Blood Kills by Nanci Rathbun (book club reads .TXT) 📗

While he read, I let the contents swirl in my head. What Mick wrote seemed… impossible, or at least highly unlikely.

Debby placed her hand on my arm and broke my reverie. “Angie?” Her quiet, quavering voice called out for reassurance.

I patted her hand and said, “I think it will be fine.” Then we both turned to Bart, like two lost children in search of their mother, or in our case, in search of answers.

He shook his head, as if seeking to clear the cobwebs from his brain. “I accept Ms. Hill’s case,” Bart said, buzzing Melinda, who came in carrying a steno pad. He directed her to copy the letter and envelope. “This is certainly unprecedented in my long career,” he told us as she returned and handed Bart and Debby duplicates, passing the original to me.

Chapter 43

Death never takes a wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.

Jean de la Fontaine

Letter from Michael Swanson to Angelina Bonaparte, dated July 18, 20__

Angie, I have been accused many times of crimes I did not commit, crimes which my cousin Artur is responsible for. We were children, growing up in the same village, until his father became rich from oil. They moved away, and my family remained poor.

Then when I was ten, my mother’s brother, Artur’s father, came to us. His son was ill and needed a bone marrow transplant. They tested me and I was a match. My uncle offered my parents what seemed like a small fortune if I would be his donor. My father agreed. The process was painful for me, and I ached and had headaches for weeks, but eventually I recovered and Artur was cured of the leukemia. After that, he was always in trouble, but his father paid my family for me to take the blame.

I was only sixteen when my parents died of influenza during a terrible outbreak in our village. As he lay burning up with fever, my father pressed a bank book into my hands and confided that he made a boat trip to Tallinn in Estonia to put the money from the marrow donation and other payments there, where it would be safe. “You will not have to stay here, Misha. Go out and make your way.” I hid that book on my person as I struggled to keep myself alive.

Then, at eighteen, I was conscripted into the army and Artur’s reign over me continued. He killed two men and accused me. I was astonished that my blood matched what was left at the crime scenes, and I was convicted and served short sentences because there were circumstances that indicated the dead men were not totally without blame. Once I was released from military prison, I thought myself finally free of Artur’s grasp.

While in service in Chechnya, where I witnessed atrocities too awful to describe, I came upon my cousin, now far above me in rank, him being a captain to my lowly sergeant major. He was beating a young woman almost to death. I pulled him off her, and he shouted that I would be the one arrested for the crime, that it was my blood that mingled with hers, before he stormed away.

The girl’s little brother crept out of the shadows of the alleyway and tugged me with him to a Ruska Roma campsite. You call them gypsies. The men retrieved the girl while the boy explained what had happened to a wise old woman of the company. She questioned me closely and decided that I was their friend—and when you are the friend of the Romani, it is for life.

While the girl Vadoma recovered, the old woman, who I discovered had a genuine psychic talent, hid me in her wagon during the day. She stained my skin dark with the husks of walnuts and dressed me in Romani clothes. I became Vano, a mute imbecile, because I could not speak their language if questioned. The soothsayer read my palm and the tea leaves and warned me to have no contact with my family, who sought to betray and kill me.

At night, the men and I went in search of Artur. On the fourth night, we found him, staggering drunkenly toward the officers’ quarters. They beat him senseless, but when they went to disembowel him, I asked for mercy on his behalf. They granted it, leaving him naked and bleeding onto the dirt. One of them carved a deep wound into his arm, a symbol, they said, that would guarantee his death at the hands of their people if he ever came under gypsy control again.

I did not understand what Artur meant about my blood, but as a precaution, I decided to take samples of his blood and hair.

The company broke camp that night. We traveled south, through Georgia to the border of Turkey, where they left me in the care of a family of Rom, whose patriarch taught me the art of the smithy. Thus I came to love metalworking.

After years of preparing for a career as a metal artist, I gained some success in Turkey, then retrieved the money my papa had secured for me in Estonia. After that, I had enough to settle in Boulogne-sur-Mer in France, where I worked as a metal artist, and finally applied for a US visa. It was the happiest day of my life to arrive on American soil.

I believed that I was finally safe at long last, until I saw Artur at the Saint Charles Fine Art Show in Illinois this spring. We exchanged looks, and I knew he recognized me. Then I remembered the old Romani woman and began to plan for my death.

Those samples are my charge to you, Angie, the evidence against Artur that will prove my innocence should I die and he again accuses me of his crimes. You will find the vials in a small box in the wall behind the