House Rules: A Novel Read online

  “What happened after that?”

  I face the jury. “Early Monday morning, January eighteenth, shortly after three A.M., Townsend Dispatch received a 911 call. All 911 calls are traced through GPS technology so responders can reach whoever is making the call. This call originated from a culvert approximately three hundred yards from the home where Jess Ogilvy was residing. I responded to the call. The victim’s body—and her phone—were found there, and she was wrapped in a blanket. There’s a video clip from the midday news that aired on WCAX—” I hesitate, waiting for Helen to take the tape and enter it as evidence, to pull the television monitor closer to the jury so that they can see it.

  There is utter silence as the reporter’s face fills the screen, her eyes watering in the cold, while crime scene investigators move along behind her. The reporter shifts her feet, and Helen freezes the image.

  “Do you recognize that blanket, Detective?” she asks.

  It is a multicolored quilt, definitely hand-sewn. “Yes. It was wrapped around Jess Ogilvy’s body.”

  “Is this the same blanket?”

  She holds up the quilt, with its bloodstains ruining the pattern here and there. “That’s it,” I say.

  “What happened after that?”

  “With the discovery of the body, I had several officers arrest Mark Maguire for the murder of Jess Ogilvy. I was interrogating him when I received another call.”

  “Did the caller identify him- or herself?”

  “Yes. It was Jacob Hunt’s mother, Emma.”

  “What was her demeanor?” Helen asks.

  “She was frantic. Extremely upset.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  The other lawyer, the one who looks like he’s still in high school, objects. “That’s hearsay, Your Honor,” he says.

  “Counsel, approach,” the judge says.

  Helen speaks quietly. “Judge, I would make an offer of proof that the mother called because she had just seen the news clip with that quilt on the screen and was able to link it to her son. Therefore, Your Honor, it’s an excited utterance.”

  “The objection’s overruled,” the judge says, and Helen approaches me again.

  “What did the defendant’s mother tell you?” she repeats.

  I don’t want to look at Emma. I can already feel the heat of her gaze, the accusations. “She told me that the quilt belonged to her son.”

  “Based on the results of your conversation, what did you do?”

  “I asked Ms. Hunt to bring Jacob down to the station, so that we could speak further.”

  “Did you place Jacob Hunt under arrest for the murder of Jess Ogilvy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I dismissed all charges against Mr. Maguire. I also executed a search warrant for the defendant’s house.”

  “What did you find there?”

  “We found Jacob Hunt’s police scanner, a self-constructed fuming chamber for fingerprinting, and hundreds of black-and-white composition notebooks.”

  “What was in those notebooks?”

  “Jacob used them to record information about CrimeBusters episodes he watched. He’d write down the date the episode aired, and the evidence, and then whether or not he solved the crime before the television detectives did. I saw him writing in one the first time I came to his house to speak to him.”

  “How many did you find?”

  “A hundred and sixteen.”

  The prosecutor enters one into evidence. “Do you recognize this, Detective Matson?”

  “It’s one of those notebooks. The one with the most recent entries.”

  “Can you turn to the fourteenth page of this notebook and tell us what you find there?”

  I read aloud the subject heading.

  At Her House. 1/12/10.

  Situation: Girl reported missing by her boyfriend.

  Evidence:

  Clothes in pile on bed

  Toothbrush missing, lip gloss missing

  Victim’s purse and coat remain

  Cell phone missing

  Luminol bathroom—blood detected

  Knapsack taken with clothing & mailbox note—red herring for kidnapping

  Cut screen—boot prints outside match up with boyfriend’s footwear

  Cell phone traced by 911 call to location of body in culvert

  “Is there anything intriguing about this entry in particular?”

  “I don’t know if it’s a CrimeBusters episode, but it’s the exact crime scene we found at Jess Ogilvy’s residence. It’s the exact way we found Jess Ogilvy’s body. And all this information is information nobody should have had,” I say. “Except for the police … and the killer.”

  Oliver

  I knew that Jacob was going to have trouble when those journals were presented as evidence. I wouldn’t want the equivalent of my diary being read to a jury. Not that I keep a diary, or not that I would recount the evidence at a murder scene in one. So I am expecting it when he starts rocking a little bit as Helen enters the journal into evidence. I can feel the stiffening of his spine, the way he is breathing hard, the fact that he barely blinks.

  When Jacob leans toward the table, I meet Emma’s gaze over his head. Now, she mouths, and sure enough, Jacob shoves a piece of paper into my hands.

  F#, it reads.

  It takes me a moment to realize that he’s passed me a note, just like I told him to do if he needed a sensory break.

  “Your Honor,” I say, standing up. “Could we take a short recess?”

  “We just had a recess, Mr. Bond,” Judge Cuttings says, and then he looks at Jacob, whose face is bright red. “Five minutes,” he announces.

  With me on one side and Emma locked on the other, we hustle Jacob up the aisle to the sensory break room. “Just hold it together for another thirty seconds,” Emma soothes. “Ten more steps. Nine … eight …”

  Jacob ducks inside and spins around to face us. “Oh my God!” he shrieks, a smile splitting his face. “Wasn’t that awesome?”

  I just stare at him.

  “I mean, that was the whole point. They finally got it. I set up a crime scene and the cops figured the whole thing out, even the red herrings.” He pokes me in the chest with his finger. “You,” Jacob says, “are doing a great job.”

  Behind me, Emma bursts into tears.

  I don’t look at her. I can’t. “I’ll fix it,” I say.

  There is a moment when I stand up to do the cross-examination of Detective Matson that I think we might have a pissing contest instead. He takes a look at Emma—her eyes still red, her face still puffy—and narrows his gaze at me, as if her condition is my fault instead of his. And that only makes me want to sink him even more.

  “The first time you met with Jacob at his house, Detective,” I begin, “he quoted the movie Terminator to you, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the second time you met with Jacob … he recommended a variety of tests for you to run on the backpack?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Several.”

  I grab the legal pad that’s in front of Jacob. “Did he recommend a DNA test on the straps of the backpack?”

  “Yes.”

  “And an AP test on the underwear inside.”

  “I guess.”

  “Luminol?”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “And what about ninhydrin on the card inside?”

  “Look, I don’t remember them all, but that’s probably true.”

  “In fact, Detective,” I say, “Jacob seemed to know your job better than you do.”

  He narrows his eyes. “He certainly knew the crime scene better than I did.”

  “Those composition notebooks that you found. Did you read them all?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did the other hundred and fifteen notebooks contain?”

  “Synopses,” he says. “Of episodes of CrimeBusters.”