These were Malcolm’s special super-vitamins, which he’d brought home from the factory for us ever since we were kids. I’d looked for them in the Physicians’ Desk Reference and in the Angel Pharma catalog, but I’d never found matches for them. I had always suspected that our pills were Malcolm’s off-label special blend.
“They’re why you children never get sick,” he’d say if we asked. And since we were the only kids we knew of who pretty much never got sick, there was no reason not to believe him.
But I hadn’t taken my pills the night before—had missed just one dose—and then I had fainted, had an emotional breakdown, sobbed, and felt out of control. In short, I’d acted in a way that was just not like me.
I felt… like a lot of other teenage girls must feel.
Could this be… normal?
I wasn’t sure what to make of it yet. But an idea was forming. It was not an entirely new idea, but it had never before seemed so powerful. And scary.
Why were the Angel kids so special, so different from other people and from one another?
Were my laser focus and concentration, Matthew’s speed and agility, Hugo’s strength, and Harry’s artistic talent enhanced by this daily handful of pills? Had our father found some way to help us become more perfect, as good as we could possibly be, maybe even a little… supernatural?
If so, what would happen if we stopped taking the pills?
I’d already started to see myself break down emotionally. Were my focus and concentration and analytical skills next?
I dropped the handful of pills onto my bed and ran straight to Harry’s room.
He was wearing headphones and had started a painting that was both garish and strangely familiar. The colors were swirled all around, but I could have sworn I recognized our father’s face in the deep green, purple, and black shapes with striking white zigzags Harry was throwing onto the canvas.
I lifted one of his earpieces and said, “Harry—the pills. What are they for? Do you know?”
He shrugged. “You’re the detective. I’m just an art dweeb.”
“I think we should stop taking them.”
“You do? But why?”
“Until we know what they are, I definitely think we should stop.”
“What will happen?”
“I don’t know for sure. But listen, Harry—we need to find out.”
“But what if they’re… necessary, or something? I’ve never not taken my pills. Malcolm and Maud would give us Big Chops for it.”
“Malcolm and Maud are gone,” I said, probably more harshly than I should have, because Harry’s eyes began to water. “I just think we need to try this,” I went on in a more soothing tone. “Don’t you want to know what they’re for… and why we are the way we are? I’m sure it’s all connected somehow.”
Harry looked at my doubtfully. Even in death our parents were still controlling him through their rules. “Okay,” he finally said, smiling through his tears. “I’ll stop being a druggie if you do.”
“Good,” I said, patting his hand and leaving him to his painting. We were one step closer to figuring everything out.
37
The doorbell rang at 7:26 the next morning, and this time I was ready for them. I wore jeans and a soft black cashmere turtleneck. I had brushed my hair, and I’d had coffee.
I opened the door and said to Caputo and Hayes, “What a surprise.”
Caputo stepped around me and into the foyer. I flipped the light switch and the UFO blazed overhead and played the musical signature from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Hayes looked up at the light fixture and smiled. I was actually starting to like him a little. Not too much, though.
“Your parents must have been hilarious,” he said.
I said, “Is this a social call? Or should I phone our lawyer?”
I didn’t like the way-too-smug look on Caputo’s face. Actually, I never liked his looks. At all.
“You should round up your brothers and your nanny,” said Caputo. He didn’t say please.
“Samantha is not our nanny.”
“Whatever she is, just get her, Tinker Bell. We’ll wait.”
I called Philippe Montaigne. My call went to voice mail, so I left a message. Then I went down the hall to the bedroom wing. Since my uncle had issued a stern “do not disturb” order, I complied. My pleasure.
When my three brothers, Samantha, and I had assembled around the shark table, Caputo said directly to me, “We found fingerprints on the poison bottle, Tippytoes. Your prints.”
My stomach dropped at the accusation, and my face felt hot. I wasn’t sure my mouth would work properly. I had that disconcerting feeling of being out of control again.
None of my brothers said a word. Harry looked like he was about to cry again, and Hugo and Matthew just stared. Thanks for the support, bros. Really appreciate it.
Samantha looked shocked, too, but quickly opened her mouth to (I hoped) proclaim my innocence. I held up a hand and forced myself to speak instead.
“Are you seriously claiming that my prints are on the poison bottle? That’s completely ridiculous.”
“They’re your prints, missy. Let’s hear how they got on that bottle.”
“If I actually had poisoned my parents, I would never make a dumb mistake like leaving my prints on the murder weapon. Trust me on that, dicks. No offense. That’s slang for detective, isn’t it?” This was something I never would have said forty-eight hours earlier. I wasn’t sure I recognized myself anymore.
They just stared at me as I looked from one to the other of them. Then I got it.
“You don’t have any fingerprints, do you?” I said. “That was a lie. You were trying to trap me because you have nothing. Having no evidence in the murders of a prominent couple like our parents is probably pretty embarrassing. Could hurt your careers.”
Caputo said, “You’re cute when you’re mad, Tilly—”
“Tandoori!” I yelled at the same time that Matthew stood up, all 215 pounds of him. His arms were crossed over his chest and he stepped in front of me. As he did so, Samantha came to sit next to me on the couch.
“Anything else you want to falsely accuse my sister of, dicks?” Matthew said menacingly as he loomed over them.
“Not so fast, Mr. Heisman. We’re not finished here,” Caputo said, standing up as well. “Tan-doori Angel,” he said, drawing out my name. “You are under arrest for obstructing governmental administration in the second degree. You’re coming with us.”
38
“You can’t take Tandy!” Hugo shouted, jumping up in front of me, alongside Matthew. Harry got up slowly, too, and stood on Matthew’s other side. Meanwhile, I was busy imagining myself standing in a snowbank, kind of like a snow girl—another Keyesian technique. I relaxed my scowl.
When I felt cool and sweet, I asked, “And how, exactly, have I obstructed governmental administration?”
Caputo said, “I thought you knew everything, Tiddlywinks.”
Hayes stepped in and paraphrased from the NYPD playbook. “Obstruction is when a person intentionally obstructs, impairs, or perverts the administration of law, or prevents or attempts to prevent a public servant from performing an official function by means of intimidation, physical force, or interference.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Yes, I know what it is. If you had listened to my question, you’d know I asked you how I obstructed you in the least.”
Caputo said, “In your case, Tiger Lily, you neglected to mention that your parents had a dinner guest on the night of the murders. And we’re going to combine that deliberate omission with your refusal to cooperate with our investigation. Ditto for you, Harrington—”
“Harrison!”
“You also omitted the dinner from your statement. And as for you, Mr. NFL Rock Star, you have been intimidating and interfering since you arrived the night of the murders.”
Matty scoffed. “You call what I did ‘intimidation’? Please
give me a chance to show you what I call intimidation.” I swear I saw his muscles bulge under his shirt.
Caputo and Matty stared at each other, black marbles against blue ice, until Hugo interrupted the face-off.
“You’ve got nothing on me, Potato,” Hugo said, “so hands off. I’m warning you.”
“You’re a material witness,” said Caputo. “Don’t worry, Shrimp Toast. Child Protective Services will confine you with little terrors your own age.” He continued, “Miss Peck, you’re a material witness and a person of interest. That’s officialese for suspect. Maybe when you have a chance to talk to us privately, you’ll have some fresh thoughts that will actually help us with our investigation.
“Anyone too dumb to be afraid, I’m making you a promise: We’re going to nail whoever killed Malcolm and Maud Angel, however many of you were involved—and you can count on that.”
While Hugo jeered, I called Phil a second time. Again, I got his voice mail. I immediately redialed the phone, my eyes wide open with shock, as unblinking as the eyes of our pygmy sharks.
Phil still didn’t answer.
Hugo had been running in circles around the cops, but suddenly he stopped, climbed up on the coffee table, pulled down his drawers, and mooned them. Then he farted.
Hayes laughed.
Caputo said, “Get down from there, you little poop. Your chariot awaits downstairs. In our slang, we call it a paddy wagon.”
They were really doing it.
They were arresting our whole family.
39
New York is one of only two states where the law treats sixteen-year-olds as adults, not juveniles.
This was very bad news for Harry and me.
Caputo and Hayes personally drove us to the Manhattan Department of Correction, aka Central Booking.
“You’re not going to separate us, are you?” Harry croaked. He was so spent from all his crying that he looked like a zombie, ghastly white.
“Take a guess, kid,” Caputo replied.
I clutched Harry’s hand for one last moment and said, “Don’t worry. Philippe will take care of us. I’ll see you soon.”
And then I took a deep breath and readied myself for what was next. This should be interesting, I told myself. A study in our law-enforcement system, criminology at work.
I was booked, given a baggy jumpsuit, and led down several steep flights of stairs, each step drawing me deeper into the hot, humid depths beneath the street. The walls of the prison were made of ancient-looking stone inset with iron gates. There were no windows. The whole place stank and was as dank as a dungeon.
It was a dungeon, actually, known throughout the city as “The Tombs.”
I was jostled roughly into a small room, where Officer Frye, a blocky woman from Criminal Justice, waited to interview me.
“It’s my job to determine if you’re eligible for bail,” she said with absolutely no inflection. “You can be held for up to three days until your arraignment.”
I could be here for three days.
And then what would happen to me?
I answered her questions about my age and my circumstances, and told her that I had never been arrested before. I couldn’t read Officer Frye’s mind, but when she was satisfied, she went to the gate and called for the guards. Did she actually think I was dangerous?
Maybe I was. Maybe I am. To put your foot through a TV screen, a voice inside my head pointed out, you need superhuman strength—and deep, primal anger.
And if I wasn’t on drugs anymore—drugs that I suspected might have been taming my emotions—who knew what kind of anger I was capable of?
Two prison guards marched me from the interview room and down another flight of stairs, toward a large holding cell filled with drunks and jeering hookers. And then there was me—a sixteen-year-old under suspicion of matricide, patricide, and obstruction of governmental administration.
My brief feeling of superhuman power shrunk with every step I took. This was a dangerous place, and there was nowhere to hide. I crouched in a corner of the cell, covering my face with my hands.
CONFESSION
Why does this feel so… familiar?
It’s not the claustrophobia. My whole world is claustrophobic. Always has been. That’s the life of an Angel.
It’s not the grossly bad attitudes of the administrators, or the total foulness everywhere around me, either. I can handle this New York correctional facility dreck. Tandy Angel is not frightened by jerk-off law enforcement trying to get media attention, right? That’s something I was raised to accept—that people will try to exploit us.
But there’s something else that’s ringing a bell, and it’s making me anxious. Jittery. And it’s getting worse and worse. Is it that I’ve not been taking my pills?
It’s the air, I think. Something subtle in the smell, a smell you don’t get anywhere in the day-to-day life of an elite Manhattan family. I can almost feel the olfactory receptors in my nose sending chemical signals to my brain, where the components are being lab-tested.
It’s the smell of an institution. The smell of the unwell, and the smell that you use to cover that stink. And it’s all mixed together with the reek of uncertainty, loneliness, and fear.
I haven’t been in prison before… have I?
I’m getting a flash of memory now. I’ve been to a place like this before. I know it.
I have been institutionalized.
It feels shameful to say, but I have to say it. I have to start confronting it.
I was locked up for treatment. After he… was gone. Taken.
It was a place my own parents sent me to. A place where I was supposed to heal, but never totally did. A broken child is not something Malcolm and Maud knew how to handle.
So I stayed a little bit broken.
Please, Philippe—anyone!—get me out of here.
40
It felt like an eternity before I was extracted from the group cell and moved to a single cell for my safety. I felt sure Phil had done this somehow, and I loved him for it.
My private cell was as different from my bedroom in the Dakota as air is from ice. It was maybe five feet wide by six feet long, and furnished with a narrow, wooden slat for a cot. There was a toilet with no seat, and a caged fluorescent light outside my cell shot its death rays from high overhead.
Actually, things were looking up. At least I was alone.
I curled up on my sleeping board and at some point found myself thinking about the last time I had been left alone overnight in a dark, uncomfortable place. It was a chop in which I had to spend one night in the closet underneath the stairs. “Maybe you’ll learn to appreciate the comforts we’ve provided for you if they’re taken away,” Malcolm said. “Maybe you’ll reconsider your interest in so casually discarding the life that your mother and I have given you.”
My interest in discarding this life—well, that’s a topic worthy of another conversation.
I had always understood that our parents used reward and punishment to shape our characters. It was a dirty-dog shame that I’d gotten another Big Chop just hours before my parents died. I would never forget that they were angry and disappointed in me. If I had just kept my mouth shut, they might have left this earth with only good feelings about me in their hearts.
That’s if they actually had hearts, Tandy, said the little voice in my head—which was getting a lot louder the more time I spent in that god-awful place.
Of course they did, I thought.
Brains, yes. Hearts, debatable.
Still, they really knew how to make people happy. I turned my mind to the last Grande Gongo I’d won, the previous year. It was a spectacular prize: a trip to the west coast of Australia, where I swam with whale sharks over the Ningaloo Reef.
The whale sharks were totally awesome—so gentle and huge. I drifted along with one I called Oliphant for almost an hour. He was about thirty-five feet long, with leopard spots and three hundred rows of tiny teeth, perfect for sieving plankto
n out of the sea.
I was a tiny speck in scuba gear, and Oliphant was a rare and wonderful behemoth, like a living flying carpet beneath me. Can you imagine it? Whatever you’re imagining, double or triple it. That Grande Gongo was easily the highlight of my life.
My sister Katherine’s Grande Gongo was also a highlight of her life—and the end of it, too.
41
Katherine may not have been perfect in my parents’ eyes, but she was a perfect sister. Like her friends, she had a wild streak. She drank too much and had a secret boyfriend who was pierced and tattooed. And even though she lied to my parents—to everyone, really—and thought nothing of it (because she, too, was trained to not have much of a conscience), she was a true inspiration for me. I loved her so much.
Katherine was going to be an engineer and was only fifteen when she was admitted to MIT, probably the best university in the country for the next generation of top-flight scientists.
My parents were so overjoyed that they awarded her the very first “Grande Gongo with an Asterisk.” The asterisk meant that she could have or do anything with her Grande Gongo, without restriction.
Katherine wanted to harvest diamonds in the rough. What an adventure! She had a plan and a finely detailed map, and she said she’d be home in time for the start of school with enough diamonds to make a necklace that would light up a room. She promised me earrings and a ring. Harry wanted an earring, too.
After she turned sixteen she flew to South Africa, and within days she’d panned a large diamond from an alluvial mine. She sent us a picture of the stone, and it was a whopper—estimated at almost seven carats when cut, perfect for a solitaire or a pendant. And it certainly would have been a grand memento of the Grandest Gongo of them all.
Katherine also found a boyfriend in South Africa: Dominick. He was an older man, something that upset my father in particular. But Katherine told me all about him, and he wasn’t a creepy pedophile type. He was just twenty-one, a free spirit, a beautiful boy, and they loved each other passionately.
Confessions of a Murder Suspect Page 9