James Patterson - Confessions of a Murder Suspect

“I’ll help you, too,” Hugo offered, like it was a game.

And so the three of us searched the apartment for several hours. It was a slow and grueling task. I was making my way through the kitchen, and Hugo was on hallway duty, when I heard Harry calling me into the study.

“Here’s another one, Tandy.” He held out the gadget to me. “You were so right.”

I paused, examining the tiny unit and rubbing my temples.

“No… no, Harry. I was so wrong .” My head was starting to hurt.

Harry gave me a quizzical look. “Huh?”

“Dad wouldn’t put a camera in his own study, would he? If he were studying us, he wouldn’t bother putting a camera in a room he rarely allowed us to spend any time in.”

“Tandy, we’re not dreaming. These are real . Someone put these here. Who else do you think could have done it?”

I rolled the little camera around in my palm. “Samantha is a real possibility, of course,” I said. “She has complete access, and she’s interested in cameras. But I don’t see any motive for her to do that, unless it was at Malcolm or Maud’s bidding.”

By now Hugo had joined us. “Maybe Maud wanted the cameras to spy on Malcolm,” he suggested. “On account of the affair and all.”

“An excellent thought,” I said, thinking how disgusting and sad it was that the ten-year-old in the room was the one to come up with that theory. “But I have another one.”

The name of a particularly saccharine-sweet filmmaker had just popped into my head. “Mr. Crosby could have planted a camera when he was interviewing our parents.”

“Creepy Crosby, spying on us?” Harry said. “That’s a little far out, Tandy.”

“We’ll have to see. It’s just a hunch. I have a couple of questions for our friendly and talented neighbor.”

We dressed quickly. With the tiny camera in my hand, I led my brothers out of the apartment and over to Mr. Crosby’s door. I looked at my watch. It was almost eight AM; he should be awake. He would definitely be awake in a few seconds.

I rang the doorbell, and when Nathan Crosby didn’t answer right away, I rang again. When I turned around to say to my brothers that we had to rethink and regroup, I saw that I was alone.

Harry and Hugo had just disappeared.

“Harry? Hugo?”

I felt every single hair on my body standing on end.

80

I pushed open our front door and called out to my brothers, then ran to the living room, where I saw that the French doors fronting our balcony were open.

Harry was standing just inside the open doors, wide-eyed and pale. His hair seemed to be standing straight up from his head. He looked terrified. I followed his gaze out the open doors.

The Dakota has steep roofs and tall gables and turrets, many dormer windows, and a few little balconies, like ours. Nathan Crosby has a balcony, too.

I pushed the fluttering gauze curtains aside, and what I saw almost stopped my heart. My little brother, shoeless and shirtless, was crossing the narrow brick ledge that extended from our balcony to Nate Crosby’s.

The ledge was not meant to be a footbridge. It was just a narrow band of fancy brickwork—nothing more than a decoration, really—and yet Hugo was digging his feet into it, finding fingerholds in the bricks above him and scrambling spiderlike across the gap, more than ninety feet above the sidewalk.

I hissed at Harry, “Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I tried. He doesn’t listen. You know he doesn’t listen!”

“Hugo!” I yelled.

“Don’t call him,” Harry said. “Let him concentrate. If he should miss a step—”

“Hugo!” I called out again. I couldn’t help myself.

He turned his head, grinned, and said, “Don’t worry, Tandy. I can fly .”

Oh, God, my too-brave little brother… He wouldn’t survive a hundred-foot fall.

Hugo’s feet slipped as I watched him. I covered my scream with both hands, and, somehow, without even looking, he found his footing again. Then he lost a handhold and had to find another.

I felt sick to my stomach.

But within two minutes, Hugo had reached Crosby’s balcony, swung his legs over the railing, and planted his feet. He raised his arms, his fingers forming a V for victory , as though he’d just won an Olympic gold medal.

“You’re wicked !” I shouted, sounding just like my mother.

“Swim fast, die hard,” he shouted back at me. Where did a ten-year-old get a line like that?

And just like that, I was once again reminded that nothing about our family was normal: Hugo was laughing with the sheer joy of being Hugo when he picked up a flowerpot and hurled it through Nate Crosby’s French doors, then climbed through the broken doorway.

“He’s barefoot!” I said. “There’s broken glass everywhere!”

“Yeah. And that’s the least of our problems,” said Harry. “Let’s go.”

81

Hugo opened Nate Crosby’s front door from the inside and made a dramatic, goofy bow to me and Harry. “Welcome to my humble home.”

“You think this is funny?” I said to my youngest brother. “You could have died , Hugo.”

“Gone splat on the street,” Harry added. “Like pigeon poop.”

Hugo laughed.

I stooped, grabbed him by both shoulders, and looked right into his eyes. “Dying is permanent,” I said. “You don’t come back.”

“I know.”

“And by the way, you’ve definitely broken the law.”

Hugo grinned—another Angel family member without remorse.

I couldn’t deal with babysitting this nut on top of illegally breaking and entering, so I gave Hugo five dollars and asked him to go to the store for some Ding Dongs. Amazingly, he didn’t hesitate—I guess our stop at the bodega for forbidden foods had made him hungry for more. As soon as he was gone, I took what would probably be my only chance to investigate Nate Crosby’s home.

I was thinking it all through again as I crossed through Crosby’s sparsely furnished living room. Nate Crosby had wanted to make a film about my parents. When they said no to his proposal, he probably got angry. And nursed a grudge.

Crosby had been inside our apartment when he interviewed Malcolm and Maud; maybe he’d had an opportunity to plant the cameras then. If he didn’t do it himself, he might have paid the super, or even our housekeeper, to do it for him.

Crosby’s film-editing room was right off the living room. He had an L-shaped desk and a top-of-the-line computer. There were several monitors on the long wall, and a huge TV and DVD player across from the desk. Next to the TV was a stack DVD jewel cases.

I went to the cases and saw that they were color-coded and labeled ANGEL—and they were dated, going back a number of months.

I think I stopped breathing as I examined them. I knew the discs were very important, that maybe they even contained evidence of murder. It came to me that each jewel-case color represented a different camera .

When my hand fell on a case marked ANGEL: MASTER BR and dated a week ago, I could hardly believe what my eyes were telling me.

Crosby had footage of my parents’ bedroom from the day they died.

Had he captured my parents’ killer on videotape?

I shouted, “ Harry! Come in here. Please. ”