Death Without Company wl-2

by Craig Johnson

  “Yes.” She clutched my hand with both of hers, and it was starting to seem more like a wrestling match than an interview. “I’m afraid that she might have gotten involved with some sordid characters while she was in Europe. It could be that they are interested in Mother’s money.”

  “I see.” I let the dust settle on that one and tried to reconcile Lana as the naive innocent with Lana the intriguing terrorist and couldn’t.

  I went back to the office to see if Bill Wiltse had faxed the picture of Leo Gaskell, but Leo didn’t fit as Charlie Nurburn’s illegitimate mystery child. That child had been born in 1950, which meant he’d be in his midfifties. Leo Gaskell was in his thirties. But someone poisoned Mari Baroja, someone tried to kill Isaac, someone tried to bludgeon Lana Baroja to death, and someone had tried to kill Lucian.

  Someone was killing everybody who knew or thought that Charlie Nurburn was dead. Maybe they thought that they could get money from Mari’s estate if Charlie could be shown to be alive. Illegitimate children could not inherit, but Cady had mentioned that in Wyoming a husband could claim half of an estate, even if he was not in a Will or Trust, as an elective share. Maybe they wanted him alive for that purpose and then they could kill him off and inherit?

  The sky was the color of liberty ships left in the sun too long with faint tinges of a deeper gray at the horizon. It wasn’t snowing, but what had fallen looked like albino BBs rolling around the parking lot. Vic and Sancho pulled up beside me and disturbed my reverie. I shut the Bullet down and climbed out. Saizarbitoria trailed along after Vic, and I could see that he was covered from head to tactical boot with a thick coating of ice and black soot; even his face was only marginally visible. “The chimney fire?”

  He shifted from boot to boot. “You two don’t mind if I go in before I completely harden?”

  I stepped aside and allowed him to continue up the handicapped ramp and into the heat and relative comfort of the office. I turned and looked at Vic. “I see your uniform is clean.”

  She smiled. “He’s the mountain climber.”

  When we got inside, Dog came to greet me and sat with his haunches on my foot. He had carefully avoided Vic. Saizarbitoria was on his way to the jail shower with a fresh towel held between forefinger and thumb. Ruby had obviously fussed over him, and he now had a cup of coffee. “We don’t have much here in Absaroka County, but we do have a fire department.”

  “Their ladder truck froze.”

  We all watched him go. Vic was still on her best behavior. “He’s fearless. We have to keep him.”

  I nodded, and it was unanimous.

  Ruby handed me a folder. “Leo Gaskell.”

  I flipped it open. There was a regular arrest dossier on Leo Cecil Gaskell, a four-pager to be exact, and a quarter page photo of Leo at his last retreat in Rawlins. He was big, with long dark hair that hung just past the shoulders. Bingo. He had lousy teeth and a broken nose that completed the package, but it was his eyes that were scary. Devoid of any feeling, Leo looked like one of those guys who could strangle a kindergarten and then go home and water the plants.

  “Not that fucker again.”

  I turned to look at Vic, who was peering over my shoulder. “What?”

  She looked at me as if I were the only village idiot left in town. “This is the guy who shot the foreman down on the methane field; Cecil Keller, the one you made come in and write on the blackboard.”

  “Cecil Keller?”

  “Yeah, this is the guy. He’s got a mustache now, but it’s the teeth. I swear it’s him.” She looked at me. “I’ve still got the gun.”

  “Get it.” She disappeared.

  I thought about the photograph of Charlie on the Rez with the pistols. I snatched the photo of Leo from the folder and held it up for Ruby to see. Her face reddened. “It’s not the name he gave us before, but that’s him. I’m sorry, Walt, but I didn’t bother to look at the fax when it came in. I know it’s no excuse, but the phone was ringing, and I just shoved it into a folder.”

  “Tell Saizarbitoria that he’s earned an inside day and keep him off the roof.” I handed Vic the file as she handed me a chrome-plated, pearl-handled. 32 automatic, identical to the four that Charlie Nurburn had worn in the photo. As Vic read the file, she whistled softly at the details. I turned to my second in command. “Looks like we’re going to Four Brothers.”

  “I have to pee first.”

  I took the file back and sighed. “Go pee.” I sat on the edge of Ruby’s desk and thought about whether Cecil Keller/Leo Gaskell was at work today and about his possible connection to the illusive Charlie Nurburn. The phone rang, and Ruby picked up her receiver and held it out to me. “Henry.”

  “I am at Anna’s house, and someone has broken in.”

  I looked at the phone. “What?”

  “Someone has pried the backdoor open, and it looks as if they were searching for something.”

  “I take it she’s not there?”

  “No.”

  Anna wasn’t at work and wasn’t at home. “Any word on Ellen Walks Over Ice?”

  “Her married name is Ellen Runs Horse, and she lives in town at the trailer park by the highway; sometimes Anna stays with her when the weather is bad.”

  I closed my eyes and then opened them to glance over at Ruby. “Can you get me an address for Ellen Runs Horse, here in town?” Her fingers began working the keys of her computer.

  The Cheyenne Nation cleared his throat. “She is related to Anna. Lonnie says that they are half sisters.”

  The wagons were beginning to circle, and all the Indians were related. “Do me another favor?”

  “We also serve who drive all over the Rez.”

  I ignored the sarcasm. “Could you and Cady go over to Durant Memorial at 2:30? Lana Baroja’s got a meeting with the terrible twins, one of whom just tried to rape me, and I was thinking it might be nice if she had a little representation.”

  “At this meeting, what are we supposed to represent?”

  “Brains and brawn.”

  “Which of us is which?”

  I hung up the phone and watched as Ruby scribbled the address down on a Post-it for me, 23 EVERGREEN CIRCLE.

  Vic returned from the powder room. “More good news?”

  “Unless I am mistaken, Ellen Runs Horse is Ellen Walks Over Ice.”

  Ruby and Vic looked at each other and then back to me, Vic the first to speak. “The woman from the home?”

  I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to stave off the headache that seemed to be coming on with the velocity of a Burlington Northern/ Santa Fe. “The mother of Charlie Nurburn’s illegitimate child from back in 1950 and the half sister of Anna Walks Over Ice, who works at the home. The same Anna Walks Over Ice who I believe has left messages on Isaac Bloomfield’s cell phone and appears to have just had her house burgled.”

  Vic nodded and looked at the Post-it in my hands. “You’ll be wanting to go over to the trailer court first.”

  On the drive over, I stuffed the small chrome automatic into the center console on top of the autopsy photographs. “That’s the pistol he shot the foreman with, which looks remarkably like one of the four pistols I saw in a picture of Charlie Nurburn.”

  “Where did you see a picture of Charlie Nurburn?”

  “At Henry’s. He’s collating a couple of hatboxes full of old photographs for the tribe.”

  “Charlie was on the Rez?”

  “Yep.”

  She looked through the windshield at the snow darting past us. “The guy got around.”

  I looked past her shoulder at the space where a trailer house had been, at a pole with the number 23, and at power hookups dangling to the ground. There was only an inch or two of snow, so it hadn’t been gone long. She turned and looked at me with her hands on her hips. “You know, that’s the problem with using these things for a permanent address.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll go check with the manager.” She marched off down the row of tr
ailers to the one that sat by the road as I knelt and looked at the snow-covered tandem tracks of a very large truck. This was going to make things difficult. What was this world coming to when you could back up to a residence of reasonable suspicion and haul it away?

  There were some trash cans, the large metal ones, chained to the low fence that divided the little yards from each other. I walked over and started going through them. The first contained the usual detritus that assembles in any household, apple cores, newspapers, and a chicken carcass. I closed the lid and moved to the next can but stopped when I saw a tiny nose and a set of eyes looking out at me from a small window in the next trailer house about four feet away.

  The glass of the vent was open, and it looked like a bathroom window. “Hi.”

  I smiled. “Hi.” It was a boy, maybe five, Indian and, from the features, probably Crow. It looked like he was having trouble standing on the toilet and talking through the window.

  “You the sheriff?”

  “You bet.”

  He continued to study me. “You looking for bad guys?”

  “Yep, you seen any?” His face became grave, and he slowly nodded. “Tall guy, like me? Long dark hair with a mustache?” He stopped for a second and then nodded some more. I put my hands in my pockets and got out my gloves and put them on. “You see him lately?” The little face continued to nod. “Last night?” More nodding.

  “He has a big truck.”

  “Did he take this lady’s home away?”

  He thought about that one for a minute. “She’s mean.”

  “Was she with him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I casually opened the second lid and found some mail on the top. “Did they leave last night?” He nodded again as I picked up an offer for long-term insurance from some fly-by-night firm in California; the addressee was Ellen Runs Horse. “Was it late last night?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Did they wake you up with the truck?”

  “Uh huh.” I nodded along with him and casually lifted the top on the last can.

  I quickly closed it. My lungs didn’t want to work, but I took a deep breath and stood there for a minute. “You see anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s at work.”

  “Who’s taking care of you?”

  “My sister.”

  I took another breath. “Where is she?”

  “Taking a nap.”

  “Would you go wake her up and see if she would mind talking to me?”

  “Now?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay.” The little face disappeared.

  I stood there for a moment longer and then opened the third trash can again. I forced myself to look, just making sure that what I was seeing was real.

  I closed it and walked back over to my truck and leaned against the side mirror, getting as much air in my lungs as I could force. I looked over the fences, past the snow-covered hills leading to the highway where the 18-wheelers jake-braked to exit Durant. I had to open the door and make some radio calls, but it seemed like all I could do was look off to the horizon and feel the wind that was picking up from the west.

  I didn’t think I could trust myself to operate the minute mechanisms of my truck door or the radio, so I waited. I took my hat off and ran a gloved hand through my hair. Still holding my hat, I threw my arm over the mirror and let the truck carry some of my weight. After a moment, I heard Vic coming back from the manager’s office.

  “I talked to his wife, and she called him. He works at the welding shop up by the high school, but he’ll be here in about five minutes.” I nodded. “Hey, you don’t look so good.”

  I took another breath to quell not so much the nausea but the anger and watched as my hands shook. “I found Anna Walks Over Ice.”

  12

  Vic was looking at me like I was a crazy person. I hadn’t liked Jess Aliff’s answers. We were standing by one of the compression stations about four miles from everything with the propane engines running in the wind at full blast. It was loud, but I had been louder.

  The snow was the stinging stuff that was whisking across the high plains at thirty miles an hour. It was as if the weather had decided to change from bad to worse after I had found Anna Walks Over Ice in the trash can. The anger I felt was like the wind; rage has no place in law enforcement, and I stand fast against it the majority of the time, but it is there, waiting for fissures of passion, waiting for me to slip, and I just had.

  The gist of my outburst had been that I wasn’t particularly concerned if Leo Cecil Gaskell/Keller was chairman of the Wyoming Oil and Gas Commission, I wanted his ass and now. According to the foreman, Leo was in a crew that was working in the fields farther south, but he wasn’t sure exactly where. I had asked him if they had radios. He said they did, but that they only worked about half the time. I informed him that this time better be the half that worked.

  It was a stubby trailer, the kind that was usually used for hunting. I was the last one in; Vic stood in the little kitchenette, and Aliff sat at the fold-down table where he pulled a radio from a holder on the wall. He looked much as he had the day he had told me about being shot. The condensation from his breath had hardened in his beard and was now dripping onto the Formica-covered table and the assortment of papers that lay there. I stroked my own beard and wiped my hand on my jeans. I started feeling bad about yelling at the man; he likely held no great love for Leo Gaskell either.

  “I’m going to need an address for Mr. Gaskell, if you’ve got one.” He tore down a sheet that was taped to the wall and handed it to me. “When was the last time you saw Leo?”

  He stared at the table. “ ’Bout two days ago. We had a meetin’.”

  “Did he act suspiciously in any way?”

  The foreman looked at me. “Nope, I mean, he was like he always is.”

  Vic interrupted. “And how is that?”

  “Swings back an’ forth. Sometimes he’s so quiet you don’t even know he’s there, ’n’ other times he’s jus’ crazy.”

  “I guess one of the crazy times is when he shot you?”

  “Yeah.” He slumped against the bench seat of the trailer. “He wanted to borrow some equipment from the company, an’ that’s against the rules.”

  “What kind of equipment?”

  He shook his head, as if to dislodge the information. I was actually starting to like the guy. “A truck.”

  Vic and I looked at each other as he picked up the mic from the clip on the side of the radio. “Station BR75115 this is 75033, do you copy?” We listened as the waves of noise lapped against the antenna. “If they ain’t in the trailer or in a vehicle, we ain’t gonna get ’em.”

  There was a burst of static; the foreman caught it and began dialing the squelch up to where it was just below constant. “Come in BR75115, this is 75033. Johnny, it’s the boss. Y’all there?”

  “BR75033 this is 75115, over?”

  The foreman keyed the mic. “Johnny, is Cecil down there?”

  Static. “He said he was supposed to go to field storage yesterday and then work with you guys.”

  Aliff turned to look at me. “Well, shit. Field storage is where we keep all the heavy equipment when it ain’t in use.”

  It was the second time that day that I had stood looking at a space where a large thing wasn’t where it was supposed to be. “Where would he get the keys?” He nodded toward yet another stubby trailer that was parked by the opening of the chain-link fence next to the highway. I could see that the door of the camper was hanging slightly open. The door had been jimmied; it appeared that Leo Gaskell had a signature tool for all occasions. When we got inside, we discovered that he had also forced open the door of the lockbox. The foreman leaned in and examined the labeled hook where the missing key had hung. “Mack, CVH613.”

  Vic was trying to close the door behind us, and I watched as her breath billowed from the doorway. “Is that b
ig enough to pull a house trailer?”

  He nodded. “Oh yeah. It’s a tandem. Haul damn near anythin’.” He looked back to me. “I guess whatever Cecil or Leo’s done, you can add grand theft auto to it.”

  Vic half laughed. I turned back from her to the foreman. “Mr. Gaskell is a prime suspect in a number of recent homicides.” I always felt like a used car salesman when I did it, but I pulled out a card and handed it to him, watching carefully to see if he understood the gravity of the situation. “If you see or have any contact with him, I’ll need you to contact me immediately.” He nodded and stared at the floor; the wind continued to beat a tattoo with the loose door. “Is there something else you’d like to tell me?”

  He licked his lips and caught part of his mustache with his lower teeth. “Yeah, I reckon there is.” We waited as he gathered a thought and muttered under his breath, “Man, our ass is gonna be in trouble no matter which way you cut it. We dug somethin’ up, jus’ out of the canyon, near that little homestead.” He looked back up at me. “A body, an old one.”

  I straightened. “How old?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but there wasn’t much left of it.” He looked from Vic to me. “You know how this stuff works, you find ol’ Chief Whosiewatchee and pretty soon yer up to yer ass in archeologists and every tree-huggin’ son of a bitch in three states.” It didn’t sound good, even to him, so he kept talking. “I’m six weeks behind schedule, I can’t keep good people no matter what I pay ’em, the weather is bound and determined to kick my ass, and all of a sudden I’ve got a sack of bones on my hands?”

  I tried not to move or do anything that might keep him from talking. “What leads you to believe the bones are Indian?”

  “Well, they all are around here.”

  Vic was now standing beside me when she spoke. “What happened to them?”

  He didn’t speak, so I did. “Let me guess, Leo Gaskell?” He nodded. “How long ago was this?”

  “ ’Bout a week ago. Cecil… I mean Leo’s got the remains. I think he’s plannin’ on blackmail’n the company.” He looked at the dull surface of the table in front of him. “I guess I’m in a lotta trouble, huh?”