Confessions of a Murder Suspect

20

I walked down the long hallway leading to my parents’ suite, intending to pass through their bedroom doorway as I’d done so many times before. But when I got to the threshold, I found that I couldn’t force myself to cross it. It was as if a thick glass wall had formed in the doorway and I couldn’t get past it.

I stared through the imaginary glass and saw that their room had been officially trashed since I’d last been in there.

After the crime-scene techs had taken photos and fingerprints, they’d torn the room apart. Every single drawer had been emptied, clothes had been shoved aside in the closets, and carpets had been rolled up. The Aronstein flag painting was down and leaning against the wall, and my parents’ four-poster bed had been stripped bare.

I had to face reality: The crime scene had been destroyed by the police, and there could be no useful evidence whatsoever still inside.

As I stared into the room, I flashed back to seeing Malcolm and Maud dead on their bed, that split-second glimpse of them locked and frozen in their death struggles. Like Robert and Mercurio, they had looked lifelike, but not alive.

The horror of it caught up with me again. I may live a very sheltered life, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced a few unspeakable things. I’ve just managed to block them out.

But not this one. Not yet. It was too fresh.

I was struck by a wave of nausea and had to immediately cover my face with my hands and concentrate on my breathing. My eardrums pounded as blood pulsed through my brain, calling to mind that roller-coaster ride with Harry so many years before.

When I took my hands away and looked again at the room, I forced myself to concentrate as hard as I ever have in my life. I looked at each object and tried to compare it to my earlier flash inventory of my parents’ possessions.

But here’s the thing: I couldn’t possibly know what the police had taken—or what might have been taken by an intruder the night of the murders.

I visualized my parents during their last hours alive, both in bed, wearing their reading glasses, books in their laps. I put myself outside their door. They looked up as I came in.

Anything wrong, Tandoori?

Father. Who killed you and Mother?

In my mind’s eye, their faces were simply frozen in a look that I couldn’t read. A look I’d never seen on their faces before that night.

A minute or two later, I left the master bedroom suite in a daze and went back downstairs—where I ran directly into Uncle Peter. He was carrying a glass of red juice in his hand. Maybe it was the morbid effect of living in a crime scene, but I imagined him drinking blood.

Which wouldn’t really surprise me, actually. The guy was a vampire of a different sort. Sucked the life out of people. Heeded only his own survival instinct. I hate him for reasons that run so deep my conscious mind hardly has access to them.

“Watch it, Tandy.”

I was almost glad to see him, but not for long. He was headed toward “his” room, had his hand on the door as he said to me, “I’m going to be using this room as my office, so please keep in mind: Noli intrare. No admittance. It’s a new rule.”

“What did you do to Katherine’s room?”

“Out. Out. Noli perturbare. Do not disturb!”

And then my uncle Peter closed the door in my face. Can you see why I dislike him so immensely?

That’s why it disturbed me so much to see him in Katherine’s room. She and I had been extremely close, and I had spent many weekend mornings in my big sister’s bed, with its pink crown of a headboard, gazing at the Marilyn Minter painting of lips and pearls on the opposite wall. I could tell her anything, and I learned more from her about the world outside our apartment than I ever did from my rigorous lessons with Malcolm and Maud.

I was particularly interested in her many stories about dating—secretly, of course. I asked a lot of questions, made a lot of mental notes. I even wrote a few things down. And Katherine was very free with her information. I think she felt bad for me and my lack of experience with what she called “the real world.”

My sister was brilliant and charming and a beauty, just like my mother had been. To the rest of the world, Katherine appeared smart, curious, calm, together. But she was very different on the inside. She was able to feel real passion about things, about people. I really looked up to her. Everyone loved her.

Then she won the Grande Gongo—and it turned out to be the biggest chop of all.

It ended with Katherine’s death.