James Patterson - Confessions of a Murder Suspect

I took the soup bowl out of his hands and put it on the floor, then got into bed beside him. He rolled toward me and cried on my shoulder. It really hurt to hear Harry cry.

But I had to ask him. I had to. He was very creative, and I was pretty sure he could come up with a way to do the impossible and never get caught.

“Did you kill them, Harry?”

He drew back and looked at me, his eyes switching back and forth across my face.

“No,” he finally said. “I didn’t kill them, Tandy. Did you ?”

It’s one thing to ask someone if they’re guilty. It’s another to be asked. I was nonplussed.

“Because, Tandy,” Harry went on, “I know what they took from you. I know we don’t talk about it—about him . About the incident. But I’ll never forget. How much it hurt. Both of us.”

I just stared at him.

“Have you forgotten, Tandy?” he asked. “Have you?”

CONFESSION

My brother. Sweet, gentle, weepy Harry. I swear he wouldn’t knowingly do anything to hurt anybody. The real Harry wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not even a hideous cockroach. When he was a little boy, he actually caught bugs in his hand and set them free on the fire escape—when Maud wasn’t looking.

So how do I explain the one time in his life Harry hurt someone? The day when my twin betrayed the person who loves him the most? Sometimes I’m so glad I’ve been given the gift of control over my emotions, because I just can’t even imagine how much it would have hurt me otherwise.

Harry never came to the hospital after my… incident. The most traumatic experience of my life. Malcolm and Maud wouldn’t really say why.

“He’s busy practicing” was Maud’s weak explanation.

“He’s never been good around blood or needles, you know that,” Malcolm said, with a touch of disdain.

Hugo was the one who told me the truth—as usual. He was too young to lie about something like that. “Harry didn’t come because he said you deserved it,” he reported innocently. “Why, Tandy? Why did you deserve it?”

I looked away and didn’t answer.

22

And that’s just what I did this time , too, as Harry’s earlier question echoed in the room: Have you forgotten, Tandy? Have you?

I looked away and didn’t answer.

I lay next to Harry in his bed, watching the changing light reflect on the painted angels peering down from the ceiling. Harry had been inspired by Michelangelo’s timeless masterpieces in the Sistine Chapel, and had invented his own special effect so that the angels’ wings seemed to shimmer in every color against a lightning-struck pink and gold sky.

My mother found Harry’s work sentimental. Maybe it was, but like his music, I found his paintings evocative, endearing, and curious. I didn’t really connect to them in the way I think Harry hoped I might, but that was just a genetic issue. He and I had talked about how odd it was that we were called “twins” when we were really nothing more than siblings who happened to grow in the womb together at the same time. Fraternal twins come from two totally separate eggs, and the differences between us were obvious: I got all the scientific genes, and Harry got all the artistic genes.

Which made me wonder: Was Maud or Malcolm really an artist at heart? Were the Angel children their sculptures, their canvases, their creations to be put on display for all the world to see and admire?

Almost any other parents would have been proud of Harry. It was a mystery to both of us why his painting wasn’t valued in this family. Maybe because it represented something missing from our lives. Or at least my life. Magic… soul… light?

Or love? Yes, maybe that was it. The experience of true, passionate love that had been snatched away from me just when it had been in my grasp—

Nil satis nisi optimum , interrupted my father’s voice, booming inside my head. Crushing the thought as if it were vermin.

Nothing but the best is good enough.

He meant no one but the best is good enough.

It doesn’t matter anymore , I reminded myself. Only one thing matters now.

“I’m going to find out who killed them,” I said to my sleepy twin.

Harry laughed. “I was wondering when you’d decide you were the most qualified person to solve the crime. And that you could do it without a forensics lab.”

“There were detectives before there were crime labs, you know.”

“Fair point.”

“Furthermore, I believe that Maud and Malcolm were poisoned.”

“In your opinion.”

“In my opinion,” I said. “Based on my research.”

Harry sighed and looked at me with his big, searching eyes. “You know, Tandy,” he began. Then he stopped.

“What?”

“Even though you were the last one to get the Big Chop, I don’t think you could have killed Malcolm and Maud. And I don’t think you have to prove it wasn’t you by solving the murder.”

Did no one in this family understand me? I wasn’t trying to prove my innocence. I was trying to bring whoever committed this crime to justice, even if it turned out to be me .

“The chop wasn’t so bad,” I said. “You just concentrate on the good times, like your Grande Gongos, and get through it.”

I immediately regretted my words.

Harry had never been awarded the Grande Gongo. The rest of us had won it at least once—even Hugo, who was six years younger than Harry and I. He’d won it three times already. Hugo had also gotten one of the biggest chops in the history of the family, but that was another story.

As I was thinking about Hugo, he came into Harry’s room and did a flying leap onto the bed, almost bouncing us out of it.

“You’ve got to get dressed, Harrison Weepyface.”

Harry groaned and turned over, pulling his pillow over his head.

“He’s got to get dressed,” Hugo said to me. “He’s going to be late.”

I went to the closet and took Harry’s tuxedo out of the dry cleaner’s plastic. Then I half coaxed, half badgered him out of his bed and into the shower.

I left Harry in Hugo’s care and called Samantha and Matthew on the intercom. Then I called Virgil, our driver and sometime bodyguard. He was fifty, and he was huge. Almost as big as Matthew. He wore a diamond in his ear. He was a poet who wrote raps in his spare time. Virgil was also very kind to all of us kids.

“I’m very sorry about the terrible news, Tandy. I’m very, very sorry,” he said when he saw me. He was a big bear of a man who didn’t think twice about offering me a hug in the face of this tragedy. I accepted it awkwardly. Not because I didn’t appreciate Virgil’s gesture, but because hugs were a rather strange and rare phenomenon in our house.

“I’ll bring the car around in about five minutes,” he said.

Only moments later, I was wearing a black dress and heels, and Harry had been transformed from a waif in baggy clothes to the smartly dressed boy prodigy that we knew him to be.

My three brothers and Samantha rode down in the elevator with me. I held Harry’s hand. He could have canceled, but even he knew that he would feel better once he poured himself into his work and was applauded for it.

It was a big day for Harry. He was playing a piano concerto at Lincoln Center.

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