Orest Stelmach - The Boy Who Stole from the Dead

“Valentin.” Karel’s frown deepened. “Why is that name so familiar?” His eyes widened. A look of recognition turned to horror. “Valentin. The Zaroff Seven—”

Light filled the doorway.

“Don’t move,” another man said.

Nadia recognized him. It was the rawboned man who’d helped retrieve their bags from the thieves in Lviv. Her headlamp illuminated his rifle. He held the barrel with his left hand. A piece of jewelry glittered in the light from his ring finger. It was the same ring Valentin had worn in his family portrait.

Karel pulled the gun out of his belt and lifted it. Two loud thumps followed. Karel’s head exploded.

Nadia dived for the floor. Her headlamp slipped off her head. She killed her flashlight. Marko did the same. He rolled atop her, pulled out his gun, and fired two bullets into the light at the doorway. The room turned dark. Pain wracked Nadia’s eardrums.

Marko slid to the side wall. Fired another shot where the light had been. The man with the rifle had retreated out of the room. Marko put the gun in his overall pocket and slid the rock aside to reveal the hole in the wall.

“Go, go, go,” he said.

Nadia scampered through the hole into a narrow walkway. The walls of the cave pressed tight against her torso. She had to stand up sideways to get her legs out.

“Come on,” she said.

But instead of crawling through the hole, Marko began to slide the boulder back in place.

“Run,” he said.

“No,” she said. “You come, too.”

He ignored her. Instead he sealed the opening.

Nadia heard more gunfire followed by silence. Then a man’s voice. She couldn’t make out the words. There was a measure of reason about it, as though he was trying to coax someone into obeying his order. She heard a deeper voice answer. Marko, she guessed. Voices and footsteps. More men entering the room.

He surrendered, she thought. They would keep him alive to find out what he knew. Which was nothing except that some group of men called themselves the Zaroff Seven. Jonathan Valentine’s father had been one of them. Perhaps the rawboned man with the same ring was another. Somehow Bobby had gotten mixed up with them in Chornobyl, where the senior Valentin travelled every year.

They would be coming for her any second. She needed to move. Marko was resourceful, she told herself. He’d find a reason for them to keep him alive. Then he’d find a way to escape.

Still she couldn’t bear to leave him. She knew they’d be pushing the boulder aside momentarily but how could she leave her brother alone?

Nadia focused on her breathing. Tried to think of an ingenious strategy to save him.

A single muted thump . The unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

Marko, she thought.

Light trickled in through tiny cracks in the sealed door. Then voices. Closer. Much, much closer.

Nadia’s heart pounded in her ears. If she didn’t do something, they were going to kill her. She was going to die.

The voices became more animated. The boulder moved.

They’d killed Marko and were coming for her.

A sense of impending doom gripped her. Move, she told herself. Move.

Nadia aimed her flashlight forward. Made note of the curve in the wall and the jagged edges in the floor. Shut the flashlight.

Hugged the wall and disappeared into the darkness.

JOHNNY STOOD FACING Bobby as the guard guided him into the visitor’s room. Usually he preferred to sit across the table from his client so he didn’t appear to be an authority figure towering over him. So they could look each other eye-to-eye and on the level. But Bobby had been anything but on the level with him since he’d landed in Rikers Island. And now Johnny had the advantage he’d been hoping for. Forcing Bobby to look up at him would emphasize he had the upper hand.

The means with which he’d obtained his advantage was a source of constant guilt requiring liberal doses of rationalization. After Victor Bodnar called him with his news about the witness, however, he pushed aside the guilt. The witness had modified his original statement. As a result, everything had changed. If Johnny could get Bobby to retract his confession and tell him the truth, the DA would drop the murder charge. That much was certain. And if Johnny could prove self-defense, he had a real chance of getting the kid off completely.

The bad news was that keeping Bobby’s true identity a secret would get more complicated. But that had to be of secondary importance to a lifetime in jail, didn’t it? Johnny imagined Nadia’s reaction to his uncovering the truth about what happened that night. To seeing the charges against Bobby reduced and ultimately dropped. He pictured the look in her eyes. Johnny savored that image.

“What about Nadia?” Bobby said, as soon as the guard closed the door behind him.

“She was all right as of this morning,” Johnny said. “Time difference. We traded messages. That’s all I know for now.”

Bobby relaxed once he heard Nadia was safe. He rocked gently back and forth in his seat. Johnny knew from his prior visit that if he glanced under the table he’d find the boy’s right foot tapping away furiously. He’d never returned to being the apathetic kid since Johnny had showed him the picture of old man Valentin. From the moment of his outburst that Nadia would be killed if she dug into Valentine’s past, Bobby’s demeanor had turned into suppressed rage. He really was a short Ukrainian fuse ready to blow. And now Johnny had the match.

“So here’s the news,” Johnny said. “The witness who saw you kill Valentine? He went to the cops yesterday afternoon and changed his story.”

Bobby’s eyes shot up.

Johnny leaned over the table. “Oh. Have I got your attention? Turns out the witness saw Valentine come at you with a knife. He saw you defend yourself with your screwdriver. Then he saw you walk away. We know you went to the police station to turn yourself in. That much was true. But from then on, he didn’t tell the police everything. And neither did you.”

Bobby blinked.

“Remember when I showed you a picture of the victim? His hand was curled as though someone had pried something from his fist. Turns out that’s exactly what happened. Valentine was carrying a knife. Just like you said. A hunting knife. An expensive hunting knife. And that’s not all. He was also carrying a compact briefcase. He probably dropped it when he went for his knife. You know what was in that briefcase. Care to tell me?”

Blood seeped into Bobby’s face.

“A Sauer 202 takedown rifle with sound moderator. You know what a takedown rifle is?” Johnny paused. “Neither did I. It’s a rifle that can be disassembled without tools. You know what a sound moderator is? It diffuses the source of the gunshot. So it’s harder to tell what direction the bullet was coming from. What do you say to that?”

Bobby put his hands on the table. Moved his lips but didn’t say anything.

“There’s something else.” Johnny paced in front of him. “There was another item of interest in the briefcase. A detailed map of a very specific part of New York City. It’s called Hart Island. You know Hart Island, Bobby?”

Bobby closed his fists.

“No? Then let me tell you about it. It’s a small island at the easternmost part of the Bronx in Long Island Sound. It’s about a mile long and a quarter mile wide. Over time it’s been a Civil War internment camp, a psychiatric hospital for women, and a base for Ajax missiles. Now it’s the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. About two thousand people who die in New York City are buried there every year. People with no names, no families. Stillborn babies. Dismembered body parts of murder victims that can’t be identified. There’re about forty of those per year. No one’s allowed on the island except the people that conduct the burials. Ironically, that’s Rikers Island prisoners. How about that, huh? Can’t make that stuff up. No press is allowed. Ever. The ferry that runs from City Island to Hart Island is controlled by the city. Even family members have to apply for a pass from the prison system.”