Confessions of a Murder Suspect

by James Patterson

  “Your momma and poppa were having an argument,” Mrs. Hauser told me. “I was in the elevator with them, and they were very tight-lipped because I was there. But when I got out on this floor, they started shouting, and I could hear them right through the doors.”

  This was interesting. “What was the fight about?”

  “Your father was saying that he was rearranging the finances and that was that. Your mother called him a name.”

  “Is that a quote, Mrs. Hauser? Exactly what he said?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And Maud called him a name?”

  “I’m afraid she did.”

  “What was the name she called him?”

  “Oh, Tandy. I don’t want you to think ill of your parents. I probably should have kept my foolish mouth shut.”

  “I’ve never thought of you as foolish,” I said. “You’re one of the wisest people I know.”

  Mrs. Hauser is neither the smartest nor the most foolish person I know, but I would have told her she was smarter than Marie Curie if it meant she would tell me what my mother had said.

  “I’m sure they apologized to each other before they died. They must have.”

  “I’m sure they did, Mrs. Hauser,” I said. “They were very forgiving. Please just tell me what my mother said.”

  “Maud called Malcolm a boob, Tandy. That’s exactly what she said.”

  27

  “No, please, Mrs. Hauser. I can find my way out. This has been really helpful. Thank you.”

  I left Mrs. Hauser sitting in her silky purple cloud under the springbok so that she didn’t have to battle her arthritis just to walk me to the door.

  But her words accompanied me, and although I didn’t doubt her, it was hard to picture my parents fighting in public. And even harder to imagine my mother calling Malcolm a boob.

  If I were a normal girl, it might even have made me laugh just a little. It sounded so… immature. Malcolm was one of the smartest men in the western hemisphere. Even when he was wrong, every decision he made was well thought out and reasoned. My mother must have been truly furious. So the word boob was nothing more than a clue that didn’t lead anywhere.

  Next I spent some time turning over the phrase rearranging the finances.

  Had my parents’ fight centered on Royal Rampling, the man who was suing my mother for fifty million dollars? His name gave me serious twists in my stomach. I can’t even begin to explain why. But the fact is, if my father thought that we might lose the lawsuit, “rearranging the finances” could have been a way to protect the family from a crushing financial blow.

  Then I had another thought.

  Did this have something to do with Uncle Peter and the company he and my father owned? I thought about what Caputo had asked Samantha: Who stands to benefit from the deaths of these people?

  Samantha didn’t know, and even if she did, she would die before she would discuss my parents’ private business. But honestly, it was obvious that my uncle Peter had the most to gain. With my father’s death, he would become the sole head and major stockholder of Angel Pharma. That would not be small change.

  As far as I knew, Uncle Peter didn’t have a key to our apartment. And if he had come to the apartment late that night, Maud would have thrown him out of her room, not knocked back a shot of poison.

  I closed Mrs. Hauser’s door and pushed the elevator call button. The doors opened immediately, and inside the elevator was another of our neighbors.

  His name is Morris Sampson, and I hate him.

  I don’t use the word hate lightly. In fact, I can’t think of another person I hate as much as Morris Sampson.

  If hate could kill, Morris Sampson would be dead.

  28

  Despite the obvious excuse I could have used to avoid Mr. Sampson—that I was traveling back up to my apartment instead of down to the lobby—I stepped into the elevator and said hello. I knew I couldn’t miss an opportunity to interview another one of our neighbors, no matter how distasteful I found him.

  Sampson looked good for a man of forty, and I would have expected nothing less than an impeccable presentation from a twenty-four-karat-gold narcissist who got paid sums of money for telling lies in the most pedestrian prose imaginable.

  He said, “Hello, Tandy,” and jabbed at the button for the ground floor.

  I hate Morris Sampson because he is a somewhat famous mystery writer who wrote a roman à clef, a novel that is obviously based on true events and real people. The villain in his book was a character called Maeve Engle, and, like my mother, she was a hedge-fund manager. The “fictitious” Maeve Engle was arrogant, cruel, greedy, and unethical, and she was murdered for it.

  After Sampson’s book came out Maud sued his publisher, and in order to settle the suit and quiet the bad publicity, the publisher had the books removed from the shelves and then put it out of print.

  But the damage had been done.

  People who had never questioned my mother’s honesty suddenly did. It was probable, in fact, that the only reason Maud was being sued was because of the cloud Morris Sampson had hung over her head.

  My mother became even more distant than she had been before—more removed from the world, and more removed from us.

  Not long after the book scandal, I’d gone to Sampson’s apartment and we’d exchanged quite a few angry words. It had been a nasty fight. I told Sampson that he was not only a very bad person, but a bad writer, too. That his books couldn’t compare to the works of Ruth Rendell or James Ellroy, and that he wasn’t even fit to tie Elmore Leonard’s shoes.

  He knew I was right, and I knew that I’d hurt him.

  But for this encounter I had to show him a different side of myself. I thought hard and put on a sad expression, the face people would expect to see on a girl whose parents had been killed just thirty-six hours before.

  “Can you spare me a few minutes, Mr. Sampson?” I said as the elevator settled with a thump on the ground floor.

  Sampson gave me a fleeting look, then stepped out of the elevator, holding open the doors as he said, “I don’t have time for your games, Tandoori. Are you really sad that your parents are gone? Really?”

  “That surprises you?”

  “Surprised that you have feelings? Ha! Well, your parents were perfectly acceptable people, I suppose, and yet, I don’t think the Residents’ Committee will be honoring them with a plaque in the courtyard.”

  “Nice use of sarcasm, Mr. Sampson. A-plus.”

  “I dislike you, Tandy, but good luck,” Sampson spat. “And give my best to your siblings—especially Harrison. He’s the nice one.”

  Sampson turned away and let the doors go. Before they closed, I found myself shouting, “You’re a fleabite, Sampson! An infected fleabite!”

  I heard him laugh; then I was alone in the elevator car.

  I’d lost my temper. And that meant Morris Sampson had won.

  Sampson was despicable, and he hated us, too, but hate alone didn’t create poison in bedside water tumblers. If he had killed my parents, I couldn’t imagine how he could have pulled it off.

  If he had done it, it was the crime of the century. Morris Sampson wasn’t smart enough for that. To be honest, he wasn’t as smart as any of us Angels.

  Not even close.

  29

  So what do you think so far, reader? Am I missing any clues? Am I doing a good enough job in my investigation? Would Malcolm and Maud be proud of my work?

  That last question is an easy one. No. They wouldn’t be proud until I had achieved my goal, and I was still so far from it.

  Nathan Beale Crosby lives next door to us. In fact, his duplex apartment is an absolute mirror of ours. The big man with the red-framed glasses is a documentarian of note, making him one of the more famous residents of the Dakota. He has made a number of shocking and successful films, including Meat Cage, Terror on the Street Where You Live, and Party Animal. His work has won him an Oscar, a bunch of Emmys, and some other awards that I don
’t pay much attention to. (I don’t like most movies. I’m a reader. I read a lot. In my humble opinion, the prescribed story structure, the limited length, and the other restrictions inherent to film cause the truth to be treated as a handicap. Manipulating the audience is considered good form. But that’s neither here nor there; my focus was on murder, not movies.)

  Nathan Beale Crosby comes across as a very nice man, but he actually isn’t. Unlike Morris Sampson, though, Nate pretends to be friendly.

  A year ago he had a quiet dinner with my parents. He said he wanted to make a film about them, and he assured them that it was going to blow up the perception of wealthy entrepreneurs as predators and show the Angels as “American heroes.”

  Malcolm had said to Maud, “Sure, I believe Mr. Crosby. And Sarah Palin should believe Michael Moore if he tells her he wants to interview her for a puff piece on the Tea Party.”

  So, in other words, my parents declined the opportunity to be the subjects of a Nate Crosby film. Some time later, I found a film treatment on Crosby’s website. A sketch, really. It was called “Filthy Rich.”

  It was about the Angels, to be sure, but I couldn’t tell if Crosby was going to savage us or if the title was a setup designed to seduce viewers before overturning their preconceptions.

  At any rate, the film project never happened, at least not to my knowledge. Nate Crosby continued being friendly, and my parents liked him as much as they liked anyone at the Dakota.

  But for the purposes of my investigation, it didn’t matter if my parents liked him or not. I was a detective. And since some of Crosby’s rooms abutted ours, he was an obvious person to interview. Had he heard anything the night “my folks”—as Detective Hayes called them—were killed? Did he have any theories about the murders?

  I put my ear to his front door and heard faint sounds coming from inside. I pressed the doorbell, counted to thirty-five, and then pressed it again.

  Finally I heard the metal clanking of the latch being turned, and then the door opened.

  “My goodness, Tandy Angel! The spitting image of your mother, God rest her soul. We have so much to talk about. Please, come right in.”

  30

  Nate Crosby’s sandy hair was combed from back to front, and he wore a yellow cardigan and dark gray slacks.

  “Tandy, I was just about to call you, but I didn’t want to intrude. Please come in. I’ve been feeling awful about what happened, and wondering if I could help in any small way. Where are your brothers? Will you be taking some time off from school?”

  I murmured that I hadn’t really thought about it yet, but would discuss it with my siblings later. I thanked him for his kindness and followed him into the heart of the living room, a clean and monkish space that hardly looked lived in. A large flat-screen television was mounted over the fireplace; I looked up to see a network newscaster talking about my parents, a picture of Malcolm and Maud floating next to his head.

  “I’m so sorry about that,” Mr. Crosby said. He picked up the remote and switched off the set. I sat down across from him in a slatted wooden chair.

  “What can I do to help you, Tandy? You and your brothers can count on me for anything.”

  I told him that my uncle Peter had moved in temporarily and that Matthew was taking care of Hugo, but that I had some questions.

  “Did you notice anything unusual, Mr. Crosby? I thought that with your cinematic eye, you may have noticed something that no one else would have seen.”

  Crosby started to smile, then held it back in a way that made him look seriously constipated. “I’ve been thinking along the same lines, Tandy. After the police left, I scrutinized my memories for anything out of the ordinary, anything your parents may have said to me, or anything that struck me as remarkable.”

  “And did something come to you?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.” He gave me a kind but patronizing look. “What was remarkable was how much they loved all of you. They considered all of you so precious—and even more so after your sister died.”

  Listening to Nate Crosby’s drivel was almost as bad as enduring potshots from Morris Sampson. And frankly, both of them had a motive for killing my parents.

  With the Angels dead, Morris Sampson could write another book about them—and probably not get sued. Unless I sued that nasty little man…

  Which begged the question: Were the Angel children next on the killer’s hit list?

  Nate Crosby could make his documentary, and with us out of the way, he could tell our family’s story any way he wanted.

  My eyes must have glazed over as I considered these possibilities. I came back to myself at the sound of Nate Crosby saying my name.

  “Tandy, when may I call on your family?”

  “We’ll see you at the funeral,” I said, and without adding a thank-you or a good-bye, I got up and left Crosby’s apartment.

  There was a meeting scheduled in our apartment, and I was already late.

  31

  Our family’s psychologist, the noted—and controversial—Dr. Florence Keyes, was in the living room when I got there. She was talking with Samantha, who had called for the session.

  Dr. Keyes looked up when I entered the room and said, “Hi, Tandy, sweetie. Come sit down.”

  We’d known Dr. Keyes our entire lives, it seemed. She’d been training all of us to “deal with” our emotions since we were old enough to throw tantrums. We each saw her once a month, on different days—I was every second Tuesday—but never in a group setting like this. I wondered if it would make things more difficult to do this together.

  Hugo had been doing pretty well with mastering his emotions, somehow channeling them all into his physical strength. Matthew stopped going to sessions the second he graduated from high school, which probably explained why he’s now so prone to outbursts—say, for example, the Heisman incident. He didn’t used to be that way.

  And poor Harry… After eight years of intensive therapy, Dr. Keyes asked to start seeing him once a week. She just couldn’t break through to him. Harry told me she never tired of coming up with new theories and methods for working with him. I’d observed the way she stared at him—almost like he was a great, raw diamond, just waiting for her to cut and polish to her liking. He was her greatest professional challenge.

  I had a feeling Samantha was particularly concerned about how Harry was going to handle our parents’ deaths. He was already like a ticking emo bomb. When was he going to explode?

  As for me, well, I was Dr. Keyes’s star patient. I was virtually a living, breathing manifestation of her doctoral thesis, “Binding the Soul: One Doctor’s Quest to Eradicate Emotionality in the Interest of Moving Humanity into its Next Evolutionary Phase.”

  Once we were all assembled, Dr. Keyes settled carefully into the Pork Chair. She smiled at the freaked-out lot of us who faced her across the shark-tank coffee table.

  “Before we start talking,” she said, “let’s remember that you’re all going to be okay. You’ll get through this. Your parents have provided for you. You are all smart, capable children who have been prepared for anything and everything—even this, the ultimate tragedy. You are strong. Stronger than most adults. There’s nothing to fear. Believe in yourselves!”

  There was a lot of shuffling and staring.

  “Do you all believe in yourselves?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Hugo chirped. It was all a game to him.

  “Perfect. Who else believes in himself? Matthew? I haven’t seen you in so long, dear. How have you been?”

  “Our parents were just murdered, for God’s sake,” Matthew said, leaning forward, clenching his fists. “I hated Malcolm and Maud. But no one had the right to do that to them. No one!”

  Dr. Keyes said, “Matthew, I understand. You have every right to be angry. But let’s remember the exercises we did together years ago, dear, to dissolve the anger, rid yourself of this poison. It’s all mind over matter—”

  “Murdering two people in their bed is unconsci
onable. I’m mad enough to kill someone myself. And I wouldn’t be circumspect about it. If I found the killer, I’d kill him in plain sight.”

  “Matty!” Dr. Keyes drew in a sharp breath. “Clearly you and I need to have a private session before your irrational rage gets out of control—”

  “Irrational? Are you kidding me? I’m done. That’s it. And don’t call me Matty—Florence!”

  Matty stormed out of the room. It killed me to see my invincible brother in pain like that. But Dr. Keyes was right: We needed to take this situation in hand. I took slow, deep breaths, remembering one of the many techniques the doctor had taught me.

  Dr. Keyes nodded quietly at Matthew’s departure, not allowing it to upset her, and then asked Hugo to tell us what he was feeling.

  “Guilty. I should have heard the killer,” said Hugo. “I should have sent up a howl. I should’ve saved them.”

  “You’re not a watchdog, Hugo. You’re a young boy,” Dr. Keyes said. “You weren’t responsible, sweetheart. There’s no reason to be upset with yourself. And if you start to feel anger and sadness, well, we know there are ways to deal with those emotions so that they don’t take over our lives.”

  Hugo’s face was all red. I know my little brother so well; I could see that he was trying not to show his feelings, but I could feel his agony. He did need our parents, far more than the rest of us did.

  I opened my arms and Hugo threw himself against me with such force that my chair tipped back and almost went over. As Hugo settled in next to me, I heard Harry start to sob.

  The emotions in the room were out of control. Dr. Keyes pressed her lips tightly together. Then she looked my way.

  “Boys, observe your sister. Notice how she’s been handling this tragedy, and take inspiration from her! Tandy knows that anguish and senseless, self-inflicted guilt don’t get us anywhere. They poison us.”