James Patterson - Confessions of a Murder Suspect

Avery Fisher Hall was packed with music aficionados—more than two thousand of them. Harry was one of Mischa Dubrowsky’s advanced students and was playing two pieces that day. He was the headliner, performing after six other gifted young pianists.

The hall is nothing like what you’d expect from seeing concert halls in the movies. There’s no red velvet or chandeliers; instead, it’s a magnificently simple place, the walls and ceiling paneled in light wood, to showcase the performance and the performer.

My brother Harry, my twin. Even after seeing him play in such magnificent spaces so many times, I still got excited for his moments in the spotlight.

There was an excited whisper in the hall as Maestro Dubrowsky came onto the stage in his tux, with his long mane and mutton chops. I got chills as he introduced my brother and said that he would be playing Bach’s “Partita no. 1 in B-flat.”

Harry strode confidently out from the wings, looking so handsome I could hardly believe he was the same boy who’d been staring up at his ceiling, wracked with grief, only an hour before.

Harry took the bench at the Steinway grand and paused for a moment with his fingers on the keys. Then he started to play. The audience was silent. In awe. Transported. I don’t know very much about music—I’m the only one in the family who can’t sing or play an instrument—but even I knew that what I was listening to was sheer magnificence.

Harry had told me all about Bach. He’d explained that Bach’s music has a measured grace, an inherent tranquility and lightness, and that it is precise, almost mathematical. “That’s why you’d like Bach, Tandy,” he’d said. “He’s not bombastic like Brahms, or romantic like Chopin.” At which point I probably kicked him in the shins. But he was right.

Bach was a kind of expression I could connect with.

Harry had told me that Bach should be played very softly, and very loudly, to exaggerate the phrasing, because the pieces themselves are so ordered that the emotion needs to come through in the playing.

I listened for these elements as Harry lost himself in the music. I lost myself, too, as the music captured me in the way that only great music can.

I thought I felt a catch in my throat, and I caught myself.

And I thought of Harry as a little boy of three, sitting at the huge piano in the bay window of the living room, his legs too short to reach the pedals and his hands too short to span a chord. And still, he practiced. Four or five hours a day, every single day, without fail.

I was brought back to the moment by the man sitting to my left, who seemed overcome by Harry’s rendition of the piece. His eyes were wet and he tapped his fingers on his knees and moved his head in time to the music.

I looked back to the stage. I knew that the climax of the piece came on with the gigue, the lively, fast-paced finale, and Harry was rendering it perfectly and faithfully, but with the brilliant accenting that the critics had always acclaimed as uniquely his.

As the last notes of Harry’s performance rang through the auditorium, the man to my left turned to me and exclaimed, “That Harrison Angel is a true genius! Perhaps our greatest pianist. And he’s only a young boy!”

I said, “I know. I know.”

I stood up to applaud, along with two thousand other admirers. Harry dipped his head in a bow, and then again when the audience continued clapping.

It’s possible that my twin was the brightest of all the Angel kids. The one of us with the most potential. Why couldn’t my parents see this? What was wrong with them?

And was that why they had been murdered?

24

We were feeling exhilarated after Harry’s magnificent performance, and we were also starving.

The five of us rode up in the north elevator, taking turns listing the goods stored in our pantry by food group. Whoever named the fewest foods would have to cook. This is the way we Angels play.

“Get ready to make dinner, Sam,” I told her. She didn’t know the pantry like we did. Most kids from a family like ours wouldn’t know the first thing about the kitchen, either, since it was usually the territory of the cook or housekeeper, but Malcolm had us all regularly cooking from the age of seven.

“You’ll be sorry if I do,” she said. “You know me. I’m the microwave queen.”

“Never too late to learn to be great,” Hugo said, and we all laughed. Another quote from our father.

We exited the elevator on the top floor and found the front door to our apartment wide open.

Samantha got out her phone and said, “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

Matthew’s chest, arms, and forehead seemed to expand, and the muscles in his neck thickened. “Stay here, all of you. I’m going to see who’s in there.” His bluer-than-blue eyes blazed like guide lights on an airfield at night.

He was heading through the open doorway when Sergeant Capricorn Caputo stepped into view. He put out his hands to stop Matthew from bulling into the apartment.

“You don’t have to call the police, Ms. Peck. We’re already here. We still have a search warrant, and we’re executing it.”

The police had entered our house when we weren’t there. It was another scandal in a day of many.

Uncle Peter was sitting on the red couch, his cell phone in hand. When he saw me, he covered the mouthpiece and said to me, “They’re authorized, Tandy.” Then he went back to his phone call.

The uniformed cops inside the apartment ignored us, coming and going through the kitchen and using the service elevator, taking cartons of foodstuffs with them.

“What the hell are you people doing here?” Matthew shouted.

I ignored Matty’s outburst. “Have you gotten back the medical examiner’s report?” I asked Caputo as calmly as possible. “There’s only one conceivable option: My parents were poisoned.”

“There’s a backlog of bodies at the morgue, Tookie. So save us some time, why don’t you. What poison did you use?”

“I did some research and found that a black tongue is caused by arsenic and by heparin,” I said. “That help you any?”

“Arsenic poisoning is very painful,” Caputo said. “It was probably a very bad death. Do you understand me? The killer showed no mercy.”

No mercy. The words echoed in my mind. And that’s when a very strange thing happened.

I suddenly felt as though my head had filled with helium. Caputo went in and out of focus. I felt Matthew’s hand at my back. And then I heard people calling my name.

I opened my eyes and I realized that I was flat on my back on the floor. I recognized the pattern on the carpet. It was definitely our carpet. I had fainted .

I had passed right out in front of the cops.

I had totally disgraced myself.

Mother, Mother, I’m so sorry.

Please forgive me.

25

Samantha was only an inch or so from my face. “Tandy, say something, please .” She offered me a glass of water, but I shook my head.

“I’m… okay. I don’t know what… It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Caputo’s smirking features loomed in my vision. He squatted down next to me and said, “Let me tell you something, Tootsie. This could be your best chance to get ahead of what you did by confessing.”

“Do you have any other suspects?” I asked him, getting to my feet. “Or is it the Angel kids and no one else?”