Jodi Picoult - House Rules

The class sings the answer back to me: “Don’t touch something wet if it’s not from you!”

As the teacher asks them all to thank me with a round of applause, I crouch down near Sasha’s desk. “What do you think? Did I embarrass you beyond repair?”

“You did okay,” she says.

“I can’t stay to have lunch with you,” I apologize. “I have to go down to the station.”

“That’s all right, Daddy.” Sasha shrugs. “I’m used to it.”

The hell with a bullet. What kills me is disappointing my kid.

I kiss her on the crown of her head and let the teacher walk me to the door. Then I drive right to the station and get a quick briefing from the sergeant who took the original complaint.

Mark Maguire, a UVM graduate student, is slouched in the waiting room. He’s wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his face and is bouncing his leg up and down nervously. I watch him for a second through the window before I head out to meet him.

“Mr. Maguire?” I say. “I’m Detective Matson. What can I do for you?”

He stands up. “My girlfriend’s missing.”

“Missing,” I repeat.

“Yeah. I called her last night, and there was no answer. And this morning, when I went to her place, she was gone.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Tuesday morning,” Mark says.

“Could there have been some emergency? Or an appointment she didn’t tell you about?”

“No. She never goes anywhere without her purse, and it was still in the house… along with her coat. It’s freezing out. Why would she have gone somewhere without her coat?” His voice is wild, worried.

“You two have a fight?”

“She was kind of pissed off at me this weekend,” he admits. “But we’d talked it out. We were good again.”

I bet, I think. “Have you tried calling her friends?”

“No one’s seen her. Not her friends, not her teachers. And she’s not the kind of person who cuts classes.”

We do not usually open up a missing person’s case until thirty-six hours have passed-although that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. The extent of the net to be cast is determined by the missing person’s status: at risk, or at no apparent risk. And right now, there’s something about this guy-some hunch-that makes me think he’s not telling me everything. “Mr. Maguire,” I say, “why don’t you and I take a ride?”

Jess Ogilvy is doing pretty damn well for a grad student. She lives in a tony neighborhood full of brick houses and BMWs. “How long has she lived here?” I ask.

“Only a week-she’s house-sitting for one of her professors, who’s in Italy for the semester.”

We park on the street, and Maguire leads me to the back door, which isn’t locked. That’s not an uncommon occurrence around here; in spite of all my warnings about being safe instead of sorry, a lot of folks make the incorrect assumption that crime could not and does not happen in this town.

In the mudroom, there’s a mélange of items-from the coat that must belong to the girl to a walking stick to a pair of men’s boots. The kitchen is tidy, and there is a mug in the sink with a tea bag in it. “I didn’t touch anything,” Maguire says. “This was all here when I showed up this morning.” The mail is stacked neatly in a pile on the table. A purse lies on its side, and I open it to find a wallet with $213 still in it.

“Did you notice anything missing?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Maguire says. “Upstairs.” He leads me to a guest bedroom where the drawers of a single dresser are half open, clothes spilling out of them. “She’s a neat freak,” he says. “She’d never leave the bed unmade, or have clothes lying around the floor like this. But this box with the gift wrap on it? It had a backpack inside that’s gone now. It still had the tags on it. Her aunt got it for her for Christmas, and she hated it.”

I walk to the closet. Inside are several dresses, as well as a few button-down men’s shirts and pairs of jeans. “Those are mine,” Maguire says.

“You live here, too?”

“Not officially, as far as the professor goes. But yeah, I’ve been staying over most nights. Until she kicked me out, anyway.”

“She kicked you out?”

“I told you, we kind of had a fight. She didn’t want to talk to me on Sunday night. But Monday, we’d worked things out.”

“Define that,” I say.

“We had sex,” Maguire replies.

“Consensual?”

“Jesus, dude. What kind of guy do you think I am?” He seems truly affronted.

“What about her makeup? Her toiletries?”

“Her toothbrush is missing,” Maguire says. “But her makeup’s still here. Look, shouldn’t you be calling in backup or something? Or posting an AMBER Alert?”

I ignore him. “Did you try contacting her parents? Where do they live?”

“I called them-they’re in Bennington, and they haven’t heard from her, and now they’re in a panic, too.”

Great, I think. “Has she ever disappeared like this before?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only been going out with her for a few months.”

“Look,” I say. “If you stick around, she’ll probably call, or just come back home. Sounds to me like she needed to cool off for a while.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Maguire says. “If she left on purpose, why would she forget to take her wallet but remember her cell phone? Why would she use a backpack she couldn’t wait to return for store credit?”

“I don’t know. To throw you off her trail, maybe?”

Maguire’s eyes flash, and I know the moment before he springs that he is going to come after me. I throw him off with one quick move that twists his arm behind his back. “Careful,” I mutter. “I could arrest you for that.”

Maguire tenses in my hold. “My girlfriend’s gone missing. I pay your salary, and you won’t even do your job and investigate?”

Technically, if Maguire is a student, he’s not paying my salary, but I am not about to press the point. “Tell you what,” I say, releasing him. “I’ll take one more look around.”

I wander into the master bedroom, but clearly Jess Ogilvy hasn’t been sleeping there; it is pristine. The master bathroom reveals slightly damp towels, but the shower floor is already dry. Downstairs, there’s no sign of disorder in the living room. I walk around the perimeter of the house and then check the mailbox. Inside is a note, printed from a computer, asking the postman to hold the mail until further notified.

Who the hell types a note to the postman?

Snapping on a pair of gloves, I slip the note into an evidence bag. I’ll have the lab run a ninhydrin test for prints.

Right now, my hunch is that if they don’t match Jess Ogilvy’s, they’re going to match Mark Maguire’s.

I don’t know what to expect when I go into Jacob’s room the next morning. He slept through the night-I checked on him every hour-but I know from past experience that he won’t be expressive until those neurotransmitters aren’t raging through his bloodstream anymore.

I called Jess twice-on her cell, and at her new residence-but only got voice mail. I’ve sent her an email, asking her to tell me what happened at yesterday’s session, if there was anything out of the ordinary. But until I hear back from her, I have to deal with Jacob.

When I peek in at 6:00 A.M., he’s not sleeping anymore. He’s sitting on his bed with his hands in his lap, staring at the wall across from him.

“Jacob?” I say tentatively. “Honey?” I walk closer and gently shake him.

Jacob continues to stare at the wall in silence. I wave a hand in front of his face, but he doesn’t respond.