House Rules: A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  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.

  Emma

  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.

  “Jacob!” I grab his shoulders and pull on them. He topples to the side and just lies where he has fallen.

  Panic climbs the ladder of my throat. “Speak to me,” I demand. I am thinking catatonia. I am thinking schizophrenia. I am thinking of all the lost places Jacob could slip to in his own mind, and not return.

  Straddling his big body, I strike him hard enough across the face to leave a red handprint, and still he doesn’t react.

  “Don’t,” I say, starting to cry. “Don’t do this to me.”

  There is a voice at the door. “What’s going on?” Theo asks, his face still hazy with sleep and his hair sticking up in hedgehog spikes.

  In that instant, I realize that Theo might be my savior. “Say something that would upset your brother,” I order.

  He looks at me as if I’m crazy.

  “There’s something wrong with him,” I explain, my voice breaking. “I just want him to come back. I need to make him come back.”

  Theo glances down at Jacob’s slack body, his vacant eyes, and I can tell he’s scared. “But—”

  “Do it, Theo,” I say.

  I think it’s the quiver in my voice, not the command, which makes him agree. Tentatively, Theo leans close to Jacob. “Wake up!”

  “Theo,” I sigh. We both know he’s holding back.

  “You’re going to be late for school,” Theo says. I watch closely, but there’s no recognition in Jacob’s eyes.

  “I’m getting in the shower first,” Theo adds. “And then I’m gonna mess up your closet.” When Jacob just stays silent, the anger Theo usually keeps hidden rolls over him like a tsunami. “You freak,” he shouts, so loud that Jacob’s hair stirs with the force of his breath. “You stupid goddamn freak!”

  Jacob doesn’t even flinch.

  “Why can’t you be normal?” Theo yells, punching his brother in the chest. He hits him again, harder this time. “Just be fucking normal!” he cries, and I realize tears are streaming down Theo’s face. For a moment, we are caught in this hell, with Jacob unresponsive between us.

  “Get me a phone,” I say, and Theo turns and flies out the door.

  As I sink down beside Jacob, the bulk of his weight sways toward me. Theo reappears with the telephone, and I punch in the page number for Jacob’s psychiatrist, Dr. Murano. She calls me back thirty seconds later, her voice still rough with sleep. “Emma,” she says. “What’s going on?”

  I explain Jacob’s meltdown last night, and his catatonia this morning. “And you don’t know what triggered it?” she asks.

  “No. He had a meeting with his tutor yesterday.” I look at Jacob. A line of drool snakes from the corner of his mouth. “I called her, but she hasn’t phoned me back yet.”

  “Does he look like he’s in physical distress?”

  No, I think. That would be me. “I don’t know … I don’t think so.”

  “Is he breathing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he know who you are?”

  “No,” I admit, and this is what really scares me. If he doesn’t know who I am, how can I help him remember who he is?

  “Tell me his vitals.”

  I put the phone down and look at my wristwatch, make a count. “His pulse is ninety and his respirations are twenty.”

  “Look, Emma,” the doctor says, “I’m an hour away from where you are. I think you need to take him to the ER.”

  I know what will happen then. If Jacob is unable to snap out of this, he’ll be a candidate for a 302 involuntary commitment in the hospital psych ward.

  After I hang up, I kneel down in front of Jacob. “Baby, just give me a sign. Just show me you’re on the other side.”

  Jacob doesn’t even blink.

  Wiping my eyes, I head to Theo’s room. He’s barricaded himself inside; I have to bang heavily on the door to be heard over the beat of his music. When he finally opens it, his eyes are red-rimmed and his jaw is set. “I need your help moving him,” I say flatly, and for once Theo doesn’t fight me. Together we try to haul Jacob’s big frame out of his bed and downstairs, into the car. I take his arms; Theo takes his legs. We drag, we push, we shove. By the time we reach the mudroom door, I am bathed in sweat and Theo’s legs are bruised from where he twice stumbled under Jacob’s weight.

  “I’ll get the car door,” Theo says, and he runs into the driveway, his socks crunching lightly on the old snow.

  Together, we manage to get Jacob to the car. He doesn’t even make a sound when his bare feet touch the icy driveway. We put him into the backseat headfirst, and then I struggle to pull him to a sitting position, practically crawling into his lap to fasten his seat belt. With my head pressed up against Jacob’s heart, I listen for the click of metal to metal.

  “Heeeeere’s Johnny.”

  The words aren’t his. They’re Jack Nicholson’s, in The Shining. But it’s his voice, his beautiful, tattered, sandpaper voice.

  “Jacob?” I cup my hands around his face.

  He is not looking at me, but then again, he never looks at me. “Mom,” Jacob says, “my feet are really cold.”

  I burst into tears and gather him tight in my arms. “Oh, baby,” I reply, “let’s do something about that.”

  Jacob

  This is where I go, when I go:

  It’s a room with no windows and no doors, and walls that are thin enough for me to see and hear everything but too thick to break through.

  I’m there, but I’m not there.

  I am pounding to be let out, but nobody can hear me.

  This is where I go, when I go:

  To a country where everyone’s face looks different from mine, and the language is the act of not speaking, and noise is everywhere in the air we breathe. I am doing what the Romans do in Rome; I am trying to communicate, but no one has bothered to tell me that these people cannot hear.

  This is where I go, when I go:

  Somewhere completely, unutterably orange.

  This is where I go, when I go:

  To the place where my body becomes a piano, full of black keys only—the sharps and
the flats, when everyone knows that to play a song other people want to hear, you need some white keys.

  This is why I come back:

  To find those white keys.

  I am not exaggerating when I say that my mother has been staring at me for fifteen minutes. “Shouldn’t you be doing something else?” I finally ask.

  “Right. You’re right,” she says, flustered, but she doesn’t actually leave.

  “Mom,” I groan. “There has got to be something more fascinating than watching me eat.” There’s watching paint dry, for example. Or watching the laundry cycle.

  I know that I’ve given her a scare today, because of what happened this morning. It’s apparent in (a) her inability to leave my side for more than three seconds and (b) her willingness to cook me Ore-Ida Crinkles fries for breakfast. She even forced Theo to take the bus today, instead of being driven into school like usual, because she didn’t want to leave me at home alone and had already decided that I was going to have a sick day.

  Frankly, I don’t understand why she’s so upset, when I am the one who went missing.

  Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I announce. “Are you coming, too?”

  That, finally, shocks her into moving. “You’re sure you feel all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll come up and check on you in a few minutes, then.”

  As soon as she is gone, I put the plate with the French fries on the nightstand. I am going to take a shower; I just have something to do first.

  I have my own fuming chamber. It used to be the home of my pet fish, Arlo, before he died. The empty fish tank sits on the top of my dresser now, inverted. Underneath the fish tank is a coffee cup warmer. I used to use a Sterno, but my mother wasn’t very enthusiastic about fire (even one burning at low level) in my room, hence the electric warmer. On top of this I make a little boat out of aluminum foil, and then I squeeze in a small nickel-size dollop of Krazy Glue. I take the mug of cocoa (nondairy, of course) my mother brought me and stick it in the chamber, too—it will provide humidity in the air, even though I won’t want to drink it after the fuming, when white scum is floating around on its surface. Finally, I place inside the drinking glass that has a known sample on it—my test fingerprint—to make sure everything is working.

  There’s only one thing left to do, but it makes my stomach clench.

  I have to force myself to sort through the clothes I was wearing yesterday to find the item I want to fume, the one I took home from her house. And that of course makes me think of everything else, which means the corners of my mind go black.

  I have to actively work to not be sucked into that hole again.

  Even through the latex glove I’ve slipped on I can feel how cold the metal is. How cold everything was, last night.

  In the shower, I scrub really hard, until my skin is too pink and my eyes are raw from staring into the stream of water. I remember everything.

  Even when I don’t want to.

  Once, when I was in third grade, a boy made fun of the way I talked. I didn’t understand why his impression of me, with words falling flat as pancakes, would be funny to anyone. I didn’t understand why he kept saying things like Take me to your leader. All I knew was that he followed me around on the playground, and everywhere he went, people would laugh at me. What is your problem? I finally asked, turning around to find him right on my heels.

  What is your problem? he parroted.

  I’d really prefer it if you could find something else to do, I said.

  I’d really prefer it if you could find something else to do.

  And before I knew what I was really planning, my fingers closed into a fist and punched him square in the face.

  There was blood everywhere. I didn’t like having his blood on my hand. I didn’t like having it on my shirt, which was supposed to be yellow.

  The boy, meanwhile, was knocked unconscious, and I was dragged to the principal’s office and suspended for a week.

  I don’t like to talk about that day, because it makes me feel like I am full of broken glass.

  I never thought I’d see that much blood again on my hands, but I was wrong.

  It only takes ten minutes for the cyanoacrylate—the Krazy Glue—to properly work. The monomers in its vapors polymerize in the presence of water, amines, amides, hydroxyl, and carboxylic acid—all of which happen to be found in the oils left by fingerprints. They stick to those oils, creating a latent image, which can be made more visible by dusting with powder. Then, the image can be photographed and resized and compared to the known sample.

  There’s a knock on my door. “You okay in there?”

  “No, I’m hanging from a closet rod,” I say.

  This is not the truth.

  “That’s not funny, Jacob,” my mother replies.

  “Fine, I’m getting dressed.”

  This is not the truth, either. I am actually wearing my underwear and a T-shirt right now.

  “Okay,” she says. “Well, give a holler when you’re done.”

  I wait until her footsteps fade down the hall, and then I remove the glass from beneath the fish tank. Sure enough, there are several prints. I dust them with a dual-use powder, which has contrast on both white and black surfaces. Then I dust the prints on the second item, too.

  I photograph them at close range with the digital camera I got for Christmas two years ago and load the images into my computer. It’s always a good idea to photograph your latent prints prior to lifting them, just in case you destroy them during the process. Later, in Adobe Photoshop, I can invert the colors of the ridges and resize the prints. I can begin an analysis.

  I carefully tape over the print to preserve it, intending to hide what I took away from her house in a place where no one will ever find it.

  My mother, by then, is tired of waiting. She opens the door. “Jacob, put on a pair of pants!”

  She holds her hand over her eyes but enters my bedroom all the same.

  “No one told you to come in,” I say.

  She sniffs. “You’ve been using Krazy Glue again, haven’t you? I told you I don’t want you fuming while you’re in the room—that can’t be good for you.” She pauses. “Then again, if you’re fuming, you must be feeling better.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “Is that your cocoa in there?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Come on downstairs,” my mother sighs. “I’ll make you a fresh cup.”

  Here are some facts about forensics:

  1. Forensics is defined as the scientific methods and techniques used in connection with the detection of crime.

  2. The word forensic comes from the Latin forensis, which means “before the forum.” In Roman times, a criminal charge was presented in front of a public group in the forum. The accused and the victim would give testimony, and the one who had the best argument would win.

  3. The first written account of forensics to solve cases was during the Song Dynasty in China in 1248. After a person was killed with a sickle, an investigator told everyone to bring their sickles to a specified location, and when the flies were drawn to one by the smell of blood, the murderer confessed.

  4. The earliest incidence of fingerprint use to determine identity was in the seventh century, when a debtor’s fingerprints were attached to a bill, as proof of the debt for the lender.

  5. Forensic science is a lot easier to perform when you aren’t personally involved.

  The tips of your fingers, the palms of your hands, and the soles of your feet aren’t smooth. They are friction-ridged skin, series of lines with contours and shapes, like a topographical map. Along those lines are sweat pores, and if they become contaminated with sweat, ink, blood, or dirt, they’ll leave a reproduction of those lines on the object that’s been touched. Or, in less fancy terms, a fingerprint.

  If the print can be seen, it can be
photographed. If it can be photographed, it can be preserved and compared to a known sample. It’s an art as much as it’s a science: since I don’t have an AFIS terminal in my house to scan the latent print and spit out fifty candidates with matching similarities, I have to rely on the naked eye. The goal is to find ten to twelve similarities between the known sample and the latent print—that’s what most examiners would conclude to be a match.

  On my computer screen, I set images of the two prints. I place my cursor on the core, the centermost part of the print. I mark a delta—a small triangular formation to the left of the core. I note ending ridges and bifurcations and a circular whorl. A bifurcation, then two ridges, then another bifurcation downward.

  Just like I assumed: This is a match.

  That makes me feel like I am going to throw up, but I swallow and force myself to do what needs to be done.

  Like yesterday.

  Shaking my head clear, I take a small Tupperware container that I’ve filched from the kitchen and place the evidence inside. Then I rummage around in my closet until I find Jemima Puddle-Duck. She’s a stuffed animal that I used to sleep with when I was a kid, and because she is white, she is up on a shelf above the rest of my clothes that have actual pigmentation. I place her facedown in my lap and, using a box cutter, make an incision in the place where she might have had a heart.

  The Tupperware has to be jammed inside, and it makes Jemima look like she has an unsightly rib cage, but it works. I suture her with the same thread I used last week to fix a hole in my sock. I’m not very good at it—I stick myself nearly every stitch—but I get the job done.

  Then I take out a notebook and start writing.

  When I am done, I lie down on my bed. I wish I were at school. It’s harder, when I’m not working at something.

  “I shot the sheriff,” I whisper. “But I swear it was in self-defense.”

  I’ve often thought about how a person could commit the perfect crime.