House Rules: A Novel Read online

  There are obvious differences—the physical trauma being the biggest one. But there’s something else about her I cannot put my finger on. Did she lose weight? Not really. Was it the makeup? Nah, she wasn’t wearing any in either shot.

  It’s the hair.

  Not the cut, which would be easy. It’s straight in the picture of Jess and her boyfriend. In the crime scene print, though, it’s curled and frizzy, a cloud around her battered face.

  I pick up the photo and study it at closer range. It seems likely that curls were the default setting for her hair, given that she would have gone to the trouble to style it when out with her boyfriend. Which means that her hair got wet while the body was out in the elements … something easily assumed, except for the fact that she was protected from rain and snow by the concrete culvert where she was dumped.

  So her hair was wet when she was killed.

  And there was blood in the bathroom.

  Was Jacob a Peeping Tom, too?

  “Captain?”

  I look up to find one of the street cops standing in front of me. “Dispatch just got a call from a kid who says he’s being abused by a parent.”

  “Don’t need a detective for that, do you?”

  “No, Captain. It’s just … the kid? He’s the one you arrested for that murder.”

  The photo flutters out of my hand, onto the floor. “You gotta be kidding,” I mutter, and I stand up and grab my coat. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Jacob

  Immediately, I realize I’ve made a colossal mistake.

  I begin hiding things: my computer, my file cabinet. I shred papers that are sitting on my desk and tuck a stash of journals from forensics associations in the bathtub. I figure all of these things can be used against me, and they’ve already taken so much of what was mine.

  I don’t think I can be arrested again, but I am not entirely sure. Double jeopardy only refers to the same crime, and only after an acquittal.

  I will say this for the boys in blue—they are speedy. Less than ten minutes after my 911 call, there is a knock at the door. My mother and Theo, who are still downstairs trying to reinstall the fire alarm Theo set off with some abortive kitchen snack, are caught completely unawares.

  It’s stupid, I know, but I hide underneath my bed.

  Rich

  “What are you doing here?” Emma Hunt demands.

  “Actually, we received a call through 911.”

  “I didn’t call 91— Jacob!” she yells, and she turns on her heel and flies up the stairs.

  I step into the house to find Theo staring at me. “We don’t want to donate to the police athletic league,” he says sarcastically.

  “Thanks.” I point up the staircase. “I’m, uh, just going to … go … ?” Without waiting for him to answer, I head toward Jacob’s room.

  “Abusing you?” Emma is shrieking when I reach the doorway. “You’ve never been abused a day in your life!”

  “There’s physical abuse and there’s mental abuse,” Jacob argues.

  Emma whips her head in my direction. “I have never laid a hand on that boy. Although right now, I’m incredibly tempted.”

  “I have three words for you,” Jacob says. “Doctor! Henry! Lee!”

  “The forensic scientist?” I am completely not following.

  “He’s speaking at UNH tomorrow, and she says I can’t go.”

  Emma looks at me. “Do you see what I’m dealing with?”

  I purse my lips, thinking. “Let me talk to him alone for a minute.”

  “Seriously?” Her eyes widen. “Were you not in the same courtroom I was in three hours ago, when the judge told you accommodations should have been made when you questioned Jacob?”

  “I’m not questioning him now,” I tell her. “Not professionally, anyway.”

  She throws up her hands. “I don’t care. Do what you want. Both of you.”

  When her last footstep fades down the stairs, I sit down beside Jacob. “You know you’re not supposed to call 911 unless you’re in serious trouble.”

  He snorts. “So arrest me. Oh, wait, you already did.”

  “You ever hear of the boy who cried wolf?”

  “I didn’t say anything about wolves,” Jacob replies. “I said I was being abused, and I am. This is the one chance I have to meet Dr. Lee and she won’t even consider it. If I’m old enough to be tried as an adult, how come I’m not old enough to walk to the bus stop and travel down there on my own?”

  “You’re old enough. You’ll just wind up with your ass in jail again. Is that what you want?” From the corner of my eye, I spy a laptop peeking out of a pillowcase. “Why is your computer under the covers?”

  He pulls it free and cradles it in his arms. “I thought you’d steal it from me. Just like you took my other stuff.”

  “I didn’t steal that, I had a warrant to seize it. And you’ll get it back, one day.” I glance at him. “You know, Jacob, your mother is only protecting you.”

  “By locking me up in here?”

  “No, the judge did that. By not letting you break your bail requirements.”

  We are both quiet for a second, and then Jacob glances at me from the corner of his eye. “I don’t understand your voice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It should be angry because I made you come all the way out here. But it’s not angry. And it wasn’t angry when I talked to you at the police station, either. You treated me like I was just a friend of yours, but then you arrested me at the end, and people don’t arrest their friends.” He clasps his hands between his knees. “Frankly, people don’t make sense to me.”

  I nod in agreement. “Frankly, people don’t make sense to me, either,” I say.

  Theo

  Why do the cops keep coming to our stupid house?

  I mean, given that they’ve already arrested Jacob, shouldn’t they let justice take its course?

  Okay, I get that Jacob was the one to summon them this time. But surely a phone call would have been just as effective to get him to call off his request for help. And yet, the police—this one guy in particular—keeps showing up. He chats up my mother, and now I can hear him yapping with Jacob about maggots that land on bodies within ten minutes of death.

  Tell me how, exactly, this has any bearing on the 911 call, hmm?

  Here’s what I think: Detective Matson isn’t even here to talk to Jacob.

  He’s certainly not here to talk to my mother.

  He’s come because he knows that in order to get to Jacob’s room, he has to pass mine, and that means at least two glimpses inside.

  Maybe someone has reported missing the Wii game I took.

  Maybe he’s just waiting for me to crack, to fall at his feet and confess that I was at Jess Ogilvy’s place shortly before my brother, so that he can tell that bitch prosecutor to put me on the witness stand to testify against Jacob.

  For these reasons and a dozen more I haven’t thought of yet, I close my door and lock it, so that when Detective Matson passes by again, I don’t have to look him in the eye.

  Jacob

  I would not have thought it possible, but Rich Matson is not a complete and utter ass.

  For example, he told me that you can tell the sex of an individual by looking at the skull, because a male skull has a square chin and a female chin is rounded. He told me that he’s been to the Body Farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, where an acre of land is covered with corpses rotting in all different stages, so that forensic anthropologists can measure the effects of weather and insects on human decay. He has pictures and promised to mail me a few.

  This is still not Dr. Henry Lee–worthy, but it makes a decent consolation prize.

  I learn that he has a daughter who, like Jess, faints at the sight of blood. When I tell him that Jess used to do this, too, his face twists, as if he’s smelled something awful.

  After a while I promise him not to call the police on my mother again, unless she is causing me dire bodily harm.