House Rules Read online

  I don't know what he was doing there--apparently it had to do with some kind of testing that was being administered at my school instead of his, and he was waiting with his aide for my mother to come pick him up. But the minute he saw me and called out my name, I knew I was screwed. At first I pretended I didn't hear him, but he ran right onto the field. --Friend of yours, Hunt?|| Tyler asked, and I just laughed it off. I whipped the Frisbee in his direction, extra hard.

  To my surprise, Jacob--who couldn't catch a freaking cold if he tried--nabbed the Frisbee and started to run with it. I froze, but Tyler took off after him. --Hey, retard,|| he yelled at Jacob. --I'm gonna kick your ass!||

  He was faster than Jacob, big surprise, and he tackled my brother to the ground. He lifted his hand to deck Jacob, but by then I was on his back, yanking him off and straddling his body as the Frisbee went spinning into the street. --You don't fucking touch him,|| I yelled into Tyler's face. --If anyone's going to beat up my brother, it's going to be me.||

  I left him in the dirt, coughing, and then took Jacob's hand and walked him to the front of the school, where I couldn't hear the girls whispering about me and my dork of a brother, where there were enough teachers milling around to keep Tyler and Wally from jumping me in revenge.

  --I wanted to play,|| Jacob said.

  --Well, they didn't want you to play,|| I told him.

  He kicked at the dirt. --I wish I could be the big brother.||

  Technically, he was, but he wasn't talking about age. He just didn't know how to say what he meant. --You could start by not stealing someone's goddamn Frisbee,|| I said.

  And then my mother drove up and rolled down the window. She was smiling a huge smile. --I thought I was only picking up Jacob, but look at that,|| she said. --You two found each other.||

  Oliver

  I am sure that the jury isn't absorbing anything that Marcy Allston, the CSI, is saying.

  She's so drop-dead gorgeous that I can practically imagine the dead bodies she stumbles across sitting up and panting.

  --The first time we came to the house, we dusted for fingerprints and found some on the computer and in the bathroom.||

  --Can you explain the process?|| Helen asks.

  --The skin of your fingers, the palms of your hands, and the soles of your feet aren't smooth--they are friction ridge skin, with lines that start, stop, and have certain contours or shapes. Along those lines of skin are a series of sweat pores, and if they become contaminated with sweat, blood, dirt, dust, and so on, they leave a reproduction of those lines on the object that's been touched. My job is to make that reproduction visible. Sometimes you need a magnifying glass to do it, sometimes you need a light source. Once I make the print visible, it can be photographed, and once it can be photographed I can preserve it and make a comparison against a known sample.||

  --Where do those known samples come from?||

  --The victim, the suspects. And from AFIS, a fingerprint database for all criminals in the United States who have been processed.||

  --How do you make the comparison?||

  --We look at specific areas and find patterns--deltas, whorls, arches, loops--and the core, the centermost part of the fingerprint. We make a visual comparison between the known fingerprint and the unknown one, looking for general shapes that match, and then we look at more specific details--ending ridges, or bifurcations where one line might split into two. If approximately ten to twelve similarities occur, a person trained in fingerprint identification will be able to determine whether the two fingerprints came from the same individual.||

  The prosecutor enters into evidence a chart that shows two fingerprints, side by side. Immediately, Jacob sits up a little straighter. --This fingerprint on the right was found on the kitchen counter. The one on the left is a known sample taken from Jacob Hunt during his arrest.||

  As she walks through the ten little red flags that show similarities between the prints, I look at Jacob. He is grinning like mad.

  --Based on your comparison, did you come to a conclusion?|| Helen asks.

  --Yes. That this was Jacob Hunt's fingerprint in the kitchen.||

  --Was there anything else of note during your processing of the house?||

  Marcy nods. --We found a kitchen window screen that had been cut from the outside, and the sash jimmied and broken. A screwdriver was found in the bushes below the window.||

  --Were there any fingerprints on the sash, or on the screwdriver?||

  --No, but the temperature that day was extremely cold, which often compromises fingerprint evidence.||

  --Did you find anything else?||

  --A boot print beneath the windowsill. We made a wax cast of the print and were able to match it to a boot on the premises.||

  --Do you know who that boot belonged to?||

  --Mark Maguire, the victim's boyfriend,|| Marcy said. --We determined that these were boots he kept at the house, since he often stayed there overnight.||

  --Did you find anything else in the house?||

  --Yes. Using a chemical called Luminol, we found significant traces of blood in the bathroom.||

  Jacob writes a note on the pad and gives it to me:

  Bleach + Luminol = false positive for blood.

  --At some point did you receive a 911 call from the victim's cell phone?|| Helen asks.

  --Yes. Early on January eighteenth, we responded to a culvert approximately three hundred yards from the home where Jess Ogilvy had been house-sitting, and found the victim's body.||

  --What was the position of the body?||

  --She was propped up with her back against the cement wall, and her arms were folded in her lap. She was fully clothed.||

  --Was there anything else noteworthy about how the body was found?||

  --Yes,|| Marcy replies. --The victim was wrapped in a distinctive, handmade quilt.||

  --Is this the quilt that you found with the victim that day?|| the prosecutor asks, and she offers Marcy a bulky roll of fabric in all the colors of the rainbow, the pattern marred by dark brown areas of dried blood.

  --That's the one,|| Marcy says, and as it is entered into evidence, I can hear Emma draw in her breath.

  Helen thanks her witness, and I stand up to cross-examine. --How long have you been a CSI?||

  --Four years,|| Marcy says.

  --So not that long, then.||

  She raises a brow. --How long have you been a lawyer?||

  --Have you seen a lot of dead bodies at crime scenes?||

  --Fortunately, not as many as I would if I worked in Nashua or Boston,|| Marcy says.

  --But enough to know what I'm doing.||

  --You said that you found a fingerprint at Jess Ogilvy's house, in the kitchen, that belongs to Jacob.||

  --That's right.||

  --Can you say that the presence of that fingerprint identifies him as a murderer?||

  --No. It only places him at the scene of the crime.||

  --Is it possible that Jacob might have left the fingerprint there at some other point?||

  --Yes.||

  --You also found Mark Maguire's boot prints beneath a window sash that had been jimmied and cut,|| I say. --Is that correct?||

  --Yes, we did.||

  --Did you find Jacob's boot prints anywhere outside?||

  --No,|| Marcy says.

  I take a deep breath. I hope you know what you're doing, I think silently, looking back once at Jacob. --And the blood in the bathroom--were you able to determine whether it belonged to the victim?||

  --No. We tried to run a DNA test, but the results were not conclusive. There were traces of bleach in the swabs, and bleach often compromises DNA tests.||

  --Isn't it true, Ms. Allston, that when sprayed on bleach, Luminol also gives a positive reading?||

  --Yes, sometimes.||

  --So the traces of blood you found might be traces of bleach instead.||

  --It's possible,|| she concedes.

  --And the alleged blood in the bathroom might simply ha