The Wailing Wind - Leaphorn & Chee 17 (16 page)

They hadn't settled the puzzle of Denton's wrong map, nor why Denton had lied about McKay's jacket, if indeed he had, or any of the several other things that had been bothering Leaphorn. But Louisa had firmly and emphatically resolved the Linda-Wiley relationship. Yes, Wiley was in love with Linda, and vice versa. Louisa had no doubt at all.

Sergeant Chee's patrol car was parked at the café, and Chee was inside holding a corner table. He stood to greet them.

"I owe you a big favor if you ever need one," he told Leaphorn. "Osborne didn't seem to have anything to complain about."

Leaphorn nodded.

"Is this something I'm not supposed to know about?" Louisa asked.

"Just avoiding some bureaucratic red tape," Leaphorn said.

"How about you, Sergeant Chee? Are you willing to tell me?"

"A piece of evidence got misplaced," Chee said. "I wasn't sure how to deal with it, and I asked Lieutenant Leaphorn for advice. He handled it for me."

Louisa laughed. "No rules broken either, not so anyone would notice it. Right?"

"Let's just say no harm was done," Leaphorn said.

Officer Bernadette Manuelito was hurrying up to the table, looking flustered, saying she was sorry to be late. Leaphorn pulled back a chair for her, introduced her to Louisa, told her he was glad she could join them.

"Sergeant Chee asked me to come," Bernie said. "He said you were interested in the Doherty homicide."

"I think we were just talking about that," Louisa said. "Something that got Joe involved in it."

Professor Bourbonette had been around long enough, attended enough meetings with touchy faculty prima donnas, to sense instantly that she would have been better off to have restricted herself to smiles and nods.

Officer Manuelito's face expressed unnaturally intense interest. Leaphorn and Chee looked merely embarrassed.

"But I gather no harm was done," the professor added.

"I was just simplifying matters," Sergeant Chee said.

"An item that might be useful as evidence was involved," said Leaphorn, in an effort at damage control. "Jim wanted to get it back in place without involving a lot of needless paperwork."

"Oh," said Louisa. "Okay." And noticed that Officer Manuelito was leaning forward, her face flushed, and that Jim Chee was looking remarkably tense, and that it was time to change the subject.

"By the way," she said, "one of our history professors specializes in American frontier, nineteenth century, and I made the mistake of asking him if he'd heard of the Golden Calf gold legend and that touched off a standard academic fifty-minute lecture."

"Hey," said Chee, "I'd like to hear about that."

"As I understand it, the recorded facts are that a civilian quartermaster employee at Fort Wingate, a man named Theodore Mott, was sent with four soldiers to deliver some supplies to the camp where they were building Fort Defiance. The soldiers were detached to join the cavalry unit at Defiance. Mott came back alone and resigned from his job. There's paperwork for that much in the army records. The interesting part is just talk about him finding a gold deposit on his trip."

Louisa paused. Bernie leaned forward again. Chee said: "Go ahead. This is going to be the interesting part."

"The legend is that Mott came back with a sack of placer gold. Several thousand dollars worth of it, very big money those days. He's supposed to have told a tale of having to detour going to Fort Defiance to avoid a band of Navajos who looked hostile. It was early summer after a wet winter—and the snowy winter is also recorded. They did an overnight camp in a canyon carrying runoff water. Mott did some placer mining with a frying pan and liked what he saw in the sand. On the way back, alone now, he stopped again and—the way he told it—collected the sack of gold between sundown and dark and the higher he got up the canyon, the richer the sand. When he awakened the next morning, six Navajos were standing around him. He said their leader was a shaman and while none of the Navajos could speak English, he knew enough Navajo words to know the shaman was telling him this canyon was a sacred place and being there for him was taboo, and if he came back again they would kill him."

The waiter was hovering, waiting to hand them their menus and to take their drink orders. Louisa paused while the group did their duty.

Bernie leaned forward, opened her mouth, said: "I'd like to know—"

"Yes," said Chee. "What happened next? Did he leave?"

"There's a sort of vague reference in Fort Wingate military records of Mott asking a military escort for a project, and the request being denied. But apparently he got three other men to join him and they left with pack animals, telling people they were going to be prospecting down in the Zuñi Mountains. Later one of the men came back to Wingate. He left a bunch of letters Mott had written to people at the fort to be mailed, and, according to the story, he turned in a substantial amount of placer gold at the assayer's office, and bought supplies, and headed out again." She threw up her hands. "That's the end of it. No one ever saw Mott or any of his partners again."

"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."