The Wailing Wind

by Tony Hillerman

  The ash deposits had survived where Bernie was huddling, too high to be cleansed by runoff water, and those weeds that thrive in the wake of forest fires had made scant progress. A few yards below, moisture from a seep had kept the soil damp. There the brown and gray were replaced by splotches of green. And there, ground-clinging puncturevines had spread—their tough-as-stone little seeds impervious even to such intense heat.

  Bernie arose from the ash pile on which she’d been sitting, overcame an impulse to slip out to the damp area in search of Doherty’s boot tracks—clinching proof that he’d been here, if not absolute evidence he’d been shot here. That impulse was squelched immediately by the image of someone looking at her over his rifle sights. She sat again. What to do?

  She could wait here. When it got dark, she could slip up canyon, climb out—(Could she climb out? Probably, but doing it in the dark would be dangerous)—and then walk out. Out to where? The climb would take her to the top, so to speak and more or less, of Mesa de los Lobos. Southward there was the Iyanbito Refinery, but getting there meant climbing down the rampart of cliffs north of the Santa Fe Railroad and Interstate 40. No way. Miles to the east was the Church Rock uranium mine, if that was still operating. Rough country over the mesa to get there, but she could do it. About then, another mood overcame Bernie. Anger.

  What was she doing, just sitting here like a wimp. She was a law enforcement officer, commissioned by the Navajo Tribal Police and deputized by the San Juan County sheriff’s department. Someone had shot at her. Shooting at a cop was a felony. Her duty, clearly, was to arrest this felon, take him in, and lock him up. Why hadn’t she brought her cellphone along? Not that it would work in this canyon. She had just proved that she deserved better than the total lack of respect she was receiving from Jim Chee, and Captain Largo, and everybody. How much respect would she deserve if she just sat here waiting for some of those men to come and rescue her? Or rescued herself and had to admit she had run away from her duty?

  Bernie got up again, took a tight grip on her pistol, edged to the end of the slab, and looked around it. She saw nothing. Heard nothing. She studied every place she imagined a sniper might be hiding. Nothing suspicious. The man who had shot at her might be miles away by now. Probably was. Anyway, who wants to live forever. She took a deep breath, stepped away from her sheltering slab, and hurried over to the growth of puncturevine.

  Preserved in the damp earth were boot prints, some crushing tendrils of the weed. True, they were a common boot print pattern, but it was also true they had left the same pattern she’d memorized from the bottom of Doherty’s boot. Another happy truth: The sniper hadn’t taken another shot at her.

  She walked over to the sluice, and from the bottom of the hole where she presumed Doherty had made his extraction, she scooped out a handful and dumped it into her jacket pocket. That done, she started walking very cautiously down-canyon, using cover when she could and with frequent stops to look and listen. When she reached the point from which she could see the hogan, she stopped a longer time. Still no sign of a vehicle there. She saw no sign of life. She heard nothing.

  Her truck was just where she’d left it. In a little while she was pulling off the dirt road onto the asphalt of Navajo Route 9. There she stopped and just sat for a while, getting over a sudden onset of shakes before she drove home.

  11

  For the first time since those awful puberty years of high school, Jim Chee found himself trying to find the wisdom, if any, imparted by the “separation of the sexes” part of Navajo mythology. As in the Old Testament or the New, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, the teachings of Buddha or Muhammad, or any of the other religious texts Chee had read in his philosophy of religions course at UNM, the complex poetry of the Navajo version of Genesis mixed lessons in survival as part of teaching your relationship with your Creator and the cosmos.

  Hostiin Frank Sam Nakai, Chee’s senior maternal uncle, had tried to explain this business of sexual relationships and gender responsibilities one night long ago—the same summer night he’d taken Chee into Gallup after his high school graduation. He’d parked in the bar-and-pawnshop section of Railroad Avenue about twilight since the primary lesson of the trip was to concern the social effects of alcohol. As the evening wore on, Nakai had pointed out a dozen or so normal-seeming individuals, a mix of Navajo, Zuñi, and whites, men and women, plus a single middle-aged Hopi male—their only commonality being that Nakai had picked them as they entered one or another Railroad Avenue bar. The Hopi soon emerged and strode down the street unaffected. The stars came out, the cool evening breeze freshened, a Navajo couple emerged, angry, arguing loudly.

  “Notice,” said Nakai, “both talk, and talk loud, but neither hears the other. Remember what Changing Woman taught us. Once we could talk to the animals, but when we became fully humans the animals couldn’t understand us anymore because now we had the words to talk to each other about the important things. But we have to learn to listen.”

  Even in the mood he was in now, Chee smiled, remembering that he had not a clue of the point Nakai was making. But as the evening became night, and more and more of their subjects stumbled out onto the street, Nakai made the point clear. The alcohol they had been drinking had wiped away that human intelligence—the link that had connected them with the Holy People—and now they had lost that human intelligence without the animal intelligence they had left behind.

  It was while they sat watching an angry argument between a man and a woman that Nakai explained the Separation story. The people had lived beside a river in the Third World, Nakai said, with the men bringing in deer, antelope, rabbits, and turkey, and the women collecting nuts, roots, and berries for the meals. Both genders became unhappy, thinking they were doing more than their share. The women decided they could live better without the men, and the men said they didn’t need the women. The women made their own camp across the river. But each gender soon discovered only unhappiness without the other, so they reunited.

  Chee had provoked Nakai’s story by asking how to handle a problem with a girl at school who switched between liking him a lot and wanting nothing to do with him. Nakai’s story didn’t seem helpful then. And now, years later, it didn’t help him decide what to do about Bernadette Manuelito. And he had to decide soon.

  Specifically, he had to call Bernie and ask her if she was coming back to work. First, he’d say, Officer Manuelito, you are about to be late for work. No, first he would apologize for being such a jerk, for losing his temper, for being rude. But where would that leave him? Where would that lead? He tried to calculate that, and found himself back at the beginning—remembering all too vividly her face. Bernie’s very pretty smooth and oval face had been transformed by shock, anger, then what? Sorrow, perhaps. Or pain and disappointment. He didn’t like to think about it.

  “Just go home and keep your mouth shut,” he’d said. Sort of shouted, really. And Bernie had looked as if he’d slapped her. Sort of stunned. Staring at him as if she didn’t know him. And then she’d turned and gone to her desk and started collecting her stuff. And, of course, being a damned fool, instead of following her and apologizing, explaining that he had lost his temper, and asking her to help him to figure out something to do to solve the problem, he had just taken that damned Prince Albert tin and walked out with it. He’d thought he’d think of something en route to the FBI office, but all he could think of was going to see Leaphorn. Just let the Legendary Lieutenant solve it for him.

  When he called Bernadette, and he would any minute now, he wasn’t going to tell her about handing Leaphorn the can and the problem along with it. First, he was going to apologize. Second, he was going to tell her all he had been able to find out about their murder victim. And then he was going to tell her he thought he might know where the murder had been committed. Next, he would tell her he was expecting her back to work, remind her she’d been given only a couple of days off and that her next shift started this afternoon.

  He picked up the
phone, punched in the first digits of her number, stopped, put the phone down. First, he would organize how he wanted to report his progress on the trail of homicide victim Doherty.

  That had started with another telephone call he’d dreaded making. He’d called Jerry Osborne, the agent in charge of handling FBI duties in the Shiprock jurisdiction, and made an appointment to meet him in Gallup. Osborne was new—replacing Special Agent Reynald, who had been transferred to New Orleans. Chee had been blamed (or credited, depending on one’s point of view) for the disposal of Reynald. Reynald had made intemperate remarks in a telephone conversation with Chee, and subsequently had been left with the impression that this conversation had been recorded without Reynald’s knowledge or permission. That, presuming Chee had done it, would have been illegal. Had the case against Chee been pressed, it might have cost Chee his job for what he’d done, and Reynald his job for what he’d said. But it would also have left egg on the face of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Thus the time-tested federal “protect your butt” solution was applied. Reynald was quietly moved out of harm’s way, and Chee was put on the list of those to be ignored when possible. Osborne, however, hadn’t shown the hostility Chee had expected—perhaps because Chee had started with an apology.

  “Since we didn’t follow the proper procedures when Doherty was found, I wanted to tell you we’ll give you all the help we can now,” Chee had said. “You know. Sort of making up for it.”

  It seemed to Chee that Osborne let that statement hang there a little longer than perfect courtesy prescribed, but maybe that was because Chee had come in expecting trouble, and not just because Osborne was pondering how much he could trust him—if at all.

  “Like how?” Osborne said. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Like run errands. Talk to people you want talked to. See if we can find someone who saw that blue king-cab pickup enroute from the site of the killing to where we found it.”

  Osborne nodded. Produced an affirmative grunt.

  “Maybe other ways,” Chee said. “To tell the truth, I know damn near nothing about the case so far. Have you found the place Doherty was shot? Maybe we could help with that.”

  “Well, that would help,” said Osborne. “Your officer didn’t leave us much to work on around the truck.”

  With that mild reminder of Navajo Tribal Police failure out of the way, Osborne gave Chee a brief and, Chee suspected, probably edited recitation of what was known so far.

  Osborne was a slender young man, curly reddish hair, gray eyes, and a pale complexion sprinkled with those freckles that Chee had found strange when he moved into a dorm at the University of New Mexico and was immersed in a pale-skinned, freckled society. Osborne sat tilted a bit back in his chair with his chin down, looking up at Chee under eyebrows as red as his hair, and recounting, in carefully phrased sentences, what the Bureau wanted the Navajo Tribal Police to know about the life and death of Mr. Doherty.

  Age thirty-one, divorced single male, employed by the U.S. Forest Service. Nephew of Sheriff Bart Hegarty, deceased. Flagstaff resident. Bachelor of science in geology, Arizona State U., then graduate student, also ASU. Worked summer seasons in Forest Service fire crew program, maintained checking account at Bank of America branch in Flag, no recent large deposits or withdrawals, held library cards for both ASU and Flag-city libraries where withdrawals showed interest in mineralogy, mining, lost gold mine legends. Reference librarian at Flag said he had asked her to help him locate microfiche files of Gallup, Farmington, and Flagstaff papers of the dates that reported the McKay homicide.

  Osborne droned through more biographical details, raised his chin, and confronted Chee with a direct stare, inviting questions.

  Chee shrugged.

  Osborne dropped his chin again. “Slug not recovered,” he continued. “Probably thirty-aught-six or thirty-thirty, rifle fired from undeterminable range, probably more than twenty yards, less than a hundred, bullet entering back between ribs four centimeters left of spinal column, exiting through sternum, causing lethal heart damage. Death almost instantaneous, and estimated twenty to thirty hours before body found. Abrasions on left side of face suggest he might have fallen against rocks.” Osborne stopped again, made that hand motion suggesting end of account.

  “Rocks,” Chee said. “What kind?”

  Osborne looked puzzled.

  “Sandstone, shale, granite, schist,” Chee said. “The coroner might have been able to tell from fragments in the abrasions.”

  Osborne shrugged. “The autopsy didn’t say.”

  Chee grinned. “It’s said the Inuits up on the Arctic Circle have nine words for snow. I guess, living in our stony world, we’re that way with our rocks. I heard you’re from Indiana. Not so rocky there.”

  “Indianapolis,” Osborne said. “And you’re right. You have us bested for rocks.”

  For the first time Osborne’s expression had turned friendly and Chee found himself looking at the man as a fellow human instead of as an uncooperative competitor. Osborne had been sent down from Denver. Chee would have considered that a move in the right direction but he doubted if a young FBI agent could consider the Gallup office a promotion. In fact, he heard it was officially listed as a “hardship assignment” with a guaranteed reassignment after three years. And then, having no friends here, probably leaving his wife (if he had one) behind while he hunted housing, he’d have to be lonely. Chee felt sympathy. Osborne needed someone to talk to. He returned Osborne’s smile.

  “I think it’d be tough to learn a new territory,” Chee said. “I’d be lost trying to work a city.”

  Osborne laughed. “My very first case here,” he said, “involved a fatal stabbing. No billfold. No identification. But he was missing some molars so we checked all the dentists for dental charts.” Osborne made a wry face. “When we finally got him identified, it turned out he’d never been to a dentist in his life. Pulled his own molars. Now how do you do that?”

  “It’s a different world,” Chee said, deciding not to explain to Osborne how his grandmother had done it. It involved numbing the gum with a concoction made of boiled roots and berries and using a little wire noose, etc., and was too complicated to get into here. Instead he got the conversation back to Doherty.

  What could Osborne tell him about how the theory of the crime was developing? What, for example, was the motive? And was it true, as the grapevine had it, that Doherty might have been trying to work a lost gold-mine scam on Wiley Denton?

  Osborne considered that a moment, decided, said: “I hadn’t heard that one yet.”

  “It seemed pretty unlikely to me,” Chee said. “His uncle being the sheriff who arrested Denton, he’d know what happened to McKay.”

  Osborne grinned. “Nephew or not, I think anybody curious could have known anything they wanted to about that case. The sheriff’s department doesn’t seem too careful about its files.”

  “So we hear,” Chee said, also grinning. “What was it this time?”

  “Well, he had a bunch of stuff copied out of that McKay homicide in the car with him.”

  “Sensitive stuff?”

  “I guess there wasn’t anything very sensitive about that one,” Osborne said. “My files show it was open and shut. Denton shot McKay, admitted it, claimed self-defense in a scam that turned into an attempted robbery, pleaded, and did his time.” Osborne shrugged. “Closed case.”

  “We need more like that,” Chee said. “What in the world would Doherty want to make copies of?”

  “Some of the stuff from McKay’s briefcase. Maps, sketches, notes on gold assays, copies of stuff from the records out at Fort Wingate.” He laughed. “He even made a copy of a State Farm Insurance business card, front and back. That seemed odd, right? So we checked out the agent. A local guy, and all we found out was that McKay didn’t buy a policy. And some numbers were jotted on the back.”

  “Telephone numbers? An address?”

  “No idea. Started with a ‘D’ and then three or four
numbers. I guess they must have meant something to McKay.”

  Chee nodded. “I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. Not if he just made copies.” He waited a moment, and added: “Be a different matter if they let him walk off with the original stuff.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Osborne.

  “Ah, well,” Chee said. “I guess the property clerk would be a family friend. And what would it matter? Closed case, after all.” Chee laughed. “What did he get off with? Anything valuable?”

  “Not very,” Osborne said. “Unless somebody collects old Prince Albert pipe tobacco cans. You remember those?”

  “Just barely,” Chee said. “I never smoked a pipe. Why would he take something like that?”

  “The theory is that maybe he wanted the sand in it, for the same reason McKay had it.”

  Osborne was grinning, enjoying this. Chee rewarded him with a quizzical look and wasted a few moments pondering.

  “Like maybe McKay was pretending it was placer gold sand,” Chee said. “Using it to persuade Denton he’d found the gold mine he was trying to sell him? Is that it?”

  “All I know is the can had some sand in it and according to the case records, a little of what they called ‘placer gold dust’ mixed in,” said Osborne, “and Doherty had it with him in his truck. We found it out on the ground. As you know the ambulance crew got there before the crime scene people. Things got knocked around.” Osborne’s expression said that was all he intended to say about this subject.