Jodi Picoult - House Rules

“Well, that’s not how the majority of people think. Most people, confronted with photographic evidence of the autopsy of someone they loved, would get upset. Maybe even cry.”

“Cry? Are you kidding?” I mimic a phrase I’ve heard kids say at school. “I would have killed to be at that autopsy.”

Oliver turns away. I’m pretty sure I hear him wrong.

Did you?

The running joke among those of us sequestered for the trial involves the sensory break room. If the defendant can get some special accommodation, why not the witnesses? Me, I want a Chinese food take-out room. I tell this to Helen Sharp when she comes to let me know that I’m testifying next.

“Dumplings,” I say, “have been scientifically proven to enhance witness focus. And General Tso’s chicken clogs the arteries just enough to increase blood flow to the brain-”

“And here all this time I thought your disability was your short-”

“Hey!”

“-attention span,” Helen says. She smiles at me. “You have five minutes.”

I’m only half kidding. I mean, if the court was willing to bend over backward for Jacob Hunt’s Asperger’s syndrome, how long will it be before this is used as a precedent by some career criminal who insists that going to jail will inflame his claustrophobia? I’m all for equality, but not when it erodes the system.

I decide to take a leak before court reconvenes and have just turned the corner toward the hallway where the restrooms are located when I smack directly into a woman who’s walking in the opposite direction. “Whoa,” I say, steadying her. “I’m sorry.”

Emma Hunt looks up at me with those incredible eyes of hers. “I bet,” she says.

In another lifetime-if I had another job, and she had a different kid-maybe we would have been talking over a bottle of wine, maybe she would be smiling at me, instead of looking like she’d just been confronted by her worst nightmare. “How are you holding up?”

“You have no right to ask me that.”

She tries to push past me, but I block her with an outstretched arm. “I was just doing my job, Emma.”

“I have to get back to Jacob-”

“Look, I’m sorry this happened to you, because you’ve already had to go through a lot. But the day Jess died, a mother lost her child.”

“And now,” she says, “you are going to make me lose mine.”

She pushes at my arm. This time, I let her go.

It takes ten minutes for Helen to walk me through my credentials-my rank as captain, my training as detective in Townsend, the fact that I’ve been doing this since before Jesus was born, yada yada, all the stuff a jury wants to hear to know they are in good hands. “How did you become involved in the investigation into Jess Ogilvy’s death?” Helen begins.

“Her boyfriend, Mark Maguire, came to the police station and reported her missing on January thirteenth. He hadn’t seen her since the morning of the twelfth and had been unable to make contact with her. She had no planned trips, and her friends and parents did not know where she was, either. Her purse and coat were at her house, but other personal items were missing.”

“Such as?”

“Her toothbrush, her cell phone.” I glance at Jacob, who raises his brows expectantly. “And some clothes in a backpack,” I finish, and he smiles and ducks his head, nodding.

“What did you do?”

“I went with Mr. Maguire to the house and listed the items that were missing. I also took a typed note found in the mailbox, asking for the mail to be held, and sent it to the lab for fingerprints. Then I told Mr. Maguire that we’d have to wait and see if Ms. Ogilvy returned.”

“Why did you send the note to the lab?” Helen asks.

“Because it seemed strange to type a note to your mailman.”

“Did you get results back from the laboratory?”

“Yes. They were inconclusive; no fingerprints were found on the paper. That led me to believe that it was possibly a note typed by someone smart enough to wear gloves when placing it. A red herring, to make us think Jess had run away on her own.”

“What happened next?”

“I received a call from Mr. Maguire a day later, saying that a rack of CDs had been knocked over and then alphabetized. It didn’t seem to be a clear sign of foul play-after all, this was something that Jess might have done, and in my experience, felons don’t tend to be neat freaks. However, we formally opened an investigation into Ms. Ogilvy’s disappearance. A CSI team was dispatched to her residence to gather evidence. I took her date book from her purse, which was found in the kitchen, and began to follow up on the meetings she had prior to her disappearance and was scheduled to have afterward.”

“Did you attempt to contact Jess Ogilvy during this investigation?”

“Numerous times. We called her cell phone, but it went right into voice mail, until even that was full. With the help of the FBI, we attempted to ping her cell phone.”

“What does that mean?”

“Using a GPS locator built into the device, the FBI has a software program which can find coordinates within a meter of actual physical location anywhere in the world, but in this case, the results were inconclusive. The phone has to be powered up in order for that software to work, and apparently, Jess Ogilvy’s was not,” I say. “We also screened the messages that came into her residence. One was from Mr. Maguire. One was from a vendor, one from the defendant’s mother, and three were missed calls that originated from Jess Ogilvy’s own cell phone number. Based on the time stamps of the answering machine, it suggested that Ms. Ogilvy was still alive somewhere at the time the calls were placed-or that we were being led to believe this by whoever had her cell phone.”

“Detective, when did you first meet the defendant?”

“On January fifteenth.”

“Had you seen him before?”

“Yes-at a crime scene a week earlier. He crashed an investigation.”

“Where did you meet Mr. Hunt on January fifteenth?”

“At his house.”

“Who else was present?”

“His mother.”

“Did you take the defendant into custody at that time?”

“No, he wasn’t a suspect. I asked him questions about his appointment with Jess. He said that he had gone to her house for the two thirty-five appointment but did not meet with her. He indicated that he walked home. He also revealed that Mark Maguire was not present when he arrived at Ms. Ogilvy’s place. When I asked him whether he had ever seen Jess fight with her boyfriend, he said, ‘ Hasta la vista, baby. ’”

“Did you recognize that statement?”

“I believe it’s attributed to the former governor of California,” I say. “Before he entered politics.”

“Did you ask the defendant anything else at that meeting?”

“No, I was… dismissed. It was four-thirty, and at four-thirty he watches a television show.”

“Did you see the defendant again?”

“Yes. I received a call from Emma Hunt, his mother, indicating that Jacob had something else to tell me.”

“What did Jacob say during that second conversation?”

“He presented me with Jess Ogilvy’s missing backpack, and some of her clothing. He admitted that he had gone to her house and found signs of a struggle, which he cleaned up.”

“Cleaned up?”

“Yes. He righted stools and picked up the mail, which had been thrown on the floor, and restacked the CDs and alphabetized them. He took the backpack, because he thought she might need it. He then proceeded to show me the backpack and the items inside.”

“Did you take Jacob into custody at that time?”

“I did not.”

“Did you take the clothes and backpack with you?”