Death Without Company

by Craig Johnson

  She drags herself up toward the door and stumbles at the steps, is pounded by the rain, and shakes with the chill of the cold water as it streams from her hair and onto her skin. Her muscles contract, and it is all she can do to drop a clenched hand against the screen door. She cries and tries to strike the door again but can’t. Her head sinks to the step, and she rests there; it cannot end like this, it must not. She stirs, but her hair clings to her broken face, and her joints ache with the strain. Whatever was there, whatever had pushed her to this point, is washing away with the cold wind and rain. She pulls her legs and arms in to protect them, to allow them rest.

  There is a sound from within the house, and the door swings wide. A kerosene lantern shines on her with the pointillist pattern of the reinforced screen. Someone is kneeling now, lowering himself to her view and reaching out a thin and gentle hand. As his fingers close around her shoulder, she raises her head and, shivering with the last strains of energy she can afford, she speaks. “Polizia constabule . . . Lucian.”

  He smoked his pipe for a while and then got up quietly, positioning his leg, and moved around to the bar. He pulled a paper filter from a stack on the shelves, placed it in the maker at the bar back, pulled the urn from the burner, and filled it with water from the small bar sink. “You ever seen a man cut like that? Ear to ear?”

  “No, not like that.”

  He nodded, poured the water into the machine, and placed it back on the heating element. “If you cut an artery completely through, it tries to heal itself by pinching off but, if you’ve got the touch, you only cut the blood vessel halfway so it keeps bleeding until there’s nothing left to bleed.”

  “Lucian, this was a clear case of domestic abuse and self-defense.”

  He shook his head as the coffee began to percolate. “Not in 1951.”

  I waited. “I thought you said it was ’52.”

  “That’s when the goddamned Indians stole the car out of the irrigation pond Isaac and I stuck it in down on Four Brothers.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the bar. “How’s I supposed to know it was gonna be a drought summer?”

  “Why the elaborate charade with Marcos down in Vista Verde?”

  “She wanted him alive.”

  “Why didn’t she just file for abandonment?”

  He shrugged. “Religion.”

  I waited. “Bloomfield was in on this?” He looked away for a moment and didn’t speak. “He’s in a room over at Durant Memorial.” I got Lucian’s undivided attention. “He tried to drive to Billings last night to assist in Mari’s autopsy and wrecked his car near Sheridan.”

  Lucian nodded. “She needed medical attention, and I knew he would understand.” He looked at me. “He all right?”

  “Yep.” I sat on the stool opposite him. “Lucian, her heart gave out.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  I thought about the things I had believed when my wife died, complicated, hurtful things, and how the only thing that seemed to help was to have somebody listen. I glanced back over at him as he waited for me. “Did you see anything that night?”

  “No.”

  “Would you tell me if you had?”

  “Yes, goddamn it. I ain’t got nothin’ to hide.”

  “You have up to now.”

  He shook his head and turned around, pulled two cups from the cluster below the coffeemaker, and poured us a fresh pair. He pushed one of the cups toward me with his fingertips. “That’s my personal life.”

  “Your personal life is this case.” The stillness was back, and I was sure he was thinking about the heart that had failed. I thought about bringing up Isaac Bloomfield’s theories on substance abuse, advanced venereal disease, and hereditary predisposition but, if Mari was resting easier in Lucian’s mind, now was no time to trouble the waters.

  When I looked back up, he was studying me. “So, you gonna call in the F B of I on me or what?”

  I took a sip of my coffee. “I’m thinking.”

  He nodded. “Well, you think about this while you’re thinkin’. You know what a jury can do. You remember what they did for Melissa Little Bird.”

  The coffee was hot, or maybe I’d lost my taste for it. I sat the mug back on the surface of the bar and shook my head. “Not the same.” I waited a moment then stood up and buttoned my coat. “I have to go to work.”

  He looked at me as I crossed to the door with Dog in tow. “Big murder investigation?”

  “Something like that.”

  He sat the mug back on the bar. “Which one?”

  I looked at the floor and pushed the door open to let Dog out. “I’ll let you know.”

  It was getting colder, so I flipped the collar up on my jacket and scrunched my neck down for cover. So, he didn’t do it, at least not technically. He just covered it up or, in the parlance of the law, he was an accessory after the fact, which could get you from twelve to seventeen. I tried to think about how things had changed in our little corner of the world in fifty years. I thought of Lucian rumbling around the county in the old, upside-down bathtub of a Nash, meting out justice with a tin badge, a long-barreled .38-caliber revolver, and a shovel. I had developed my own ideas about murder from a Vietnamese Colonel COSVN who labeled it as the worst of crimes because once you had taken a life it could not be replaced. He had also stated that Ngo Dinh Diem was an idiot, but he was our idiot, one of the statements I had chosen not to take to heart. All in all, murder was a complicated and dirty business that took up a lot of emotional space in your soul; I don’t think Lucian could have tolerated that kind of occupancy.

  I shifted my thoughts to Mari Baroja. I wondered if she would have preferred to die in one of the small rooms in the Euskadi Hotel rather than in Room 42 of the Durant Home for Assisted Living. Some of their lunches must have been longer than their three-hour marriage. I thought about the effect she might have made on the old sheriff’s life had she been able to remain nestled there, the good she would have probably done, the holes in his tattered sails that could have been filled. Why hadn’t they remarried? Religion, maybe, but perhaps the clandestine weight of Charlie Nurburn had been too much. Things like that have a way of gathering momentum until there simply isn’t a way of dealing with them in one lifetime. Maybe they were two different people by then. Maybe it was that those three hours weren’t to be tampered with, that those three hours for those two people had been enough. Some fires can’t bear to dampen and can provide heat even from the distance of time.

  As soon as I closed the door of the truck and fired her up, I spotted a well-worn unit of the Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department sliding down Main Street. She was driving too fast, like she always did, but didn’t stop beside me; rather, she pulled around and parked. She got out, ducked her head against her collar, and trudged through the snow with a silent determination. She stood beside the window, and I noticed a piece of folded paper in her gloved hands. I hit the button, but the window only made a brief herniated sound; it was apparently frozen shut. She raised an eyebrow, then calmly unfolded the paper in her hands and slammed the face of it against the glass. It was a fax from the medical examiner’s office in Billings, and it said that Mari Baroja had died of complications due to naphthalene poisoning.

  “Mothballs?”

  We both stared at the speakerphone on my desk. “It’s where the smell comes from but, for it to be toxic, it has to be ingested. It forces the hemoglobin out, causing kidney damage and other assorted niceties.” We continued to stare at the little plastic speaker cover. “Some people have a hereditary deficiency of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenate that makes them particularly susceptible to naphthalene poisoning. Mari Baroja was in that group. It’s usually in people of Mediterranean descent, and Basques are on the list.”

  I shook my head and looked at Vic who seemed lost also. “How would someone know that?”

  “The same deficiency makes them sensitive to aspirin. If somebody knew that, it would give them a pretty good indication.”


  I thought about the stuffed and golden brown crow I was preparing to ingest. “There’s no chance that this could be something else?”

  “None.” The little speaker was silent for a moment. “The amount in her kidneys was miniscule, but her medical records showed that the deficiency was diagnosed back in the forties.”

  “What medical records?”

  “The ones I had faxed up from your hospital.”

  “Who was the attending physician?”

  There was a brief pause as he shuffled some papers. “You know, doctors really do have the worst handwriting.” I waited. “I. Brumfield ring a bell?”

  “Isaac Bloomfield.” I looked up at Vic; I had already filled her in on the Bloomfield front. “Yep, that’s the personal physician of the decedent.”

  “I guess you need to go talk to him.” I thanked Bill McDermott, punched the button, and looked back up at my smiling deputy.

  “I’m glad I’m not you right now.” She started to get up and head for her own office as somebody opened the front door. I assumed it was Ruby. “Sancho is out at Sonny George’s checking the Mercedes. Do you really think somebody tried to kill the Doc?”

  I took a breath. “I don’t know, but the accident sure seems fishy.”

  She was grinning, enjoying my quandary. “You want me to head over to that hotbed of illegal activity, the Durant Home for . . . ?”

  “Do me a favor first?” I couldn’t resist, she was looking so satisfied with herself. I stood and pulled the Post-it from my shirt pocket and handed it to her. “Call Charlie Nurburn down in Vista Verde and ask him when he’s going to be up here next?”

  She took the slip of paper and frowned at me. “You don’t think we have more important things to do?”

  I smiled back. “It’ll just take you a second.” She gave me the finger as I passed her on the way to Ruby’s desk. Dog was already there. “Isn’t Cady supposed to arrive sometime this afternoon?”

  “All the flights from Denver have been canceled.”

  I looked down at her, hoping what I had heard was wrong. “What?”

  “All the flights from Denver have been canceled, and I’m not even sure if she made it there yet.”

  “I better call.”

  She held the receiver up to show me. “What do you think I’m doing?” I glanced at my pocket watch as Ruby watched me. “Got an important meeting?”

  I continued to watch my sweep second hand. “No, but I’m expecting an explosion any time now.”

  “Fuck me!” It resonated down the hallway from her office and, a moment later, my highly agitated deputy was standing beside me and requesting a private audience in chambers. I looked back at Ruby. “Let me know what’s happening with Cady.”

  She smiled. “You bet.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “No shit.”

  “But Lucian didn’t kill him.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure he didn’t, he’s too busy providing his answering service.”

  “She did it.”

  Her eyes widened. “She did it?” I told her the story just as Lucian had told me and watched as she sat there. “Ugh.” She looked at the fax on my desk. “I guess that puts a whole new profile on our victim, huh?”

  “That and, from what the foreman told me, she was worth millions.”

  “Methane?”

  “Yep.”

  She pursed her lips. “By the way, your buddy stopped by this morning.”

  “Which buddy?”

  “Cecil Keller, the roustabout that shot his foreman? Big fucker with bad teeth? Nice of you to give me the heads-up on that one. He said you wanted him to come in and have a little chat.” I smiled. “Go ahead and smirk. No current wants or warrants, but I confiscated the weapon and had a little talk with him about resolving his conflicts.”

  I felt the muscles pull at the corner of my mouth. “I forgot about him.”

  She shook her head. “You know, I’m glad I’m around, considering the laissez-faire attitude the two previous administrations seem to have taken toward capital crimes.”

  I looked at the fax. “Yep, well, I guess the salad days are over.”

  She grew quiet. “I’ll go over to the home. Where are you headed?”

  “I figured I’d go over to the hospital and talk to Isaac, then I guess I’ll start with the family by telling Lana that somebody poisoned her grandmother.” She started out. “Hey?” She turned back. “There were some cookies on the floor beside her bed. I know it all sounds very Dorothy Sayers, but I thought I’d mention it.”

  “And I’ll check the drawers for mothballs. Maybe Mari was schnockered and thought they were breath mints.”

  Isaac Bloomfield wasn’t in his room, but he wasn’t hard to find; he was snoring in the staff lounge with a large bandage running from his temple and around his ear. I sat in the chair opposite his sofa, unbuttoned my coat, and placed my hat on my knee. The old guy snored like a Husquavarna chainsaw. “Isaac?” I said it three times before he heard me.

  “Walter?”

  “How come you’re not in your room?”

  “I’m more comfortable here.” He leaned in and took my hands. “I understand I owe you my life?”

  I shrugged. “I almost got both of us killed, if that’s what you mean.”

  He shook his head at my inability to accept thanks. “How is my car?”

  “Totaled.” I leaned back and watched him. “Isaac, last night you said the brakes failed.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes.”

  I took a deep breath and went on, before he could interrupt. “Isaac, did Mari have a deficiency of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenate?”

  He sat up slowly and looked at me, after rubbing his eyes and putting on his glasses. There was a very long pause. “Naphthalene poisoning?” I nodded. “Clever.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She was a lifetime smoker, it would have made the trace elements difficult to discover, along with the miniscule amount to be effective due to the deficiency.”

  I leaned back in the chair. “You learn something every day.”

  “But it must be ingested to be poison. That would create a difficulty under most situations, but Mari’s sense of smell had long been deadened.” He thought for a moment. “We discovered her reaction to aspirin during one of her clinic visits, and it was a textbook response. I induced vomiting with a syrup of ipecac, since her respiration was not depressed, and then insisted on further testing.” He smiled and continued to look at me. “This makes things difficult for you, doesn’t it?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You are looking for someone who knew her medical history.” He continued to smile. “If I were you, I would suspect me but, in that I am innocent, I have nothing to fear from your suspicions. So, I give them and you my blessing.” He leaned forward and again took my hands in his. “Find who murdered her, Walter. She suffered enough in life; there is no reason she should have to bear this final indignity.”

  I took Isaac off the unofficial suspect list on my way out to the truck. Dog was waiting, so I let him out to pee and stretch his legs. I leaned against the Bullet and thought about all the Barojas I was going to have to contact in the next few hours. I loaded Dog up and headed out to buy some overdue baked goods.

  Someone hadn’t been content to wait for the old woman to die, and all the suspects smacked of being too obvious. That’s how it worked, though. Motive and opportunity rode along like two out of four apocalyptic equestrians, grinning with their bony death heads at us lesser humans as we fumbled along, refusing to believe the obvious.

  I had eaten the ruggelach, and I didn’t die.

  I parked the truck and noticed a single set of footprints going in but none leaving. Lana must have walked. I opened the door and carefully shut it against the compacted snow at the sill. She needed to shovel. The bell at the top of the door tinkled, but no one appeared. I took a step in as I followed th
e dog but stopped to knock some of the accumulated snow from my hat and shoulders and to breathe in the fragrance of rising yeast and baking bread. The only sound was the quiet hum of the coolers and the winds of forced-air heating.

  Dog had advanced down the long counter but had stopped at the end. His head dropped, and he stared at the small seating area in the back. I was surprised when he retreated a step or two, froze and growled, and looked at something around the corner. “Dog?”

  It took about two strides to get to Lana Baroja who was lying at the top of the steps to the basement in a considerable amount of blood. Spikes of black hair were matted at the back of her head where there was a deep wound. One arm was turned while the other shot off to the side in an unnatural position.

  I checked her pulse; the rhythm was fast. Tachycardia—no way to know the pressure. She was pale, bluish, and clammy, with a light sweat, classic symptoms of shock.

  The numbers started up like an adding machine in my head; large bold numbers that stated simply that one third of the victims of head injury are unconscious and that more than 80 percent of the total deaths came from this group; that a full 50 percent of the individuals who could speak at some point after their injury and later died could have been saved with immediate treatment. I thought back to Isaac Bloomfield on the highway, my recently accumulated experience, and momentarily considered another line of work.

  I checked her neck, but nothing seemed broken. I made the decision I had been making a lot of lately and scooped her up, yanking a tablecloth from the nearest table and wrapping it around her, being careful to support her head. As I made my way toward the door, Dog followed.