Confessions of a Murder Suspect

45

I think I lost consciousness then and didn’t fully regain it until the car stopped in front of the Dakota.

Where we were met by more reporters.

Phil and his driver escorted me quickly through the crowd at the gates, inside the building, and into the elevator. Phil kept saying, over and over, “Don’t let them rattle you, Tandy. You’re going to be okay.”

“Promise?”

Uncle Peter opened the front door to us, his face a mask of disapproval. I went into the living room but didn’t see any sign of my brothers.

I was home. But home had never felt like this.

“Matthew is downtown with his slutty actress girlfriend,” my uncle said. “Samantha is out looking for a rental apartment—and good luck to her. Harry is in bed. Hugo kicked a social worker in the shin. That was a mistake. He’s currently buried under a few layers of bureaucracy.”

My little brother was lost in the system? I wasn’t worried that he might be scared, because Hugo isn’t afraid of anything. But Hugo wouldn’t recognize a dangerous situation if it sprouted claws and fangs and spewed fire through its nose.

Hugo would laugh out loud. And that scared me.

I went to his room and stood in the doorway, looking in at the broken bed, the unused toys, the stuffed pony and other relics of the childhood my little brother never really had.

I had to know if Hugo had anything to do with our parents’ deaths. I just couldn’t rule him out, and I needed to rule somebody out soon.

His computer was open on his desk, and I knew his password. I hadn’t been sneaky; Hugo had told me what it was.

I touched the mouse and the computer jumped to life. I punched in Ginats, which is how Hugo spells Giants. Hugo has an IQ in the 160s, but he either can’t or won’t follow the rules of spelling.

I clicked open the file marked “H” and began to read my little brother’s private journal. His early entries were bland and blameless, but as I scrolled down to the more recent entries, I found many mentions of our parents.

Hugo always called them “Malkim ’n’ Mud.”

Tues. 4th. Malkim was ugly 2day. He had a big welt under his eye and a sour look. It was the real Malkim. No fool. He’z an ugly person + he’z not as smrty as he thinx.

In similar entries about “Mud,” Hugo described her as “batty” and “meen.” It was clear that Hugo was sitting on a volcano of anger. I scrolled through his journal until I came to his entries for the previous summer.

Hugo had been only nine, but our parents’ expectations were, of course, that he would bring home academic honors and that he wouldn’t misbehave.

Despite warnings and Big Chops, Hugo consistently started fights with his classmates; he actually knocked out a total of three teeth, and was unabashedly proud of his right uppercut. He regularly muffed his homework and otherwise torpedoed his grades in courses he could have easily aced.

Last summer had been a bad one for Hugo.

For getting the lowest-possible grades and barely passing the fourth grade, Hugo was awarded a world-class Big Chop—and was sent far away from home.