The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  “You moved her after she died, Jacob, didn’t you?”

  “Yes! Of course I moved her!” Isn’t that obvious?

  “Why?”

  “I needed to set up the crime scene, and that’s where she had to be.” He, of all people, should understand.

  Detective Matson tilts his head. “Is that why you did this? You wanted to commit a crime and see if you could get away with it?”

  “No, that’s not why—”

  “Then what is?” he interrupts.

  I try to find a way to put into words all the reasons I have done what I did. But if there is one subject I do not understand—not internally, much less externally—it’s the ties that bind us to each other. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” I mutter.

  “Is this a joke to you? Some big joke? Because I don’t see it that way. A girl’s dead, and there’s nothing funny about that.” He comes closer, until his arm is brushing mine, and I can barely concentrate because of the buzzing in my head. “Tell me, Jacob,” he says. “Tell me why you killed Jess.”

  Suddenly the door slams open, striking him in the shoulder. “Don’t answer that,” a strange man yells. Behind him stands my mother, and behind her are two uniformed officers, who have just raced down the hall, too.

  “Who the hell are you?” Detective Matson asks.

  “I’m Jacob’s attorney.”

  “Oh, really,” he says. “Jacob, is this your lawyer?”

  I glance at the man. He’s wearing khaki pants and a dress shirt but no tie. He has sandy hair that reminds me of Theo’s and looks too young to be a real lawyer. “No,” I reply.

  The detective smiles triumphantly. “He’s eighteen years old, Counselor. He says you’re not his lawyer, and he hasn’t asked for one.”

  I am not stupid. I’ve watched enough CrimeBusters to know where this is headed. “I want a lawyer,” I announce.

  Detective Matson throws up his hands.

  “We’re leaving now.” My mother elbows her way closer. I reach for my coat, which is still draped over the back of the chair.

  “Mr. . . . what’s your name?” the detective asks.

  “Bond,” my new lawyer says. “Oliver Bond.” He grins at me.

  “Mr. Bond, your client is being charged with the murder of Jessica Ogilvy,” Detective Matson says. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  CASE 5: THE NOT-SO-GOOD DOCTOR

  Kay Sybers was fifty-two years old and, by anyone’s standards, unhealthy. She’d been a smoker years ago; she was overweight. But she didn’t show signs of medical problems until one evening in 1991, when (after a dinner of prime rib and Chardonnay) she had trouble breathing and developed shooting pain down her left arm. Those are classic signs of a heart attack—something her husband, Bill, should have recognized. After all, he was a Florida physician who doubled as the county coroner. Instead of calling an ambulance or whisking her to the ER, though, he attempted to draw blood from her arm. He wanted to run a few tests that day at work, he said. Yet hours later, Kay was dead. Concluding that she had died from a coronary, Bill Sybers decided against an autopsy.

  A day later, based on an anonymous tip of suspicious activity, Kay Sybers was scheduled for autopsy. The toxicology reports came back inconclusive, and Kay was buried. However, suspicions arose again when rumors circulated that Bill Sybers was sleeping with a lab technician at his workplace. Kay’s body was exhumed, and forensic toxicologist Kevin Ballard screened for succinylcholine, a drug that increases the release of potassium and paralyzes the muscles, including the diaphragm. In the tissues, he discovered succinylmonocholine, a by-product of succinylcholine and proof of the poison’s presence in Kay’s body.

  Ironically, although Bill Sybers seemed in a hurry to bury his wife and hide the evidence, the embalming process helped preserve the succinylmonocholine and made it easier to detect.

  5

  Rich

  The minute after I arrest Jacob Hunt, all hell breaks loose. His mother cries out and starts shouting at the same moment that I put my hand on Jacob’s shoulder to lead him back to the room where we do our fingerprints and mug shots—but from his reaction, you would have thought I’d just run him through with a sword. He takes a swing at me, which sets off his lawyer, who—being a lawyer—is no doubt already wondering how to keep his client from being charged for assault on an officer as well. “Jacob!” his mother shrieks, and then she grabs my arm. “Don’t touch him. He doesn’t like to be touched.”

  I gingerly test my jaw where he’s decked me. “Yeah, well, I don’t like to be punched,” I mutter, and I twist Jacob’s arms behind his back and handcuff him. “I need to type up some paperwork for your son. Then we’ll drive him down to the courthouse for his arraignment.”

  “He can’t handle all this,” Emma argues. “At least let me stay with him, so that he knows it’s going to be all right—”

  “You can’t,” I say flatly.

  “You wouldn’t interrogate someone deaf without an interpreter!”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, your son isn’t deaf.” I meet her gaze. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to arrest you as well.”

  “Emma,” the lawyer murmurs, taking her arm.

  “Let go of me,” she says, shaking him off. She takes a step toward her flailing son, but one of the other officers stops her.

  “Get them out of here,” I order as I start to drag Jacob down the hall to the processing room.

  It’s like trying to wrestle a bull into the backseat of a car. “Look,” I say, “you just have to relax.” But he is still struggling against my hold when I finally shove him into the small space. There’s a fingerprinting machine in there, plus the camera we use for mug shots, expensive equipment that in my mind’s eye I’m seeing shattered by Jacob’s tantrum. “Stand here,” I say, pointing to a white line on the floor. “Look at the camera.”

  Jacob lifts up his face and closes his eyes.

  “Open them,” I say.

  He does—and rolls them toward the ceiling. After a minute, I take the damn picture anyway, and then his profile shots.

  It’s when he’s turned to his right that he notices the fingerprint machine and goes very still. “Is that a LiveScan?” Jacob murmurs, the first coherent words he’s said since I placed him under arrest.

  “Yup.” I stand at the keypad and suddenly realize that there is a much easier way to go about processing Jacob. “You want to see how it works?”

  It’s like a switch has been flipped; the crazed tornado has morphed into a curious kid. He takes a step closer. “They’re digital files, right?”

  “Yeah.” I type Jacob’s name onto the keypad. “What’s your middle initial?”

  “T.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “December twenty-first, 1991,” he says.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know your social security—”

  He rattles off a string of numbers, looking over my shoulder at the next entry. “Weight: 185 pounds,” Jacob says, growing more animated. “Occupation: Student. Place of Birth: Burlington, Vermont.”

  I reach for a bottle of Corn Huskers lotion that we use to make sure the ridges are slightly damp and all friction skin is captured and realize Jacob’s hands are still cuffed behind him. “I’d like to show you how this machine operates,” I say slowly, “but I can’t do it if you’re in handcuffs.”

  “Right. I understand,” Jacob says, but he’s staring at the screen on the LiveScan machine, and I think if I’d told him that he’d have to give up one of his limbs in return for seeing the scan in action, he would have eagerly agreed. I unlock the cuffs and wipe his fingertips down with the lotion before taking his right hand in mine.

  “First we do the thumb flats,” I say, pressing Jacob’s down one at a time. “Then we do flats of the fingers.” It’s a simultaneous impression, the four fingers of each hand pressed on the glass surface at once. “Once the computer’s got these loaded, the other images are matched up against them. Y