The Wailing Wind

by Tony Hillerman

  “It was a ‘D’ followed by 2187,” she said. “Have you found out what it’s about?”

  “It’s probably the number of a bunker out at Fort Wingate,” Leaphorn said, thinking how great it had been when he, too, had had such a young and vigorous memory. He explained as much as he knew of the army’s blocking system.

  “Something to do with the old McKay homicide, you think? Something to do with that wailing woman business?”

  “I don’t know,” Leaphorn said. “I’m going on out there now and see if I can find a bunker with that number on it. And I thought Jim or you might want to check on it.”

  “You bet,” Bernie said. “And by the way, Mr. Denton called for you here. He said he needed to find you as soon as he could. He said it was urgent. He wanted you to call him.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “I asked. He wouldn’t tell me.”

  Mrs. Mendoza answered the telephone at the Denton home, confirmed that Mr. Denton wanted to talk to him, and put him through.

  “Leaphorn,” Denton said. “Are you still in Gallup? Come on out to the house. I’ve got something I have to tell you. Something important.”

  “I don’t work for you anymore, Mr. Denton,” Leaphorn said. “In fact, I never did work for you.”

  “To hell with that,” Denton said. “This is something you really need to know.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Not on the damned telephone. I think the FBI has had this line tapped because of the Doherty case. They think I’m involved in that. Come on out.”

  “I learned in all these years as a cop that when somebody has something important to tell me, it turns out to be a lot more important to them than it is to me.”

  Silence. Then Denton said, “Meet me halfway then. Where are you?”

  Leaphorn considered that. “All right,” he said. “In fifteen minutes from now I’ll pull into the parking lot at the Smith grocery on Railroad Avenue. You remember my pickup truck?”

  “I do,” Denton said. “I’ll be there.”

  And there he was, sitting in his big, mud-splattered off-road sports utility vehicle watching as Leaphorn made his turn into the lot, getting out and walking over as Leaphorn parked, leaning in the passenger’s-side window.

  “Let’s take your truck,” he said.

  “Take it where?” Leaphorn asked.

  “Someplace quiet where I can tell you my secret,” Denton said while he opened the door and got in.

  Leaphorn wasn’t liking any of this. He had the uneasy feeling he’d miscalculated.

  “We’ll do our talking here,” Leaphorn said.

  “No,” Denton said, shaking his head. “Let’s get away from all these people.”

  “Just tell me this secret of yours,” Leaphorn said. “Not that I guarantee I’ll believe it.”

  “Part of the secret is I may have to kill you,” Denton said, and he pressed what felt like the barrel of a pistol against Leaphorn’s ribs.

  27

  When dealing with federal agencies, Sergeant Jim Chee was always conscious of the “Navajo time” stereotype applied to the Dineh. Thus he showed up at the Gold Avenue address of the FBI ten minutes early. Bernie was in the entrance area talking to the receptionist as Chee passed through the metal detector. She looked, as usual, slightly disheveled, as if some impossible breeze had invaded this guarded office, ruffled her hair, and moved the collar of her uniform shirt slightly out of its official alignment. With that notion of her thus confirmed by his glance, Chee’s analysis and conclusions advanced to another level. Officer Bernadette Manuelito was a very bewitching young woman in a way he couldn’t quite define. Certainly Bernadette’s style was equal to (and far beyond) the perfect beauty of Janet Pete or the sensuous, soft, blonde charms of Mary Landon. With that established, and just as Bernie noticed his arrival and turned and recognized him with a smile, Sergeant Chee’s consciousness took the great jump to the very top level. Face it. He had fallen in love with Officer Manuelito. And what the devil could he do about that?

  Bernie’s welcoming smile faded into a wry look.

  “The meeting’s been postponed,” she said. “Something came up down at the Zuñi Pueblo, and the Albuquerque Office supervisor came in, and now Osborne has to go down there with them.”

  Chee said: “Oh, well.” Which wasn’t what he would have said had he not been suddenly engulfed with a flood of thoughts about Bernadette Manuelito. “So what?” he added.

  “And,” Bernie added, “Lieutenant Leaphorn called for you here. He wanted to ask you the number that was on a card with Mr. Doherty’s stuff.”

  “Number?” Chee said. “What number?”

  “The number was D2187,” Bernie said. “Don’t you remember? It was written on the back of a business card Doherty had, and nobody had any idea what it was about.”

  “Oh,” Chee said. “I remember telling Leaphorn about it. I thought he might understand it. Has the Legendary Lieutenant now solved the number puzzle?”

  “He thinks it’s the army’s munitions depot code number for one of the bunkers out at Fort Wingate,” Bernie said. Chee was just standing there, staring at her with a strange look on his face but no sign of understanding.

  “He thinks it might be near where those kids heard the wailing woman the night Mr. McKay was killed,” Bernie said, wondering what was bothering Chee.

  “Oh,” Chee said. “He wanted me to call him? Where? I need to call him anyway about talking to Hostiin Peshlakai this morning. About what Peshlakai said.”

  “Maybe at Mr. Denton’s place. He said he had to see Denton about something. But he also said he was going out to the fort to see what he could find out,” Bernie said. “And what did Hostiin Peshlakai tell you?”

  “It’s complicated,” Chee said. “Let’s find Leaphorn first.”

  He called Denton’s number. No, Mrs. Mendoza said, Leaphorn wasn’t there and neither was Mr. Denton. “I heard them talking on the telephone. I think Mr. Denton drove down into Gallup to meet him somewhere.”

  “Let’s go find Leaphorn at the fort,” Chee said. “I’ll tell you on the way out.”

  “You sound nervous,” Bernie said.

  “I am,” Chee said. “From what Peshlakai told me, I think our Legendary Lieutenant is playing with fire.”

  28

  As he rolled his truck through the grocery parking lot toward the exit, Leaphorn was analyzing his situation. It didn’t seem reasonable to believe that Wiley Denton actually intended to kill him. However, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that suggested otherwise. For one thing, he had given Denton a motive. Louisa had warned him that Denton was dangerous. He’d already known that. And yet Leaphorn unloaded on the man the very evidence Denton had already killed one man—and probably two—to protect. He had poked Denton’s two sorest spots—his obsession to claim the Golden Calf, legendary or not, and his desperate love of his missing wife.

  At this tense moment, Leaphorn was doubting his judgment on several things, but not on that. Denton dearly loved the girl who had been willing to marry him. Leaphorn had been a fool for love himself, had been there and done that, would never ever forget Emma. He crept through the parking-lot traffic, giving right-of-way to everyone, thinking about tactics.

  “Move along,” Denton said, pushing the pistol against Leaphorn’s side. “Do a left turn out on Railroad Avenue.”

  “You were going to tell me something I needed to know,” Leaphorn said. “Remember? Called it a secret. That’s how you got me to meet you.”

  “We’ll get to that when we get where we have some privacy.”

  “Give me a hint,” Leaphorn said. “Tell me what McKay told you about his back-up plan. No use to keep lying, is there?”

  Denton snorted. “You’re not going to believe this, either.”

  “Probably not,” Leaphorn said. “Why not try me?” He stopped again and waved ahead a blue Chevy that was waiting for him to pass.

  “All right,” Denton said. �
�McKay said he had a love affair started with Linda, but she didn’t want to leave me. So he made this bet with her. He took her to a little hut way back in the Zuñi Mountains. Took her shoes away from her, and said he was going back to see me and tell me I could have her back along with his Golden Calf map for fifty thousand dollars.”

  The Chevy drove past. The pickup behind Leaphorn honked.

  “What else did he say?”

  “He said he bet her I wouldn’t pay to get her back.”

  The pickup honked again. Leaphorn eased his truck forward.

  “What’d you say to that?”

  Denton’s laugh had a bitter sound. “Just like the court records show. Marvin McKay pulled out his pistol, and I shot the son of a bitch.”

  Leaphorn was heading for the exit now, a bit above the legal pace. “Didn’t you believe him?”

  “Of course not,” Denton said.

  “How about now?”

  “Well, maybe some of it. Do a left on Railroad.”

  Leaphorn jammed down on the accelerator and made a tire-squealing right turn into a gap in the traffic. He felt the pistol barrel jamming into his ribs.

  “Left,” Denton said. “We’re going the wrong way.”

  “We’re going the right way,” Leaphorn said. “And I don’t think you’re going to shoot me because I think you still want me to find Linda for you.”

  “Fat chance of that.” Denton said. But the pistol moved away from Leaphorn’s ribs. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I think I know where she is, and I want to go there and find out. But first, I’ve got to make a telephone call.”

  Denton laughed. “Oh, come on, Leaphorn. You’ve been calling me a liar, but you never called me stupid before.”

  “I call Lorenzo Perez; he calls the security man at Fort Wingate and tells him we’ve got business out in the bunker area and to let us in.”

  “Fort Wingate?” Denton said. “You said McKay was there the day I shot him, and he had a woman in his car. Right?”

  Leaphorn nodded.

  “Who’s this Perez?”

  “Former undersheriff. Knows people at the fort. Hand me the cellphone out of the glovebox.”

  Denton got out the cellphone, inspected it, said: “What’s the number for Perez?”

  Leaphorn told him.

  “You know how it sounds when you cock a pistol?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then listen to this.” The click of a pistol being cocked followed. “The pistol is a forty-five caliber. You know what that does to somebody. If you say anything to Perez that sounds suspicious to me, then I shoot you, turn off the ignition, grab the wheel, pull your truck off the road, wipe everything down for my fingerprints, leave the gun on the floor. No prints on it and none on the rounds in the magazine. There’ll be not a drop of blood on me. I just open the door and step out and walk away.”

  “You won’t have to bother with a self-defense plea this time, then,” Leaphorn said.

  “Right,” said Denton. He pushed the speaker volume to the top, dialed the number, listened for a second to the voice that answered, then handed it to Leaphorn.

  “Lorenzo, this is Joe Leaphorn. Can I get you to call security out at Fort Wingate and ask them to let me in? Just tell ’em I’m working on something with you.”

  “Sure,” Lorenzo said. “I already did. What is—“

  “Thanks,” Leaphorn said, and disconnected.

  “Already did?” Denton said. “What’s that mean?”

  “I told him I was going out there today to see what I could find.”

  Denton didn’t comment on that. And when Leaphorn asked him what else McKay had said about Linda and his back-up plan, Denton said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” The rest of the trip was made in tense and gloomy silence. Leaphorn broke it once, just before they made the turn into the fort’s entrance, to comment on a massive cumulus-nebulous cloud building up over the Zuñi Mountains. He pointed toward it. “Maybe we’ll finally get some rain,” he said. “That looks promising.”

  Denton said, “Just drive,” and he didn’t speak again until Leaphorn slowed at the security gate of the bunker area.

  “Remember this,” he said, and showed Leaphorn the pistol, one of those 1902 model .45 automatics the U.S. Army had been using through every war up to Desert Storm. “If the security man at the gate wants to talk, don’t.”

  The security man offered no opportunity for conversation. He simply grinned and waved them through.

  Leaphorn had long since abandoned the notion that Wiley Denton wouldn’t actually shoot him and had been concentrating on coming up with some sort of action to abort that. He’d read too much and had seen too many movies about the training of the Green Berets in efficient killing to have much hope of overpowering Denton. He might be rusty, being half a lifetime away from ambushing Vietcong on the Cambodian side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but he was incurably bigger, burlier, and, alas, younger than Leaphorn. He’d finally settled on getting Denton to bunker D2187 so filled with dread (or hope) concerning what they might find there that he would be—despite his training—incautious for a required moment or two. During which Leaphorn would do something suitable, which he hoped he could think of.

  Now, however, the problem was finding bunker D2187 in the vast maze of weed-grown railroad tracks, crumbling asphalt access roads, and rows and rows of great grassy humps. While these were neatly spaced two hundred yards apart as the army had required, the rolling terrain of the Zuñi Mountains foothills defeated the West Pointian obsession with straight and unbroken lines. After two wrong turns, one of which led them into an old but still unbroken security fence, Denton began to lose patience.

  “I’m beginning to get skeptical about this,” he said. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “We’re going to a block of bunkers labeled ‘D,’” Leaphorn said.

  “These have a ‘G’ over the doors,” Denton said. “Are you lost, or are you just bulling me?”

  Leaphorn backed around, made the first possible right turn onto a street where the asphalt paving was so worn it was mostly reduced to gravel. The first bunker he passed bore the label D2163 (faded by years of weather) over its massive door. After a slow quarter mile of counting off numbers, Leaphorn pulled his pickup off the gravel and parked in front of bunker D2187. Finally! It actually existed. He took a deep breath and blew it out.

  “This is it?” Denton asked.

  Leaphorn took his flashlight from the glovebox, opened his door, got out, and studied the bunker door—a great, heavy slab of steel covered with peeled and rusty-looking army paint. Fastened to the bunker’s bare cement front to the right of the entry were two steel boxes, mounted side by side, labeled respectively “1” and “2.” A metal tube ran up the concrete face of the bunker into box 2, and another such tube linked box 2 to box 1, from which five similar tubes emerged. One ran up the face of the bunker and disappeared over the roof. The four others ran downward, three of them disappearing through the front of the bunker at floor level and the other running along the ground and up the wall and linking to a device on one of the bottom hinges.

  Denton now had joined him in this inspection.

  “The one going over the roof probably served the ventilating pump they have on top of these bunkers,” Denton said. “The others probably involve some sort of an alarm system, humidity or temperature sensors, or maybe an alarm to signal if the door opened without the proper code.” He produced a contemptuous snort. “And you haven’t got the code.”

  “Nobody has the code,” Leaphorn said. “It’s been decommissioned for years. The army base up in Utah that is supposed to keep an eye on things uses it now and then to shoot off target rockets down to White Sands for that Star Wars foolishness. No need for security anymore.”

  As he was explaining that, he was thinking the door seemed altogether too secure. Another steel box, slightly rusted, was welded to its center. Near the bottom was a bolt locking device. The bol
t seemed to be missing. The only thing Leaphorn was sure he understood was the steel locking bar that swung across the door and, when clamped down, prevented it from being opened.

  Leaphorn took two steps toward the door.

  “Hold it,” Denton said. “You want me to believe you’re going to get into that vault?”

  Denton was holding the .45, still cocked, now pointed at the ground about halfway between him and Leaphorn.

  “We’ll see,” Leaphorn said, and walked to the door.

  It wasn’t a fast walk. Leaphorn had become belatedly aware that he had managed to make himself an ally to Denton if Denton planned to kill him and get away with it. The thunderstorm brewing over the Zuñis was producing lightning now and would probably dump enough rain to erase their tracks. The rumble of thunder echoed along the rows of bunkers, and the updrafts feeding the cloud were producing gusty winds. He had brought Denton to an absolutely perfect place for Denton to shoot him. No one would be near enough to hear a pistol shot even on a quiet day. Denton could probably drive out through the main gate with no more than a wave, or if he thought the security man would be curious, he could find a way out easily enough on the Zuñi Mountains side, where ranchers had been using their wire cutters for years to get their cattle into the free grazing.

  Now that he was closer, Leaphorn could read the faded little sign posted over the box on the door: LOCK DOOR. Bad news. He checked the small box on the door, which he now saw was like those used in prisons as containers for coded locking devices. But, good news, this box was empty.

  Then he noticed at his feet a section of thick wire. He picked it up. It had been cut. Still on the wire was a circular metal tab. Leaphorn found the place where the wire had been run through a flange on the door and a matching flange on the doorjamb. This tab had been the official seal.

  “Okay, Leaphorn,” Denton said. “Enough of this screwing around. I think this is a sort of setup. You’re killing time. Waiting for somebody to come.”