Death Without Company

by Craig Johnson

  I had her at Durant Memorial in four minutes.

  A doctor I didn’t recognize pushed me away from the gurney as he felt the region at the back of her head, palpating the lacerations and bruising, checking for signs of hemorrhage behind the eardrums, and shining a light into her eyes to see if the pupils were equal and reactive. I wasn’t surprised when the damaged Isaac Bloomfield appeared and called for a CT scan to examine her brain and the inner lining of her skull for evidence of the subdural hematoma he knew was there. I wasn’t surprised when he called for two units of blood as they rushed her into the operating room, nor was I surprised that A-negative was what he asked for, without consulting any files or records. I wasn’t surprised as I watched the snow from the waiting-room windows and felt the cold creep in from a winter that showed no signs of ending.

  I was surprised when Isaac Bloomfield reappeared after twenty minutes and told me that Lana Baroja would live.

  8

  I reached out and pulled her hand down; it seemed that she was probing the wound a little too aggressively. “No idea, huh?”

  She smiled, but I think it hurt. “No.”

  I looked into her eyes again, but the pupils seemed normal; they must not have given her any drugs because of the head trauma. Even in the gauze turban, she was looking pretty good; amazing what youth can do. “How do you think they got in then?”

  She was studying me now. “I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t get the door relocked.” I guess I made a face. “What?”

  “No footprints and, odds are, they wouldn’t rely on you accidentally leaving the door ajar. Anybody besides you have keys to the place?”

  She looked at me for a second longer than necessary but then answered. “Nobody.”

  “Who rented you the space?”

  “Elizabeth Banks at Clear Creek Realty.”

  I made a mental note to call Beebee. “Have you heard from your aunts in the last few days?”

  “Kay called and said that Carol was flying in from Miami and that we have to have a family meeting on Thursday; something about the Will.”

  “Today?”

  She looked sheepish, and it was a look that agreed with her. “Is it Thursday?”

  “Yep, I think they knocked Wednesday out of you.” I was silent for a moment too long, and she blinked and looked at me. They were fine dark eyes giving a clear view into a very fine mind that continued to operate despite recent abuse. “I’ve got something to tell you, Lana.” It hung there between us as the baseboard heaters ticked in the private room.

  “It’s about my grandmother?”

  “Yep, it is.” She didn’t move as I told her about the evidence we had assembled; instead, her attention shifted to the knees that were pulled up to provide a resting place for her crossed arms. As I talked, it seemed as though she was drawing in, growing smaller as the world grew colder. I calculated the risk and decided to go ahead. “Lana, do you know about the methane development that’s going on down on your grandmother’s place?”

  Thought clouded her eyes for a moment. “Kay is in charge of the estate, but I’m not sure. Carol might be in charge of the ranch. There’s a manager who lives in the old house on Four Brothers.” She shrugged. “I really don’t know.” She was still looking at me when I glanced back up. “You think the same person that killed my grandmother tried to kill me?”

  I rubbed my face and looked through my fingers. “I’d rather be chasing one killer than two; it gives me better odds.”

  I got all the way to the front desk before Vic accosted me. She was eating an almond cookie. “So did you have to step on every one of the fucking footprints at the bakery?”

  “I didn’t want it to be too easy for you.” I leaned against the receptionist’s desk. “I’m assuming you checked those?”

  She winked and pulled two more out of a ziplock bag and held them out to me. “That’s what I’m doing now. Want one?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll wait till the report’s in.”

  She shrugged and ate another cookie. “Naphthalene’s easy to trace in food. The smell is hard to hide.”

  “Where’s the high-altitude Mexican?”

  “I left him at the office. He went there from Sonny George’s.”

  “Anything at the junkyard?”

  I noticed she wasn’t smiling. “The bleeders on both the front and rear brakes had been loosened just enough for the fluid to escape. I called Fred Ray over at the Sinclair station, and he said he did a full brake job on the Mercedes about two months ago, and there is no way the car could have lasted that long with them loose.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll need to talk to Sancho.”

  “He’s going through the boxes and cataloging the crap from Mari Baroja’s room which, I might add, is a lot of crap cataloging.” She looked off toward the windows and casually walked over to the waiting room to watch the snowfall. “Letters, boxes, and boxes of letters, notes, and telegrams. You name it. If it was written, she kept it.”

  “That may be handy.”

  “Yeah, we got her whole life in boxes.” She turned, and her eyes locked onto mine. “Note the phrase whole life in boxes and note that Sancho is at the office. When we got there this morning, there were the cartons. We found out that the staff at the Durant Home for Assisted Living had taken it upon themselves to box up Mari Baroja’s life, send it to us, and clean the fucking room.”

  I could feel my jaw muscles tightening. “I guess they didn’t notice the bright yellow tape across the door that says SHERIFF’S BARRICADE DO NOT CROSS?”

  “Maybe they can’t read.” She cocked her head and continued to look at me. “Are you going to get really mad? ’Cause I like it when you get really mad.”

  I ignored her. “Anything in the letter boxes?”

  “Well, we’re just getting started, and a lot of it’s in Basque, so Sancho’s the only man for the job. A couple of letters from Northern Rockies Energy Exploration, pretty straight forward stuff, and all of it from Baroja-Calloway down in Miami.”

  She waited, the tarnished gold of her eyes lying heavily upon me. Then she pulled what looked like a stack of assorted letters from her other jacket pocket. They were old and tied together with a faded piece of red fringe that had been pulled from the edge of a scarf. It looked like the one that had blown across the Powder River and had snagged on the European blue sage that I had seen in my dream. I carefully took the stack of thin paper and looked down at the address: Room 201, The Euskadi Hotel, Durant. In a swirling hand, the letters were addressed from Lucian.

  “I thought you might want these.”

  I nodded and looked at the fragile letters with the faded words and the worn fuzzy edges. Words like accessory to commit fraud, conspiracy, tampering, and a myriad of others hung there in the small space between us. I glanced up at her, but she was watching the snow, and I stood there for a moment, looking at the reflection in her eyes before quietly shoving the letters in my own jacket pocket.

  She remained silent for a moment, then reached out to place the tip of her forefinger against the glass, and I saw her as a child, the kind of child who had to touch everything, the kind of child you couldn’t say no to. I had a child like that and reminded myself to ask Ruby if I could expect Cady by Christmas. “So, are you going to go over to the Home for Assisted Living and assist the staff in an ass-chewing or what?”

  I ignored her some more. “No moth balls?”

  She licked her cookie-crumb lips. “No moth balls.” She held the bag out to me again. “Last one.” She smiled. “So . . . you think we should have a look at Mari Baroja’s last Will and Testament?”

  I looked through the glass doors of the hospital at the gentle but ever-falling precipitation. “We should be thankful for the snow, it’s probably the only thing that’s holding Baroja-Lofton-Baroja-Calloway at bay.”

  “Oh, the hyphen-harpies called.”

  I sighed. “When?”

  She finished off the last almond cookie and stuffed the
bag in the inside pocket of her coat. “This morning. I’m assuming they are assembling for the charge.”

  “Well, that’s my problem. If there’s nothing over at the bakery, then I guess you should go back to the home. Get the names of everybody who went into that room. Start fingerprinting with the easy stuff, get what you can from contrasting powder and silicon lifts, superglue fuming, and simple photography. Hit the AFIS. It’s a long shot, but you never know.” She was already nodding and smiling. “What?”

  “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  I nodded and self-consciously adjusted the brim of my hat. “I want the names of everybody who was in that room, and I want all of them in my office at exactly 3:45 or I come and get them. Remind them that if I have to come and get them that I will not be happy. We will impress upon them the seriousness of our line of work by fingerprinting all of them in the jail.”

  She looked at her watch. “What’re you going to do between now and 3:45?”

  “Find the Will.”

  She continued to smile. “The will to what?”

  “That would be Jarrard and Straub.”

  “That was your old firm. Do you remember any of the details?”

  He reshaped the corner of his mustache and smiled. “It was not a close relationship. I think the law made her uneasy.”

  Amen.

  “When was her Will attested?”

  “Which one?”

  I studied him for a moment. “Oh, now why do I not like the sound of that?”

  Vern leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “She was of a mercurial disposition and, according to her mood toward her children and grandchild . . .” He paused. “This is all completely off the cuff and an old cuff at that. You understand that I had already left the firm?” I nodded for official purposes while he captured the front of his mustache in his lower lip and thought. “The last one that I saw was a three-way split, straight up the middle.”

  I wondered about the judge’s ideas on percentages. “Which three?”

  “Carol, Kay, and Lana. I assume she didn’t care for David’s wife.”

  “Executor of the estate?”

  “Carol, I think.”

  I thought for a moment and went on. “You know about the methane development down on Four Brothers?” I waited, but he didn’t respond. “About a million a week. It’s going to complicate matters, especially since Mari Baroja died of naphthalene poisoning.” He didn’t say anything, so I told him what I wanted. “Vern, I’m about to be ass-deep in lawyers, but I need room to work. Are you going to help me out with this?”

  His eyes drifted to the window that overlooked Main Street where I’m sure the vision of Mari Baroja sauntered down the snow-covered sidewalk in a blue polka-dot sundress and clunky heels. I wasn’t sure if the judge’s daydreams allowed for current weather conditions. “What can I do to help you?”

  “I need a peek at that Will.”

  Vern nodded out the window. “I’ll call Kyle Straub.” He looked at me. “You need this now?”

  “Yes.” I waited as the judge made a telephone call. “Well, I have some good news and some bad news.” It didn’t sound like the first time the judge had expressed this particular sentiment. “He says the reading of the Will is in his office today at 5:00 and that you are more than welcome to attend.”

  “Did I mention that Lana Baroja is over at Durant Memorial with a blunt trauma wound to the head, a probable victim of attempted homicide, and that somebody may have attempted to kill Isaac Bloomfield as well?”

  The judge stalled out there for a second but got going again pretty quickly. “No, you did not.”

  “I don’t suppose Kyle would like to exchange venue for the hospital?”

  “He’s under no obligation.”

  I sighed; dealing with lawyers always made me tired. “What’s the good news?”

  “That was the good news.”

  I sighed again. “What’s the bad news?”

  “As suspected, Mari Baroja viewed revising her will as something of an avocation.”

  I couldn’t risk sighing again; I was losing too much air. “Two quick questions: how many and when was the last?”

  “Fourteen, and the latest revision was last Friday afternoon.”

  I went ahead and sighed again; maybe my lungs would collapse, and Vic and Sancho could handle the whole thing. “Any idea who attested it?”

  He glanced up at the aged Seth Thomas on the wall, which was not unlike the one in my office. I figured a clock salesman at the turn of the last century must have made out like a bandit in this county. “I imagine you will find out at 5:00.”

  I got up and shook my head. “If you talk to Kyle Straub again, remind him that I’m going to start taking a personal interest in his miseries.” As I went down the steps, I turned and looked at him through the doorway. “And I’m considering yours.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded slowly. “Always comforting to know one is in your thoughts, Walter.”

  I’d have never made it as a lawyer.

  It was just past 3:15, and I was hungry, but I knew there was supposed to be a small crowd waiting for me at the jail in half an hour. There was no time to eat, but I had an extra twenty minutes, so I rolled past Clear Creek Realty. Beth Banks, or Beebee as the locals had called her as long as I’d been aware, was attempting to lodge her considerable girth into a spanking new Cadillac. I smiled at her as I pushed the button on the passenger window and watched as about a cubic foot of snow fell inside my truck; I really had to get some seat covers. “Hey, Beebee.”

  She giggled. “Uh-oh, what have I done now?” She was wearing a flaming red wool coat, and the flakes were beginning to accumulate in her platinum blond hair.

  I left the motor running, so she wouldn’t think I was going to hold her for long. “Beebee, did you lease that building next to Evans’s to Lana Baroja?”

  She thought. “Yes, about three months ago.” The smile faded a little. “Is there a problem?”

  I thought it best to keep things simple. “Somebody broke into the place, and I’m thinking that they might have had keys. I was wondering if you knew of any other sets?”

  “No, but I’ll check.” She thought for a moment. “I don’t know if there were any other keys to that building, but it’s always a good idea to change the locks in a new business.” The smile returned. “Like I have to tell you that.”

  There was a substantial group of vehicles in the office parking lot; I guess Vic had been able to corral all the usual administrators for the mass imprinting. I put on my serious face which, I’m told by some, makes me look like I am mildly constipated and walked in, ignoring them and standing at Ruby’s desk. She was the first to speak, Dog by her side. “Walt . . .”

  I whipped my hat off and spoke in what my father used to refer to as a full field voice. “Damn it.” Dog rolled his eyes up in a worried look at my tone of voice. I winked at Ruby, and she almost smiled. “Get me Vern Selby on line one, and tell him that I want to know the sentencing guidelines on obstruction of justice.”

  She nodded. “First degree?”

  I almost broke, but bit my lip and nodded back. She didn’t mention the chair or the big house, so I made a safe escape into my office and slammed the door behind me with a thunderous clap. The knob came off in my hand. I bent down and looked at the mechanism still imbedded in the core of the wood and hoped somebody would come in before too long. I tossed the knob on my desk and sat down to wait.

  After a few moments, the intercom buzzed on my phone. I punched the button, “What?” I made sure it was loud enough for them to hear in the reception area.

  “Walt, Louis Gilbert and the people from the Home for Assisted Living are here.”

  “Tell them I want them in my office, right now.” I scrambled around and picked up Saizarbitoria’s folder, attempted to look like a captain of destiny, and waited a few more moments. Somebody quietly knocked against the door, and I was relieved that it push
ed open a little with the knock. “Come in.”

  Louis was talking as he opened it and looked at the hole where my doorknob used to be. “Walt, this is all just a big mistake.”

  “I hope so.” I didn’t sound as angry; it was a hard emotion for me to sustain.

  There was a small crowd behind him, and I recognized Jennifer Felson and Joe Lesky for starters. “There was a memo we put out saying that unoccupied rooms should be cleared in twenty-four hours.” Louis introduced a small, frightened old woman in the back of the group, Indian and probably Crow. “Anna Walks Over Ice thought she heard Joe tell Jennifer that that meant all rooms, including Room 42, but Joe doesn’t remember having that conversation with Jennifer.” Louis nodded toward the elderly woman. “She doesn’t understand English very well.”

  I stared at the blotter on my desk. “Who cleaned the room?”

  Louis was quick to speak. “Anna.” It is a long-standing western tradition—when in doubt, blame the Indian.

  I looked at the group as they looked at each other. “Jennifer, you were on duty?”

  She looked up and slightly raised her hand. “Yes.”

  “Joe?” He raised his hand, too, and I started feeling like I was teaching class. I sighed. “Okay, you don’t have to raise your hands. Both of you were on duty?”

  Joe was eager to clear things up. “It was near the shift change. I come in at ten o’clock, but I had some extra work to do, so I came in early.”

  “And you found her, Jennifer?”

  She started to raise her hand but stopped herself. “Yes, I was doing the eight P.M. rounds.”

  “Did you have any contact with her earlier in the evening?” She nodded. “What was she doing?”

  “Reading. She liked to read.”

  “Was she eating or drinking anything?”

  “She had some cookies.”

  I wondered if Vic had eaten all the evidence. “Anything else?”