Death Without Company

Table of Contents

 

 

ALSO BY CRAIG JOHNSON

VIKING 
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in 2006 by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright © Craig Johnson, 2006

All rights reserved

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

eISBN : 978-1-4406-2197-0

 

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For Dorothy Caldwell Kisling (1930-2005)
for whom I still look when I laugh

A writer, like a sheriff, is the embodiment of a group of people and, without their support, both are in a tight spot. I have been blessed with a close order of family, friends, and associates who have made this book possible. They know who they are and, as the tradition goes, you can never thank a good cast too much. Thanks particularly to Lilly and Glenn, the dairy princess and the crack shot.

Many thanks to Susan Fain for the philosophic and legal counsel and for the weekly Fain File and to Ana Echavarri-Daily for the clarification of Euskara, the Basque language. Donna Dubrow for a lot more than just the use of the
Presence Suit
e and Ned Tanen for the Sunday drives in the desert and the prune milkshakes. Susan Miller for reading half-written novels and saying she fully likes them. Marcus Red Thunder and Charles Little Old Man for circling the wagons, because I only feel safe when I’m surrounded by Indians and books. Sheriff Larry Kirkpatrick for not making fun of me when I didn’t recognize a 10-54 (livestock in the road) and Richard Rhoades for the intensive ballistic testing on gallon water jugs. Erin Guy for the Web site and phone messages and Joel Katz for the Absaroka Sheriff Department logo and for watching the detectives.

To Gail Hochman, superagent, who always has the correct word and is the fastest talker in New York and that’s saying a lot. Ali Both-well Mancini, my editor in arms, who always has a sharp sense of humor and fresh ammo. To Kathryn Court, whose steady hand charms me, and to Clare Ferraro, who hides when I come to Manhattan and probably for good reason. Sonya Cheuse for finding lodging for Lucy and knowing that three fingers in Wyoming is a long way.

Eric Boss, Viking Penguin sales rep of the year for the mountain and plains region, who taught me how to say things like
It’s a character-driven piece
with a straight face. Scott Montgomery, the only one brave enough to swim when we could have just had Jim walk across the Tongue River Reservoir. To Sharon Dynak and the Ucross Foundation for not taking what I wrote about the foundation seriously and Bonita Schwann for not putting a yellow-truck hit out on me.

Thanks to Robert B. Parker, Bob Shacochis, Dan O’Brien, and Buck Brannaman for the kindness of words; you’ve always got a tumbler of Pappy Van Winkles in Ucross. To the Independent Booksellers Association for making
The Cold Dish
a Booksense pick and to the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association for making it a Killer pick.

For Judy who, like the stars, wonders if she shines brightly enough and always does.

A life without friends means death without company.
(Adiskidegabeko bizita, auzogabeko heriotza.)

—BASQUE PROVERB

1

“They used fire, back in the day.”

What the old cowboy meant was that folks who were inconsiderate enough to die in the Wyoming winter faced four feet of frozen ground between them and their final resting place.

“They used to build a bonfire an’ allow it to burn a couple of hours, melt through the frost, and then dig the grave.”

Jules unscrewed the top from a flask he had pulled from the breast pocket of his tattered jean jacket and leaned on his worn shovel. It was 28 degrees outside, the jean jacket was all he wore, and he wasn’t shivering; the flask probably had something to do with that.

“Now we only use the shovels when dirt clods roll into the grave from the backhoe.” The tiny man took a sip from the flask and continued the throes of philosophic debate. “The traditional Chinese coffin is rectangular with three humps, and they won’t bury you wearing red ’cause you’ll turn into a ghost.”

I nodded and did my best to stand still in the wind. He took another sip and didn’t offer me any.

“The ancient Egyptians had their essential organs removed and put in jars.”

I nodded some more.

“The Hindus burn the body, a practice I admire, but we cremated my uncle Milo and ended up losing him when his top came loose and he fell through the holes in the rusted floorboard of a Willy’s Jeepster on the Upper Powder River Road.” He thought about it, shaking his head at the ignominious end. “That ain’t where I wanna spend eternity.”

I nodded again and looked off toward the Big Horn Mountains, where it continued to snow. Somehow bonfires seemed more romantic than construction equipment or Willy’s Jeepsters, for that matter.

“The Vikings used to stick ’em afire on a boat with all their stuff and shove out to sea, but that seems like an awful waste of stuff, not to mention a perfectly good boat.” He paused, but continued. “Vikings considered death to be just another voyage and you never knew what you could end up needing, so you might as well take it all with you.” The jackleg carpenter turned his ferocious blue eyes toward me and took another sip in honor of his ancestors, still not offering me any.

I buried my hands in my duty jacket, straining the embroidered star of the Absaroka County Sheriff ’s Office, and dropped my head a little as he kept on talking. I had seen Jules on a professional basis as a lodger at the jail when the nephew of the previous sheriff, and deputy of mine at the time, had picked him up for public intoxication and had beaten him. I had in turn beaten Turk, much to the dismay of my receptionist /dispatcher Ruby, and then turned him over to the highway patrol in hopes that a more structured environment might do him some good.

“The Mongols used to ride the body on a horse till it fell off.”

I sighed deeply, but Jules didn’t seem to notice.

“The Plains Indians probably had it right with the burial scaffolding; if you aren’t up to anything else, you might as well feed the buzzards.”

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Jules?”

“Yep?”

I turned and looked down at him. “Do you ever shut up?”

He tipped his battered cowboy hat back on his head and took the final swig, still smiling. “Nope.”

I nodded my final nod, turned, and tramped my way down the hill away from the aged cottonwood at the fence line, where I had already worn a path in the snow. Jules had been there on my three previous visits, and he knew my pattern.

I guess gravedigging got lonely.

You can tell the new graves by the pristine markers and the mounds of earth. From my numerous and one-sided conversations, I had learned that there were water lines running a patchwork under the graveyard with faucets that would be used in the spring to help soak the dirt and tamp the new ones flat but, for now, it was as if the ground had refused to accept Vonnie Hayes. It had been almost a month since her death, and I found myself up here once a week.

When somebody like Vonnie dies you expect the world to stop, and maybe for one brief second the world does take notice. Maybe it’s not the world outside, but the world inside that’s still.

 
 
It took about ten minutes to get back to the IGA in the center of Durant where I had left my erstwhile deputy to shanghai prospective jurors for the local judicial system. I rolled into the parking lot, scratched my beard as I parked, and looked at the plastic-wrapped bundles of wood priced at two for seven bucks that were stacked at the entrance of the grocery store. We had been forced to act as the Absaroka County press gang about eight times during my tenure as sheriff, which itself had taken up almost a quarter of a century. The jury wheels used by the county were chocked so full of outdated records that a large percentage of the summonses were returned undeliverable, and the ones that did get where they were supposed to go many times got ignored. My advice that we simply put occupant on the things was dismissed out of hand.

I looked at the handsome woman at the entrance of the grocery store with the clipboard in her hands. Victoria Moretti didn’t like being called handsome, but that’s how I thought of her. Her features were a little too pronounced to be dismissed as pretty. The jaw was just a little too strong, the tarnished gold eyes just a little too sharp. She was like one of those beautiful saltwater fish in one of those tanks you knew better than to stick your hand into; you didn’t even tap on the glass.