The Wailing Wind

by Tony Hillerman

  “Sounds a little like the story about the Lost Adams diggings,” Leaphorn said.

  “Killed by us savages,” Chee said.

  Bernie said: “I’d like to hear more about that tobacco tin.”

  Chee said: “Ah, well . . .”

  Silence ensued.

  Leaphorn cleared his throat.

  “It seems a tobacco tin had been taken from the site where Mr. Doherty’s body was found,” said Leaphorn. “Later the officer in charge discovered the sand in this can contained a bit of placer gold and reported it. Sergeant Chee asked me to help devise a way to get it back where it had been and make sure the Federal Bureau of Investigation folks would find it there.” He paused, glanced nervously at Bernie, cleared his throat. “That was accomplished. No harm done. No big deal.”

  Silence descended again on the table.

  “I’ve always enjoyed this drive up here from Gallup,” Louisa said. “When we pass that old volcanic throat east of the highway, Joe always tells me stories about it being a meeting place for skinwalkers. Where they held their initiation ceremonies.”

  “She’s a very patient lady,” Leaphorn said, nodding to Louisa. “I think she should have those tales memorized by now.”

  “I’ve heard a few of them myself,” said Chee, happy to join the rush away from the tobacco-can debacle. “In fact, I may have made up a few of my own.”

  The waiter appeared and delivered four coffees, then took their food orders.

  “Well, Lieutenant,” said Chee, rushing in to keep the conversation away from tobacco tins and bruised feelings, “you said you’re trying to find if there’s a connection between the Doherty case and McKay. I can think of the placer gold link. And then Doherty having Denton’s unlisted telephone number. But I think you were aware of both of those.”

  “I’d heard,” Leaphorn said. “I guess that’s what got me interested to start with. And now I should let you know where I stand. Denton asked me to do some work for him. He wants me to see if I can find out what happened to his wife. Find her, if she’s findable.”

  Chee looked surprised. “You think that’s possible? After all this time? I’ve heard two theories about Mrs. Denton. One is she’s dead, and the other is she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “I couldn’t give him any hope. And I told him I wouldn’t even try if he didn’t lay everything out for me. But I’ve always wondered what happened to that woman.”

  “Has he ‘laid everything out’?”

  Leaphorn laughed. “Well, no. He seems to have misled me about what McKay was trying to sell him, for one thing. And he seems to have been lying a little about what was going on when he shot the man.”

  “Like how?”

  “About the sale deal? Well—“ Leaphorn reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted a roll of paper and unrolled it on the table, exposing two maps.

  “Maps,” Chee said, grinning. “Why am I not the least bit surprised?”

  “Well,” said Leaphorn, sounding slightly defensive, “this whole business has been about maps, hasn’t it?”

  “Right,” Chee said. “Sorry.”

  “McKay told Denton the location of this so-called Golden Calf dig was on this map—about here.” With his fork, Leaphorn indicated a place on the southeast slope of the Zuñi Mountains.

  “Denton told me he knew it couldn’t possibly be there. Said he personally knows the geology of that area. Had walked all over it. So he ordered McKay out. They quarreled, McKay pulled a pistol out of his jacket pocket, picked up his briefcase and the bag of money Denton had ready to pay him, and said he was leaving with both. As this was happening Denton got his own pistol out of his desk drawer and shot McKay. That’s Denton’s story.”

  Chee nodded. “That sounds like what came out of the sentencing hearing.”

  “Right,” Leaphorn said. “But that’s not the map McKay had locked in his briefcase when the cops came to look at his body. And the part about McKay pulling the pistol out of his jacket pocket doesn’t work. Big, fat revolver, little jacket pockets. And he didn’t have the jacket on when Denton shot him. No holes in it, no blood, and it was hanging over the back of a chair.”

  Leaphorn expanded his summary with the details of his exploration of the evidence basket and his conversation with Price. During all this, Officer Manuelito was leaning forward, studying the second of Leaphorn’s maps. Leaphorn caught her eye.

  “I believe this is where Mr. Doherty was shot,” she said. “I think this is where the gold came from that was in that Prince Albert tin.”

  “I think you’re right,” Leaphorn said. “At least about the first part. But maybe McKay had collected it there. Not Doherty.”

  Bernie was looking at Chee, her expression odd, but for Leaphorn unreadable.

  “Do you know which deputy found it?” Bernie asked.

  “Price didn’t say,” Leaphorn said.

  Chee, who had been studying the Mesa de los Lobos map, felt an urge to get off the tobacco-tin subject fast.

  “Speaking of that McKay evidence basket,” Chee said, “Osborne told me that Doherty may have also taken a business card out of it with a number written on it. He asked me if that number had any meaning to me. It didn’t, except maybe the ‘D’ referred to Denton. How about the rest of you? It was ‘D2187.’”

  “End of the Denton telephone number, license plate, Social Security number?” said Bernie.

  No one else had a suggestion.

  “Much more important,” Chee said: “Officer Manuelito here”—he acknowledged Bernie with a smile— “has pretty well established that this Coyote Canyon drainage off Mesa de los Lobos is where Doherty was shot. Doherty had worked that fire in there during that bad season a couple of years ago—part of one of the BLM fire crews. The fire burned out the brush and uncovered an old mining sluice. Bernie found his tracks in there and a place where he seems to have dug some sand out of the sluice. And while she was in there, somebody shot at her.”

  “Shot at you?” said Leaphorn.

  “Oh! Oh!” said Professor Bourbonette. “Tried to shoot you!”

  Bernie, looking flustered, said: “Well, anyway, they missed.”

  “And,” continued Chee, “the FBI got its team in there and found the slug. They’re checking it against a thirty-thirty owned by Hostiin Peshlakai. An old fellow who lives near the mouth of the canyon.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Leaphorn said. “He did a Night Chant years ago for one of Emma’s aunts. Is he their suspect in the Doherty killing, too?”

  “Probably. Osborne’s interpreter is a little weak on traditional Navajo, so they had me interview him.” Chee laughed. “Osborne was in a hurry. He wanted yes or no answers, and you can guess how that went. Anyway, he finally said he didn’t try to kill Bernie.”

  Leaphorn digested that a moment.

  “Didn’t try to kill her,” Leaphorn said. “Did he deny he tried to scare her away?”

  “I didn’t ask him that,” Chee said.

  Leaphorn drank what was left of his coffee, looking at Chee over the cup. “What are you thinking?”

  Chee shrugged. “Not much mystery there. Peshlakai says a place up the canyon is a unique source of some of the minerals and herbs hataali need for some ceremonies. Like the Yeibichai. He performs that one. I think he’s trying to keep belagaani from destroying the sacred place. Bernie heard the interview. She agrees.”

  Chee provided some of the mythical and theological details of Peshlakai’s statement, which were discussed. Bernie mentioned the artificial owl guarding the canyon from a tree. Louisa added a bit of her anthropological/sociological information about the role of owls as harbingers of death and disaster among southwestern tribes. Their orders arrived.

  Over the coffee refills, Leaphorn got to the questions he’d come to ask.

  “I may be getting myself in a sort of funny position,” he said. “I mean, if I do some really serious digging for Denton while I’m hunting his wife, I’m going to need to know
if the FBI decides he’s a primary suspect in the Doherty homicide. I don’t want to get in the way. Mess anything up. What do you think?”

  “They don’t tell me everything,” Chee said. “They’d have to be interested. Doherty had Denton’s telephone number with him. He’d taken that tin can out of the evidence file in the McKay case, and from what I hear, he seemed to be following McKay’s tracks. Interested in the same old mine legend. But as far as I know they have absolutely nothing except some circumstantial evidence.”

  “Would you mind if I call you now and then and ask you if anything criminal is brewing about Denton?”

  “Lieutenant,” said Chee, “you didn’t need to ask me that. Of course I won’t mind. If I know anything, I’ll tell you. Trouble is, I may not know. How about reversing it. If you learn something, you tell me.”

  “One more question. Do you think that Golden Calf dig, or whatever it was, is up Coyote Canyon?”

  “I don’t believe in these legendary mines,” Chee said. “When I was a kid I used to think I’d go out someday and find the Lost Adams diggings, or maybe the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, and when I was poking around on arroyo bottoms, sometimes I’d dig in the wet sand and pretend I was looking for placer gold. But no. I grew up. Peshlakai said there’s some quartzite deposits up there somewhere, probably a little gold dust washes downstream if we ever have a wet summer. One wet year, maybe enough washed down to start the legend.”

  “So you’re not out looking for it?”

  Chee laughed. “Gold causes trouble. I don’t look for that.”

  17

  Unfortunately for Joe Leaphorn, Denton had spent a lot of money on his telephone taping system. It was modern stuff, installed by a technician, and thus it had all the high-tech bells and whistles and a twenty-four-page instruction book written in the opaque language that the specialists use to exclude laymen from their science. Leaphorn had stacked the accumulated answering machine tapes in neat reverse chronological order, wasted fifteen minutes trying to get the first one to play, and finally called in Mrs. Mendoza. She showed him how to get the tape properly located in the proper slot, which buttons to push to reverse, repeat, adjust sound, and so forth.

  With that, Leaphorn put on the earphones and immersed himself in the weird world of those who read the personal ads: of the lost, lonely, lovelorn, the angry, the wanna-be-helpfuls, and the predators. The first caller to speak into his ear was one of the latter.

  “I read your advertisment in the Arizona Republic,” the man said. “I think I know where your woman is. I was eating lunch at Denny’s, and there was this woman at the next table. Pretty girl but looking, you know, really strung out and stressed, talking to someone on a cellphone. Crying now and then. She mentioned running away from a man named Wiley. Whoever she was talking to, she told them she wanted to go back but was afraid this Wiley wouldn’t want her, and she mentioned where she was staying. A place here in Phoenix. Using another name, she said. I got that written down, that address, along with the last name she was using along with Linda. I’d just tell it to you now, but I’m tapped out for cash, and I need a little financial help for this. I’ll give you this number to call me at. Call right at three any day this week.”

  He followed that with a number, and hung up.

  Leaphorn checked the first item in the ledger Denton kept beside the telephone.

  Call 1. Haley finds number of phone booth at the Phoenix Convention Center. Answered right at three on second ring. Told me he knew exactly where Linda was. Said if I would mail thousand to his P.O. box, he’ll call me back, provide her address, keep eye on her until I arrive. Description not Linda. Haley says a man showed up ten minutes before I called. Waited, took call, left. Followed him to trailer park on the highway south. Haley checked Phoenix PD sources. Parolee.

  Leaphorn laid aside the headphones and went looking for Wiley Denton. Instead he found Mrs. Mendoza mixing something in the kitchen. She thought Denton was “off somewhere.” He’d left a few minutes ago in his car. Did Mrs. Mendoza know anything about the tape machine and Denton’s call ledger? Not much, Mrs. Mendoza said, but she rinsed her hands, dried them, and followed him into the empty bedroom where the listening equipment was installed.

  “He started this when he was in the prison,” she explained. “He got us to take the tapes in to the prison. He had a player there, and he’d make these notes and tell George what he wanted done about them.”

  “Who is this Haley he mentions in the first entry?”

  “Mr. Denton’s lawyer made some sort of arrangement with a security company. Haley Security and Investigations. Whoever the company had checking for him, Mr. Denton calls ’em Haley.”

  “Must have cost him a ton of money,” Leaphorn said.

  “Money.” She made a sound of contempt, shook her head, and skipped through the ledger, explaining Denton’s dating system, code, and shorthand. Leaphorn thanked her and went back to work.

  The next call was a complaint that the reward offered in the Boston Herald was too small and left a number to call if Denton would double it. That was followed by a woman motivated by hatred instead of avarice. She didn’t know where Linda was, but she knew she would never come back. She had fled because her husband had abused her. Now she was free, happy at last.

  Leaphorn skipped the last of that one and began listening to a fellow who was certain Linda had been whisked away by space aliens. He then adopted a time-saving policy of making a quick judgment of whether the caller had anything enlightening to say.

  After about two hours of this he had concluded that the idea had been a mistake. All he was learning was the peculiar nature of that segment of the population that responds to personal advertisements. A very few expressed sympathy for a man who had somehow lost the woman he treasured. But most of the responses had been triggered by greed, some sort of fantasy delusion, whimsy, or malice.

  Then came another sort of call. A woman’s voice, sounding both nervous and sad:

  “You must be Wiley Denton,” the woman said, “and I wish I could help you find Linda, but I can’t. I just wanted you not to think she did you wrong. I’ve heard that gossip—that she was in cahoots with Marvin—but she wasn’t. Not at all. I know for sure. I used to talk with her down where she worked before she married you. Just a sweet young girl. I’m praying that you find her.”

  Leaphorn listened to that again. And again. And then he took off the headset. He would listen to more of the calls later. Maybe all of them. But now he wanted to find this sad-sounding woman.

  18

  Wiley Denton was home now from wherever he’d been, but Denton was not much help.

  “Who?” he asked, and when Leaphorn explained, he snorted, said: “Oh, yeah. Her. I guess she was McKay’s lady friend, but she didn’t know anything. Or wouldn’t admit it if she did.”

  “You found her and talked to her?”

  Denton was not in a good mood. “I was still in lockup then, remember? But I got my lawyer to go out and see her. At least he billed me for it, but all she would tell him was that Marvin was a good man at heart, just liked to get his money the easy way, and he wasn’t chasing after Linda.”

  “You still have her address?”

  “It’s in the file, I guess. But, hell, if this is the most interesting thing you’ve found so far, I’d say you’re wasting your time.”

  But Denton provided the address and her name. It was Peggy McKay, and the address was one of a row of very small concrete block houses built in the 1920s when Gallup was a booming railroad and coal center. “Maybe she still lives there,” Denton said. “But I doubt it. Her type moves around a lot.”

  The woman who came to the door to answer his knock was younger than Leaphorn had expected, causing him to think Denton might be right. She smiled at him, and said: “Yes. What can I do for you?”

  “My name’s Joe Leaphorn,” Leaphorn said. “And I am trying to find Mrs. Linda Denton.”

  The smile went away, and suddenly she looked
every bit old enough to be Marvin McKay’s widow. She moved a half step back from the doorway and said: “Oh. Oh. Linda Denton. But I don’t know anything to help you about that.”

  “I heard what you told Mr. Denton when you called him. That was good of you to call, and he feels the same way about it that you do. That nothing was going on between her and Mr. McKay. But he can’t give up the idea of somehow finding her. And he asked me to help him, and I said I’d do what I could. Now I’m trying to make sure I understand what happened that day.”

  She held a hand up to her face. “Oh, yes. I wish I could understand it.”

  “Could I ask you a few questions? Just about that day?”

  She nodded, motioned him to come in, invited him to take a seat on a dusty, overstuffed chair by the television, asked him if he’d like a glass of water, and then sat herself on the sofa, hands twisting in her lap, looking at Leaphorn and waiting.

  “I’m a retired policeman,” Leaphorn said. “I guess I still sort of think like one. What I hope I can do is get you to remember that day and sort of re-create it for me.”

  Mrs. McKay looked away from Leaphorn, examined the room. “Everything is in a mess,” she said. “I just got home from the hospital.”

  Everything was indeed a mess. Every flat surface was covered with disorderly piles. The worn places in the carpet were more or less camouflaged by discolorations that Leaphorn diagnosed as coffee stains, ground-in crumbs, and assorted bits and pieces of this and that; and the corner beside the sofa housed a deep pile of old newspapers, magazines, sales brochures, etc. “The hospital?” Leaphorn said. “Do you have someone sick?”

  “I work there,” she said. “I’m a medical secretary. Keep the record files, type up reports. I was working that day. I was trying . . .” She brushed away a strand of black hair, put her hands over her face, took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Leaphorn said.