House Rules (31 page)

You do realize that keeping me locked up in this house for weeks or months could be considered criminal behavior. That good parents do not treat their children like caged animals.

And you do realize that even if we had Oliver go before the judge to ask for an exception, Dr. Lee‘s speech would be over before the judge scheduled the hearing? I point out. I‘m sure it will be recorded. We can listen to the podcast.

That‘s not the same! Jacob yells.

The cords of his neck stand out in relief; he is dangerously close to losing control again. I moderate my voice so that it spreads like a balm. Take a deep breath. Your Asperger‘s is showing.

I hate you, Jacob says. This has nothing to do with my Asperger‘s. It‘s about being made a slave in my own household. He shoves me aside, heading for the hallway.

I use every ounce of strength I can to hold him back. I know better, but sometimes, when Jacob is being particularly supercilious, I can‘t help but argue back. You walk out that door, and you‘ll be in jail before morning. And this time, I swear, I won‘t try to get you out, I tell him. I may be six inches shorter than you and fifty pounds lighter, but I am still your mother, and no means no.

He struggles against the restraint of my arms for a few seconds, and then all the fight goes out of him. Almost too easily, he sinks onto his bed and puts a pillow over his head.

Without another word, I back out of Jacob‘s bedroom and close the door behind me.

I lean against the wall for a moment, sagging under the weight of the relief his admission has brought me. I had been telling myself that the reason I hadn‘t directly asked Jacob earlier if he had murdered Jess was that I was afraid he‘d be disappointed in me for even believing it was a possibility. But the real reason I‘d waited so long was that I was afraid to hear his answer. How many times, after all, had I asked Jacob a question only to hope for a white lie?

Do I have too many wrinkles?

I just baked these it‘s a new recipe. What do you think?

I know you‘re angry, but you don‘t
really
wish your brother had never been born,
do you?

Even today on the witness stand, the expert Oliver had found said Aspie kids don‘t lie.

Then again.

Jacob told me Jess didn‘t talk to him that Tuesday he was supposed to meet with her, but he didn‘t tell me she was dead.

Jacob told me that he‘d been to Jess‘s house, but he neglected to mention that he‘d found it in a state of disarray.

And he never mentioned taking his rainbow quilt anywhere.

Technically, he had told me the truth. And at the same time, he had lied by omission.

Mom? Theo yells. I think I set the toaster on fire …

I hurry downstairs. By the time I am extricating the charred bagel with two knives, I‘ve convinced myself that everything Jacob
hasn‘t
told me has been an oversight, a typical Aspie side effect of having so much information that some of it gets lost or forgotten.

I have convinced myself that this could not have been deliberate.

Jacob

The term
stir-crazy
comes from the early 1900s.
Stir
was slang for
prison,
based on the Gypsy word
stariben. Stir-crazy
was actually a play on an older expression,
stir-bugs,
which described a prisoner who became mentally unstable due to being locked up too long.

You can attribute my next actions to the fact that I was stir-crazy, or to the correct stimulus: the fact that Dr. Henry Lee, my idol, was going to be 188.61 miles away from me, and I was not going to be able to meet him. In spite of my mother‘s assertions that
if
I went to college I would have to go somewhere local, where I could live at home and benefit from her help and organization, I had long assumed that, one day, I‘d apply to the University of New Haven (never mind that as a high school senior I was already over a month past deadline). I would get into the criminalist program he‘d founded there, where I would be plucked from undergraduate obscurity by Dr. Lee himself, who would notice my attention to detail and my inability to be distracted by girls or frat parties or loud music emanating from dorm windows and would invite me to help him solve a real current case and consider me his protégé.

Now, of course, I had an even more pressing reason to meet him.

Imagine, Dr. Lee,
I would begin.
You have set up a crime scene to point to someone
else‘s involvement and wind up a suspect yourself.
And then together we would analyze what might have been conceived differently, to prevent it from happening the next time.

My mother and I argue about the same things over and over, such as why she refuses to treat me normally. This would be a classic example, where she is taking my desire to see Dr. Lee and twisting it into a pretzel so that it seems like an unreasonable Aspie request, instead of one grounded in reality. There are many instances where I want to do things other kids my age do:

1. Get a license and drive a car.

2. Live on my own at college.

3. Go out with my friends without her having to call their parents first and explain my quirks.

a. It should be noted, of course, that this would apply to a time when I currently
had
friends.

4. Get a job so that I have money for the above.

a. It should be noted that she did let me get a job, and unfortunately to date the only people who‘ve chosen to hire me were completely unreasonable asses who couldn‘t see the big picture, like whether being five minutes late on a shift is truly going to cause a global catastrophe.

Instead, I watch Theo sail out the door while she waves good-bye to him. Unlike me, he will be allowed to get his driver‘s license sooner or later. Imagine how incredibly humiliating it will be for me to be driven around by my younger brother, the same child who used his own poop to paint a mural on the garage door once.

My mother argued that I could not have it both ways. I could not ask to be treated like an ordinary eighteen-year-old and also demand clothing with the tags cut out and refuse to drink orange juice because of its name. Maybe I did feel that I could have it both ways be disabled sometimes and normal at other times but then again, why
couldn‘t
I? Let‘s say that Theo sucked at growing vegetables but was really good at bowling. My mother might treat him like a slightly remedial student if she was teaching him to grow rutabagas, but when she hit the lanes with him, she‘d ditch the slow voice. Not all humans have one standard, so why should I?

At any rate, whether I have simply been cooped up too long or whether I am suffering acute mental distress from my soon-to-be missed opportunity with Dr. Lee, I do the only thing that seems justifiable at the time.

I call 911 and tell them I am being abused by my mother.

Rich

It‘s like one of those pictures in celebrity magazines I read at the dentist‘s office: What‘s Different? The first shot shows Jess Ogilvy with a big smile on her face and Mark Maguire‘s arm draped over her shoulder. It‘s a photograph we took from her nightstand.

The second picture was taken by my CSI team and shows Jess with her eyes closed and ringed with bruises, her skin frozen a solid, pale blue. She is draped with a postage-stamp quilt that looks like a painter‘s color wheel.

Ironically, she is wearing the same sweatshirt in both photos.

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.