hand. “It says ‘We can no longer say.’ ” He waited, and it was an old world wait, the kind that doesn’t concern itself with giving you a fast answer. The Cheyenne and Crow were masters of such things, but the kid was pretty good. “I’m not sure if it means anything, but it’s also a line from a poem by Jean Diharce about Guernica.” It didn’t take him long to remember the translation. “Guernica. This name inflames and saddens my heart; centuries will know its misfortunes… We can no longer say the names Numancia and Carthage without saying in a loud voice in Euskara, lying in its ruins, Guernica.” There wasn’t a lot of drama in the presentation; he stated it as if it were history. “Is this from the woman that died?” I nodded, and he studied it some more. “You think it’s important?”
“Everything’s important when you don’t know what you’re looking for, or if you even should be looking.”
“She was Basque?” I nodded some more. “Is there anybody you’d like me to talk to?”
I sighed, thought about the old priest, Mari’s cousin, and looked at the scrap of paper. “Maybe.” I looked back up at him. “You got a place to stay tonight?”
“I figured I’d just stay here.”
“Okay, but you might need a vehicle. If anything happens, take Vic’s. There’s an extra set of keys on the wall by the door.”
I couldn’t tell if he was smiling when he left my office, and that probably was a good thing. I picked up the piece of paper. “We can no longer say.” It was capitalized at the beginning, which led me to believe that it wasn’t the continuation of a stanza or part of a poem. I didn’t know Mari Baroja but thought she might have had enough on her plate without political intrigue. She was Basque, though.
I stuffed the paper scrap back in my pocket and picked up my life in Post-it form. Vic appeared in my doorway with her jacket over her shoulder and wine glass in hand. “I can’t fucking believe you’re gonna get laid before me.”
“Maybe you should stop looking at this as a competition?”
“You are such an asshole.” She took a sip. “Not that I give a shit, but where have you been all day?”
I took a sip of my wine, its complex bouquet undiminished by the styrene stemware. “Following up on this Baroja thing.”
“There’s a thing?”
I blew out and thought back on my day. “Spoke with the ME from Billings. His opinion is that she smoked too much, she drank too much, and I’m coming to the conclusion that she might have done other things too much as well.”
She shrugged and toasted with her glass. “That’s how I wanna go.”
I curbed the urge to say something about slow starts. “Talked to the personal physician.”
“Who is?”
“Isaac Bloomfield, who concurred. There was something else, though.” She held the edge of the plastic against her lip. “She’d been consistently beaten.” Her eyes widened. “Massive tissue damage on the back and other areas.”
The lip slipped away. “Holy shit.”
“It gets better. I went to see the granddaughter.”
When I told her what Lana had said, she came and sat in the chair opposite my desk and scooted it in so that she could lay her arms on the flat surface and rest her chin there. The glass dangled over the edge, unseen. Her voice was low, but it cut like only a woman’s voice can. “No fucking way. Lucian?”
“It gets better.”
“It can’t get any better, unless you found the body.”
“Trust me, it gets better.” I told her about the conversation with the judge.
“Fuck me.” She glanced around the room; she had just been given a passport to strangeland where I had spent the day. The big eyes finally came back to rest on me, and they were heavy. “He did it. I’ll bet you anything he did it.” The cutting voice was back. “The love of your life is taken away and is being slowly beaten to death? Charlie Nurburn is lying in a shallow grave in Absaroka County or eaten by coyotes and shit off a cliff, which is too good for the son of a bitch.” She folded her arms on the desk again, having spoken. “What are you gonna do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are you gonna do?” It was a smile, a wonderfully vicious and lovely smile with no warmth in it. “The sheriff has killed a man, the one-legged bandit, your pal.”
I leaned in until our noses were about sixteen inches apart. “I really wish you weren’t enjoying this so much.”
“I can’t help it. This is one of those great fucking moral quandaries, and I can’t wait to see what you’re gonna do next.”
I folded an arm and supported my head with a fist. “I’m going to wait and see what comes back from the NCIC.”
“It’s going to say that Charlie Nurburn is dead as the proverbial doornail and that somebody hammered him a very long time ago.” She trapped her lower lip in thought. “Can I go with you when you go to talk to Lucian?”
“No.”
She whined. “C’mon.” I didn’t say anything and, after a moment, she asked again: “C’mon.” We stared at each other for a while, and then she drank the last sip of her wine, placed the empty glass on my desk, and stood. “I don’t have to mention that there is no statute of limitations on murder, right?”
I sighed, still holding my head up with my fist. “No, you don’t. You also don’t have to impress upon me how easy it is to drive a man to the act.”
She pulled a wayward lock behind her ear, sparkled her eyes with a quick batting of the lashes, and quarter curtseyed. “Just here to help out.” She paused at the door. “By the way…?”
“Yes?”
“I hope you get the clap.”
I collapsed my head on my arm and looked at the small amount of wine in my plastic glass, trying to figure out how to drown myself in it. What was I going to do? Hard as I tried, I couldn’t see myself marching into Lucian’s room and accusing him of something I wasn’t sure he had done. I was going to have to feel the outside edges of the thing first. I wanted to know why he had lied to me; it was a start, a chicken-shit start, but a start. As soon as I looked toward the Post-its, Ruby appeared in the doorway.
Her tone was stern. “Have you read those?”
“I’d rather have you tell me.”
She came in, and I noticed she had a large mailing envelope under her arm. “You want the good news or the bad news first?”
“There’s good news?”
“Charlie Nurburn is alive and well and living in Vista Verde, New Mexico.”
My head came off the desk like it was on fire. “What?”
She tapped the Post-its with a bright red nail, which had a little holiday wreath painted on it. “According to the records, Mr. Charlie Nurburn has been paying his taxes in Vista Verde since 1951. Here is his address and phone number.”
I yelled out the door. “Vic!”
“She’s gone.”
I got up and walked around the desk and kissed the top of her head again. “Thank you. You have no idea how much.”
She looked up at me. “Does this mean you’re ready for the bad news?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Mari Baroja is in Billings. The medical examiner said that there were tests he wanted to perform and that he couldn’t do them here.”
I stared at her for a moment and then rubbed my hands across my face. “When was this?”
“He phoned about an hour ago.”
“He already took her?”
“Yes. He said that he left a series of autopsy pictures for you at the hospital. I had the Ferg pick them up before he left.” She was watching me, but I was looking out the window and into the darkness of my life. I wasn’t in any hurry to see those pictures. She placed the large envelope on my desk.
“Is there any more bad news?”
