The Murder of an Angel

by James Patterson

  Caputo said to Jacob, “Letting you know. We can’t be responding to these kinds of calls anymore.”

  Jacob said, “Tandy is not a liar.”

  I shouted at Caputo. “Someone is trying to kill me! What are you going to say when you find me dead?”

  Chairs scraped. Cops got to their feet. Caputo said, “If I learn anything, I’ll get in touch. Meanwhile, Sandy, maybe you ought to become a writer. Fiction, of course.”

  “Screw you!” I shouted at Caputo’s back.

  Jacob gripped my arm to stop me from following the cops to the front door. I felt as crazy as everyone thought I was. Had I fabricated this assault?

  My cheek and my chin were scraped from my fall. My arm was cut. I’d heard what I’d heard: “Die, bitch.” Footsteps.

  Hell, no, I didn’t make this up. I don’t lie and I’m not crazy. I’m also the leading authority on my own state of mind, thank you.

  You can trust me on that.

  I was still shaky when Jacob and I returned from the emergency room late that night. Hugo was still awake, and he demanded to see the fifteen neat little stitches closing the gash on my arm.

  I took a hot shower, then pulled on Harry’s pajamas and Hugo’s socks for some added comfort. Jacob brought a few of Dr. Robosson’s prescribed and newly refilled antianxiety pills up to my bedroom with a cup of herbal tea and a plate of cookies.

  I said, “Thanks. And you don’t have to watch me swallow the pills. I want to take them.”

  “Good. Do you need anything else right now? I’m going down to the laundry room.”

  “My whites need to be dried.”

  “No problem.”

  “If you see an unknown or imaginary attacker looking for his knife, kindly beat the hell out of him and hold him for questioning.”

  “Will do. That’s a promise.”

  I swallowed the pills and gathered my two brothers in residence for a meeting on my bed.

  I said, “Guys, once again, my sanity is in question. If you think someone threatened and slashed me, please raise your hand.”

  “We were on the plane together, remember?” Hugo said. “I know a death threat when I see the ground coming up at me.”

  Harry said, “Seriously? You need a show of hands?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  Hands went up.

  “Excellent. Okay. I’m back in detective beast mode. You know my motto: Mystery solved. Case closed.”

  I repeated to my brothers what Jacob had told me about Peter: that he was supporting our fantastic lifestyle. They were as shocked as I had been, and they had the same questions I had hurled at Jacob.

  Why was Peter supporting us when he clearly hated us? And why hadn’t we been told?

  Harry said, “If he’s paying the bills, he could plant spies.”

  Hugo added, “And spies would tell his hired thugs when to sneak up on you. Like whoever knifed you tonight.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “People we don’t even know could be watching. Mailmen. That old couple who are always hanging out in the lobby. By the way, everyone’s a suspect until I clear you. Where were you when I was attacked?”

  Harry said, “We were both in my room when you went down to do your laundry, goofball. We can alibi each other.”

  “Okay. You’re both not guilty.”

  I bumped fists first with Harry, then with Hugo.

  Hugo said, “Booooommmm!” and shot his fingers out in an “explosion,” then rolled off the bed and kept rolling until he hit the wall, where he played dead.

  Sometimes I forget he’s only eleven. “Get up, Hugo.”

  “You blew me up,” he said. “I saw you.”

  We all cracked up, and it took a while to call my meeting back to order.

  When we’d collected ourselves, I said, “So let’s say Peter is guilty of being a pig, but not of trying to kill me. Who else would want me crazy or dead?”

  I handed out pads and pens, saying, “Put your number one suspect first, your number two after that, and so on, for a total of five.”

  After our lists were done, we compared notes and had a heated discussion about the suspects, each of us defending names on the list and providing reasons for other suspects to go to the top.

  We firmed up our lists. Then I adjourned the meeting and took a sleeping pill.

  Sorry, Dr. Robosson. I have no idea if I dreamed. But when I woke up the next morning, I was breathless, as if I’d been running hard.

  Was I fleeing or chasing?

  I wish I knew.

  Friend, the names on my list were frightening, even to me. They were people I knew, some I’ve been close to most of my life. And some I hardly knew at all.

  Not being able to trust anyone is enough to drive someone crazy. Was that what was happening to me? Had the pills finally kicked in with their poison to debilitate me mentally, if not physically? Was I going crazy?

  I felt hot tears well up in my eyes. I let them flood and spill over. When I was younger, obediently taking my course of “vitamins” every morning, I never cried. It felt good to have emotions again, even if they were painful and harrowing. But maybe my chaotic thoughts and emotions were hard to manage because I was so out of practice.

  My parents had done this to me. And my uncle.

  Could I trust anyone ever again?

  I was in a state of high anxiety the next morning. The pain in my arm reminded me how much I wanted to get ahead of the psycho who had attacked me last night and was still at large.

  Hugo, our in-house tech wiz, hacked into the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and ran a search on our driver, Leonard Peavey. Leo was on Peter’s payroll, carried a gun, and knew where I was at all times. He was my number one suspect.

  But Leonard Peavey had no criminal history. Au contraire. He had been a cop for twenty years in Schenectady, retired with distinction, and became security chief for Target in Albany before coming to work for us at the age of fifty-five.

  He was clean.

  We ran a similar search on Philippe Montaigne, our attorney, who had also once worked for Uncle Peter. I ran global searches on Sergeant Capricorn Caputo and Detective Ryan Hayes, and we screened our night doorman, Benito Rodriguez, and the rest of the San Remo staff.

  There were no red flags on any of our top suspects, but we continued to throw spaghetti against criminal databases all morning. None of our suspects stuck.

  At noon, I decided to call Samantha Peck for help.

  Sam, my mother’s former personal assistant and—as we’d recently found out—lover, knew the Angel family extremely well, maybe better than I did. She also knew about the plane crash that came this close to killing us all and was the reason my brothers and I had missed her mother’s funeral.

  After we’d exchanged fond hellos, I brought Sam up to the minute on my recent near-death experiences.

  “Trust your gut, Sam,” I urged her. “Who would want me crazy or dead?”

  There was a silence, and then Sam started crying so hard, she couldn’t speak. I waited while she blew her nose and went for a glass of water, and when she came back to the phone, she said, “My mother was a mean old bitch, Tandy, but even with her rough edges and hoarding and inappropriate comments and judgments and rudeness, I still miss her. And I miss Maud, too, so much. I even miss Malcolm. I still believe your mom and dad were murdered.”

  “Sam. You know that’s not true.”

  “I don’t know much anymore, sweetie. I’m sorry. I think I’ve crossed over the line into crazy.”

  Everything Sam said pulled at my head and my heart in ways I hadn’t predicted. I commiserated with our family friend, brought her up to date on my brothers, and finally got her laughing before we said good-bye.

  But I wasn’t laughing.

  I sat for a while in my blue room, staring at the sky, remembering my parents’ wretched deaths. The end of their lives meant the end of the pills and an epic turning point in the lives of everyone who loved them.

  Sirens
blaring on Central Park West brought me back to the present. They sounded like a call to action.

  I texted Leo and asked him to drive me downtown.

  I found Matty sitting on the steps outside his apartment building, drinking a forty-ounce bottle of Bud. He hadn’t shaved in a while. His dreadlocks were so disreputable that they had shot past cool and rolled right up to homeless. He was cheerful, however, and somewhat lucid.

  I sat down next to him, facing glinting snowbanks, and I told him everything. He heard me out, including my suspicions.

  “Me?” he asked. “Why would I want to kill you?”

  “Well, maybe it’s not personal. You’re prone to violence, Matty. You have an anger problem, and let’s face it, you’re a professional thug. And now that you’re broke, you could have a financial motive. If the rest of us are out of the way, you might get money from the estate. Or maybe you’ve got a split personality. I’ve heard that craziness runs in the family.”

  Matty laughed and said, “You don’t really think I tried to kill you. Come here.”

  He put his arm around my good shoulder and pulled me close. He hugged me really hard and I liked it. Correction. I loved it.

  “I never have and never will hurt you, Tandoo. You’ve been my strongest, most loyal supporter always, and I’ve loved you since you were born. But I am worried about you.”

  “And I’m kind of worried about you, big brother.”

  I crossed Matty off the list and asked Leo to drive me uptown to Sarabeth’s, a trendy tea shop on the Upper East Side.

  I was on time. I took a sunny table at a zebra-striped banquette and asked the waiter for lemon cake and peppermint tea. But before I put cup to lip, the door opened with a jangle and James walked in.

  He looked like the girl-crush he was, perfectly dressed to show off his great body and his huge pots of money. He slipped into the seat across from me and said, “Hey, Tandy, you’re looking like, uh, someone hit you. Or something.”

  My heart, traitor that it is, took off at a gallop and sent blood rushing into my cheeks—and down below. But I did my best to seem unaffected by the sight and smell of a boy I still loved.

  I said, “I’m okay, James. I’m not going to take up much of your time. I’m not recording this meeting”—his eyebrows shot up at this—“so I want you to be honest with me.”

  “Not recording? What do you mean?”

  “That this conversation is strictly confidential and will never come back to bite you. Oh. Here she is.”

  The door jangled and C.P. came in. She was in private school slut mode—miniskirt up to her smile, tights, knee-high boots, and an open fur coat over all of that. Skunk, I think. Or hyena.

  She sat down next to James and put her hand in his lap, smirking.

  I wanted to slap her. But I had invited her. Know thy enemy. Keep her close.

  Once they’d both ordered tea, I asked, straight-out, “Does either of you have any idea who may have been responsible for the attempts on my life?”

  “Huh?” C.P. said. “What attempts? Oh, I forgot. You’re out of your mind.”

  I ignored her and turned to James.

  “James, your father was Uncle Peter’s partner for a while. That’s a fact. So have you stepped into your father’s shoes? Do you have a partnership with my uncle?”

  “Me? And your uncle Peter? You can’t be serious.” Peter was there when I was ripped from James’s arms that long-ago night on the beach. At the time, we both had reason to hate him. But that James—the one who cared—was not the boy sitting across from me now.

  Screwing the lid tightly closed on those memories, I cut to the chase. “Do you have any idea who might want to kill me?” I asked crisply.

  “No, but I think you might be a little grandiose,” said James.

  “Or delusional,” C.P. added. “Megalo-something.”

  “Megalomaniacal,” said James.

  C.P. said, “Yeah, that’s it.” And they both laughed.

  I couldn’t hide my disgust, so I just went with it.

  “Thanks. You’ve reminded me that neither of you has the brains or the wherewithal to come after me. You’re off the list. The tea is on me.”

  I dropped a fifty on the table and walked out.

  “Where to, Ms. Tandy?”

  “One Hundred Fifty-Fifth Street and Broadway, please. Thanks, Leo.”

  I was just about out of suspects.

  This would be my last stop.

  Trinity Church Cemetery is on a sloping twenty-three acres, tucked between banks of nondescript apartment buildings in Washington Heights. It runs downhill between Amsterdam Avenue and Riverside Drive, and from the top of the hill, it owns a commanding view of the Hudson.

  I left Leo at the gate and walked uphill under a gray, snow-laden sky to the mausoleum where my parents were interred. It was easy to pick out their final resting place because of the angel statues on each side of the doors and the name Angel carved above the lintel.

  I sat on a stone bench fronting the mausoleum, with its view in one direction of the Church of the Intercession and, in the other, of the river. I took in cold breaths and let out frosted ones as snowflakes began to float down.

  I was still thinking about my conversation with Sam and felt the ache of irreplaceable loss, maybe more than ever before.

  Sam had said, “My mom was a bitch, but I miss her so much.”

  Maud was worse than a bitch. But now I wasn’t thinking of her aloofness or her tough lessons “for my own good.” I was remembering lying on the couch with her on Sunday mornings when she did the crossword puzzle in her yellow silk pj’s. She asked for my help with the puzzle and shared her tea and toast, and those mornings were so precious, I could almost smell the ink from the New York Times and the fragrance of her shampoo.

  I was having similar thoughts about my distant and preoccupied father. I saw myself as a little girl, playing in his lab and working with him in the kitchen. He taught me to cook and told me that the best cooks were scientists, whether they knew it or not. Just thinking about him saying that I had a scientific mind made me feel good about myself, then and now.

  Sitting there, I decided to relinquish my anger over the stiff punishments and the tight leash and the wretched pills. I even forgave them for my time at Fern Haven, which was Waterside on steroids, where there were electroshock treatments, heavy medications, and controversial therapy, all in the interest of getting me away from James.

  Looking back, I had to give it to them. They’d been right about James.

  Sweet images came to me of party hats, and ball games where we watched my big brother take punts and kickoffs to the house. I thought about growing up with Katherine and swimming with gentle sharks the size of whales and about preparing for a future where all of us would become… something more than just nature and nurture combined.

  I walked up to the gates of the mausoleum and touched each of the carved stone angels and said, “I know you loved us in your way and that you did your best. I get that now, and I’m very grateful. I wish I could talk to you, or even just see you. I love and miss you both.”

  And then I let them go.

  I found the car on Amsterdam. Leo jumped out and opened the back door for me. I brushed snow from my coat and stamped my boots. Then, when I had strapped in, Leo turned and fixed me with his pale gray eyes.

  “Ms. Tandy, I’m asking you again. This isn’t bull. Is there something I can do for you?”

  I knew now that Leo used to be a cop. I searched his face for the truth of him and saw nothing to be afraid of.

  “Do you mean it?” I said.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need. Just ask.”

  “I need you to tail someone.”

  “No problem,” said Leo. “Who?”

  The nightmare was back again.

  The one in which someone—Peter? James? Malcolm?—is slowly and firmly pushing my head underwater. I don’t know if I’m in a bathtub or a pool or
a lake. My guttural screams are abruptly cut off by the water flooding my throat. I fight and flail, but the iron hand steadily, inexorably pushes me down.

  I gasp and choke as fluid fills my lungs.

  I look up—

  After a night of tumultuous, haunting dreams, I finally gave up on sleep. I was brushing my teeth, wondering what my parents would advise now that I’d quit school, when Jacob called up to me from downstairs.

  “In a minute,” I shouted.

  “Now,” he shouted back.

  I was in pajamas—but fine. I went down the stairs, and when I cleared the spiral, I saw a lot of people filling the living room. At eight in the morning?

  Harry and Hugo were dressed for school, but their faces were frozen in an expression I could read only as shock. What the hell was going on?

  Jacob looked agitated, and that was when I saw that Dr. Robosson, warm and fuzzy in gray cashmere, was sitting in the Pork Chair and two young women were standing behind her.

  I knew the women, Luann and Stella, a nurse and an orderly from Waterside. From the corner of my eye, I saw another figure standing between me and the door. I turned my head for a better look.

  He was male, white, about twenty-eight, wearing blue scrubs with the name LOUIS stitched over the breast pocket. He had a blond brush cut and fire tattoos spiraling around his huge arms. I had never seen him before.

  Dr. Robosson said, “Tandy, don’t be afraid. This is a good thing. I want you to come with us to Waterside.”

  “But why? I’m fine. I’m taking my medicine.”

  “You had an incident the other night that required stitches. It’s been suggested that you may have cut yourself. Honey, just look at what you’ve done to your face.”

  I shot a furious look at Jacob and said, “Are you serious? Is this what’s happening now? I’m being committed?”