Confessions of a Murder Suspect (29 page)

“I have no firsthand knowledge and no comment about this tragedy that’s happened to my family,” he said. He gave the camera a little wave and a thumbs-up before he walked away from the reporter and toward the Dakota’s entrance.

Kerz turned back to face the lens.

“That was Matthew Angel, answering our questions about his suspension by the National Football League. He said unequivocally that—”

I clicked off the television and Hugo, Harry, and I stared at one another in disbelief until we heard our front door open.

Matty poked his head around the corner. “How’d I do?”

“Great. Really well done, Matty.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “So why didn’t you tell us about the suspension?”

Matty shrugged. “You didn’t give me a chance. As soon as I saw you, you were practically threatening to tell the
NFL that I was guilty of taking performance-enhancing drugs. You wanted me out anyway, didn’t you?”

“Of course not! I—”

“And don’t
you
talk to
me
about keeping stuff to myself, Tandy,” Matthew growled. “You’re guilty of that more than anyone else in this family.”

I was silent.
Guilty
. Harry jumped weakly to my defense. “Tandy
selectively discusses
,” he offered. “She doesn’t
hide
.”

“Whatever you want to call it, it proves my point.” Matthew chortled. “It’s all about spin.”

Hugo leapt from his chair and shouted “Hup!” as he went barreling into his hero’s arms.

As the two headed for Hugo’s room, I thought about Matty’s interview.

Everything in Matty’s life was going directly down the drain: dead parents, pregnant girlfriend who was saying the baby wasn’t his, and tarnish on his sterling reputation that might get him booted out of the big league. Yet, none of that loss and chaos had been evident when he’d spoken with a reporter who could salvage his reputation.

It’s all in the spin.

Why did that suddenly sound scary to me?

Matthew had not only won Kaylee Kerz over, he’d
represented himself perfectly and then effortlessly deflected her questions about our parents’ murders.

The ability to perform flawlessly under pressure was what made Malcolm think that Matty could be president one day.

It was also why he thought Matthew was a sociopath.

66

News of the Angel family scandal
was aired on every channel that night.

It’s
crazy
to see yourself on television—crazy in a really bad way. You have no control over what people say about you. They can lie viciously, and they do. I’m beginning to have some compassion for Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and everybody else caught in the media glare.

Believe me, it’s beyond awful.

Three one-hour specials about our family were going to air in the same time slot.
Under Suspicion
was the most outrageous of the shows. The host was Anthony Imbimbo, who was known for his investigative reporting of true-crime stories. That night’s special episode was titled
“
Under Suspicion
: The New York Angel Family, Part One.”

The piece started with footage of our parents’ bodies being roughly unloaded from the ambulance behind the medical examiner’s office at dawn. Then Imbimbo narrated the fast-forward version of our parents’ lives in tiny bio snippets. Malcolm and Maud were portrayed as coldhearted capitalists without any humanity.

“The Angel family is no stranger to scandal, dating back to the Angel dynasty’s patriarch, William Harrison Angel, who, as a result of his spectacular gambling habit, lost more than half of the giant fortune he acquired by investing in Manhattan real estate. Still, the family managed to hold on to their magnificent wealth, and to increase it by many millions over the next several generations. In fact, for nearly a century, an often-mocked urban legend has circulated in elite Manhattan society about an
actual
Angel family guardian angel, supernaturally bound by God—or perhaps the devil—to ensure that the family is protected from any trouble it makes. And trouble, it seems, has a habit of seeking out the Angels.”

I rolled my eyes, amazed that such a silly story had found a way to live on into the twenty-first century. Despite how many still believe in the American dream, people never seem to grasp that our wealth has come from
hard work. They have to make up stories that explain it away.

On TV, Imbimbo continued on with his blather. But I wasn’t able to dismiss the next part quite so easily.

“When the family’s eldest daughter, Katherine, died in a motorcycle crash in South Africa, her death was ruled suspicious at first.”

I stood up, not sure I really wanted to have this wound reopened.

“But the case was closed less than forty-eight hours later.”

I started punching buttons on the remote.

“And the most recent case was the quickly squashed scandal involving the disappearance of the Angels’ other teenage daughter, Tandoori, known as ‘Tandy’ to the few who have regularly interacted with this very sheltered child. Just a year ago, the girl was found—”

I clicked the power button on the remote.

But not before setting the DVR.

Someday, I might be ready to watch that part.

CONFESSION

I clicked off the TV just
in time. Those four words were enough. Too much.

The girl was found.

Had I been lost?

Malcolm and Maud would have told the police that I was lost, I’m sure. But something told me I wasn’t. My mind was starting to feel like it was emerging from a fog, allowing me to trust something beyond the facts stored in my conscious mind. It was starting to allow me to trust my gut.

And this is the truth my gut told me.

I’d been found, but I hadn’t been lost, and I hadn’t been alone.

I closed my eyes and lay down on the couch. I saw the ghostly
face in my mind again, and this time I wasn’t scared of it. This time I didn’t pass out. I concentrated on it.

His face wasn’t clear enough yet, and I couldn’t tell how old he was. But I could remember now how desperately I had wanted to be with him. Passionately, you might even say. I think I would have done anything for him to help me get out of the prison. The prison that was my life.

We were escaping.

He had promised me freedom. And I’d tasted it—I could almost taste it now. I had flashes of his fingers interlacing with mine. Leaving under cover of dark. Looking at the stars together. Spooning together in the backseat of his car. Laughing as he tried to educate me about all the pop music on his iPod, and then enjoying long, peaceful stretches of classical music when I switched over to satellite radio. We even started compiling a sound track for our getaway.

It seemed so easy. So perfect.

We were headed for Canada, and we got as far as a McDonald’s in northern New York State, where we stopped for breakfast at dawn, snuggling into the same side of a booth. I’d never been to a McDonald’s in my life. I remember being happy at the thought of how enraged Malcolm would be to see me there, and thinking I had the whole world—the
real
world—ahead of me.

Until the place was stormed by a bunch of thugs.

I had made two mistakes: not being a hundred percent aware
of my surroundings at all times, like I usually was, and seating myself on the outside edge of the booth. So that when they came for me, I was easily yanked out.

In my mind’s eye, I can’t see his face as I was being torn away from him forever. But I can feel his arm around my waist and his hand clutching at my sweater to hold me to him. I can hear his voice shouting:
Tandy, they can’t do this. They can’t keep you away from me. They can’t keep you in a cage. Don’t let them.

And his last words:
I’ll come back for you.

But he never did.

My last sight of him was a view of his hunched-over back as he was shoved into an Escalade. And as I screamed his name and tried to fight off my captors, I saw who was supervising the whole operation from just a few paces away:
Uncle Peter.

That’s when I realized Malcolm and Maud had been tracking me.

Like a dog with a chip, penned in by an electric fence.

67