Confessions of a Murder Suspect (35 page)

I rang the doorbell, and when Nathan Crosby didn’t answer right away, I rang again. When I turned around to say to my brothers that we had to rethink and regroup, I saw that I was alone.

Harry and Hugo had just disappeared.

“Harry? Hugo?”

I felt every single hair on my body standing on end.

80

I pushed open our front door
and called out to my brothers, then ran to the living room, where I saw that the French doors fronting our balcony were open.

Harry was standing just inside the open doors, wide-eyed and pale. His hair seemed to be standing straight up from his head. He looked terrified. I followed his gaze out the open doors.

The Dakota has steep roofs and tall gables and turrets, many dormer windows, and a few little balconies, like ours. Nathan Crosby has a balcony, too.

I pushed the fluttering gauze curtains aside, and what I saw almost stopped my heart. My little brother, shoeless
and shirtless, was crossing the narrow brick ledge that extended from our balcony to Nate Crosby’s.

The ledge was not meant to be a footbridge. It was just a narrow band of fancy brickwork—nothing more than a decoration, really—and yet Hugo was digging his feet into it, finding fingerholds in the bricks above him and scrambling spiderlike across the gap, more than ninety feet above the sidewalk.

I hissed at Harry, “Why didn’t you
stop
him?”

“I tried. He doesn’t listen. You
know
he doesn’t listen!”

“Hugo!” I yelled.

“Don’t call him,” Harry said. “Let him concentrate. If he should miss a step—”

“Hugo!” I called out again. I couldn’t help myself.

He turned his head, grinned, and said, “Don’t worry, Tandy. I can
fly
.”

Oh, God, my too-brave little brother… He wouldn’t survive a hundred-foot fall.

Hugo’s feet slipped as I watched him. I covered my scream with both hands, and, somehow, without even looking, he found his footing again. Then he lost a handhold and had to find another.

I felt sick to my stomach.

But within two minutes, Hugo had reached Crosby’s
balcony, swung his legs over the railing, and planted his feet. He raised his arms, his fingers forming a
V
for
victory
, as though he’d just won an Olympic gold medal.

“You’re
wicked
!” I shouted, sounding just like my mother.

“Swim fast, die hard,” he shouted back at me. Where did a ten-year-old get a line like that?

And just like that, I was once again reminded that nothing about our family was normal: Hugo was laughing with the sheer joy of being Hugo when he picked up a flowerpot and hurled it through Nate Crosby’s French doors, then climbed through the broken doorway.

“He’s barefoot!” I said. “There’s broken glass everywhere!”

“Yeah. And that’s the least of our problems,” said Harry. “Let’s go.”

81

Hugo opened Nate Crosby’s front door
from the inside and made a dramatic, goofy bow to me and Harry. “Welcome to my humble home.”

“You think this is funny?” I said to my youngest brother. “You could have
died
, Hugo.”

“Gone splat on the street,” Harry added. “Like pigeon poop.”

Hugo laughed.

I stooped, grabbed him by both shoulders, and looked right into his eyes. “Dying is permanent,” I said. “You don’t come back.”

“I know.”

“And by the way, you’ve definitely broken the law.”

Hugo grinned—another Angel family member without remorse.

I couldn’t deal with babysitting this nut on top of illegally breaking and entering, so I gave Hugo five dollars and asked him to go to the store for some Ding Dongs. Amazingly, he didn’t hesitate—I guess our stop at the bodega for forbidden foods had made him hungry for more. As soon as he was gone, I took what would probably be my only chance to investigate Nate Crosby’s home.

I was thinking it all through again as I crossed through Crosby’s sparsely furnished living room. Nate Crosby had wanted to make a film about my parents. When they said no to his proposal, he probably got angry. And nursed a grudge.

Crosby had been inside our apartment when he interviewed Malcolm and Maud; maybe he’d had an opportunity to plant the cameras then. If he didn’t do it himself, he might have paid the super, or even our housekeeper, to do it for him.

Crosby’s film-editing room was right off the living room. He had an L-shaped desk and a top-of-the-line computer. There were several monitors on the long wall, and a huge TV and DVD player across from the desk. Next to the TV was a stack DVD jewel cases.

I went to the cases and saw that they were color-coded
and labeled
ANGEL
—and they were dated, going back a number of months.

I think I stopped breathing as I examined them. I knew the discs were very important, that maybe they even contained evidence of murder. It came to me that each jewel-case color represented a different
camera
.

When my hand fell on a case marked
ANGEL: MASTER BR
and dated a week ago, I could hardly believe what my eyes were telling me.

Crosby had footage of my parents’ bedroom from the day they died.

Had he captured my parents’ killer on videotape?

I shouted, “
Harry!
Come in here.
Please.
”

My twin came through the door and I handed him the disc. He switched on the TV’s DVD player and pushed the disk into the tray. The video started playing.

This couldn’t be true—but it was.

We were looking at Malcolm and Maud in their bedroom on the last night of their lives. My mouth went dry, my scalp tightened, and my hands started to shake.

Oh my God, oh my God.

“Turn it
off
. Harry, turn it
off
.”

He did and we stood there, blinking at each other, shocked to the core. I tried to quiet my panicked mind, but it was flailing like an animal caught in a trap.

Harry was wheezing. He said, “We have to see it through.”

I nodded, and Harry pushed play again.

We watched the video to the end, and during those ten minutes of
hell
, we witnessed things we shouldn’t have seen and would never forget.

All sensation left my body.

When the video ended, I reached for Crosby’s phone and dialed a number I knew by heart.

“Sergeant Caputo, this is Tandy Angel. You have to come to unit sixty-four in the Dakota right now. The mystery has been solved.”

82

“So you broke into Crosby’s apartment,”
Caputo said. “And you want us to what? Watch a movie?”

Caputo’s expression was sour, but I didn’t care. My insides were liquid. I could barely stand or order my thoughts.

I had just watched my parents
die
.

I picked up the three-hole-punched sheaf of paper with the cover sheet that read “Filthy Rich” and shoved it at Caputo.

“Crosby outlined all the scenes,” I said.

My voice broke. I swallowed hard, then pushed on.

“These DVDs are copies of illegal wireless transmissions from our apartment to this apartment. Sergeant,
Nate Crosby knew the whole story. He knew what happened to my parents because he
filmed
it.”

“So you say,” said Caputo.

Harry took a puff from his inhaler. Then he cued up the DVD. I didn’t think I could bear to see it again, but I had no choice.

Harry pushed play, and the video began to roll.

The camera had been mounted above the fireplace, looking toward the bed. My mother was wearing ice-blue satin pajamas. My father wore his favorite striped cotton pj’s, with the Angel Pharma logo over the breast pocket.

My mother coughed into a tissue, then dropped it into a trash can beside the bed. Her voice sounded strained when she turned to my father and said, “I’m sorry, Malcolm. I don’t think I can put it off any longer.”

“Maud. What are you saying?”

He put his book down, then took off his reading glasses and placed them on the night table along with the book. He looked into my mother’s eyes. “We haven’t even decided to go through with it. Do you really think you’re ready? Something could change.”

Maud said, “I wish.… But there’s no getting around it, Malcolm. The pain has become unbearable. I could hardly get through dinner tonight. Everything is coming down.
And I won’t survive it. You know that. This is the right time.” There were tears on her cheeks, and in her voice, too.