James Patterson - Confessions of a Murder Suspect

Would I do that to you? Of course I wouldn’t. At least, I don’t think I would. But you can never tell about people, can you? How much do you really know about my past?

That’s a subject we’ll have to investigate together, later.

For now, back to my story. I was about to begin the investigation of my parents’ murders. While the two detectives conferred in the study, out of sight, I climbed the stairs to the long hallway in my parents’ penthouse suite. I flattened myself against the dark red wall and averted my eyes as the techs from the medical examiner’s office took my parents away in body bags.

Then I edged down the hall to the threshold of Malcolm and Maud’s bedroom and peered inside.

An efficient-looking crime-scene investigator was busily dusting for fingerprints. The name tag on her shirt read CSI JOYCE YEAGER.

I said hello to the freckle-faced CSI and told her my name. She said that she was sorry for my loss. I nodded, then said, “Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

CSI Yeager looked around before saying, “Okay.”

I didn’t have time for tact. I’d been warned away from this room and everything in it, so I began to shoot questions at the CSI as if I were firing them from a nail gun.

“What was the time of death?”

“That hasn’t been determined,” she said.

“And the means?”

“We don’t know yet how your parents were killed.”

“And what about the manner of death?” I asked.

“The medical examiner will determine if these were homicides, accidents, natural deaths—”

“Natural?” I interrupted, already getting fed up. “Come on.”

“It’s the medical examiner’s job to determine these things,” she said.

“Have you found a weapon? Was there any blood?”

“Listen, Tandy. I’m sorry, but you have to go now, before you get me in trouble.”

CSI Yeager was ignoring me now, but she didn’t close the door. I looked around the room, taking in the enormous four-poster bed and the silk bedspread on the floor.

And I did a visual inventory of my parents’ valuables.

The painting over their fireplace, by Daniel Aronstein, was a modern depiction of an American flag: strips of frayed muslin layered with oil paints in greens and mauve. It was worth almost $200,000—and it hadn’t been touched.

My mother’s expensive jewelry was also untouched; her strand of impossibly creamy Mikimoto pearls lay in an open velvet-lined box on the dresser, and her twelve-carat emerald ring still hung from a branch of the crystal ring tree beside her bed.

It could not be clearer that there had been no robbery here.

It shouldn’t surprise me that the evidence pointed to the fact that my parents had been killed out of anger, fear, hatred…

Or revenge.

7

As I stood outside my parents’ bedroom a shadow fell across me and I jumped, as if I were already living in fear of the ghosts of Malcolm and Maud. Many ghosts in my family already haunt us, friend, so it helps me to know that you’re here.

Fortunately, this shadow just belonged to Sergeant Caputo. He pinched my shoulder. Hard.

“Let’s go, Tansy. I told you, this floor is off-limits. Entering a crime scene before it’s cleared is evidence tampering. It’s against the law.”

“Tandy,” I said. “Not Tansy. Tandy.”

I didn’t argue his point; he was right. Instead, I went ahead of him down the stairs and back to the living room, arriving just as my big brother, Matthew, stormed in from the kitchen.

When Matthew entered a room, he seemed to draw all the light and air to him. He had light brown dreadlocks tied in a bunch with a hank of yarn, and intense blue eyes that shone like high beams.

I’ve never seen eyes like his. No one has.

Matty was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt under a leather jacket, but anyone would’ve sworn he was wearing a bodysuit with an emblem on the chest and a cape fluttering behind.

Hugo broke the spell by leaping out of his chair. “Hup!” he yelled at Matty, jumping toward his brother with outstretched arms.

Matthew caught Hugo easily and put a hand to the back of his baby brother’s head while fastening his eyes on the two homicide detectives.

Matthew is six-two and has biceps the size of thighs. And, well, he can be a little scary when he’s mad.

Mad wasn’t even the word to describe him that night.

“ My parents were just carried out of the building in the service elevator,” he shouted at the cops. “They were vile , but they didn’t deserve to be taken out with the trash !”

Detective Hayes said, “And you are…?”

“Matthew Angel. Malcolm and Maud’s son.”

“And how did you get into the apartment?” Hayes said.

“Cops let me in. One of them wanted my autograph.”

Caputo said to Matthew, “You won the Heisman last year, right?”

Matthew nodded. In addition to having won the Heisman and being a three-time all-American, Matthew was a poster boy for the NFL and had a fat Nike contract. The sportscaster Aran Delaney had once said of Matthew’s blazing speed and agility, “He can run around the block between the time I strike a match and light my cigarette. Matthew Angel is not just a cut above, but an order of magnitude above other outstanding athletes.” So it didn’t surprise me that Caputo recognized my brother.

Matty was sneering, as if the mention of his celebrity was offensive under the circumstances. I kind of had to agree. Who cares about his stupid Heisman right now?

Fortunately, Hayes was all business. “Look, Matthew. I’m sorry we had to take your folks out the back way. You wouldn’t have wanted them carried around the front so the rubberneckers could gawk and take pictures, would you? Please sit down. We have a few questions.”

“I’ll stand,” Matthew said. By that point, Hugo had climbed around Matthew’s body and was on his back, looking at the cops over his brother’s shoulder.

Caputo went right into hostility mode. “Where have you been for the last six hours?”

“I stayed with my girlfriend on West Ninth Street. We were together all night, and she’ll be happy to tell you that.”

Matthew’s girlfriend was the actress Tamara Gee. She’d received an Academy Award nomination the previous year, when she was twenty-three, and was almost as famous as Matty. I should have realized he would be at her apartment, but I really had no way of contacting him there. I met Tamara the one time Matty brought her home to meet our parents, and while she was certainly pretty in real life, and maybe an order of magnitude above other actors in smarts, I understood easily from her posture and way of speaking that she wanted nothing to do with us. She certainly wasn’t passing out her phone number in case I ever needed to call my brother at her apartment. Especially in the dead of night, to inform him that our parents had been murdered.

My father, on the other hand, seemed to admire Tamara’s obvious distrust of us, and later remarked to me that she was the last piece of the puzzle to make Matthew’s future all but certain. You see, he wanted Matty to run for president one day. He was certain Matty would win.

Incidentally, Malcolm also thought that Matthew was a sociopath. But, except for Harry, all of us, including my father, had been called sociopaths at some time in our lives.

“My siblings will tell you that I haven’t set foot in this place, or even seen my parents, for months,” Matthew was saying to Detective Hayes.