Death Without Company

by Craig Johnson

  He peeled the hood back, pulled the fleece scarf from his face, and revealed a set of pale blue eyes. He was of average height, but was disproportionately large in the shoulders and hands, one of which he had de-gloved and held out to me. Between the glove finger in his mouth and the amount of ferocious red beard he had to talk through, I had to listen carefully to understand him. “Wanna thank you for cumin’ down, but I think we got ’er under control.”

  I looked at him. “No problem.” I kept looking at him in hopes that he would say something more on the offhand chance that I might understand it. I took the hand that was almost as large as my own. “Why don’t you just tell me all about it?”

  We shook, and he nodded and pulled the hood all the way back to reveal a lot more red hair and a yellow Northern Rockies Energy Exploration hat. “He’s not a bad ol’ boy, he just gets carried away some times.” He looked at his lap. “I’m not gonna lie to you, mighta been some drugs. Shit, he’s so loopy he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.” He sniffed. “Just a little ol’ thirtytu.” I looked at Yukon Cornelius and raised an eyebrow. “Ah’m aw right.” He nodded. “Just glanced a rib.” He assisted the last statement by unzipping his jacket and poking a finger through what I assumed was a bullet hole in both the front and rear of his coat. There was a dark stain at his side where the blue plaid flannel was exposed, but he only shrugged and looked at me. “Just a little ol’ thirtytu.” He nodded some more. “Told ’em not to call yuh.”

  As far as I knew, they hadn’t. “Well, I like to be informed when people are shooting each other in my county.” I pulled the aluminum form folder from the door pocket, placed it on the center console between us, and pulled my pen from my shirtfront. I clicked it. “What’s his name?”

  He took a deep breath. “Cecil Keller.” He looked at me, and I was impressed by the direct and steady quality of his gaze. “Constable, I just don’ want him to get in trouble fer this.”

  “You don’t want to lose him?”

  He shrugged. “He’s just a dumb kid.”

  After a moment, I clicked the pen closed and placed it on the clipboard. “What’s your name?”

  He automatically stuck out his hand again. “Jess Aliff, foreman.”

  We shook again. “Jess, unless you’re willing to press charges, seeing as how you’re the one that he shot, I can’t do too much about this, but I have to file a report on any gunshot wounds in my jurisdiction.” He nodded some more and pulled at a wayward blondish-red tuft just below his lower lip. “But I don’t suppose you’re planning on going to a hospital?”

  He blew out a dismissal puff of air and looked at me. “Naw.”

  “Well, then I guess there’s not a lot to do officially.” His mood visibly brightened. “But I don’t like the idea of drug-crazed individuals running around my county with unregistered weapons shooting people.” He nodded and did his best to look serious. “Mister Keller is going to have to come in with the gun and have a little chat with me tomorrow.”

  We both nodded. I looked out the windshield at the silent rig and the assembled vehicles idling in the frigid air. “Quite an operation you’ve got going here.”

  He followed my gaze. “Not today.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what does an outfit like this produce in a day?”

  He thought and pulled at the tuft again; I was starting to see a pattern. “Well, we’re on tap with three pods, the biggest on the tail end of the Big George coal seam, 220 heads.”

  “High production?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Millions. I looked back out the windshield and let it sink in. “How long have you fellas been in operation here?”

  “A little less than a year.”

  That was a lot of methane being pulled out of the ground of Four Brothers Ranch. From my quick glance at the mineral rights at the courthouse, I figured the Barojas were making more than a lot of money but, if Mari had died of natural causes, there was no need to search for a motive. I had piqued my own curiosity and was going to have to go back to the courthouse, but it was creeping up on five o’clock. There was always tomorrow. I looked back at the man sitting in my passenger seat. “ ’Bout time for you guys to pack it in, isn’t it?”

  He glanced past me to the truck alongside. “They will. I’ll stick aroun’ to see if the weather changes.” Before he climbed out, I reminded him that I wanted to talk to Mr. Keller tomorrow. Mr. Aliff said he’d make sure that the young man would be there first thing, and I had no doubts that he would. Mr. Aliff did not strike me as a trifling individual, bullet holes notwithstanding.

  I did some quick figures as I carefully picked my way across the ridge to the county road and back toward the highway. I was tired, but I needed to talk to someone about all of this before I went and talked to Lucian. I figured I’d check in at the office, gas up, stop by the house to check for snowdrifts, and go see Henry Standing Bear.

  When I got to the office it was close to six, but I recognized every vehicle, including one that took me a minute. I parked the Bullet and took a deep breath to prepare myself for what was inside.

  When I opened the office door, I became instantly aware of a kangaroo court in full session. It was in the air, like the snowflakes. Ruby was seated at her desk, and Vic was leaning against it with her arms folded; Saizarbitoria was standing a little away—he probably didn’t want to get blood on the borrowed uniform. I noticed they were all holding plastic wine glasses, except for Sancho, and there was an open bottle of merlot on Ruby’s desk.

  I closed the door behind me and turned to look at all of them. There were a number of Post-its on the doorjamb of my office, but I figured I’d get to those. I was about to say something witty when I caught a pair of very nice legs out of the corner of my eye belonging to someone sitting in one of my visitors’ chairs with a coat and a large dog head on her lap. I leaned forward around the coat rack and met a vivacious set of deep-sea blues, “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Slow day at the safe-deposit boxes?” I leaned a little farther and took her all in. Dog didn’t move, and I didn’t blame him.

  Her hand paused on his head, and she looked down; she was also holding one of the plastic wine glasses. “What’s your dog’s name?”

  I felt just a little ashamed. “He doesn’t really have one. I’ve been calling him Dog.” I looked back at her. “I’ve only had him for a couple of weeks now.”

  She did a slow nod. “I hope you don’t mind. I thought I’d stop by and deliver a gift of gratitude for last night.” She raised the glass in a slight toast and then used it to gesture toward the pack. “They said it was okay.”

  I looked at the assembly. “I bet they did.” I made a great show of pulling out my pocket watch. “Whose got the watch tonight?” Both Ruby and Vic finally looked at something other than Maggie Watson. I looked over at Saizarbitoria, too. “You pulling double duty?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind. I used to do it in Rawlins all the time.”

  I turned to Ruby. “You give him the beeper?”

  She didn’t look at me. “I gave him the beeper.”

  I needed a quick neutralizer to change the point of interest, so I walked over and poured myself a glass. “Great.” I smiled and turned to Vic. “How’d he do?”

  She held the synthetic glass at her temple. “He’s really polite.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  She took a sip and glanced over to Ms. Watson. “We all choose where to expend our energies.”

  I was pretty sure that that arched eyebrow could pierce steel, but Maggie Watson saved herself and me. “I was wondering if you were free for dinner?”

  All their eyes swiveled back to her.

  “Dinner?”

  All their eyes swiveled back to me.

  “Yes.”

  I was feeling a little dizzy with all the attention. “I just have a bit of work to do, and then I’ll swing by and pick you up.” I looked down at the exposed and v
ery lovely legs. “Dress warm, okay?”

  “Okay.” It was easier on everybody’s eyes since we were now standing beside each other.

  I helped her with her coat and opened the door as she turned and looked at the assembly. “Nice meeting everyone. Bye.” I closed the door as she stepped into the darkness and onto the stoop, and I turned back to face the afternoon of the long knives.

  “Her car was stuck.”

  “Really?”

  I took a sip of my wine. “Really. Look, don’t think that you’re so big that I can’t put you over my knee and spank your little Italian butt.”

  She looked up at me with a carnivorous smile. “Watch it, big man, it might work with the locals, but I’ve been to the rodeo.” She walked past me toward her office. “Anyway, I’m not into that stuff, and it sounds like you better save it for tonight.”

  At least she hadn’t said fuck fourteen times. Maybe she really was on her best behavior. I turned back to Ruby. “Charlie Nurburn?”

  She turned back to her computer, and I noticed there wasn’t anything on it except a blank blue screen. I also noticed that her coat was in her lap, even if she still had her half-glass of wine. “Go read your Post-its.”

  I leaned over and kissed the top of her head, sighed, and trudged off to my office. I glanced back at Saizarbitoria. “You got anything to say?”

  “No, sir.”

  I guess that’s when I hired him. He sat in the chair opposite my desk as I tossed the Post-its on the blotter and carefully placed the mostly full goblet on top of them. People always took precedence over Post-its, so I asked him what was on his mind.

  “I’m having a good time.” The silence hung in the room for a moment.

  “Good.” I wondered if he’d feel the same way standing in front of the IGA accosting the citizenry. “You can have wine some other time.”

  He laughed, and I looked at the bright young man sitting in front of me and felt like Monsieur de Treville with the young Gascon in attendance. It was hard not to with the Vandyke and the mischievous glint. I wondered if, like D’Artagnan, he was going to be an inordinate pain. He seemed to be waiting for more, so I reached into my coat pocket and produced the bookmark I had taken from Mari Baroja’s room. “You’ve got quite a facility with languages. Maybe you can help me out with something.” I flipped the piece of paper on the desk, careful to avoid the wine. He leaned over and turned the scrap so that he could read it. He was smiling. “What?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That I’m Basque?”

  I kept looking at him and, in a flash, it all fit. “Just a lucky guess.”

  “I’m French Basque.” I contemplated that one as he looked back at the piece of paper and the scribbled hand. “It says ‘We can no longer say.’ ” He waited, and it was an old world wait, the kind that doesn’t concern itself with giving you a fast answer. The Cheyenne and Crow were masters of such things, but the kid was pretty good. “I’m not sure if it means anything, but it’s also a line from a poem by Jean Diharce about Guernica.” It didn’t take him long to remember the translation. “Guernica. This name inflames and saddens my heart; centuries will know its misfortunes. . . . We can no longer say the names Numancia and Carthage without saying in a loud voice in Euskara, lying in its ruins, Guernica.” There wasn’t a lot of drama in the presentation; he stated it as if it were history. “Is this from the woman that died?” I nodded, and he studied it some more. “You think it’s important?”

  “Everything’s important when you don’t know what you’re looking for, or if you even should be looking.”

  “She was Basque?” I nodded some more. “Is there anybody you’d like me to talk to?”

  I sighed, thought about the old priest, Mari’s cousin, and looked at the scrap of paper. “Maybe.” I looked back up at him. “You got a place to stay tonight?”

  “I figured I’d just stay here.”

  “Okay, but you might need a vehicle. If anything happens, take Vic’s. There’s an extra set of keys on the wall by the door.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was smiling when he left my office, and that probably was a good thing. I picked up the piece of paper. “We can no longer say.” It was capitalized at the beginning, which led me to believe that it wasn’t the continuation of a stanza or part of a poem. I didn’t know Mari Baroja but thought she might have had enough on her plate without political intrigue. She was Basque, though.

  I stuffed the paper scrap back in my pocket and picked up my life in Post-it form. Vic appeared in my doorway with her jacket over her shoulder and wine glass in hand. “I can’t fucking believe you’re gonna get laid before me.”

  “Maybe you should stop looking at this as a competition?”

  “You are such an asshole.” She took a sip. “Not that I give a shit, but where have you been all day?”

  I took a sip of my wine, its complex bouquet undiminished by the styrene stemware. “Following up on this Baroja thing.”

  “There’s a thing?”

  I blew out and thought back on my day. “Spoke with the ME from Billings. His opinion is that she smoked too much, she drank too much, and I’m coming to the conclusion that she might have done other things too much as well.”

  She shrugged and toasted with her glass. “That’s how I wanna go.”

  I curbed the urge to say something about slow starts. “Talked to the personal physician.”

  “Who is?”

  “Isaac Bloomfield, who concurred. There was something else, though.” She held the edge of the plastic against her lip. “She’d been consistently beaten.” Her eyes widened. “Massive tissue damage on the back and other areas.”

  The lip slipped away. “Holy shit.”

  “It gets better. I went to see the granddaughter.”

  When I told her what Lana had said, she came and sat in the chair opposite my desk and scooted it in so that she could lay her arms on the flat surface and rest her chin there. The glass dangled over the edge, unseen. Her voice was low, but it cut like only a woman’s voice can. “No fucking way. Lucian?”

  “It gets better.”

  “It can’t get any better, unless you found the body.”

  “Trust me, it gets better.” I told her about the conversation with the judge.

  “Fuck me.” She glanced around the room; she had just been given a passport to strangeland where I had spent the day. The big eyes finally came back to rest on me, and they were heavy. “He did it. I’ll bet you anything he did it.” The cutting voice was back. “The love of your life is taken away and is being slowly beaten to death? Charlie Nurburn is lying in a shallow grave in Absaroka County or eaten by coyotes and shit off a cliff, which is too good for the son of a bitch.” She folded her arms on the desk again, having spoken. “What are you gonna do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are you gonna do?” It was a smile, a wonderfully vicious and lovely smile with no warmth in it. “The sheriff has killed a man, the one-legged bandit, your pal.”

  I leaned in until our noses were about sixteen inches apart. “I really wish you weren’t enjoying this so much.”

  “I can’t help it. This is one of those great fucking moral quandaries, and I can’t wait to see what you’re gonna do next.”

  I folded an arm and supported my head with a fist. “I’m going to wait and see what comes back from the NCIC.”

  “It’s going to say that Charlie Nurburn is dead as the proverbial doornail and that somebody hammered him a very long time ago.” She trapped her lower lip in thought. “Can I go with you when you go to talk to Lucian?”

  “No.”

  She whined. “C’mon.” I didn’t say anything and, after a moment, she asked again: “C’mon.” We stared at each other for a while, and then she drank the last sip of her wine, placed the empty glass on my desk, and stood. “I don’t have to mention that there is no statute of limitations on murder, right?”

  I sigh
ed, still holding my head up with my fist. “No, you don’t. You also don’t have to impress upon me how easy it is to drive a man to the act.”

  She pulled a wayward lock behind her ear, sparkled her eyes with a quick batting of the lashes, and quarter curtseyed. “Just here to help out.” She paused at the door. “By the way . . . ?”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you get the clap.”

  I collapsed my head on my arm and looked at the small amount of wine in my plastic glass, trying to figure out how to drown myself in it. What was I going to do? Hard as I tried, I couldn’t see myself marching into Lucian’s room and accusing him of something I wasn’t sure he had done. I was going to have to feel the outside edges of the thing first. I wanted to know why he had lied to me; it was a start, a chicken-shit start, but a start. As soon as I looked toward the Post-its, Ruby appeared in the doorway.

  Her tone was stern. “Have you read those?”

  “I’d rather have you tell me.”

  She came in, and I noticed she had a large mailing envelope under her arm. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”

  “There’s good news?”

  “Charlie Nurburn is alive and well and living in Vista Verde, New Mexico.”

  My head came off the desk like it was on fire. “What?”

  She tapped the Post-its with a bright red nail, which had a little holiday wreath painted on it. “According to the records, Mr. Charlie Nurburn has been paying his taxes in Vista Verde since 1951. Here is his address and phone number.”

  I yelled out the door. “Vic!”

  “She’s gone.”

  I got up and walked around the desk and kissed the top of her head again. “Thank you. You have no idea how much.”

  She looked up at me. “Does this mean you’re ready for the bad news?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Mari Baroja is in Billings. The medical examiner said that there were tests he wanted to perform and that he couldn’t do them here.”

  I stared at her for a moment and then rubbed my hands across my face. “When was this?”