James Patterson - Confessions of a Murder Suspect

If you stick with me long enough, though, maybe I’ll remember enough about it—and about him —to share.

14

After our little family meeting, we decided it was best to try to get some sleep and keep talking in the morning. But it felt like only seconds after I drifted off that I was awakened by the sounds of loud pounding and crashing somewhere in the apartment.

I didn’t have a shotgun, so I grabbed a lacrosse stick that was leaning against the wall and ran from my room toward the noise.

Was someone else being murdered?

I found ten-year-old Hugo in his room. He was still wearing his Giants sweatshirt, and he was using a baseball bat to break up his four-poster bed.

As I entered the room, he swung the bat for the last time, splintering the headboard, then began working on the bed frame with karate kicks.

“ Hey. Hey, Hugo ,” I said. “Enough. Stop. Please.”

I dropped my lacrosse stick and wrapped my arms around my little brother. I dragged him away from the bed and more or less hurled him toward the cushy, life-size toy pony that Uncle Peter had given Hugo when he was born.

We collapsed together onto the pony, my arms wrapped tightly around him. He could easily pick me up and toss me into the closet, but I knew he actually wanted me to keep him still and safe.

“What is it, Hugo? Tell me what exactly has made you go bug-nuts.”

Hugo heaved a long sigh that could have stirred the posters of Matty up on the wall. Then he put his head on my lap and started to talk.

“I didn’t hear anything, Tandy. I should have. Something horrible happened in there, and I totally failed them! If I’ve ever done anything to deserve the Big Chop, this is it. I was supposed to protect them. Malcolm said that would always be my job.”

“Hugo, it wasn’t your fault.”

I stroked my little brother’s hair and told him about crimes that had happened without anyone knowing intruders were in the house. One of the stories was about a family that had lived in Florida in 2009.

“They were very kind parents,” I told Hugo. “They had adopted a lot of children with disabilities, and had a total of sixteen kids.”

Hugo listened attentively.

“Eight of those children were asleep in the house when three intruders broke in, and in just a few minutes shot the parents to death and escaped. They weren’t caught. And no one knows why they committed that horrible crime.”

I realized that I was talking to myself, suddenly aware of the fact that maybe someday some other big sister out there would be telling her little brother about the great unsolved Angel Family Murders.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Soon, I noticed that Hugo’s breathing had slowed. He wasn’t in a state anymore.

“It was late, Hugo, and you were asleep. Whoever killed them was intent on being silent and invisible. If Malcolm and Maud had screamed, you would’ve been right there. All of us would have.”

A few minutes later Hugo was asleep, half on me, half on the unloved stuffed pony. And he left me alone with a question:

Why hadn’t my parents screamed?

15

After everything that had happened, it was hard to believe I’d be able to sleep. But I dozed off as soon as I crawled back into my bed, only to wake up sweating and feeling like I’d traveled very far—but also like I’d been tied to a bungee cord and yanked back to my bed, hard.

I’d had a dream, and like most of my dreams, it was a memory, complete in every detail.

My twin brother, Harry, and I had just turned three.

Maud was carrying Harry piggyback and Malcolm was carrying me. I had my fingers twisted in my father’s hair and my legs were hooked around his chest. I was grabbing onto his shoulders and pulling up because I was so excited, kicking him in the ribs to make him go faster.

I could already recite Victorian poetry from memory, but right then I only had one thing to say: “Harry, Mommy, lookit meeee, lookit meeee.”

The four of us were at the small boardwalk amusement park at Coney Island, where Malcolm and Maud had come as kids before they got married.

Maud looked beautiful in this memory, if that’s indeed what it was. She was wearing a butter-yellow sundress and her dark hair was curling around her face and she was beaming at Malcolm and me as she said to my brother, “You’re going to love this, my angel. This is going to be a wonderful experience. I wish that I were going on the rollercoaster for the first time.”

Oompah music was coming from the merry-go-round, and bright-eyed, happy people swarmed all around us. Other kids were on their parents’ shoulders or holding their hands or giggling and weaving through the crowd at high speed. And there was the pervasive and incredibly delicious first-time smells of burnt sugar and popcorn.

We joined the line for the Cyclone, and as we reached the front, the train of roller-coaster cars braked with a loud metallic squeal. A man in a striped shirt and suspenders pulled a lever and the lap bars came up, releasing the people who had been on the ride. They spilled giddily down the ramp past us.

Now, no three-year-old would ever be legally allowed to ride on a coaster like the Cyclone, but Malcolm and Maud thought their children were up to the task. The man looked at us and shook his head, pointing to the height requirement. My father pulled out his wallet and quickly remedied the situation; several hundred-dollar bills, at least, must have changed hands. The man’s face broke into a smile, and he tore our tickets and remarked on what pretty children we were. Our parents placed us next to each other in one of the seats, and then took the seat behind ours.

The metal bar came down across our laps and locked with a loud clank —although there was still a considerable amount of space between our bodies and the bar. The train began to roll forward. “Here we gooooo,” Malcolm sang from behind me. “Hang ooooooon.”

The car rolled slowly at first, chug-chug-chugging as it went up the incline. For a moment we hung over the boardwalk. We could see the moving dots of color below, and the other rides, and even the beach and the horizon.

And then, with a breathtaking and shocking suddenness, it all dropped away. My stomach flipped over and my eyes watered and I gripped the lap bar with both hands.

It was the most incredible feeling.

I was flying .

As the car hurtled toward the boardwalk, Harry let out a piercing scream that could be heard over the shrieks of our fellow passengers—and probably across the whole island. I looked at him and saw that his face was crumpled, completely transformed by terror.

I turned away.

I could see myself as if from above, leaning into the wind, looking into the next dip and rise, feeling one with the roller coaster, seeing everything. I didn’t want it to stop.

But it did stop—because of Harry’s wailing, blubbering, unceasing meltdown. The man in the striped shirt slowed and then stopped the roller coaster as it pulled into the station.

The bars went up.

Malcolm reached toward me to lift me out of the seat, but Maud picked me up instead and said to Malcolm, “You take him .”

We left Coney Island in a hurry. I wrapped my legs around Maud’s waist and pressed my face against her sunny yellow bust. Harry clutched Malcolm’s hand and was being dragged along, sobbing the whole way.