Jodi Picoult - House Rules

“Well, the backpack was a disappointment.”

“No prints?”

“Only ones we could match to Jess herself,” I say. “Something else interesting turned up at the house-a screen was cut and the window jimmied open.”

“You think that’s how the perp got inside?”

“No, because the door wasn’t locked. We did, however, find boot prints under the window that matched footwear Jess’s boyfriend owns.”

“There was a great CrimeBusters episode once where the exterior footprints didn’t show up until it snowed-” Jacob breaks off, editing himself. “So Mark kills Jess and then tries to make it look like something else-a break-in-by cutting the screen and knocking over the stools and the mail and the CDs?”

“Something like that.” I glance down at his hands-like Maguire’s, they are injury-free. “What’s your take? How hard would it be to reorganize a crime scene to mislead the investigators?”

Before he can answer, my cell phone rings. I recognize the number; it’s Basil, who’s accompanied the medical examiner back to the hospital. “Could you excuse me for a minute?” I ask Jacob, and I step into the hall and close the door behind me before answering the phone. “What have you got?”

“In addition to the scrapes on her back and contusions on the throat and upper arms, there are some more in the periorbital region-”

“English, Basil.”

“Raccoon eyes,” he says. “She’s got a broken nose and a skull fracture. Cause of death is subdural hematoma.”

I try to imagine Jacob Hunt throwing a right hook to Jess Ogilvy’s face, hard enough to crack her skull. “Great. Thanks.”

“That’s not all,” Basil answers. “Her underwear was on backward, but there’s no evidence of sexual assault. Her face was washed clean-there were traces of blood in the hairline. And that missing tooth? We found it.”

“Where?”

“Wrapped up in toilet paper, and tucked into the front pocket of her sweatpants,” Basil says. “Whoever did this didn’t just dump Jess Ogilvy. He cared about her.”

I hang up the phone and immediately think of Sasha, who lost a tooth just a month ago when she was staying at my place. We wrapped it in tissue paper and put it in an envelope with the Tooth Fairy’s name on it, for good measure. Naturally, I had to call my ex to ask her what the going rate was-$5, if you can believe it, which means my whole mouth is worth $160. After Sasha was asleep and I swapped the envelope for a nice crisp Lincoln, I held it, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with a baby tooth. I imagined the Tooth Fairy to have those empty glass jar lamps that hold seashells, only hers would hold thousands of tiny cuspids. Since I didn’t subscribe to that kind of décor, I figured I’d just toss the damn thing, but at the last minute, I couldn’t do it. This was my daughter’s childhood, sealed in an envelope. How many chances would I have to hold on to a piece of her life?

Had Jacob Hunt felt the same way when he held Jess’s tooth?

With a deep breath, I walk back into my office. The gloves are off. “You ever been to an autopsy, Jacob?”

“No.”

I settle back down behind my desk. “The first thing the ME does is take a huge needle and stick it into the jelly of the eye so he can draw out the vitreous humor. If you run a tox screen on it, you can see what was in the victim’s system at the moment of death.”

“What kind of toxicity test?” Jacob asks, not fazed at all by the gruesome image I just presented. “Alcohol? Prescription meds? Or illegal drugs?”

“Then the medical examiner cuts the torso open with a Y incision and peels back the skin. He’ll saw through the ribs to make a little dome that he can lift up like the top of a jar, and then he starts pulling out the organs, one by one… weighing them… cutting slices he can look at under a microscope.”

“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

“Then the medical examiner takes his saw and cuts off the whole top of the skull and pops it open with a chisel. He reaches in, and he pulls her brain out. You know the sound a brain makes when it’s being pried out of a skull, Jacob?” I imitate it, like a seal breaking.

“Then it gets weighed, right?” Jacob asks. “The average human brain weighs three pounds, but the biggest one on record was five pounds, one-point-one ounces.”

“All that stuff I just described,” I say, leaning forward. “All of that just happened to your friend Jess. What do you think about that?”

Jacob sinks deeper in his chair. “I don’t want to think about that.”

“I want to tell you some of the things that were found at Jess’s autopsy. Maybe you can tell me how they might have happened.”

He brightens considerably, ready to play the game.

“There were bruises that showed someone had grabbed her by the arms, and choked her around the neck.”

“Well,” Jacob muses, “were they fingertip bruises or handprints?”

“You tell me, Jacob. You’re the one who grabbed Jess by the arms, aren’t you?”

His face, when he realizes he is trapped, looks a great deal like his mother’s. Jacob’s hands curl over the arms of his chair, and he shakes his head. “No.”

“What about choking her? You’re not going to lie to me about doing that, are you?”

He closes his eyes and winces, as if he’s in pain. “No…”

“So what made you choke her?”

“Nothing!”

“Was it a fight? Did she say something you didn’t like?” I press.

Jacob moves to the edge of his chair and starts rocking. He won’t look me in the eye, no matter how loud my voice gets. I wish I’d had the foresight to videotape this conversation instead of audiotaping it. If this kid’s demeanor isn’t a Hallmark card for guilt, frankly, I don’t know what is. “Nothing made me choke Jess,” Jacob says.

I ignore this completely. “Did you choke her till she stopped breathing?”

“No-”

“Did you hit her in the face?”

“What? No!”

“Then how did her tooth get knocked out?”

He looks at me, and that takes me by surprise. His stare is direct, open, with emotion so raw that I feel compelled to turn away, like he usually does. “That was an accident,” Jacob confesses softly, and only then do I realize I have been holding my breath.

This morning, I managed to teach Thor to balance a paper clip on top of his nose. “All right,” I say, “let’s give it another whirl.” The way I figure it, if I can get him to balance and multitask-roll over, maybe, or bark to the tune of “Dixie”-we can get on Letterman.

I have just placed the paper clip on top of his nose again when a crazy woman bursts in. “I need a lawyer,” she announces, breathless.

She’s probably in her late thirties or early forties-there are some lines around her mouth and her dark hair has a few strands of gray in it-but her eyes make her look younger. They’re like caramel, or butterscotch, and why the hell am I looking at a potential client and channeling ice cream toppings? “Come right in!” I stand up, offering her a chair. “Sit down and tell me what the problem is.”

“We don’t have time for that. You have to come with me right now.”

“But I-”

“My son is being interrogated at the police station, and you have to stop it. I’m retaining you on his behalf.”

“Awesome,” I say, and Thor drops the paper clip. I pick it up so he doesn’t swallow it in my absence and grab my coat.

I know it’s totally mercenary of me, but I’m hoping that she’s going to lead me to the BMW parked outside the pizza place. Instead, she veers to the right, to the battered Volvo that probably has 300,000 miles on it. So much for asking for my retainer in cash. I slide into the passenger seat and stick out my hand. “I’m Oliver Bond.”