Death Without Company (5 page)

“No arguments?”

“You’re the sheriff.”

“That’s usually why people argue with me.”

With the advent of modern CPR techniques, organ transplants, and life-support systems, home field advantage was shifted from the heart and lungs to the brain. In an unprecedented agreement between both lawyers and doctors, the terminal indicator of the grim reaper’s touch is now the point when all cerebral function has ceased and is deemed irreversible. Brain dead.

For Mari Baroja, the bell tolled at exactly 10:43:12 P.M. Chris Wyatt and Cathi Kindt were the attending EMTs. Six attempts at resuscitation were made, standard for this kind of incident, and a code 99 was radioed to the hospital. Wyatt went for the electric defibrillator paddles, and the woman’s body arched five more times like a head of rough stock on rodeo weekend. They canceled the code, and they canceled Mari Baroja.

“I’m sorry, Sheriff.”

I looked past the file and down at Joe. “Hmm?”

“Did you know Mrs. Baroja?”

“No.” I rubbed my dry eyes. “No, I didn’t.”

“She’s gone on to a far better place.”

I nodded. “Did you?”

“Did I . . . ?”

“Did you know Mrs. Baroja?”

He thought for a moment. “Not really. I think she was very quiet. Most of the clients are asleep during this shift.”

I smiled a little smile, far better places withstanding. “You know Lucian, don’t you?”

He rubbed his throat and shrugged. “Everybody knows Mr. Connally. He’s a legend.”

I looked back at the file. “I think Mrs. Baroja just might have been a legend, too.” I closed the folder and handed it back to him. “Can you make some copies of this for me? It’ll save me the official harassment later today.”

“Sure.”

“Who found her?”

“Jennifer Felson. Mrs. Baroja must’ve hit the nurse’s button in her room.”

“Anybody else visit her last night?”

He was starting off with the folder but stopped to point. “I’m not sure, but you can check the guest register.”

I flipped the handcrafted quilted book to where I could read it, scanned the names, and looked for any more Barojas. There was only one: Lana Baroja had signed in at 7:10 and left about an hour later. There were also a couple of Loftons who had gone to Room 42 less than twenty minutes before Lana. I could go there and do a little poking around. I looked at Dog, and Dog wagged.

I laughed. “Let’s go get the butler that did this.”

It honestly didn’t look like a murder case. It looked like a lonely room where a vibrant and beautiful woman had been warehoused to finish up her days. There is no allowance for murder, no curve in which we judge the value of human life on a chronological sliding scale no matter how I had teased Lucian. I owed Mari Baroja. I’d never met the woman, but she was from Absaroka County, and she was mine.

There was a crucifix above the bed, which was the only decoration on the walls. There were a few personal items, and a quilt, a Bible, and a few letters from some law firm in Miami. I figured I’d get to the letters later.

There were seven photographs, all in antique silver frames. Some of the pictures were so aged that their emulsion had adhered to the inside surface of the glass. The oldest looked to be one of what I was willing to bet were the four short brothers, all on short horses. They were thin and hard-looking men, and I’m sure the wind whistled when it cut around them; they appeared as if they were carved out of ironwood. I thought about that fight north of Miles City and was glad I wasn’t there for that particular apocalypse.

The next was of a man, I believe the fourth horseman on the end, along with a woman whom I assumed was his wife. They looked dour and righteous, so I moved on. The next photo was that strange color that only seemed to exist in the fifties, like real color wasn’t good enough. There were two small girls in summer dresses and barrettes, seated on a doorstep. They looked happy but like they had to be. They both had long dark hair, and the one on the right was looking off to the right.

The next was a young air force officer circa mid-sixties who looked vaguely familiar. He was a lieutenant and battle-awarded, with a green and yellow ribbon bar that told me it was Vietnam. There was a sad quality to the photo, and he didn’t seem to fit with all the others; he was blonder, and the eyes just looked different. The next set of photos was lying on the floor amid a pile of prescription medicines and a hardbound copy of
Pride and Prejudice.
I opened a reader-worn Bible and found a handwritten note in Basque that read, “
A ver nire aitaren etxea defendituko dut, otsoen kontra.
”

I kneeled by a partially wrapped dish of what looked and smelled like almond cookies. I was hungry and was tempted to tamper with the evidence but instead picked up the next framed photograph. It was a group shot of the Baroja family. The vantage point of the camera and the distance made it hard to pick out the individuals, but the brothers were there with their wives and a priest. I thought I could make out the two little girls having grown and acquired husbands, but the lieutenant wasn’t there.

The last was the most recent and was of a woman in maybe her late twenties who looked embarrassed in a chef’s jacket and hat. It was the only one that had official printing along the bottom, which read CULINARY INSTITUTE DU BASQUE, BAYONNE, FRANCE. She had short wisps of jet-black hair that were pulled back and behind the ears, revealing wide-set dark eyes steeped in facetious sarcasm. I liked her already, which was good, because when I turned she was standing by the door.

It was a simple statement. “She’s dead.”

I stood and looked at Dog, who was looking at her. Some guard dog. When I looked at her again, she was looking at the carpeted floor down and to the left. I took a step toward her, but her eyes didn’t move. I went ahead with my educated guess. “Ms. Baroja, Lana Baroja?”

She hadn’t changed much since the cooking school photo, thinner, maybe a little more tired looking. She had on a full-length quilted coat that was just shy of purple and a red stocking cap that matched neither the scarf at her neck nor the gloves on her hands. She wore high-top waterproof boots, and I was thinking it was a good thing she could cook, because the career in high fashion wasn’t working out. I looked at her again and felt bad about the judgments I was levying on someone who had lost someone very dear. “I’m Sheriff Walt Longmire, and I’m very sorry. I’ve got Mrs. Baroja over at Memorial.”

“You’ve got her?”

It was just a turn of phrase unless you were listening for it. “Yes.”

“Can I see her?”

Here we go. “There are just a few formalities we need to take care of concerning the late Mrs. Baroja.”

“Formalities?”

“I’m afraid that your grandmother’s death was specifically unattended with a declaration of death registered by the emergency medical technician, but we’re going to need a formal certificate from the attending physician indicating that the death was due to natural causes secondary to old age.” I thought it sounded like I knew what I was talking about.

“Or?”

She had spotted the flaw. “Or, if circumstances are complicated, a coroner will be asked to rule on the cause of death.”

“Complicated?”

“Mitigating circumstance that might lead us to believe that an autopsy may have to be performed.” I watched her for a moment, but she didn’t flinch. “Right now, we’re talking hypothetical formalities, but I’m sure you would want to know why it is your grandmother died.” She was silent. “Could you tell me who your grandmother’s doctor was?”

“Bloomfield.”

Isaac. “I’ll get in touch with him.” I had pulled my trump card and gotten some interesting responses. I took another step toward her. “Why don’t you go home, and I’ll give you a call later?”

“All right.” She started to leave.

“Ms. Baroja?”

“Yes?”

”You could give me your phone number. It would save me having to look it up.”

She came back and gave it to me, smiling a sad and covered smile. “I’m sorry.”

I reached out and lightly touched her shoulder. “No, I’m sorry. This has been a clumsy conversation at a very inopportune time. I understand your grandmother was a wonderful woman.”

“Really?” I had been waiting for the facetious sarcasm, and here it was in spades. “And where did you hear that?”

 
 
The early morning sun was still a thought as I crunched across the parking lot. Dog snapped at the falling flakes and crow-hopped in a wide sweep toward the truck. When I stopped to stare at him, he barked at me. I continued to stare, and he continued to bark, ready to play. His eyes were all wild from the exertion, and his tongue unrolled from the side of his mouth. I really had to give him a formal name some day.

After a little frozen difficulty, I jarred the door open and watched as Dog left snow-dappled tracks across my seat on the way to his usual spot. I had to get some seat covers. I climbed in and pulled the door shut, fired her up, and looked down at the manila folder in my lap, at the stuff of which legends were made. I flipped the defroster to high and watched as my breath spun across my chest and scattered as it hit the paperwork that Joe had given me. The blowers on the heater started leaching warmth from the engine, and the windshield slowly began to clear.

As I pulled onto route 16 and took a left, I could see Lana Baroja walking along the sidewalk like a mobile quilted teepee. I wondered mildly where she lived, then wondered where she worked this early in the morning. She had scribbled two numbers on the back of the folder at my side. I could have offered her a ride, but it seemed like she was anxious to be away from me. You get used to that kind of response from people when you’re in this line of work.

It looked like the plows had already made a pass or two, which meant that the little apex of downtown Durant was clear. I pulled off behind the courthouse and parked in my spot. Dog followed me into the office. I tossed the file onto my desk so that I wouldn’t be tempted to read it and continued into the holding area and cell 1. We only had two, but I tried not to use cell 2 or the jail downstairs because it wasn’t my pattern and, if something happened, no one would know where to find me. Dog jumped up and stretched out on the other bunk, and very soon we were both asleep. I don’t know if it was the quick once-over I had given Mari Baroja’s room or Lucian’s words, but it was dream filled and didn’t leave me particularly rested.

 
 
There was a house, just a little saltbox out along one of the spurs and ridges of the Powder River. There were arroyos that cut back along the foothills that headed for the Big Horns, and there were owls in the stunted black oaks and cottonwoods. It looked like the place I’d been to about a month ago, a place I didn’t want to go back to again. The house stood empty and deserted, desolate against a dark purpled sky. A screen door on rusted hinges slapped shut in the framework, and the windows were missing or broken; barren, empty eyes that stared out blindly. There was an old barn and a warped calving shed that leaned away from the wind. The missing slats looked like piano keys set on edge and, having grown tired of playing the same old song, had decided to quit.

It was a place of tangible dreams that could be touched like fingerprints and felt through the raised and weathered grain of the wood; whorls and swoops of passion and loss, of qualified success and absolute defeat. I was not alone in this place. There was a woman there with her face turned toward the mountains, the northwest breeze pulling at her dark hair like long fingers and pressing a threadbare, polka dot dress against her loins. She had strong calves planted a shoulder’s width apart, and she wore no shoes. Her hands held a silk scarf around her shoulders that was fringed and of an old world print, like nothing I’d ever seen before.

After a moment, she raised the scarf above her head. She held it there for an instant and then released it. I watched as it raced across the buffalo grass, where it snagged on a gnarled stub of sage and then disappeared. When I turned back to her, she was looking at me. Her eyes were like the black glass of last night and, as she moved past me toward the little house, she did not pause. I could see the delicate quality of her features, the careful shape of her lips.
“A ver nire aitaren etxea defendituko, otsoen kontra.”

 
 
I tipped my hat up. Ruby was standing at the open cell door, Dog already having left his bunk to stand beside her. “Rough night at the Home for Assisted Living?”

I let the hat fall back over my eyes. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” As she turned, I called after her. “I might need DCI on the horn; it’s possible I’m going to need an ME for a general autopsy toot sweet.”

She was back with the coffee, toot sweeter. “It really must have been a rough night.”

I sat up, pushed my hat back on my head, and took my old Denver Broncos mug. “Thanks.”

“Sooooo?” She was petting Dog’s head, which rested on her knee, and was carefully sipping hers from her own Wall Drug mug, which proclaimed 5-cent coffee.

“Ever heard of any Barojas?”

I watched the binary computer in her eyes calculate an area the size of Vermont, divide it in a swift grid pattern, and locate the appropriate square. “Basque, down on Swayback, Four Brothers.”

“That’s them. Ever heard of Mari Baroja?”

She paused for a moment too long, and her eyes avoided me. “No.”

I sipped my coffee and let it go. “Then you missed your chance.”

“Does she have a granddaughter who just opened a bakery here in town?”

I yawned and covered my mouth with the cup. “We have a bakery in town?”

She continued to stroke Dog’s broad head. “What do you mean by might need a coroner?”

“Lucian thinks there might be some funny business going on.” I took a sip and looked at the snorting pony sticking out of the orange D. “Ruby, what do you know about Lucian?”