A Conspiracy of Bones (Temperance Brennan #19)(93)

“May I indulge?” Tapping a finger to his upper lip. “It calms me.”

I shrugged.

Withdrawing the familiar blue tin from the center console, he pinched a little white packet and thumbed the snus up against his gum.

“I won’t apologize. It is my sole addiction.”

Yuriev closed his eyes and concentrated on controlling his breathing. I sensed an easing of anxiety. When he resumed speaking, his voice sounded steadier.

“You were also correct that Felix took his own life. His symptoms had become so severe that he no longer wished to live. Upon his last visit to the ashram, he asked that I assist him with suicide. I refused. He asked that I prescribe drugs to enable him to overdose. I refused that request also.”

I nodded, wondering how much of this I could trust.

“You are an astute woman, Dr. Brennan. It is Brennan?”

“The rude detective helped a lot. His name is Slidell.”

“Felix was employed doing research for his brother. He traveled the world finding unconventional ideas and looking for evidence to support them.”

“Unconventional?”

Yuriev tipped his head, acknowledging a valid point. “Some concepts were more controversial than others.”

“Such as?”

For the next ten minutes Yuriev relayed material I already knew from the blogs and podcasts. I listened, mostly to evaluate his candor.

As he spoke, his gaze remained fixed on the windshield. Not once did he again make eye contact. Not once did he show even a nodding acquaintance with sentiment. Not once did he touch on the topic of kids.

“And Body’s crackpot theories about the abduction of children?” I asked when he’d finished.

“I reject them.”

“As does anyone with an IQ higher than a mushroom. But Vodyanov had no qualms about supporting his brother’s lunatic ravings. Body’s hate and fear mongering.”

“Call it weak, call it flawed. Felix was devoted.”

“Most people love their siblings. But most place limits on what they will do for them.”

“I will share a few facts Felix revealed concerning his childhood. He is dead now. Ethically, I’m allowed to do so. And I believe he would approve, as the story may provide insight into his character. Perhaps into his brother’s.”

Yuriev took a moment to collect his thoughts. Or sift through ethics.

“Felix and Nick were born four years apart to a woman named Tatiana Yanova. Tatiana fled Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, in the late sixties after being abandoned by her lover following the stillbirth of a child. Though uneducated, unskilled, and speaking no English, Tatiana managed to get herself across the Bering Sea and to a tiny community called the Russian Old Believers in Nikolaevsk, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.

“How did she manage that?”

“According to Felix, his mother was a large woman. She buzz-cut her hair, wore men’s clothing, and hired on as crew to a fishing vessel. I suppose border control was less stringent back then.

“In Nikolaevsk, Tatiana met an unemployed miner named Aleksandr Vodyanov. The couple married and, after Felix came along, made their way south to the lower forty-eight, hoping to find employment. On May 2, 1972, Aleksandr was one of ninety-one miners killed in a fire at the Sunshine Mine in Kellogg, Idaho. Alone, impoverished, and pregnant a third time, Tatiana was once again forced to rely on her own wits.

“I forget the details, probably not pertinent, but in Idaho, Tatiana threw in with another miner, a Russian, of course, and the family eventually ended up somewhere in West Virginia. I don’t know the man’s name or his fate, only that he drank, was violent, and eventually left.”

When Yuriev didn’t continue. “What happened to Tatiana?”

“Felix said she’s alive and in some sort of assisted-living facility near Morgantown, West Virginia.”

“I understand how difficult life must have been for Tatiana and her children. But how is this relevant?”

“Throughout their childhood, Tatiana ingrained an old Russian proverb into her boys’ thinking.”

Yuriev reached into his pocket, withdrew pen and paper, jotted, and handed the note to me. I read: всевозможное.

I looked a question at Yuriev.

“Do whatever it takes,” he translated. “For Felix, that meant he was to do anything necessary to protect his little brother. He took the mandate literally, interpreted it to mean total loyalty and devotion.”

“Detective Slidell and I suspect Felix’s support of Nick went far beyond brotherly support.”

“Lest you judge Felix too harshly, know that Tatiana’s approach to parenting was nothing short of brutal. She kept a large wooden spoon on a hook in her kitchen, threatened its use constantly. And followed through. Some examples. When Nick broke a vase at age three, both he and Felix were beaten, then made to kneel on the shards. When Nick wet his bed at age four, the spoon was applied, then the brothers were forced to wear the urine-soaked pajamas around their necks for days. When, at age six, Nick returned home from a playground with a bloodied nose, Tatiana beat Felix, then ordered him to stand under a freezing shower for hours. When the brothers snuck a stray kitten into the house, they were beaten—”

“I get the picture.”

“—then required to watch as Tatiana boiled the young cat alive. Felix was forced to wear the corpse around his neck, as he had the pajamas.”