I don‘t have to look him in the eye.

Jacob

I would not have thought it possible, but Rich Matson is not a complete and utter ass.

For example, he told me that you can tell the sex of an individual by looking at the skull, because a male skull has a square chin and a female chin is rounded. He told me that he‘s been to the Body Farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, where an acre of land is covered with corpses rotting in all different stages, so that forensic anthropologists can measure the effects of weather and insects on human decay. He has pictures and promised to mail me a few.

This is still not Dr. Henry Lee–worthy, but it makes a decent consolation prize.

I learn that he has a daughter who, like Jess, faints at the sight of blood. When I tell him that Jess used to do this, too, his face twists, as if he‘s smelled something awful.

After a while I promise him not to call the police on my mother again, unless she is causing me dire bodily harm. And he convinces me that an apology to her might go a long way right now.

When I walk him downstairs, my mother is pacing in the kitchen. Jacob has something to tell you, he announces.

Detective Matson is going to send me photographs of decomposing bodies, I say.

Not that. The other thing.

I push my lips out and then suck them in. I do it twice, as if I‘m melting the words in my mouth. I shouldn‘t have called the cops. Asperger‘s impulsiveness.

My mother‘s face freezes, and so does the detective‘s. Only after I‘ve said it do I realize that they‘re probably assuming Jess‘s death was Asperger‘s impulsiveness, too.

Or in other words, talking about my Asperger‘s impulsiveness was a bit too impulsive.

I think we‘re all set here, the detective says. You two have a nice evening.

My mother touches his sleeve. Thank you.

He looks at her as if he is about to tell her something important, but instead he says,

You have nothing to thank me for.

When he leaves, a lick of cold air from outside wraps around my ankles.

Would you like me to make you something to eat? my mother asks. You never had lunch.

No thanks. I‘m going to lie down, I announce, although I really just want to be alone. I‘ve learned that when someone invites you to do something and you really don‘t want to, they don‘t particularly want to hear the truth.

Her eyes fly to my face. Are you sick?

I‘m fine, I tell her. Really.

I can feel her staring at me as I walk up the stairs.

I don‘t plan to lie down, but I do. And I guess I fall asleep, because all of a sudden Dr. Henry Lee is there. We are crouched down on either side of Jess‘s body. He examines the tooth in her pocket, the abrasions on her lower back. He looks up the cavities of her nostrils.

Oh yes,
he says, crystal clear.
I understand.

I can see why you had to do what you did.

CASE 8: ONE IN SIX BILLION

In the 1980s and ‘90s, over fifty women in the Seattle-Tacoma, Washington, area were
murdered. Most of the victims were prostitutes or teen runaways, and most of the bodies
were dumped in or near the Green River. Dubbed the Green River Killer, the murderer was
unknown until science managed to catch up to crime.

In the early 1980s, while performing autopsies on the victims, pathologists and medical
technologists were able to recover small amounts of DNA in semen left behind by the killer.

These were retained as evidence, but then-current scientific techniques proved worthless,
since there wasn‘t enough material for testing.

Gary Ridgway, who was arrested in 1982 on a prostitution charge, was a suspect in
the Green River killings, but there wasn‘t any evidence to formally link him to the crimes.

In 1984, he passed a polygraph test. In 1987, while searching his home, the King County
Sheriff‘s department took a saliva sample from Ridgway.

By March 2001, improvements in DNA typing technology had identified the source
of the semen on the victims‘ bodies. In September 2001, the lab received results: they were
able to get a comparative match between the DNA in that semen and the DNA in Ridgway‘s
saliva. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

The DNA results linked Ridgway to three of the four women listed as victims in his
indictment. Sperm samples taken from one of these victims, Carol Ann Christensen, were so
conclusive that not more than one person in the world, excluding identical twins, would
exhibit that particular DNA profile. Ridgway was charged with three more murders after
microscopic paint evidence found with the bodies matched paint at his workplace. In return
for confessing to more of the Green River murders, Ridgway was spared the death penalty
and is currently serving forty-eight life sentences with no possibility of parole.

8

Oliver

A month later I am sprawled on the couch in the Hunts‘ living room, caught in a weird déjà

vu: I am scanning the discovery that‘s been sent to me, which includes Jacob‘s journals on
CrimeBusters,
while he sits on the floor in front of me watching on TV the very same episode I‘m reading about. Want me to tell you how it ends? I ask.

I already know. Not that that‘s kept him from writing down yet another journal entry, this one in a brand-new composition-style notebook.

Episode 49: Sex, Lies, and iMovie

Situation: After a suicide note is spliced into the credits of a feature at a film festival, a
B-movie director is found dead in the back of a car but the team suspects foul play.

Evidence:

Trailer from festival

Cuttings from editing studio who is the blonde and is she really dead or just acting?

Hard drive of director‘s computer

Director‘s collection of rare butterflies red herring, entomology not involved
Acid in pipes

Solved: By ME! 0:24.

You figured it out in twenty minutes?

Yeah.

The butler did it, I say.

No, actually, it‘s the plumber, Jacob corrects.

So much for making a joke.

We‘ve gotten into a routine: instead of staying at my office during the day, I do my trial preparation here at the Hunts‘. That way, I can watch Jacob if Emma needs to run out, and I have my client available to answer any questions I‘ve got. Thor likes it, because he spends most of the day curled up in Jacob‘s lap. Jacob likes it, because I bring the Wii with me. Theo likes it because if I bring guacamole on Green Monday for his brother, I slip a personal-size nongreen sausage pizza into the fridge for him.

I don‘t really know if Emma likes it.

Theo walks past us in the living room to a file cabinet in the back. You still doing your homework? Jacob asks.

There‘s not really any malice in his tone it‘s flat, like everything else Jacob says but Theo flips him the bird. Usually Theo‘s the one to finish his work first, but today, he seems to be dragging.

I wait for Jacob to tell him to go fuck himself, but instead, he just fixes his glassy gaze on the television again.

Hey, I say, approaching Theo.

He startles and takes the piece of paper he‘s scanning and stuffs it into his jeans pocket. Stop sneaking up on me.

What are you doing in here anyway? Isn‘t this your mother‘s file cabinet?

Isn‘t this none of your business? Theo says.

No. But Jacob is. And you should apologize.

I should also have five servings of vegetables a day, but
that
rarely happens, he replies, and he heads back into the kitchen to finish his homework.

I know Jacob well enough by now to pick up on the cues that flag his emotions. The fact that he‘s rocking back and forth slightly means whatever Theo just said rattled him more than he‘s letting on. If you tell your mother he does that shit to you, I say, I can bet you it will stop.

You don‘t tell on your brother you take care of him. He‘s the only one you‘ve got, Jacob recites. It‘s a rule.

If I could only make the jury see how Jacob lives from one decree to another; if I could make the connection between a kid who won‘t even break one of his mother‘s rules much less the law governing our country; if I could somehow prove that his Asperger‘s makes it virtually impossible for him to cross that line between right and wrong well, I could win his case.

Hey, after lunch I want to talk to you about what‘s going to happen later this week when we

Shh, Jacob says. The commercial‘s over.

I flip the page and see an entry that doesn‘t have an episode number.

I start reading, and my jaw drops. Oh, shit, I say out loud.

* * *

A month ago, after the suppression hearing, I‘d called Helen Sharp. I think you need to give up, I told her. You can‘t prove the case. We‘re willing to take probation for five years.

I can win this without his police department confession, she said. I‘ve got all the statements that were made at the house before Jacob was in custody; I have the forensic evidence at the scene and eyewitness evidence that goes to motive. I‘ve got his history of violence, and I‘ve got the defendant‘s journals.

At the time, I‘d shrugged it off. Jacob‘s journals were formulaic, and every other piece of evidence she listed was something I could excuse away on cross.

We‘re going forward, Helen had said, and I‘d thought,
Good freaking luck.

Here‘s what the journal says:

At Her House. 1/12/10.

Situation: Girl missing.

Evidence:

Clothes in pile on bed

Toothbrush missing, lip gloss missing

Victim‘s purse and coat remain

Cell phone missing … cut screen … boot prints outside match up with boyfriend‘s footwear.

Jesus Christ, Jacob, I explode, so loud that Emma comes running in from the laundry room. You wrote about Jess in your
CrimeBusters
journals?

He doesn‘t respond, so I stand and turn off the TV.

What do you mean? Emma says.

I pass her the photocopy of the notebook. What were you
thinking
? I demand.

Jacob shrugs. It was a crime scene, he says simply.

Do you have any idea what Helen Sharp is going to do with this?

No, and I don‘t care, Emma replies. I want to know what
you‘re
going to do about it. She folds her arms and moves a step closer to Jacob.

I don‘t know, to be honest. Because after all the work we did to get the police station statement thrown out, this brings it all back in.

Jacob repeats what I said, and then repeats it again:
Brings it all back. Brings it all
back.
The first time I heard him do it, I thought he was mimicking me. Now I know it‘s echolalia; Emma explained it to me as just the repetition of sounds. Sometimes Jacob does that by reciting movie quotes, and sometimes it‘s an immediate parroting of something he‘s heard.

I just hope no one hears him doing it in court, or they‘ll assume he‘s a wiseass.

Bring it all back, Jacob says again. Bring
what
all back?

Something that‘s going to make the jury assume you‘re guilty.

But it‘s a crime scene, Jacob says again. I just wrote down the evidence like usual.

It‘s not a fictional crime scene, I point out.

Why not? he asks. I‘m the one who created it.

Oh my God, Emma chokes. They‘re going to think he‘s a monster.

I want to put my hand on her arm and tell her I will be able to keep that from happening, but I cannot make that kind of promise. Even having been with Jacob for the past month, like I have, there are still things he does that strike me as utterly chilling like now, when his mother is hysterical and he turns away without registering any remorse and cranks up the volume on his TV show. Juries, which are supposed to be about reason, are actually always about the heart. A juror who watches Jacob stare blankly through the graphic testimony about Jess Ogilvy‘s death will deliberate his fate with that image etched in her mind, and it cannot help but sway her decision.

I cannot change Jacob, which means I have to change the system. This is why I‘ve filed a motion, and why we‘re going to court tomorrow, although I haven‘t yet broken the news to Emma yet.

I need to tell you both something, I say, as Emma‘s watch begins to beep.

Hold on, she says, I‘m timing Theo on a math quiz. She faces the kitchen.

Theo? Put your pencil down. Jacob, lower that volume. Theo? Did you hear me?

When there‘s no answer, Emma walks into the kitchen. She calls out again, and then I hear her footsteps overhead, in Theo‘s room. A moment later, she is back in the living room, her voice wild. He never did his math quiz. And his coat and sneakers and backpack are missing, she says. Theo‘s gone.

Theo

Let me just say that I think it‘s pretty insane that a kid who‘s fifteen, like me, can fly across the country without a parent. The hardest part was getting the ticket, which turned out to not be very hard at all. It was no secret that my mother keeps an emergency credit card buried in her file cabinet, and honestly, didn‘t this count as an emergency? All I had to do was dig it out, get the number off the front and the PIN code on the back, and book my ticket on Orbitz.com.

I had a passport, too (we‘d driven up to Canada once on a vacation that lasted approximately six hours, after Jacob refused to sleep in the motel room because it had an orange carpet), which was stored one file folder away from the emergency credit card. And getting to the airport was a piece of cake; it took two hitched rides, and that was that.

I wish I could tell you I had a plan, but I didn‘t. All I knew was that, directly or indirectly, this was my fault. I hadn‘t killed Jess Ogilvy, but I‘d seen her the day she died, and I hadn‘t told the police or my mother or anyone else and now Jacob was going to be tried for murder. In my mind, it was like a chain reaction. If I hadn‘t been breaking into houses at the time, if I hadn‘t been in Jess‘s, if I had never locked eyes with her maybe that missing link would have broken the string of events that happened afterward. It was no great secret that my mother was totally freaking out about where the money would be coming from for Jacob‘s trial; I figured that if I was ever going to remove my karmic debt, I might as well start by finding the solution to that problem.

Hence: this visit to my father.

On the plane, I am sitting between a businessman who‘s trying to sleep and a woman who looks like a grandmother she‘s got short white hair and a light purple sweatshirt with a cat on it. The businessman is shifting in his seat because he‘s got a kid behind him who keeps kicking it.

Jesus H. Christ, he says.

I‘ve always wondered why people say that. Why the
H
? I mean, what if his middle name was Stanley?

I‘m stuck on the last one, the grandma says.

I pull my iPod earphone free. Sorry?

No, that doesn‘t fit. She is hunched over a crossword puzzle in the back of the
US

Airways
magazine. It had been filled out halfway. I hate that; doesn‘t the jerk who is sitting in the seat on the previous flight think someone else might want to try it on his own? The clue is
Regretted.
And it‘s four letters.

Theo,
I think.

Suddenly the businessman comes out of his seat and twists around. Madam, he says to the kid‘s mom, is there any chance you could keep your brat from being so incredibly rude?

That‘s it, the grandma says. Rude!

I watch her write it in pencil. I, uh, think it‘s spelled differently, I suggest.

R-U-E-D.

Right, she says, erasing it to make the correction. I admit to being a horrendous speller. She smiles at me. Now, what‘s bringing you out to sunny California?

I‘m visiting someone.

Me, too. Someone I‘ve never met my first grandbaby.

Wow, I say. You must be pretty stoked.

If that‘s a good thing, then yes, I guess I am. My name‘s Edith.

I‘m Paul.

Okay, I don‘t know where the lie came from. I shouldn‘t have been surprised after all, I‘d hidden my involvement in this whole nightmare for over a month now, and I was getting really good at pretending I wasn‘t the same person I was back then. But once I made up the name, the rest kept coming. I was on school break. I was an only child. My parents were divorced (Ha!
Not
a lie!), and I was going to see my dad. We were planning on taking a college tour of Stanford.

At home, we don‘t talk about my father. In world studies class we learned about indigenous cultures who no longer speak the names of the dead well, we no longer say the name of the person who quit when the going got tough. I don‘t really know the details of my parents‘ split, except that I was still a baby when it happened, and so of course there‘s a piece of me that thinks I must have been the straw that broke the camel‘s back. But I do know that he tries to pay off his guilt by sending my mom a child support check every month. And I also know that he has replaced Jacob and me with two little girls who look like china dolls and who probably have never broken into a house or stimmed a day in their short lives. I know this because he sends us a Christmas card every year, which I throw out if I get to the mail before my mother does.

Do you have brothers or sisters? Edith asks.

I take a sip of the 7-Up I bought for three bucks. Nope, I say. Only child.

Stop it, the businessman says, and for one awful moment I think he‘s going to tell this woman who I really am. Then he turns around in his seat. For the love of God, he says to the little kid‘s mom.

So, Paul, Edith says, what do you want to study at Stanford?

I am fifteen, I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Except fix the mess I‘ve made of it.

Instead of answering, I point down at her crossword puzzle. Quito, I say. That‘s the answer to forty-two across.

She gets all excited and reads aloud the next clue. I think about how happy she‘ll be if we finish this crossword puzzle. She‘ll get off the plane and tell her son-in-law, or whoever is picking her up, about the nice young man she met. About how helpful I was.

How proud my parents must be of me.

Jacob

My brother is not as smart as I am.

I am not saying this to be mean; I‘m just stating a fact. For example, he has to study all his vocabulary words if he wants to do well on a test; I can look at the page and it‘s stuck in my head for easy retrieval after that first glance. He would leave the room if two adults started discussing adult things, like current events; I would just pull up a chair and join the conversation. He doesn‘t care about storing information away like a squirrel would save nuts for the winter; it‘s only interesting to Theo if it has current real-life applications.

However, I am not nearly as intuitive as my brother. This is why when I begin to let some of that stored information bleed free like for example how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak released the Apple I computer on April Fool‘s Day 1976 and the person I am speaking with begins to go glassy-eyed and make excuses, I will keep talking, although Theo would easily read the clues and shut up.

Being a detective is all about intuition. Being a good crime scene investigator, however, requires great thoroughness and intelligence. Which is why, while my mother is rendered immobile by her panic over Theo‘s disappearance and Oliver is doing stupid things like patting her shoulder, I go to Theo‘s bedroom and get on his computer.

I am very good with computers. I once took my guidance counselor‘s laptop apart and put it back together, motherboard and all. I could probably configure your wireless network in my sleep. Here is the other reason I like computers: when you are talking to someone online, you don‘t have to read expressions on faces or interpret tones of voice.

What you see is what you get, and that means I don‘t have to try so hard when I interact.