The Wailing Wind

by Tony Hillerman

  “I’ll bet the FBI is going to give Jim Chee a ration of paperwork out of this. You think?”

  “Who knows?” Leaphorn said, even though he knew all too well.

  Bellman grinned, knowing Leaphorn knew the answer, and recited it anyway. It had three parts. The first was the friction between Sergeant Chee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, widely known and happily celebrated in the Four Corners Country law enforcement fraternity; the second being a general belief by the same fraternity that Captain Largo, where the buck stopped in the Shiprock district of the Navajo police, detested paperwork and would pass it down where Sergeant Chee would be stuck with it; the third being gossip that Chee and Officer Manuelito had romantic inclinations—which meant Chee would strain himself to defend her from any allegations of mishandling evidence in a homicide.

  “And something else, Joe,” Bellman continued, “I got a feeling you’re going to get interested in this one before it’s over.”

  Leaphorn opened his mouth, closed it. He wanted Bellman to drive away before Louisa came out with her trophy, or without it, rushing up and giving Bellman more ammunition for his gossip mill. “Guess who I saw with old Joe Leaphorn out at the T.G.H. trading post?” Bellman would be saying. But now Leaphorn was curious. He blurted out a “Why?”

  “The stuff they found in Doherty’s truck. Bunch of maps, some computer printouts about geology and mineralogy, a whole bunch of Polaroid photographs taken in canyons, that sort of material.”

  Leaphorn didn’t comment.

  “Had a folder full of reprints of articles about the Golden Calf Mine,” Bellman added. “I’ll bet that will remind you of old Wiley Denton and what’s his name? The con man Wiley killed five years ago. McKay, wasn’t it?”

  “Marvin McKay,” Leaphorn said. Yes, it did remind him, but he wished it hadn’t. The Wiley Denton case was one he’d like to forget if he could. And he probably could, if he could ever find out what had happened to Wiley Denton’s wife.

  3

  Sergeant Jim Chee came out the side exit of the Navajo Tribal Police headquarters in a mood compatible with the weather—which was bad. The gusting west wind slammed the door behind him, saving Chee the trouble, blew up the legs of his uniform pants, and peppered his shins with hard-blown sand. To make things worse, the anger he was feeling was as much against himself—for complicating the problem—as against the Chief for not just telling the FBI to mind its own business and against Captain Largo for not handling this himself.

  Part of the dust blown against Chee was now being stirred up by a civilian pickup truck being parked in one of the clearly marked “Police Vehicle Only” spaces. It was a familiar truck, blue and banged up, rust spot on the right fender—the truck of Joe Leaphorn, now retired but still the Legendary Lieutenant.

  Chee took two steps toward the truck and was abruptly beset by the familiar mixed feelings of irritation, admiration, and of personal incompetence he always had around his former boss. He stopped, but Leaphorn had his window down and was waving to him.

  “Jim,” he shouted. “What brings you down to Window Rock?”

  “Just a little administrative problem,” Chee said. “How about you? Here at the office, I mean?”

  “I was just scouting around for somebody to buy me lunch,” Leaphorn said.

  They got a table at the Navajo Inn, ordered coffee. Chee would eat a hamburger with fries as always, but he pretended to study the menu while struggling with his pride. All during the long drive down U.S. 666 from his Shiprock office in answer to the Chief’s summons, he’d considered going by Leaphorn’s place and asking for some advice. This idea had been rejected on various grounds—unfair to bother the lieutenant in his retirement, or he should be able to deal with it himself, or it would make him look like a nerd in the eyes of his former boss, or. . . . Finally he’d rejected the idea—and then there was Leaphorn waving at him through the dust.

  He glanced over the menu at Leaphorn, whose own menu still lay unopened on the table.

  “I always have an enchilada,” Leaphorn said. “People fall into habits when they get older.”

  That seemed to Chee as good an opening as any. “You still have that habit of being interested in odd cases?”

  Leaphorn smiled. “I hope you mean the killing of that Doherty boy. I’m sort of interested in that.”

  “What do you hear?” Chee asked, thinking it would be just about everything—except maybe the final twist to his own problem.

  “What I read in the Gallup Independent and the Navajo Times, which was what the FBI was telling. No suspect. And I guess no known motive. Doherty apparently shot somewhere else, hauled to where he was found in his own pickup truck. That’s about it.”

  “How about what’s on the rumor circuit?”

  “Well, it’s said that the FBI’s not happy with how the crime scene was handled.” Leaphorn was grinning at him. “And if I was into betting, I’d bet that’s what brought you down to see the Chief today.”

  “You’d win,” Chee said. “The dispatcher sent Officer Manuelito out to check on an abandoned truck. Bernie looks in and sees the body. Doherty slumped over on the driver’s side. No blood. No sign of violence. Just like ten thousand drunks you’ve seen pulled over to sleep it off. When Doherty doesn’t wake up, Bernadette reaches in to check an ankle for a pulse. It’s cold. So then she calls in and asks for an ambulance and hangs around waiting for it.”

  Chee stopped. Leaphorn waited. He sipped his coffee.

  Chee sighed. “And she says she walked around some, collecting seed pods and that sort of thing. Bernie’s a botany buff. The ambulance guys pull the body out and then, finally, the blood gets noticed. Of course by that time everybody has walked all over everything. But there wasn’t a way in the world Bernie could—“ He stopped. With Leaphorn, there was never any need to explain anything.

  He waited for Leaphorn to tell him that Bernie should have looked more closely at the situation, should have taped off the site. But of course Leaphorn didn’t. He just sipped a little more of his coffee and put down his cup.

  “I ran into Delo Bellman yesterday at Two Grey Hills. He said Doherty had a bunch of stuff with him relating to gold mining. Some articles about that famous old Golden Calf diggings. He said it would remind me of the Wiley Denton case. Wiley shooting that con man. That sound right?”

  Chee nodded, made a wry face. “As you may have heard I’m not all that popular with the Bureau these days. But the grapevine told me it looked like Doherty might have been looking into that McKay homicide himself. I heard some of the stuff the Federals found in his briefcase must have been copied out of the evidence files in that homicide.”

  “He was old Bart Hegarty’s nephew,” Leaphorn said. “And it’s an old dead case. He could have gotten that easily enough.”

  “I gather there’s no suspect yet. I wonder if the Bureau has picked Denton as its man,” Chee said.

  Leaphorn sipped his coffee and considered. Chee was asking him what he thought about that idea. And, indeed, the fact was he had thought about it. He hadn’t found any sign of a sensible connection, but something about it nagged at him. Hinted there might be one if he was smart enough to find it.

  “What would be Denton’s motive?” Leaphorn asked.

  “Pretty vague,” Chee said. “I guess the theory of the crime is that Doherty wanted to finish what McKay started. Tell Denton he’d located the Golden Calf, try to milk him for some money.”

  Leaphorn smiled. “Vague indeed,” he said. “That would make him either pretty stupid. Or maybe suicidal.” He wanted off this subject. To get Chee to tell him what was really on his mind. So he said: “Bellman said he heard the Federals wanted Manuelito suspended.”

  “That seems to be true,” Chee said.

  Leaphorn shook his head. “I wouldn’t worry much about it. Nothing happens if you arrest the killer. Otherwise if a scapegoat is required, she’d get suspended a week or so. Probably with pay. I’d think that would be the worst.�
��

  Chee said: “Well . . . ,” then stopped.

  Leaphorn waited awhile, took another sip of coffee. “Miss Manuelito seemed like a fine officer from what I saw of her when you were working on that casino robbery. Probably has a good record in her personnel jacket. But maybe there’s something I don’t know about this.”

  “There is,” Chee said. “Can I talk to you in confidence? Because I may wish I’d kept my mouth shut.”

  Their lunches arrived. Leaphorn stirred sugar into his fresh cup of coffee.

  “I guess you’re sort of asking if maybe you can tell me something that if it came down to crunch I might have to deny you told me?”

  “Something like that,” Chee said. You never had to explain anything to the Legendary Lieutenant.

  “Well,” Leaphorn said. “I think I know you well enough so I can rely on your judgment. Go ahead and tell me.”

  Chee extracted a Ziploc bag from his jacket pocket and put it on the table.

  “Officer Manuelito picked this up at the crime scene, in a bush beside the car. She used it to hold the weed seeds she’d been collecting.”

  “Looks like an old Prince Albert tobacco tin,” Leaphorn said.

  He looked at Chee, expression curious.

  Chee took another plastic bag from his pocket, handed it to Leaphorn.

  “When she got home and dumped her seeds out into a bowl, this came out.”

  “Looks like arroyo bottom sand,” Leaphorn said. He shook the bag in his palm, studied it. “Or is it?” he asked. “Color’s a little off and it seems too heavy.”

  “It’s partly sand and I think it’s partly placer gold dust.”

  “Be damned,” said Leaphorn. He opened the plastic bag, rubbed a pinch of the sand between his fingertips, and examined what stuck to the skin. “I’m no assayer, but I’ll bet you’re right.”

  “She said she picked up the can from some weeds maybe three or four feet from the driver-side door,” Chee said. “Gave it to me because she thought it might be evidence.” He laughed at that, a sort of grim laugh.

  “For you to give to the FBI?”

  “Sure,” Chee said, sounding bitter. “To do my duty. And absolutely guarantee she’ll get suspended with a reprimand in her file. I told her that’s what would happen, and she said she guessed she deserved it.” Chee grimaced at that and looked down into his cup, seeing not coffee but Bernie standing rigidly in front of his desk, looking very small, very slim, her black hair glossy and her uniform neater than usual. She had glanced down and away, made one of those vague motions with her lips that expressed regret and apology and then looked up at him, her dark eyes sad, awaiting his verdict. And he had understood then why he’d never rated her as cute. There was dignity in her face. She was beautiful. And then she had said: “I guess I’m just too careless to be in police work.” And what had he said? Something stupid, he was sure. And now Leaphorn was studying him, wondering why he was just staring into his cup of coffee.

  “It might be evidence, all right,” Leaphorn said. “With that placer gold in it. It could be connected to the crime.”

  “So, Lieutenant, how do I handle this? I guess I’m asking you what you’d do if you were me?”

  Leaphorn put a forkful of enchilada in his mouth. Chewed it. Took another bite. Frowned. “Do you know the L.C. of this one? Is it the one you got crosswise with a couple of years back in that case involving the eagle poaching?”

  “No. He was transferred,” Chee said. “Thank God for that small favor.”

  Leaphorn took another bite, said: “But the memory will linger in the federal tribe for a while.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Chee said.

  “I think if it was me, and the officer was a good one I wanted to keep in my department, I’d take that tobacco can and put it back exactly where Bernie found it. Then I’d tell someone, in a suitably subtle way, someone who had some business out there, tell them where to look for it and ask him to go find it. Then he could call the FBI and tell them he’s noticed this tin out there and let them find it for themselves. Do you have any of your Shiprock people working the crime scene?”

  “They’ve dealt us out of it,” Chee said. He’d thought he’d got beyond being surprised by Leaphorn, but he hadn’t. Was the Legendary Lieutenant volunteering to do this himself?

  Leaphorn was smiling, mostly to himself.

  “Well then, I’ve got a legitimate reason to go out there and take a look,” he said. “I still get kidded now and then about being obsessed with that McKay killing. I’ll be looking for a connection. Worst they can do is tell me to go away.”

  “Connection? Isn’t that going to sound pretty weak?”

  “Awful weak,” Leaphorn said. “Maybe I’ll just tell ’em I’m a bored old ex-cop looking for a way to kill time. Maybe they’ll be finished at the scene and nobody will even ask.”

  “I’ve always wondered why you were so interested in that case,” Chee said. “Hell, Denton laid it all out. Admitted he shot McKay, claimed it was self-defense, and worked out a plea bargain. You’ve had doubts about that?”

  “He got a year, served part of it with time off for behaving,” Leaphorn said. “I had some doubts about the self-defense, but mostly I’ve always wondered what happened to Linda Denton.”

  “Linda Denton? What do you mean?” Leaphorn was surprising him again. Chee checked his memory. The way it came to him, the young Mrs. Denton had set her wealthy old hubby up for McKay’s swindle and then ran when the plan didn’t work out. “Now I’m wondering why you’ve been wondering.”

  Leaphorn smiled, consumed a bit more of his lunch. Shook his head.

  “You’re going to think I’m an old-fashioned romantic,” he said. “That’s what Louisa—what Professor Bourbonette says. Tells me to get real.”

  Chee finally took the first bite from his hamburger, studying Leaphorn. The Legendary Lieutenant actually looked slightly abashed. Or was he imagining it?

  “You really want to hear all this?” Leaphorn asked. “It takes time.”

  “I do,” Chee said.

  “Well, of course it was a McKinley County case because Denton built his house outside Gallup city limits. Lorenzo Perez was undersheriff then and handling major crime investigations. Good man, Lorenzo. He had himself a clear-cut uncomplicated case with the shooter admitting it. Only question was how much self-defense was involved. Where’d the gun come from the con man had? You remember the story Denton told? McKay had told him he’d located the Golden Calf diggings and needed money to file claims and begin development. He’d let Denton in for fifty grand. In cash. So Denton drew the money out of his bank, had it in a briefcase at his house. McKay shows him a bunch of stuff, a little bit of placer gold, part of a map, some other stuff. Denton spots it as bogus, tells McKay to get out. McKay says he’ll take the money with him. He pulls a gun and Denton shoots him.”

  Leaphorn stopped. “McKay was an ex-con with a record of trying to run con games. That didn’t seem to leave much to investigate.”

  “Yeah,” Chee said. “That’s the way I remember it. But how does this bring us to Linda Denton? The story was she wasn’t home when it happened.”

  “Denton said she’d gone to have lunch with some friends and wasn’t there when it happened and never did come back. He said he was worried. Couldn’t imagine what had happened to her.” Leaphorn made a wry face. “It seemed pretty easy to guess if you remember the circumstances. Turned out Linda had introduced McKay to her husband. Denton said she’d met McKay before she married him. Met him at that bar-grill where she used to wait tables.”

  Their waiter came and refilled their cups. Leaphorn picked his up, looked at it, returned it to the saucer. “And she never did come back. Ever. Not a word. Not a trace.”

  It sounded sad, the way he said it, and Chee asked: “Didn’t that seem natural? Young gal working in a bar meets a rich guy about thirty years older, bags him, then decides he’s too boring for her taste so she locks onto a slick-talking
young con man to get the old bird’s money. It turns into a homicide with her maybe facing some sort of conspiracy charge. So she runs.”

  “That’s the way I read it at first,” Leaphorn said. “Lorenzo wanted to find her. See what she had to say. I started on it. Went out to see her folks at Thoreau. Couple named Verbiscar. They were frantic. Said she would never leave Denton. Loved him. Something had to have happened to her.”

  Chee nodded. It seemed to him about the sort of response you’d expect from the woman’s parents. And he noticed Leaphorn had sensed his attitude.

  “They sat me down and told me her story,” Leaphorn said. “Great kid. Went to the St. Bonaventure School there. Real bookish girl and very much into music. Not much for boyfriends. Good grades. Scholarship offers from University of Arizona, couple of other places. But her dad had a heart problem. So Linda Verbiscar turned the scholarship down and enrolled at the U.N.M. branch at Gallup. She got herself that restaurant waitress job. She and another girl from Thoreau rented themselves a little place out on Railroad Avenue. Brought home a boyfriend once for them to look over but decided he was sort of stupid. Then she brought Wiley Denton out to meet them.”

  Leaphorn paused, the polite Navajo gesture to give the listener a chance to comment.

  Chee tried to think of something sensible to say, and came up with: “Linda doesn’t sound like the kind of woman I had in mind.”

  Leaphorn nodded.

  “They said it scared ’em to death when she showed up with Wiley Denton. She was twenty then and he was early fifties. Older than her dad, in fact. Big, homely, rich old guy.” Leaphorn chuckled. “Verbiscar said they knew he hadn’t been born rich because he had the kind of broken nose that can’t be overlooked and is easy to fix if you can pay the surgeon. All they really knew about him was he had been in the Green Berets in the Vietnam War, made a ton of money off oil and gas leases out around the Jicarilla Reservation and built himself that huge house on the slope outside Gallup. That, and everybody said he was an eccentric sort of loner.”