House Rules: A Novel Read online

  Dr. Cohn makes another note. “Do you have confidence in your lawyer, Jacob?”

  “No,” I say. “The first time I met him I wound up in jail for three days.”

  “Do you agree with how he’s handling the case?”

  “Obviously not. He needs to tell them the truth so that the charges will be dismissed.”

  “That’s not how it works,” Dr. Cohn says.

  “It worked that way in My Cousin Vinny,” I tell him. “When Joe Pesci tells the court that the car isn’t the same as the one the witness identified because it had different tires. And it worked that way on CrimeBusters, episode eighty-eight. Do you want me to tell you about it?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Dr. Cohn says. “Jacob, what would you do if a witness told a lie on the stand?”

  I feel my fingers start to flutter, so I clamp my other hand down on top of them. “How would I know?” I say. “Only the liar knows that he’s lying.”

  Oliver

  On paper, Jacob Hunt not only looks competent to stand trial but looks like a damn prelaw student, one who is probably more qualified to defend himself than I am.

  Only the liar knows that he’s lying.

  It’s the third time I’ve read Jacob’s answers to Dr. Cohn, the state shrink, and the third time that statement has jumped out at me. Is Jacob Hunt brilliant, with a photographic memory that I could have used back in law school? Or is he just snowing his mother … and everyone else?

  Either way, during my last pass through the report, I realized that I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of challenging his competency—especially in a place like Vermont. No, if anyone’s feeling incompetent right now, it’s me—because I have to tell Emma that I’m not even going to fight the State on this one.

  I drive to the Hunts’—since Emma and Jacob are basically under house arrest, I can’t very well ask them to meet me at my office. Thor’s riding in my lap, half tucked beneath the steering wheel.

  I pull into the driveway and cut the ignition but don’t make a move to get out of the car. “If she goes haywire,” I tell the dog, “I’m counting on you to defend me.”

  Because it’s cold today—just above zero degrees—I carry Thor inside my coat and head to the front door. Emma answers before I can even knock. “Hi,” she says. “It’s good to see you.” She even smiles a little, which makes her soft around all the edges. “Frankly, when you’re stuck in the house, even a visit from the electric company meter reader is a highlight of the day.”

  “And here I thought you were starting to like me.” Thor pops his head between the buttons of my coat. “Would it be okay to bring him in? It’s really cold in the car.”

  She eyes the dog warily. “Is it going to pee on my carpet?”

  “Only if you keep looking at him like that.”

  I set Thor on the floor of the mudroom and watch him trot away. “I don’t like dog hair,” Emma murmurs.

  “Then aren’t you lucky you weren’t born a spaniel?” I take off my coat and fold it over my arm. “I got the competency results back.”

  “And?” In one heartbeat, Emma is focused, intense.

  “Jacob’s competent to stand trial.”

  She shakes her head, as if she hasn’t quite heard me right. “You saw what happened during the arraignment!”

  “Yes, but that’s not the legal definition of competency, and according to the state psychiatrist—”

  “I don’t care about the state psychiatrist. Of course they’re going to find someone who says what the DA wants. Aren’t you at least going to fight back?”

  “You don’t understand,” I tell her. “In Vermont you could be Charlie Manson and you’d still be found competent to stand trial.” I sit down on one of the benches in the mudroom. “You ever hear of a guy named John Bean?”

  “No.”

  “In 1993, he tied his mother up and built a funeral pyre for her with furniture he’d chopped into pieces. He threw bleach in her eyes, but his mother was able to escape. At his first appearance before a court, Bean told the judge he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The judge said that his statements were bizarre and indicated an inability to comprehend what was happening. When he was charged with kidnapping for the same event, he refused counsel. He wanted to plead guilty, but the court wouldn’t accept that, so he was given a public defender. Bean told an evaluator that he believed he was the father of the public defender’s children and that she was the author of a comic strip and was a cross between Janet Reno and Janet Jackson. Through the next eight years of representation, he never discussed his case with his attorney—who raised the competency issue with the court—”

  “I don’t see what this has—”

  “I’m not done,” I say. “The defense shrink said Bean reported having computer chips inside him that were letting him be programmed. The state psychiatrist found him psychotic. During the trial, Bean tore the radiator out of the wall, threw the court television, and got hold of one of the officers’ guns. He told his attorney that he was seeing serpents coming out of people’s heads in the courtroom, and that angels were controlling the witness. He was convicted, and before sentencing, he told the court that in Riverside Park they put a memorial stone in the name of the Freddie Mercury Foundation, after Freddie Mercury had killed a Catholic priest. After that, he said Tony Curtis said he would be Bean’s father, and he used the greater power of Simon the Pig—the same power that had created the Nazi government—to bring him into his house and feed him human flesh. Oh, and a cat talked to him subliminally.”

  Emma stares at me. “None of this has anything to do with Jacob.”

  “It does,” I say, “because in the State of Vermont, in spite of everything I just told you, John Bean was found competent to stand trial. That’s legal precedent.”

  Emma sinks down onto the bench beside me. “Oh,” she says, her voice small. “So what do we do now?”

  “I, uh, think we need to plead insanity.”

  Her head snaps up. “What? What are you talking about? Jacob’s not insane—”

  “You just told me he wasn’t competent to stand trial, and now you’re telling me he’s too competent to use an insanity defense. You can’t have it both ways!” I argue. “We can look at the discovery when it comes in … But from what you’ve told me, there’s a pretty strong case against Jacob, including a confession. I really believe it’s the best way to keep him out of jail.”

  Emma paces the mudroom. A shaft of sunlight falls across her hair and her cheek, and suddenly I remember an art history course I took in college: in Michelangelo’s Pietà, Raphael’s Madonna and Child, da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks, Mary was never seen smiling. Was it because she knew what was coming down the pike?

  “If the insanity defense works,” Emma asks, “does he get to come home?”

  “It depends. The judge has the right to put him in a secure treatment facility until he’s sure Jacob won’t hurt anyone again.”

  “What do you mean, ‘secure treatment facility’? You’re talking about a mental hospital?”

  “Pretty much,” I admit.

  “So my son can either go to jail or be put in a mental hospital? What about the third option?”

  “What third option?”

  “He’s free to go,” Emma says. “He’s acquitted.”

  I open my mouth to tell her that’s a huge gamble, to say that she’d have a better chance of teaching Thor to knit, but instead, I take a deep breath. “Why don’t we go ask Jacob?”

  “No way,” Emma replies.

  “Unfortunately, that’s not your choice.” I stand up and walk into the kitchen. Jacob is picking through a bowl of blueberries and giving the smaller ones to Thor.

  “Did you know he likes fruit?” Jacob asks.

  “He’ll eat anything that’s not nailed down,” I say. “We have to talk about your case, dude.”

  “Dude?” Emma’s come into the room and is standing behind me, arms folded.

  I ign