Death Without Company

by Craig Johnson

“He’s better at living with it.”

  I felt the dull throb through the anesthetic and wondered where I could get a pair of pants that would fit around the bandage. I looked down at the coroner as he finished. “Does it bother you if I talk to you while you’re working?”

  He smiled. “Most of my patients don’t, but go ahead.”

  “How’s Ellen Runs Horse?”

  “For a dehydrated old woman, who is suffering from exposure and malnutrition, she’s doing quite well.”

  There was a nurse at the desk outside the Intensive Care Unit, but she was committing a copy of Redbook to memory and so only raised her head briefly as we passed. Ellen was in the curtained-off section to the far right with no one else in the room. They had cleaned her up, and she looked a lot better. I only felt marginally shitty about what we were doing, but when I thought about Mari Baroja, Anna Walks Over Ice, and Wes Rogers, I felt better about it. Too many people had died.

  I dug into my pocket and handed Henry the ornament that I had taken from the tree in her trailer, and her eyes followed it from my hand to his. He held it there between them; the Mason jar lid that dangled from the yarn turned slowly revealing the photo on one side and the name on the other. She stared at me long enough to convince me that I was interfering with the investigative process, so I went to the other side of the curtain. I could hear her whispering.

  The next thing I knew, Henry was standing next to me. “Anything we can use?”

  It pained him as he spoke. “She keeps repeating a phrase that means ‘give up’.”

  “She’s throwing in the towel after all this?” He shrugged as I glanced back and saw that she was watching us. I smiled and to my surprise she smiled back. She didn’t look like somebody who was calling it quits.

  “She is apologetic about it.” I noticed that he was able to talk softly from the right side of his mouth.

  She was still holding the Mason jar lid. “I’m going to need that ornament.”

  He looked back, and she smiled at us some more. “We will have to wait until she is asleep.”

  Vic had yelled at me last night, and I was thinking there wasn’t anybody left to yell at me when I saw Ruby’s car. It was a Sunday, but Lucian must not have felt well enough to come to work. Henry quietly closed the door behind us, and I felt like we were sneaking in after an all night drunk. We stood there on the landing as a set of ferocious blues looked down on us.

  “How is Dog?”

  I tried a weak smile. “He’s going to be all right. We can visit him in a couple of days.” The eyes disappeared.

  We struggled our way up the steps with Henry assisting by allowing me a hand on his shoulder. My leg was throbbing, so we stopped at the top, and I caught my breath. I looked at the bench by the door; someone was sleeping, covered with one of our PROPERTY OF ABSAROKA COUNTY JAIL wool blankets. The place was like a boarding house. “Who is that?”

  She didn’t look up from the computer screen. “The methane foreman.”

  I looked over at Henry, who was risking injury by smiling. “Let’s go to my office, shall we?”

  My chair felt good, and I thought about spending the rest of the day there, but the obligations of duty called my attention to a large tan envelope that read Sheriff Sweetie Pie; I had forgotten that she had dropped off an envelope what seemed like an eternity ago.

  There was a crisp piece of legal paper clipped to a photocopy. I started with the note, a gracefully looping script in red that sprawled across the rigid lines of light blue on yellow. “Mon Amour, I’ve left you a little present I found in one of my investigations of Durant National Bank’s safe-deposit boxes. The manager found an old registration for box number 283, a Mr. Charles Joseph Nurburn. It hadn’t been opened since 1950 but someone had paid the rental fee until around ten years ago when the bill came back with addressee unknown.” I thought about the timing and that was when Lucian had taken up residence at the Durant Home for Assisted Living. I guess he had forgotten about the rental.

  I looked up at Henry, but he was looking out the window, so I continued reading to myself. “I’m here for another day and a half, but then I’ve got to be in Denver on the 24th at 9 A.M. Call me.”

  I looked up at the old Seth Thomas clock, figuring maybe I could just catch up with her and convince her to stay another day but then wondered how Cady would feel about that. I hadn’t seen her in almost two days and she’d be gone before I knew it. I flipped the note over and looked at the photocopy. It was Charlie Nurburn’s Will and Testament or a copy thereof. It was pretty cut and dried and left all Charlie’s assets to Joseph Walks Over Ice.

  Joseph.

  We had a name. I handed the copy to Henry and called for Ruby. Even with the limp, I met her at the door. “Get the NCIC and ask about a Joseph Walks Over Ice, male, about fifty-five years of age, born in Sheridan County. See if anything pops up.” She disappeared around the corner as I turned back to the Bear. “Ring any bells?” He shook his head as I went around the desk and sat back down. “I’ve got an idea . . .” His eyes stayed steady with mine. I stared at the surface of my desk. “Whoever killed Mari Baroja did it to get her money. Since illegitimate or stepchildren cannot inherit directly, the only way to do that was to have Mari predecease Charlie so that he could collect his elective share. Then you kill off the already dead Charlie and inherit the money he left you.”

  The Bear’s eyes widened, and I continued. “Leo Gaskell and, more importantly, Joseph Walks Over Ice found it suddenly financially beneficial to keep Lucian’s ruse going after the methane started producing. I think it snowballed on them. I don’t think they thought that that many people knew Charlie was dead. Even Lana would have to be on the list. She told me that Lucian had killed her grandfather the day I met her. Everyone who knew Charlie was dead has been either attacked or killed.” I slumped back in my chair and yelled into the other room. “Have you got anything?”

  The reply was curt. “Hold your horses!”

  “There’s something else that’s bothering me.” Henry handed me back the Will, and I laid the photocopy on the desk. “I’m sure they killed Anna because she was trying to tell Doc Bloomfield about Leo’s plans or Joseph’s, but how did Leo kill Wes Rogers?” It was quiet in the room. “Wes would have known . . . unless Leo Gaskell was not driving the car.”

  Ruby’s voice called from the other room. “I’ve got something.”

  We rushed in, as best we could, and crowded around the computer screen as Ruby summoned forth Joseph Walks Over Ice. “The name came up in the Department of Child Services in Cheyenne. A child was given up for adoption to a Catholic orphanage, a Saint Anthony’s in Casper, back in 1951.”

  Henry and I locked eyes. It wasn’t that Ellen was giving up; it was what she had given up. “What else?”

  “The child had numerous altercations and was described as emotionally disturbed. He was never adopted and left the orphanage at age sixteen.” She looked up at me. “That’s as far as it goes.”

  Henry spoke softly through his bandage. “At that period in time, a lot of Indian children took the surname of the priest who ran the orphanage.”

  Ruby’s fingers started dancing again. She turned to me. “The priest who signed off on Joseph’s papers was a Father Mark Lesky.”

  Lesky, Joseph.

  Joe Lesky.

  I grabbed the phone from Ruby’s desk and punched in the number for the home. Jennifer Felson answered, and I asked her if Joe was on duty. “He was here a little while ago, but he got off at 8:00. Is there a problem?”

  “Is he still around?”

  “I’ll check.” I stood there with the phone in my hand. “Shelly saw Joe walk out of here with Lucian about twenty minutes ago.”

  “If they show up, call me. Thanks, Jennifer.” I hung up and looked at Henry. Double Tough had woken up with all the commotion and was now standing with us. “He has been everywhere in this case.” I looked down at Ruby. “Where are Vic and Saizarbitoria?”

  She stutte
red. “There was a fender bender on the highway bypass.”

  “Radio them and get them in here now. Joe Lesky’s out with Lucian.” I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. “Where would they go?” I took another breath and thought out loud. “Where would Joe take him?”

  It was the clearest I’d heard him speak since he had been shot. “Breakfast?”

  I turned to Ruby on our way out. “Tell Vic and Saizarbitoria to meet us at the Bee.” As we started down the steps, I noticed that the methane foreman was accompanying us. I turned my head toward him so that I could see him with my uncovered eye. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  He smiled as he caught the door and allowed Henry to go through first. “I thought ya might need somebody who could both walk and talk.”

  He had a point.

  We pulled up alongside the Busy Bee, just as Vic’s unit slid to a stop beside us, only missing the front of my truck by inches. Her window was rolled down. “Joe Fucking Lesky?”

  The place was packed as we flooded in, all the patrons freezing at the sight of an armed sheriff, two deputies, an Indian, and a construction worker; we probably looked like the Village People.

  I caught Dorothy’s eye from behind the counter. “Lucian and Joe Lesky?”

  You couldn’t ruffle her feathers with a brick. “Haven’t seen them.”

  We regrouped on the sidewalk, and I started breaking it down. “Vic, you and Double Tough go to the home and wait. If they show up, just tell Joe that we’ve got some papers for him at the office. Try not to tip him off but bring him in no matter what.” They left in Vic’s unit as I turned to Saizarbitoria. “Santiago, get Ferg and do a perimeter. Radio the HPs and tell them to stop anything heading south on I-25 and that we’re looking for Lucian and Joe Lesky.” I tossed him the keys to the Bullet, and he was gone.

  I turned to look down Main Street and then back at the Bear. I thought for a long moment. “I’ve got a question for you.” He didn’t say anything. “What makes us think that Joe took Lucian?” I looked back down the street at the Euskadi Hotel sign. “What if Lucian took Joe?”

  “Mornin’ Lucian. Joe . . .”

  I limped the twenty feet to the table; Lucian was facing me as I came in, the old gunfighter to the end. Joe had his back to the door but turned and lightly smiled as I entered. There were two cups of coffee on the table, but it looked like Joe was the only one drinking. Lucian’s hat was off and placed on the chair beside him with the brim down, which struck me as strange. The old sheriff looked relaxed, leaning back in his chair with his hands folded in his lap. Joe had his elbows resting on the table. Neither of them had their coats on, both were hanging from their chairs, and the jukebox was playing Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanian’s “Ring Those Christmas Bells.”

  I hobbled past them to the bar back and poured myself a cup of coffee and gently placed it on a saucer. Coffee bought ten minutes. I raised a cup to Henry, who had stayed back by the door. He shook his head no. As I stalled at the bar, trying to think how I was going to play this, I thought of the mixture of excitements the next few minutes could unleash.

  “What happened to your leg?” Joe was looking at me, but he was also glancing at Henry and his bandaged face. “And what happened to you?”

  I shuffled back over to their table, turned one of the bentwood chairs around, and sat, giving me ready access to my sidearm and Joe. “Oh . . . we got shot.”

  They were both staring at us now. Lucian the first to ask. “Who the hell shot ya?”

  I studied the little vase on our table with its decorative plastic sprigs of holly and mistletoe, then trailed an arm over the back of the chair and took a sip of my coffee, my sore hand hardly fitting the delicate dinnerware of the Euskadi. “Leo Gaskell.” I kept my eyes on the old sheriff. “We’ve got him up at the hospital, and they’re patching him up.” Another Lazarus on the pile.

  It was quiet for a moment, but then the music swelled with the false vibrancy and good humor of the season. “Who’s Leo Gaskell?”

  I turned and looked at Joe Lesky. You had to give him credit; he was good. “Drug dealer from over in Fremont County; looks like he’s the one that hurt Anna Walks Over Ice.” May as well keep everybody alive. “He’s up there talking to the investigators now.”

  Joe’s head nodded. He too was trying to buy time but in an establishment where nobody was selling. “Well, it’s good you got the guy that did it.”

  “Yep.” The old sheriff was watching me very closely as I turned back to him and tried to get a read. “What’re you up to?”

  “Doin’ some Christmas shoppin’.”

  “The stores aren’t open yet.”

  He looked back at Joe. “I got plenty a time.” He adjusted his hat on the seat of the chair beside him. Now I knew where the gun was.

  Joe started to push off from the table. “Well, it sounds like you fellas have a lot to . . .” Out of the corner of my good eye, I could see Henry’s hands move from his pockets.

  “Sit.” It was the soft voice he used when he would ask me if I really wanted to make a move in our chess games, the warning voice that sounded like the guttural vibration in the back of a cougar’s throat. Joe eased back into his chair, and I turned to Lucian.

  We looked at each other like we had for decades, a blind man talking to a deaf one. There was a line that neither of us was able to cross: his sneering at my supposed weakness and my righteous indignation at his immorality. I was sure that the chasm between us was a generational one. Lucian’s world was simpler, and he was unable to see that law enforcement had become complicated in the modern era; or was it that he was so close, so much of a part of the whole mess, that he had lost perspective on it long ago? Charlie Nurburn hung out there like a reoccurring nightmare and in Charlie’s child and his child’s child.

  I guess the heat was getting to Joe, because he felt compelled to interrupt. “We were just having a little conversation somewhere quiet.” His voice was a little unsteady. “I came across some information I thought might interest Lucian.”

  I glanced back as Lucian pulled his pipe from one jacket pocket and the beaded leather pouch from the other. The tension eased but only a little. “I got some information, too.” Lucian filled his pipe and struck a match on the side of his chair. “I, um . . .” He sucked on his pipe until he got it going, the thick plume of smoke roiling from the corner of his mouth. “Beebee Banks was visitin’ her mother over at the home. Walt, she told me to tell you she found out who had that little Baroja girl’s bakery building before she did.” The smile played on his face like a reflection on moving water. “Why, it was Joe here.”

  Like the motor drive on an automatic shutter, I counted six different stills as my head rotated to Joe, like six separate heartbeats. “Don’t move.”

  The weight of it was in the room with us now like a cold cloud-burst had suddenly let loose; the rain of recognition was dripping from all of us and, as I saw Joe’s hand slip from the table, I was positive that of the four men in the room, three had guns. I saw the Bear move, but I was closer.

  The bones in his wrist crunched with a nauseating give, and I finally got a look at the Joe Lesky that had been so carefully hidden from me as, with a snarl of rage, he tried to twist and pull away. My left held, but I wasn’t going to trust it to do the job alone. His expression changed as the cold barrel of the .45 pressed up under his jaw, forcing his head back to where he had to look over the contours of his face to see me.

  I took a deep breath. “I said, don’t move.”

  I watched as his nostrils spread, and he pulled air in like a bellows. “Let go of my wrist!”

  “I don’t hardly think so.” I eased the pressure of the .45 and allowed his head to lower enough so that I could see his expression. I thought of an old drill sergeant who had told me that a professional is the one who always has his gun. I risked a glimpse to the right, around the damn eye patch, and saw the long-barreled .38 of Lucian’s duty revolver extended acros
s the table eight inches from Joe’s face.

  I looked back at Joe, who was glancing at his coat and thinking about trying the reach with his left. “You do, and I will splatter your brains all over the pressed tin ceiling.” His eyes came back to mine. “Now I’m going to place your hands back on this table, and you are not going to move them, do you understand?”

  I swept my hand behind him, lifting his coat and throwing it to Henry. I pulled my cuffs from my belt. “Put those on.”

  “You broke my wrist.”

  “Put those on.” He pressed the one loop through and delicately placed it around his damaged wrist, only partially locking it as I counted only three notches that clicked. “All the way.”

  He looked at me. “It hurts.”

  “So will the .45.” He clicked it again and then did the other hand as specified. I leaned back and took another deep breath as I pulled the Colt away from the underside of Joe’s chin. I turned my head, so that I could see Lucian with the inside of my good eye. “You all right?”

  “I ain’t the one without a gun, if that’s what ya mean.”

  I looked back at Joe. His eyes shifted from me, to Lucian, and then back to me. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not saying anything until I talk to a lawyer.”

  Lucian snorted. “What makes you think that you’re gonna see a lawyer?”

  My voice sounded a long way away, like it was coming from the land of reason. “Lucian.”

  The old sheriff ’s hand didn’t move, and the extended barrel of the Smith and Wesson stayed even with Joe’s eyes. “I aim to kill this son of a bitch, right here and right now.” He pulled the pipe from his mouth and blew a strong lungful of smoke away from us. The pounding of “Ring Those Christmas Bells” continued as the jukebox charged on.

  I cleared my throat and swallowed. “Lucian, I’m going to need you to lower your weapon.”

  He gestured toward Joe with the stem of his pipe. “You killed my wife.”

  I needed to buy some more time. I studied Joe. “When did you find out that Charlie Nurburn was dead?” He didn’t move, but his eyes switched from Lucian to me. “I’m betting that you knew he was dead by the time you contacted Leo. I guess you figured that Lucian here had kept Charlie alive for fifty-odd years and there was no reason why you couldn’t keep him alive for a little while longer or at least until you could get a share of Mari’s money.”