House Rules: A Novel Read online

  She is babbling, and I have no idea what the hell she is talking about. Although I did hear the word single. “I’m sorry, Ms. Hunt—”

  “Emma.”

  “Emma, then. I … have no idea what you’re talking about. I came because your son is tutored by Jess Ogilvy—”

  “Oh,” she says, sobering. “I heard about Jess on the news. Her poor parents must be frantic. Are there any leads yet?”

  “That’s why I’m here to speak to your son.”

  Those eyes of hers darken. “You can’t possibly think Jacob had anything to do with her disappearance?”

  “No, but he was the last appointment in her date book before she disappeared.”

  She folds her arms. “Detective Matson, my son has Asperger’s syndrome.”

  “Okay.” And I’m red-green color-blind. Whatever.

  “It’s high-functioning autism. He doesn’t even know Jess is missing yet. He’s had a hard time lately, and the news could be devastating to him.”

  “I can be sensitive about the subject.”

  She measures me for a moment with her gaze. Then, turning, she heads into the house, expecting me to follow. “Jacob,” she calls as we reach the kitchen.

  I stand in the entryway, waiting for a child to appear. After all, Jess Ogilvy is a teacher and Professor Gorgona referred to a boy she worked with. Instead, a behemoth teenager who’s taller than I am, and probably stronger, shuffles into the room. This is who Jess Ogilvy tutored? I stare at him for a second, trying to place the reason he looks so familiar out of context, and suddenly it comes to me: hypothermic man. This kid identified the cause of death before the medical examiner did.

  “You?” I say. “You’re Jacob Hunt?”

  Now his mother’s rushed apologies make sense. She probably thought I’d come to slap a fine on the kid, or arrest him for interfering with a crime scene.

  “Jacob,” she says drily, “I think you’re already acquainted with Detective Matson.”

  “Hi, Jacob.” I hold out a hand. “Nice to officially meet you.”

  He doesn’t shake it. He doesn’t even look me in the eye. “I saw the article in the paper,” he says, his voice flat and robotic. “It was buried in the back. If you ask me, someone dying of hypothermia is worthy of at least page two.” He takes a step forward. “Did the full autopsy results come back? It would be interesting to know if the alcohol lowered the freezing point for the body, or if there’s not a significant change.”

  “So, Jake,” I say.

  “Jacob. My name is Jacob, not Jake.”

  “Right, Jacob. I was hoping to ask you a few questions?”

  “If they’re about forensics,” he says, growing animated, “then I am more than happy to help. Have you heard about the research coming out of Purdue, on desorption electrospray ionization? They found that the sweat from finger pores slightly corrodes metal surfaces—anything from a bullet to a piece of a bomb. If you spray the fingerprints with positively charged water, the droplets dissolve chemicals in the fingerprints and transfer minute amounts that can be analyzed by mass spectrometer. Can you imagine how handy it would be to not only get fingerprint images but also identify the chemicals in them? You could not only place a suspect at a crime scene but also get proof that he handled explosives.”

  I look at Emma Hunt, begging for help. “Jacob, Detective Matson needs to talk to you about something else. You want to sit down for a minute?”

  “A minute. Because it’s almost four-thirty.”

  And what, I wonder, happens at 4:30? His mother doesn’t react at all to his comment. I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland, in the Disney video that Sasha likes to watch on her weekends with me, and everyone is in on the Unbirthday routine but me. Last time we’d watched it, I realized that being a parent wasn’t all that different. We’re always bluffing, pretending we know best, when most of the time we’re just praying we won’t screw up too badly.

  “Well, then,” I say to Jacob. “I guess I’d better start.”

  Emma

  The only reason I let Rich Matson into my house is because I’m still not entirely sure that he doesn’t want to punish Jacob for showing up at his crime scene last weekend, and I will do whatever I have to do to make that whole nightmare go away.

  “Jacob,” I say, “Detective Matson needs to talk to you about something else. You want to sit down for a minute?”

  We are racing against a clock, not that Matson would understand. “A minute. Because it’s almost four-thirty,” Jacob tells me.

  I don’t know how anyone could look at Jacob and think he’d be a viable witness. Sure, his mind is a steel trap. But half the time, there’s no lock to get inside it.

  The detective sits at the kitchen table. I turn down the flame on the stove and then join him. Jacob is struggling to look in Matson’s direction, but his eyelids keep fluttering, as if he’s staring into the sun, and finally he gives up and lets his gaze slide away.

  “You have a friend named Jess, right?” the detective asks.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you and Jess do together?”

  “We practice social skills. Conversations. Good-byes. Things like that.” He hesitates. “She’s my best friend.”

  This doesn’t surprise me. Jacob’s definition of a friend isn’t legitimate. To him, a friend might be the kid whose locker is next to his in school, who therefore has an interaction at least once a day to say, Could you move over? A friend is someone who he’s never met but who doesn’t actively taunt him in school. Jess may be paid by me to meet with Jacob, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that she honestly cares about him and connects with him.

  The detective looks at Jacob, who, of course, is not looking at him. I watch people falter over that normal courtesy of communication all the time—after a while, it feels like staring, so they look away from Jacob, mirroring his behavior. Sure enough, after a moment, Matson stares down at the table as if there’s something fascinating in the wood grain. “Right now, Jacob, Jess is missing. And it’s my job to find her.”

  I suck in my breath. “That’s what you call sensitive?”

  But Jacob doesn’t seem to be surprised, which makes me wonder if he’s seen the news, or read about the disappearance in the papers or online. “Jess is gone,” he repeats.

  The detective leans forward. “Were you supposed to meet with her last Tuesday?”

  “Yes,” Jacob says. “At two thirty-five.”

  “And did you?”

  “No.”

  Suddenly, Jacob’s breakdown makes perfect sense. To travel to Jess’s unfamiliar new residence—which already would have set off his alarm bells—and then to never have Jess show up … Well, talk about a perfect storm for an AS kid. “Oh, Jacob. Was that why you had a meltdown?”

  “Meltdown?” Matson echoes.

  I glance at him briefly. “When Jacob’s routine is disrupted, he gets very agitated. This was a double whammy, and by the time he came home—” I break off, suddenly remembering something else. “You walked home from Jess’s place? Alone?”

  It isn’t that he wouldn’t know the way—Jacob is a veritable human GPS; he can take one look at a map and have it memorized. But knowing geography and knowing how to follow directions are two very different things. Getting from point A to point B to point C inevitably trips him up.

  “Yes,” Jacob says. “It wasn’t so bad.”

  It was nearly eight miles. In the freezing cold. I suppose I should consider us lucky: on top of everything else, Jacob could have wound up with pneumonia.

  “How long did you wait for her?”

  Jacob looks up at the clock. He starts rubbing the tips of his fingers against his thumbs, back and forth. “I have to go now.”

  I notice the detective staring at Jacob as he fidgets, and I know damn well what he’s thinking. “I bet when you see someone who doesn’t make eye contact and who can’t sit still, you immediately assume guilt,” I say. “Me, I assume he’s on the spectr