Tony Hillerman - Leaphorn & Chee 15 - The Wailing Wind

by The Wailing Wind(lit)

  "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.

  Chapter Eighteen

  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.

  "No," she said, "I was just remembering. That day I was trying to get caught up on everything because we were going to have a weekend in San Diego. Marvin was planning to close on a deal he was working on with Mr. Denton, get the money Denton was paying him, and we had reservations on Amtrak for the next afternoon. We'd go swimming, visit Sea World or whatever they call it-and I think most of all I was looking forward to the train ride."

  She gave Leaphorn a shy smile. "Old as I am, I'd never been on a train. You see them go by every day here in Gallup, of course, and when we got stopped at the crossing barrier to let one pass, I'd wave at the people in the observation cars and Marvin would say, 'Peggy, when I get this deal closed, we'll take an Amtrak vacation.' The evening before when he came in, he told me he thought this would be the day. He had all the items he needed, and Mr. Denton was agreeable. So I arranged to take some of my vacation time."

  With that, she paused. Remembering those plans, Leaphorn guessed, organizing her thoughts. She sighed, shook her head.

  "He called me about the middle of the morning, I think it was. He said he couldn't make it into town for lunch. He said he was wrapping up some loose ends. He sounded very happy. Exuberant. He said he'd just talked to Denton, and that Denton had the payment money at his house and he was going out to get it."

  "Did he say where he was calling from?"

  "He didn't say. But I remember he said he had to make a run out to Fort Wingate."

  "Did he say what he was going to do there?"

  She shook her head.

  "Did he mention having anyone with him?"

  "No."

  "Can you remember anything else he told you in those calls?"

  She frowned, thinking. "Well, in the first one he said Denton had asked him a lot of questions. He wanted Marvin to tell him just about everything about where the gold deposit was located, and Marvin said no way. Not until they had sealed the deal. He said then Denton said he wanted to know just the general area. What direction it was from Fort Wingate. Things like that. Marvin said he told him it was north. And Denton said, 'North of Interstate Forty?' And Marvin said he told him it was. He said he told Denton when he came he'd give him all the details, even show him some photographs of the sluice for placer mining in the bottom of the canyon."

  "Photographs," Leaphorn said. "Had you seen them?"

  She nodded. "They weren't very good," she said. "Didn't show much. Just
some old rotted logs half buried in the sand and a bunch of trees in the background. Marvin wasn't much of a photographer."

  "Did your husband ever tell you just where this lost mine was located?" Leaphorn asked.

  "I guess he did in a general way," she said. "Once when I asked him about it, he asked me if I remembered when we went to the Crownpoint rug auction and had driven down that road that runs east from Highway Six Sixty-Six to Crownpoint, and I said I remembered. And he said it's off in that high country to the right when you're about halfway there."

  "Driving east on Navajo Route Nine?"

  "Yeah, I think that's the road. If we had a map I could tell you for sure."

  For once, Leaphorn didn't have a map. But he didn't need one.

  "Did Mr. McKay have those pictures with him when he went to see Denton?"

  "I think so. He put a whole bunch of things in his briefcase before he left that morning. And-" She stopped, looked down, rubbed her hand across her face. "And after I got the word about what happened, and the sheriff came to talk to me about it, I looked through his things and the pictures weren't there."

  "What did he tell you on the second call?"

  "Well, he said he might be a little late." She forced a smile for Leaphorn. "Pretty ironic, isn't that? Then he said he was a little bit troubled by those questions Denton asked. Like Denton was trying to get the information he wanted without paying for it. He said just in case Denton was going to pull a fast one-something sneaky-he was arranging something himself. He said not to hold dinner for him. If he was late, we'd go out to eat."

  "Did he say what he was arranging?"

  She shook her head. "I think he called it 'some just-in-case, backup insurance.'"

  "No details?"

  "No. He said he had to run."

  Leaphorn chose to let the silence linger. Navajos are conditioned to polite silences, but he had learned long ago that they put pressure on most belagaana. It had that effect on Peggy McKay.

  "And he said he'd be seeing me in a few hours. And he loved me."

  Leaphorn nodded.

  "I know everybody thinks Marvin was a crook, and I guess the way the laws are written, sometimes he was. But it was just his way of making a living, and he always did it in ways that wouldn't really hurt people."

  "Do you think that he was selling Mr. Denton what Denton wanted to buy?"

  "You mean the location of that Golden Calf Mine-or whatever you call it?"

  "Yes."

  "I never much believed in those treasure stories myself," Peggy McKay said. "But, yes. Marvin had done a lot of work on this Golden Calf thing. For more than a year. I think he was selling Mr. Denton everything you could possibly get to find that place. Whatever it was. I do."

  "Do you think he pulled a gun on Denton?"

  "No. Denton made that up."

  "The police found the gun."

  "Marvin didn't have a gun. He never did have one. He didn't like them. He said anyone who did the kind of work he did was crazy to have a gun."

  "You told the officers that?"

  "Of course," she said. "They seemed to think that's what a wife would be expected to say. And later when the sentencing came up, I told the district attorney. He said that pistol hadn't been recorded anywhere, and they hadn't been able to trace it."

  "Yeah," Leaphorn said. "That's often the case."

  "It was like they took for granted I was lying. It was finished. Marvin had a criminal record. He was dead. And Mr. Denton admitted shooting him. Why worry."

  Leaphorn thought she had probably summed the situation up very well. But he just nodded. He was putting together what Peggy McKay had told him. He was thinking that the death of Marvin McKay looked an awful lot like a carefully planned and premeditated murder. And that left him two puzzles to solve. The one he had brought with him: Linda Denton was still missing with no reason why. And a new one. He couldn't think of a reason, short of insanity, why Denton would have wanted to kill Marvin McKay.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I know you've never had much use for academic methods," Louisa told Leaphorn, "but for heaven's sake, doesn't it make sense, when you're trying to solve a problem, to collect all the information available?"

  His inability to find a good answer to that had led Joe Leaphorn to call Jim Chee at Chee's Shiprock office. Chee was en route to a meeting at ntp headquarters in Window Rock, the secretary said, but she'd have the dispatcher contact him and ask him to call Leaphorn. That happened. Leaphorn told Chee he was developing serious doubts about Wiley Denton's role in the McKay homicide. He asked Chee if he knew anything new that might strengthen the notion of a connection between the McKay and Doherty cases.

  "Not me," Chee said. "But I think Osborne may have been putting some pieces together. And we may be about to make a mistake. Could we get together and talk?"

  "What mistake?"

  "The Bureau is getting a search warrant for Peshlakai's place."

  "Bad idea?"

  "I can't see Peshlakai killing anyone," Chee said. "But when you invest too much time in a suspect, you're inclined to get stuck with him. I'm early anyway. Okay if I stop by your place before checking in with the office?"

  "I'll have the coffee on."

  "Lay out a cup for Officer Manuelito, too," Chee said. "This Doherty homicide is her case." He laughed. "In my opinion, that is. We'll be there in about forty-five minutes."

  "Officer Manuelito is with you?"

  "Yes," Chee said, with no explanation.

  For Leaphorn, with half his lifetime spent with the Navajo Tribal Police and thus battle-scarred by years of dealing with various federal law enforcement agencies, no explanation was needed. Officer Manuelito had been chosen by the Federals as their designated scapegoat in the difficult Doherty homicide. The fact that she had screwed up the supposed crime site had not been erased by her discovery of the genuine crime site. The meeting to which Chee had been summoned probably had been instigated by a Bureau of Indian Affairs law-and-order bureaucrat, and would involve the criminal investigator assigned by the bia, someone from the fbi, someone in the top ranks of the Navajo Nation's justice department, and assorted others, and Chee had brought Bernie along to defend herself and explain how she had found where the victim had apparently actually been shot.

  By the time Chee's car parked in Leaphorn's driveway, Louisa had the kitchen's dining table set for four.

  Leaphorn's old mugs had been put back on the shelf and replaced by cups and saucers-and each of the four places she had set was equipped with napkin, spoon, and a plate for cookies.

  Louisa had stopped by en route to Towaoc on the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation where she hoped to locate an elderly Ute purported to have an account from his maternal great-grandfather of Ute warfare with Comanche raiders in the 1840s.

  "But that can wait," Louisa said. "If you don't mind, I'll hang around and find out what's going on with this mysterious murder of yours."

  "It's not my murder," Leaphorn had said. But he couldn't think of a way to tell her that maybe it would be better if she went about her academic business and left homicide to the cops. Then, too, he wasn't actually a cop himself any longer.

  When the real cops arrived, they didn't seem to care, either. In fact, Bernadette seemed pleased. She and Louisa had gotten along well, and Bernie was greeted with a hug. But Chee had a meeting to attend. He looked at his watch, then at Leaphorn.

  "I talked to Mrs. Marvin McKay," Leaphorn said, getting right to the point, "and she said several things of interest. One. She said McKay didn't have a gun. Had never had a gun. Always said that carrying a gun was insane."

  Chee nodded. Waiting. Knowing that Leaphorn knew he'd be skeptical.

  "The gun the police found on the floor by McKay's body was a thirty-eight-caliber revolver. A heavy old Colt model with a medium-length barrel. Too big to go into his pants' pockets. I put it in the pocket of McKay's jacket-an expensive leather job. I could hardly force it in. Hard to get it out. Denton told me Mc
Kay pulled the pistol out of his jacket pocket as he was preparing to leave, carrying Denton's case with the money in it, and his own case. That would be hard to do, but possible, I guess."

  He glanced at Chee, found him looking more interested and less skeptical.

  "So we go to item two. No holes in the jacket. No blood on it. And no jacket on McKay's body when the law arrived. It was hanging on the back of a chair. It makes it seem sort of obvious that the shooting didn't happen while McKay was leaving."