Free Death Without Company by Craig Johnson Page A

looked down at my uniform, the badge, and the .45 at my hip. It didn’t take much imagination to see the distance that they put between myself and most people, let alone Isaac. Nice people with uniforms, badges, and guns had once told him they were doing things for his own good, his own safety, and his own welfare. Next thing he knew he was being carried out of a reinforced hanger with three thousand dead people. If I were Isaac, I wouldn’t let me in the same room as me. “What do you know about the children?”
    “Everything. Carol, Kay, and David.”
    “I’m assuming David is dead?” I thought back to the sad-eyed lieutenant in the photograph in her room. “Vietnam?”
    “Yes.” His eyes softened a little. “That was your war, wasn’t it, Walter?”
    “Don’t blame me, I didn’t start it.” I allowed my mind to play over the photograph again. “I’m trying to think if I knew him.”
    “He was quiet.” He said it like I wasn’t. “Mari had a cousin, a priest, I believe.”
    “Here in town?”
    “He was not a priest here, but I think he retired here . . . If he’s still alive.”
    The priest in the family photograph; this would take a little following up. I thought of the picture of the little dark-haired girls on the stoop. “Both of the twins are lawyers?”
    “Yes.”
    I changed the subject to the only other Baroja I knew who wasn’t a lawyer in an attempt to pick up my spirits. “I understand that one of the grandchildren has a bakery here in town?”
    “Yes. Lana was David’s daughter. She is the only grandchild. The twins both have had miscarriages, probably as a result of the hereditary syphilitic condition.” It took a while, but his face brightened. “The bakery is a wonderful place. Have you been there?”
    “No, but I’m going there next.” I patted my stomach. “I’ll take a baker over a lawyer any day of the week.”
    “You must try the ruggelach, it is the best I have ever tasted.”
    As we were leaving, I asked him if he would go by and formally identify Mari Baroja to save the family the grief. He said that he would, and I asked him if he wanted to turn the music off. All he did was lock the door behind us and ask, “Why?”
    I watched as the silver Mercedes without snow tires made its way up Fetterman taking a right on Aspen and thought about a man who had escaped the concentration camps and now drove a German car. The Hun be damned.
     
 
I thought the snow had stopped, but it had just satisfied itself with a finer version of delivery. If I squinted my eyes and looked away from the breeze, I could still see the clandestine little flakes ganging up on me. “Okay, so where is this damned bakery?”
    Static. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Base, this is Unit One, where is this damned bakery?’ Over.”
    It had taken forever to get her to use proper radio procedure, and now I wasn’t sure I was happy with the results. “It’s still snowing, and I haven’t bought my soon-to-arrive daughter anything for Christmas. Have you listened to the weather?”
    Static. “More snow. Over.”
    “Wonderful. Any ideas about Cady?”
    Static. “I’ll work on it, and the bakery is next to the small motor repair place next to the creek. Over.”
    “Unit One to Base, thank you. Over.”
    Static. “That’s much better.”
    The bakery was on the back street, as Ruby had described, next to Evans’s Chainsaw Service, something I was going to need if I ever got my wood-burning stove into operation. The building had been a gift store that had been boarded up for a couple of years. She had pulled off all the old plywood and replaced it with new wood that sported a jaunty red with gold trim. A handpainted sign hung over the entrance between the two bay windows extolling, in a florid script, BAROJA’S BAKED GOODS, as simple as that. Baskets of baguettes and fresh loaves spilled out of carefully arranged displays along with bottles of wine and full pound wedges of exotic cheese. I stood