House Rules: A Novel Read online

  HOUSE

  RULES

  ALSO BY JODI PICOULT

  Handle with Care

  Change of Heart

  Nineteen Minutes

  The Tenth Circle

  Vanishing Acts

  My Sister’s Keeper

  Second Glance

  Perfect Match

  Salem Falls

  Plain Truth

  Keeping Faith

  The Pact

  Mercy

  Picture Perfect

  Harvesting the Heart

  Songs of the Humpback Whale

  HOUSE

  RULES

  A Novel

  JODI PICOULT

  ATRIA BOOKS

  NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Jodi Picoult

  “I Shot the Sheriff” © 1974 Fifty-Six Hope Road Music Ltd. and Odnil Music Ltd. All rights administered by Blue Mountain Music Ltd. Copyright renewed.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Atria Books hardcover edition March 2010

  ATRIA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Jaime Putorti

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Picoult, Jodi, 1966–

  House rules : a novel / by Jodi Picoult.—1st Atria Books hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Asperger’s syndrome—Fiction. 2. Autistic youth—Fiction. 3. Forensic sciences—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3566.I372H68 2010

  813’.54—dc22 2009026381

  ISBN 978-0-7432-9643-4

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-9931-2

  For Nancy Friend Stuart (1949–2008)

  and David Stuart

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have so many people to thank, as always:

  My brilliant legal team: Jennifer Sternick and Lise Iwon; as well as Jennifer Sargent, Rory Malone, and Seth Lipschutz.

  The CSIs who let me tag along: Cpl. Claire Demarais, Betty Martin, Beth Anne Zielinski, Jim Knoll, Lt. Dennis Pincince, Lt. Arthur Kershaw, Sgt. Richard Altimari, Lt. John Blessing, Detective John Grassel, Ms. Robin Smith, Dr. Thomas Gilson, Dr. Peter Gillespie, Detective Patricia Cornell—Providence Police, Ret. Trooper Robert Hathaway—Connecticut State Police, Ret. Lt. Ed Downing—Providence Police, Amy Duhaime, and Kim Freeland.

  Katherine Yanis and her son Jacob, whose generous donation to Autism Speaks UK inspired the name of my fictional Jacob.

  Jim Taylor, who provided the computer lingo for Henry, and who keeps my website the best one I’ve ever seen for an author.

  Chief Nick Giaccone, for police procedure.

  Julia Cooper, for her banking expertise.

  My publishing team: Carolyn Reidy, Judith Curr, Kathleen Schmidt, Mellony Torres, Sarah Branham, Laura Stern, Gary Urda, Lisa Keim, Christine Duplessis, Michael Selleck, the sales force, and everyone else who somehow keeps finding readers who haven’t heard of me and bullying them into getting on the bandwagon.

  My editor, Emily Bestler, who actually makes me forget that this is supposed to be work, and not fun.

  My publicist, Camille McDuffie, who still gets just as excited as I do over the good press.

  My agent, Laura Gross, who may lose belts and BlackBerries (and provides excellent comic relief during stressful tours) but who has never lost sight of the fact that we make a phenomenal team.

  My mom. We don’t get to pick our parents, but if we did, I still would have chosen her.

  My dad. Because I’ve never thanked him formally for being so proud of me.

  I spoke with numerous people who have personal experience with Asperger’s syndrome: Linda Zicko and her son Rich, Laura Bagnall and her son Alex Linden, Jan McAdams and her son Matthew, Deb Smith and her son Dylan, Mike Norbury and his son Chris, Kathleen Kirby and her son David, Kelly Meeder and her sons Brett and Derek, Catherine McMaster, Charlotte Scott and her son James, Dr. Boyd Haley, Lesley Dexter and her son Ethan, Sue Gerber and her daughter Liza, Nancy Albinini and her son Alec, Stella Chin and her son Scott Leung, Michelle Snail, Katie Lescarbeau, Stephanie Loo, Gina Crane and Bill Kolar and their son Anthony, Becky Pekar, Suzanne Harlow and her son Brad.

  A special thanks to Ronna Hochbein, a mighty fine author in her own right, who works with autistic kids and not only was a font of information for me regarding vaccines and autism but also arranged for multiple face-to-face interviews with children and their parents.

  Thanks aren’t really enough for Jess Watsky. She needs something much larger—gratitude, humility, slavish devotion. As a teen with Asperger’s, she not only allowed me to pick through her life and her mind and steal specific memories and incidents for fiction; but she also read every word of this book with lightning speed, told me what made her laugh and what needed to be fixed. She’s the heart of this novel; I could not have created a character like Jacob without her.

  And last (but never least): to Tim, Kyle, Jake, and Sammy. If you four were all I had to call my own, I’d be the richest woman on the planet.

  HOUSE

  RULES

  CASE 1: SLEEP TIGHT

  At first glance, she looked like a saint: Dorothea Puente rented out rooms to the elderly and disabled in Sacramento, California, in the 1980s. But then, her boarders started to vanish. Seven bodies were found buried in the garden, and traces of prescription sleeping pills were found in the remains, through forensic toxicology analysis. Puente was charged with killing her boarders so that she could take their pension checks and get herself plastic surgery and expensive clothing, in order to maintain her image as a doyenne of Sacramento society. She was charged with nine murders and convicted of three.

  In 1998, while serving two consecutive life sentences, Puente began corresponding with a writer named Shane Bugbee and sending him recipes, which were subsequently published in a book called Cooking with a Serial Killer.

  Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t touch that food with a ten-foot pole.

  1

  Emma

  Everywhere I look, there are signs of a struggle. The mail has been scattered all over the kitchen floor; the stools are overturned. The phone has been knocked off its pedestal, its battery pack hanging loose from an umbilicus of wires. There’s one single faint footprint at the threshold of the living room, pointing toward the dead body of my son, Jacob.

  He is sprawled like a starfish in front of the fireplace. Blood covers his temple and his hands. For a moment, I can’t move, can’t breathe.

  Suddenly, he sits up. “Mom,” Jacob says, “you’re not even trying.”

  This is not real, I remind myself, and I watch him lie back down in the exact same position—on his back,