Craig Johnson: Death Without Company

I figured Joe Lesky was one of those people that fill the gap of human misery, doing their best to make everybody’s lives a little better; about my age, with dark hair and dark eyes, he looked like he might have a touch of Indian, but all the time spent inside must have taken a lot of it out of him.

I leaned against the counter, and Dog sat on my foot. I glanced back over at the tree. “How’s the patient?”

He leaned back in his chair and looked over his shoulder at the abused conifer. Some of the arms looked as if they were signaling aircraft. “I don’t think there were any family heirlooms lost, but I still can’t get the lights to work.”

“You don’t happen to have the file on Mrs. Baroja?” He slid the folder on the counter toward me. “I had it out for the EMTs.”

“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.