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, 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.
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, 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.
“You have a problem with your parents?” Hayes asked.
“I’m twenty-four. I’ve flown the coop.” Matthew didn’t even try to disguise the fact that he had no use for Malcolm and Maud.
“We’ll check out your alibi soon enough,” Caputo snapped. “But listen: We all know you could have left your girlfriend in the Village, killed your parents, and gone back to bed before your twinkie even knew you were gone.”
It was just short of an accusation, obviously meant to provoke a reaction from M
atthew. But my big brother didn’t bite. Instead, he turned to Hugo and said, “I’m going to tuck you into bed, Buddy.”
Caputo hadn’t gotten anything from Matty, but he’d forced me to face my own suspicions. My brother hated our parents. He was a 215-pound professional football player, a cunning brute.
Was he also a killer?
Confession
I have pretty bad associations with the Heisman. My therapist, Dr. Keyes, has done a lot to help me forget that night, but every now and then, a memory will pierce my mind’s eye.
It was after the celebration, after we’d returned to the apartment from dinner at Le Cirque. Malcolm and Matty had both had more than a few drinks at that point, and Malcolm said, “So, let me hold the Angel family Heisman now, son.” He latched on to the trophy, like Matty should hand it over. “Remember, you owe everything to us,” he went on. “Your speed, your strength, your endurance. Your career. Your money.”
That did not go over well with Matty. To say the least.
“I didn’t ask for what you gave me,” he said through clenched teeth. He slammed his fist on the glass dining table and I jumped as a crack appeared, sure his hand was going to get sliced to ribbons. Matty was so angry I don’t think he would have even noticed. “You created each and every one of us to live out one of your freakish childhood fantasies! We’re Malcolm’s puppets. Maud’s baby dolls. Malcolm and Maud’s precious little trophies.”
And that’s when he hurled the Heisman trophy through the living room window, less than two inches above my head.
He could have killed someone walking down below. He could have killed me. Would he have regretted it?
They didn’t call us sociopaths for nothing.
Contents
WELCOME
DEDICATION
TO THE READER
PROLOGUE
BOOK ONE: BEFORE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
BOOK TWO: AND SO IT BEGINS
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
BOOK THREE: THE END
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
BOOK FOUR: PARADISE
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
CHAPTER 84
CHAPTER 85
EPILOGUE: MAX’S LAST WORDS
EPILOGUE THE LAST: THE BEGINNING
A PREVIEW OF CONFESSIONS OF A MURDER SUSPECT
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by James Patterson
Excerpt from Confessions of a Murder Suspect © 2012 by James Patterson
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
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First e-book edition: August 2012
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ISBN 978-0-316-19186-9
Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure Page 21
