Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 15 - The Wailing Wind

by The Wailing Wind(lit)

  "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.

  "One more thing that might help me. Could you tell anything from the stuff in his truck, on his boots, clothes. Anything that would give you a hint at where he'd been between leaving Gallup and getting shot?"

  "Not much," Osborne said. He looked at his watch, frowned, and glanced at Chee. "You're going to ask me what kind of rocks he was walking on, and I can't help you about that." He pushed back from the table. "I can tell you he walked through somebody's camp fire, or ash heap, or something. He had soot all over his shoes. And there's something I'd like to ask you about."

  Chee nodded.

  Osborne studied him. About to tell Chee something. Or ask him something. Then he picked up his notebook and paged through it. "Maybe those numbers will mean something to you," he said.

  "Numbers?"

  "On that insurance card of McKay's that Doherty copied. I remembered I copied them down. D2187. That ring any bells with you? It didn't with us, and it didn't with the insurance agent."

  "The 'D' might stand for Denton, of course. Are those the last four numbers of his unlisted telephone?"

  "No. We thought of that. Funny thing to copy. Made us wonder if Doherty knew something about McKay that we don't. It had to mean something or he wouldn't have made a copy. Seems funny."

  It seemed funny to Chee, too, and he jotted the numbers into his own notebook. He'd try D2187 on Leaphorn. The Legendary Lieutenant would probably recognize them as map coordinates.

  With the number and the sooty shoes in mind, Chee had driven directly from Osborne's office to the pay telephone outside the Pancake House, called the U.S. Forest Service office, asked for Denny Pacheco, and told him his problem. He needed Pacheco to check his records for the past big burn season, find out which fires the late Thomas Doherty had worked, and call Chee at his office in Shiprock.

  "Just drop whatever unimportant stuff I might be working on and do it, huh?" said Pacheco. "Why am I going to do something like that?"

  "Because I'm your good buddy, is why," Chee said. "And we're trying to find out where this guy was when somebody shot him. It would need to be a fire within, say. fifty or sixty miles of where he was found."

  "And where was that?"

  Chee explained it.

  "So I plow through all that paper for you, and call you at your office with it?" Pacheco asked. "And you remember this when I need a ticket fixed. Right?"

  "Anything short of a felony," Chee had said, and he found Pacheco's message waiting on his answering machine when he got back to his office. Pacheco had listed three fires where Doherty's name was on the crew payroll. One was the huge Mesa Verde burn, one was a smaller fire south in the White Mountains, and one was a little nipped-in-the-bud lightning-caused blaze in the Coyote Canyon drainage. The bigger ones were too distant to interest Chee. The lightning burn was in a narrow canyon draining the north slope of Mesa de los Lobos "This one is well within your rmileage limits," Pacheco said. "Bad hot spots due to accumulation of dead timber, trash, etc., but we got to it fast with fire-suppression planes, and then it rained to dampen it down. We let the hot spots burn out the fuel trash and just sent a man in to make sure it didn't take off again. That was your Doherty."

  Chee listened to that again.Probably their canyon. He'd heard that this fire, like the one that roared through the Mesa Verde National Monument area, had uncovered interesting rock art. Perhaps it had also uncovered signs of the legendary Golden Calf dig. Perhaps Doherty had seen them.

  The phone buzzed. He picked it up. Officer Bernadette Manuelito calling. Take line three.

  Chapter Twelve

  Chee sucked in his breath, picked up the telephone, punched button three, and said: "Bernie. I was just going to-"

  "Sergeant Chee," said the strained-sounding voice in his ear, "this is Bernadette Manuelito. Are you still looking for where that man was shot?"

  "Well, yes," Chee said. "But I think we have a pretty good idea now. It looks like-"

  "He was shot in a canyon draining off of Mesa de los Lobos," Officer Manuelito said. "About two miles up a little drainage that runs into Coyote Canyon. There's an old placer mining sluice there-"

  "Wait a minute," Chee said. "What-"

  But Bernie wasn't being interrupted. "And that's the place it looks like he dug up the sand with the placer gold in it."

  "Bernie," Chee said. "Slow down."

  "I found what looked like his tracks there, and the same sort of seeds that were in his shoes and socks, but I didn't stake off the scene because somebody shot at me."

  With that, Officer Manuelito inhaled deeply. A moment of silence ensued.

  "Shot at you!" Chee said.

  "I think so," Bernie said. "He missed. That's why I called in, really. I didn't see him and maybe he wasn't shooting at me, but I thought I should report it. And find out whether I'm still suspended."

  "Somebody shot at you!" Chee shouted. "Are you all right? Where are you? Where are you calling from?"

  "I'm home," Bernie said. "But you didn't answer me. Am I still suspended?"

  "You never were suspended," Chee said. From there the conversation settled into a relatively normal pace, with Chee shutting up and letting Officer Manuelito give an uninterrupted account of her afternoon. It wasn't until it had ended and Chee was leaning back in his chair, shocked, feeling stunned, digesting the fact that Bernie Manuelito might well have been killed, that he remembered that he had forgotten to apologize.

  He'd need to report all this to Captain Largo, but Largo wasn't in his office today. Chee picked up the telephone again. He'd call Osborne, tell him the probable site of the Doherty homicide had be
en found, tell him an officer had been shot at there, and give him the details. He'd enjoy doing that. But halfway through punching in the numbers, he hung up. Officer Bernadette Manuelito was coming in. Officer Manuelito deserved to make her own report.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The car rolling to a stop in the parking lot of the McDonald's where Joe Leaphorn was eating a hamburger was a shiny black latest version of Jaguar's Vanden Plas sedan-which Leaphorn guessed was the only one of its vintage in Gallup. The man climbing out of it seemed totally out of character for the car. He wore rumpled jeans, a plaid work shirt, and a gimme cap decorated with a trucking company's decal. It shaded a slightly lopsided and weather-beaten face with a mouth that was too large for it.

  Wiley Denton. He'd said he'd meet Leaphorn at the McDonald's at 12:15 P.M. and came through the entrance twenty-three seconds early.

  Leaphorn stood and motioned Denton over to his booth. They shook hands, and sat.

  "I guess I owe you an apology," Denton said.

  "How's that?"

  "Last time I talked to you, I mean, before calling you down at Window Rock this morning, I hung up on you. Called you a son of a bitch. I shouldn't have said that. Sorry about that."

  "I've been called that several times," Leaphorn said. "Before and since."

  "I remember I was pretty pissed off at the time. Didn't mean to give any offense."

  "None taken," Leaphorn said.

  "Hope not," said Denton, "because I'm going to ask you for a favor. I'd like to get you to do some work for me."

  Leaphorn considered this a moment, looked at Denton who was studying his reaction, and waved over at the service counter. "You want to get yourself something to eat?"

  "No," Denton said. He glanced around at the lunchroom crowded with the noontime hungry. "What I'd rather do, if you've got the time, is go out to the house where we could talk with some privacy." He pushed back his chair, then stopped. "Unless you're just not interested."

  Leaphorn was definitely interested. "Let's go have a talk," he said.

  Denton's house and its grounds occupied an expanse of the high slope that looked down on Gallup, Interstate 40 and the railroad below, and, fifty miles to the east, the shape of Mount Taylor-the Navajo's sacred Turquoise Mountain. Leaphorn had seen a few more imposing residences, most of them in Aspen where the moguls of Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry had been buying five-million-dollar houses and tearing them down to make room for fifty-million-dollar houses, but by Four Corners standards this place was a mansion. Denton pushed the proper button and the iron gate slid open, groaning and shrieking, to admit them to the drive. A little past the halfway point the gate stopped.

  "Well, hell," Denton said, and jammed the heel of his hand down on the car horn. "I told George to fix that damn thing."

  "Sounds like it needs greasing," Leaphorn said.

  "I think George needs some greasing, too," Denton said. "He hasn't been good for much since-ah, since I went away and did my time."

  A tall, narrow-faced man wearing a red nylon wind-breaker was hurrying toward them. Leaphorn first noticed he was a Navajo with the western Navajo shape of broad shoulders and narrow hips, then that he had a nose which seemed to have been bent, that the face was familiar. Finally he recognized George Billie.

  "You got back early, Mr. Denton," Billie said. "I was just about to take care of that gate."

  "Well, get it open now," Denton said. "And then get it fixed."

  "Okay," Billie said. He had glanced at Leaphorn, glanced again, and then looked quickly away.

  "Ya eeh teh, Mr. Billie," Leaphorn said. "How is life treating you these days?"

  "All right," Billie said. He put his shoulder to the gate and pushed it open. Denton drove through.

  "You and George know one another," Denton said. "I bet I can guess how that happened. He said he was a wild kid. Did time for this and that before he quit drinking."

  Denton pushed another button, raising one of the three garage doors. They drove in. "He's been working here for several years now. Pretty fair help, and Linda liked him. She thought he was sweet." Denton chuckled at this description as they exited the garage and entered the house. Denton ushered Leaphorn through a foyer and down a hallway into a spacious office.

  "Have a seat," he said. "And how about a drink?" Leaphorn opted for a glass of water, or coffee if available.

  "Mrs. Mendoza," Denton shouted. "Gloria." He awaited a response, got none, and disappeared back down the hall. Leaphorn studied the office. Its expanse of windows looked out across a thousand square miles of green, tan, and pink, with the shade of colors changing under a sky full of those dry autumn clouds. The view was spectacular, but Leaphorn was more interested in the interior decorations. A section of wall behind Denton's desk was occupied with photographs of Mrs. Linda Denton, a blonde, blue-eyed girl smiling shyly and wearing oval glasses, who was every bit as beautiful as all he'd heard. Other photographs, some in color, some black-and-white copies of old photos, some aerials, and all in various sizes and shapes, hung on two of the walls. Denton himself appeared in only one of them, a much younger version of him standing with two other soldiers in Green Beret camouflage attire by the side door of a helicopter. In most of the photos mining was the subject, and the exceptions seemed to Leaphorn to be views of canyons, ridges, or cliffs where mining was a possibility for the future. He edged around the room, examining photographs of nineteenth-century prospectors working at sluices, smiling at the camera in assay offices, leading pack mules, or digging along dry streambeds. He recognized Arizona's Superstition Mountains in one photograph, the Navajo Nation's own Beautiful Mountain in another, and-in the largest one of all-a mural-sized blowup of part of Mesa de los Lobos. That, being east of Gallup, probably included Navajo land, Bureau of Land Management land, and private land. In other words, it would be a part of the "Checkerboard Reservation."

  He was studying that when Denton reappeared, carrying a tea tray with two coffee cups, cream, sugar, and a glass of ice water, which he carefully deposited on a table.

  "I imagine you've heard I'm a gold-mine nut," Denton said. "Came out in the trial, and all. I made my money in oil and natural gas leases, but gold's where the glamour's always been for me. Ever since I was a kid."

  Leaphorn was sampling his coffee. He nodded.

  "Always had a dream of actually finding the so-called Lost Adams dig down south of here," Denton said. "Or that Sick Swede Mine that's supposed to be somewhere in the Superstitions. Or one of the other ones. Read everything about 'em. And then I heard about the Golden Calf and I got to reading about it. And that was the one I decided I'd find."

  Denton had picked up his cup and was pacing back and forth with it, still untasted. He waved his unoccupied hand at the bookshelves along much of the fourth wall. "Collected everything I could find on it, and that's a hell of a lot of stuff." He laughed. "Mostly just baloney. Just fellows rewriting somebody else's rewriting of tall tales." Denton laughed. "One of 'em said if you say a man's a prospector, you don't have to say he's a liar." He put down the cup and sat across from Leaphorn.

  "That's sort of what I suspected," Leaphorn said. "Always seemed funny that gold deposits were so easy to lose out here."

  Denton didn't like the sound of that.

  "They weren't exactly lost," he said, tone defensive. "With the Adams dig, the Apaches wiped out the miners. It was usually something like that. Pretty much the same with the Golden Calf, too."

  "Yeah," Leaphorn said. Sooner or later Denton would get to what he'd brought him to talk about. The coffee was good and the chair comfortable, something more important to him now that his back had discovered arthritis. He had intended to drive north today to see Chee at Shiprock, but Chee could wait. After a while Denton would say something interesting and it would give him a chance to ask questions. He had several to ask.

  "About fifteen years ago one of the people working on a lease up by the Utah border told me about the Golden Calf. He was part Z
u¤i, part white, and he said his white granddaddy used to talk about it. Claimed the grandfather had known Theodore Mott, the fellow who found the deposit and was borrowing money to build the sluices he needed to develop it. This half-Zu¤i guy showed me a little bit of placer gold. It was supposed to have been sluiced out of an arroyo draining south out of the Zu¤i Mountains."

  Denton unbuttoned his shirt pocket and extracted a little bottle about the size of shampoo bottles found in hotel bathrooms.

  "Here it is," Denton said, and handed the bottle to Leaphorn.

  "I had it assayed. A little more than half an ounce, but it is flake gold all right. You'll notice some of those little grains are pinkish and some are almost black. It don't turn shiny gold until it's washed and refined." He laughed. "The son of a bitch charged me for a full ounce, and that was back when we were having that inflation and the gold price was up over six hundred dollars."