The Wailing Wind jlajc-15

by Tony Hillerman

  "It sounds like you're certain that lens is from Linda's glasses."

  "Yeah. What else," Denton said, still looking at whatever attracted him outside. "It's the same oval shape. One of those merged-in trifocal grinds."

  "Let's go back to where we started," Leaphorn said. "Get back to that day you asked me if I would look for your wife. See if I could find what happened to her, anyway. And I said I would if you wouldn't lie to me. You've been lying to me, so I'm quitting. But I'd still like some straight answers out of you."

  Denton had turned away from the window. "Lying about what?" The bright backlighting from the window made it impossible for Leaphorn to read his expression, but the tone was hostile.

  "About the maps, for starters. McKay wasn't trying to sell you a location in the Zuñi Mountains. His was on Mesa de los Lobos. Then there's the circumstances of how you shot him. He wasn't just leaving when that happened. He was—"

  "What makes you think that?"

  "McKay was a sort of fancy dresser. He wouldn't have been walking out of here without his expensive leather jacket, which was hanging on that chair over there with no bullet hole in it, and no blood."

  Denton walked over and sat behind his desk, studying Leaphorn. He shrugged. "So what?" he said. "Whether he was leaving, or just getting ready to leave."

  "Then there's the gun. Big, clumsy long-barrel thirty-eight revolver. He wouldn't have been carrying a gun like that in the pocket of his jacket. It wouldn't fit anyway. Hell of a job to get it in your pants pocket. Or out of them."

  Denton shrugged again. "You're sounding like a damned lawyer."

  "Peggy McKay says he didn't have a gun."

  Now Denton leaned forward. "What are you saying? You saying I just shot the bastard down and planted the gun on him? Like you police sometimes do?"

  "Something like that. Am I close?"

  A long minute of silence followed that question. Leaphorn remembered Louisa's warning to him to be careful—that Denton might be a little crazy. He'd always figured Denton to be a little crazy. Who wasn't? But he was conscious of how Denton had moved behind the desk, of desk drawers with pistols in them.

  Denton had come to some sort of decision. He exhaled, shook his head, said: "What you're suggesting is I had that pistol in here all ready to plant on him. You're suggesting I invited him here just to execute him. Right? Now why in the world would I do that? The man's trying to sell me what I've been trying to buy. The location of the Golden Calf."

  "Because," Leaphorn said, and hesitated. Perhaps it was time for him to lie himself. Time to avoid standing right where Marvin McKay had stood. But he was already past that point. "Because you already knew where this legendary gold deposit is located. You'd already found it. When you learned McKay knew the location, you didn't want him around spreading the word."

  "Hell," Denton said. "That doesn't make much sense, does it? Why would I give a damn if he talked about it? People been talking about finding the Golden Calf for a hundred years. More than that. And nobody would believe them. Why would they believe a con artist? And why would I care anyway?"

  "Because at the end of the month, an option you have with Elrod Land and Cattle to buy that land at the head of Coyote Canyon goes into effect," Leaphorn said. "If the word gets out before then, the deal can be canceled."

  Denton's swivel chair creaked as he leaned back in it, studying Leaphorn. His hands were out of sight, under the table. Then the left one reappeared. He rubbed the crooked hump of his broken nose. Made a wry face.

  "Where'd you hear that?"

  "It's public record," Leaphorn said. "The contract's tied in with the Bureau of Land Management lease."

  "So what," Denton said. "What if you're guessing right? So you think that gives me a motive for murder. Hell, man, I've already been to court on this thing. Found guilty of killing McKay. Already served my time in prison. You know the law. It's over with. No double jeopardy. And what's any of this have to do with finding Linda? That's what you're supposed to be doing."

  "That brings us to one of your deceptions that has a lot to do with finding Linda. Let's see if you'll tell the truth about that."

  Denton produced a hostile grin. "It's deception now, is it, instead of lie? Well, go ahead. Let's hear it."

  "Before McKay came out here that evening he called his wife. Told her he was bringing you your map and all that. He said that from the questions you'd been asking him, he thought you might be planning to cheat him. Take the map and his information and not give him the fifty thousand. He said in case that happened, he had a back-up plan, insurance, something to make you pay."

  "She told you that, did she?"

  "She did, and with nothing to gain from lying about it.

  "What was this insurance? This back-up plan?"

  "You tell me," Leaphorn said. "McKay didn't tell her what he had in mind. So now you tell me what he said. It might help us find your wife."

  Denton said nothing. He looked away from Leaphorn, at the window. When he looked back, the bravado had slipped away. He shook his head.

  "I don't know."

  "Come on, Denton, stop wasting our time," Leaphorn said. "You know now Linda must have been in McKay's car out at Fort Wingate that afternoon. That would have been just before he came here. Just before he called his own wife and told her about his 'insurance.' Why not quit kidding yourself?"

  Denton had lowered his head into his hands, and was shaking it back and forth. He didn't look up. "Shut up," he said. "Shut up, damn you, and get out of here. And don't ever come back."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

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  Lorenzo perez was in his front yard holding a garden hose with a high-pressure nozzle when Leaphorn drove up—and was doing what seemed eccentric to Leaphorn.

  "Watering your rosebush?" he asked. "Looks like you're trying to knock the leaves off."

  "No," said Perez, "I'm trying to get rid of the damned aphids."

  "They don't like water?"

  Perez laughed. "You try to knock them off the stems," Perez said. "It's better than using poison. That kills the ladybugs, and the birds, and all your other helpers. If you can knock the aphids off with the water, they can't climb back up again." He turned off the hose. "But it's a lost cause anyway, trying to grow roses in Gallup. Wrong climate."

  "I need a favor, if you have time."

  "When you catch me out squirting water on aphids, you know I'm not terrible busy."

  "I'm still on that wailing woman business out at the fort," Leaphorn said. "I wanted to see if you could give me a clearer picture of just where those kids were when they heard it, and from which direction they said the sounds were coming."

  "You mean go on out there and sort of try to re-create it for you?"

  "That's what I had in mind. And maybe see if we could get Gracella Garcia to come along."

  "I guess we could handle that. When you want to do it?"

  "How about right now?"

  "I can't do it today," Perez said. "You in a hurry?"

  "Sort of," said Leaphorn. "But I guess it could wait."

  "I could pretty well tell you just where it was, if you're in a rush," said Perez as he walked over to his fence. "You know they have those bunkers blocked off? Well, they were—"

  "Well, no, I don't. I never had very much business out there, and when I did I wasn't paying that sort of attention."

  "You know the military, though," Perez said. "The army divided all those bunkers off into ten blocks, and lettered the blocks from A to J, and then numbered the bunkers. Like, for example, B1028."

  "Divided them off by what they had in them?" Leaphorn asked.

  "God knows." Perez said. "I think they did it during the Vietnam War when they added some new ones. They were running virtually all the munitions and explosive stuff through Wingate then. Busy, busy. Artillery shells, rockets, mines, everything. Big boom for Gallup. New rail lines had to be built, everything." Perez laughed. "They even built concrete shelters every so often
so people working could run in them for shelter in case lightning might strike something and blow things up."

  Leaphorn had stopped paying close attention to the rest of this report after Perez cited the bunker-labeling system.

  "Each bunker had its own number?"

  "Letter and number."

  "How many bunkers in each block?"

  "I don't know. They used ten letters, A through J, and there's about eight hundred bunkers, so I'd guess a hundred to a block, but maybe they lettered 'em by what's stored inside. Like 'A' for artillery, and 'B' for bombs, and—" Perez paused, unable to think of anything that exploded that started with a "C."

  "These days, 'E' for empty would be the letter they'd need for most of the blocks. Anyway, the army rule was no bunker could be closer than two hundred yards to another one, and they used about twenty-four-thousand acres scattering them out. Had to build a hell of a lot of railroad track."

  "How about the numbers?" Leaphorn asked. "I noticed some of them had four numbers after the letter."

  Perez frowned. "I think maybe all of them did," he said. "No idea why, except they seemed to be in order. Like B1222 would come after B1221."

  "What block were the kids in?"

  "I think it was 'D,'" Perez said. "Or maybe 'C.'"

  "I'm going on out there and look around," Leaphorn said. "If I learn anything, I'll call you."

  But now Leaphorn found he couldn't remember the number on the card with Doherty's stuff. He was sure it began with a D, but his usually fine memory had jumbled together Peshlakai's cellphone number, Denton's unlisted number, his advertisement number, and Doherty's four digits. But he did remember telling the number to Chee, and Chee jotting it into his notebook.

  Chee was probably still in Gallup. Leaphorn called the fbi office there. Chee wasn't there, but Bernie was. She said Chee would be in any minute for a meeting with Osborne. Did he want to leave a message?

  "I wanted to ask him if he had that number found on the back of that business card in Doherty's stuff. I remember he wrote it down."

  "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.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

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  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."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

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  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.