Thomas Perry - Blood Money

“A TERRIFYING RIDE …

No one is better at the literary equivalent of a road movie

than Thomas Perry, and Blood Money shows perfectly

all his many strengths.… A terrific, pell-mell book.”

—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A delicious treat … Perry has a knack for creating

memorable characters, but where he really shines is in

his breathlessly paced and beautifully streamlined plots.”

—The Seattle Times

“Jane Whitefield [is] a sleuth with the most original

occupation in mystery fiction—she makes people in

trouble disappear.… Her methods are ingenious, and

Perry’s writing is as sharp as a sushi knife.”

—Los Angeles Times

“[This series] just keeps getting better.… Perry has

created a very strong and likable protagonist who

continues to evolve as a human being. An interesting

plot backed by good writing, intriguing characters, and

realistic dialogue makes Blood Money a winner.”

—San Francisco Examiner

“KEEPS YOU IN A CONSTANT STATE OF SUSPENSE …

Thomas Perry has

once again combined characters, plot, and

writing style into a winner.”

—The Providence Sunday Journal

“Smart, intricate, and fun … Thomas Perry’s

Jane Whitefield has to be one of fiction’s best

heroines. She’s tough. She’s wily. She’s idealistic.

And she looks darned good, too.”

—The State (SC)

“[Blood Money] moves quickly, with even minor

characters drawn believably, so that a great range of

individuals populates a story of intrigue and suspense.

It’s an all-nighter for sure.”

—Mystery Review

“Ingeniously plotted, beautifully written, and

pulse-poundingly suspenseful … Jane Whitefield

[is] one of the most unique and engaging characters

in modern crime fiction.”

—Romantic Times magazine

“COMPULSIVELY READABLE …

A TERRIFICALLY PLOTTED NAIL-BITER.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“What makes this series so consistently engaging is

not only Perry’s ability to cleverly untie the Gordian

knot of his plots, but also to draw us closer

and closer to his people. Details make a successful thriller, but

they can also overwhelm the inferior one. Perry mixes

plot and character with great delicacy, producing

a superbly emulsified whole.”

—Booklist

“A terrific thriller with wonderful characters

[and] lots of action.”

—The Ellenville Press

“[A] fast-paced thriller … There are many exciting

moments.”

—Publishers Weekly

Also by Thomas Perry

THE BUTCHER’S BOY

METZGER’S DOG

BIG FISH

ISLAND

SLEEPING DOGS

VANISHING ACT

DANCE FOR THE DEAD

SHADOW WOMAN

THE FACE-CHANGERS

DEATH BENEFITS

PURSUIT

DEAD AIM

NIGHTLIFE

Copyright © 1999 by Thomas Perry

All rights reserved.

To Jo, Alix, and Isabel

Their Great Men, both Sachems and Captains, are generally poorer than the common People, for they affect to give away and distribute all the Presents or Plunder they get in their Treaties or War, so as to leave nothing to themselves. If they should once be suspected of Selfishness, they would grow mean in the opinion of their Country-men, and would consequently loose [ sic ] their Authority.

—Cadwallader Colden, The History of the

Five Indian Nations Depending on the

Province of New-York in America , 1727.

1

There were still moments when the old life seemed to be on the verge of returning—there would be something out of place near the vanishing point of her sight or in the periphery. A bit of the past seemed to materialize for an instant, just long enough to catch Jane’s eye and cause her to remember it, then recede again to become indistinguishable from the soft, familiar landscape. Sometimes it would be no more than a sound—a spring-loaded metallic click-scrape noise that turned out to be a door bolt slipping into its receptacle, but could have been the slide of a pistol cycling to snap the first round into the chamber.

Usually it would be a man who made her uneasy. A few times it had been men in crowds who had resembled other men from other times. Once it was only a stranger in a deserted mall parking structure who happened to be walking in the wrong place for too many steps—a bit behind Jane and to her right, where she would be most vulnerable to attack. The old habits of mind emerged again in a reflex. As she prepared her body to make the sudden dodge, her ears listened to his footsteps to detect a change in his position. Her eyes scanned the area around her to record its features—the shapes of parked cars she could put between them, small pools of bright light on the pavement to avoid, the railing she could roll over to drop to the next level down without running for the stairs. Then, as each of the others had done, this man changed his course, unaware that he had startled her, and walked off in another direction. Usually it had been men. Today, it was just a young girl.

From a distance, the girl looked about fourteen: the thin, stringy blond hair that kept getting in her eyes; the narrow hips and bony chest; the clothes she wore that were a little too tight and too short, but made Jane wonder about her mother rather than about her. The girl first appeared on the Seneca reservation, and that was the first sign. She was too blond to be somebody’s cousin from Cattaraugus or Allegany, and too young to work for the government, and Jane couldn’t see any obvious explanation of how she had gotten there.

It was twelve miles from the Tonawanda reservation to the house in Amherst where Jane and Carey lived. Since Jane had begun to construct her new life she had spent more and more time on the reservation. First, she had visited friends and relatives, then let the friends talk her into going with them to meetings about tribal issues. At one of them she had volunteered to work in an after-school program to teach the old language to kids who had not learned it. All of them knew some words and phrases, and a few could make sentences, so the classes were easy and pleasant.

Jane had held her walks three times a week for over a year on the day when she first noticed the girl. Jane had waited on the high wooden front porch of Billy and Violet Peterson’s house under the tall hemlock and watched for the school buses. When enough of the children had gathered, Jane had gone inside with them and talked. The simple, inevitable logic of languages was appealing and satisfying to her students: “ah-ga-weh” is mine, “ho-weh” is his, “go-weh” is hers, “ung-gwa-weh” is ours, “swa-weh” is yours, “ho-nau-weh” is theirs.

But a language carried implications and assumptions that had to be explained. There was a history even in its lapses and absences. A modern Seneca conversation was filled with borrowed words for the things that filled the children’s houses—computers, television sets, microwave ovens.

Jane found herself taking the group out to walk the roads and fields and woods of the reservation to talk about the world. Whatever scurried across the path ahead of them or hung in the sky above or shaded them with its branches she could talk about without words from new languages.