Jodi Picoult - House Rules

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.

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.

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.