The Wailing Wind - Leaphorn & Chee 17 (6 page)

He was in the kitchen, having toast and his first cup of coffee, when Professor Louisa Bourbonette emerged from the guest bedroom wrapped in her bulky terry-cloth bathrobe, said, "Good morning, Joe," and walked past him to the coffeepot.

"Way past
midnight
when I got in," she added, suppressing a yawn. "I hope I didn't wake you."

"No," Leaphorn said. "I'm glad you made it. Wanted to ask you if you know anything about a spooky Hispanic legend about La Llorana. Which I probably mispronounced."

"You did," said Professor Bourbonette. She was eyeing the file folder open beside his plate. "It's a tale told about a lost woman, or about a lost woman with a lost child whose sorrowful cries can be heard at night. There are several versions, but the authorities pretty well agree they all originated in the
Valley
of
Mexico
and then spread north into this part of the world."

She nodded toward the file. "That looks official," she said. "I hope it's not."

"It's just some personal notes I kept on that old McKay homicide. The case was closed right away. You may remember it. Wiley
Denton
confessed he shot the man. Claimed self-defense. McKay had a criminal record as a swindler, and
Denton
got a short term."

Louisa sat across the table from him and sipped her coffee.

"That the one in which the shooter's wife sort of simultaneously disappeared? Did she ever come back?"

Leaphorn shook his head.

"You surprise me," she said. "I've been reading about that Doherty homicide in the
Flagstaff
paper. I thought you might be getting interested in that."

"Well, there might be a connection."

Louisa had looked very sleepy while pouring her coffee. Now she looked very interested. She was a small, sturdy woman with her gray hair cut short, holding a tenured position on the
Northern
Arizona
University
anthropology faculty with, to her credit, a long list of publications on the legends and oral histories of Southwestern Indian tribes and the old settlers who invaded their territory. And now she was smiling at Leaphorn, expectantly.

"A connection," she said. "Does it connect to the Legend of the Wailing Woman or just to
Gallup
's richest man shooting his swindler?"

"Probably neither," Leaphorn said. "It's very shaky, very foggy." But as he said that he knew he would tell her about it, discuss it with this white woman. With that knowledge came the familiar guilty feeling. This had been one of the ten thousand reasons he'd loved Emma—this business of laying the problems and troubles of his work before her and finding as he talked, as he measured her reactions, the fog tended to lift and new ideas emerge.

He shouldn't share with another woman this special link he'd had with Emma. But he had done it before with Louisa—a sign of his weakness. And so he turned his notebook to a blank page, got out his pen, and began drawing.

Louisa laughed. "A map," she said. "Why did I know there would be a map."

Leaphorn found himself grinning. It was a habit he was often kidded about. The dominant feature on the wall in his Criminal Investigation Division office at Navajo Tribal Police headquarters had been an enlarged version of the Indian Country map of the American Automobile Association—a map defaced with hundreds of pinheads, their colors identifying incidents, events, or individuals whom Leaphorn considered significant. The black pins represented places where Navajo Wolves had been reported being seen or where complaints of other witchcraft activities of these mythical "skinwalkers" had been registered. The red ones marked homes of known bootleggers, blue ones dope dealers, white ones cattle thieves, and so forth. Some were footnoted in the precise and tiny script he used, others coded with symbols only Lieutenant Leaphorn understood. Everyone in the law-and-order community seemed to know of this map, and of the smaller versions Leaphorn kept in his vehicle—mapping out whatever case he happened to be working on at the time.

"I can't deny it," Leaphorn said. "I admit I like maps. They help me sort out my thinking. And on this map, here's Wiley Denton's mansion, where he shot McKay. The straight line is Interstate Forty and the railroad running into
Gallup
. And over here…" He drew a large rectangle.

"Here is
Fort
Wingate
." He created more squares, circles, and symbols and used the pen as a pointer, identifying them.

"
Gallup
," he said. "And over here's where Doherty's body was found, and this is
McGaffey
School
."

Louisa examined the sketch. "Lots of big empty blank spaces," she said. "And you haven't told me what
McGaffey
School
has to do with any of this. And where's your mark for the Wailing Woman?"

Leaphorn tapped a spot on the edge of his
Fort
Wingate
square closest to the McGaffey square. "I think that should be about here," he said.

Louisa looked surprised. "Really? I hope you're going to explain this now."

"Maybe not," Leaphorn said. "I'm afraid you might take it seriously."

"I won't," she said, but her expression denied that.

"Think of it in terms of connections," Leaphorn said. "There seem to be three, with one of them very fuzzy." He held up one finger. "Two shooting victims. Both had collected information on that legendary lost Golden Calf mine. McKay seemed to have claimed he'd found it. Doherty seemed to be looking for it. McKay goes to meet
Denton
and
Denton
shoots him. Doherty had
Denton
's unlisted telephone number written in his notebook."

Leaphorn paused.

Louisa nodded, held up one finger, said: "One connection."

Leaphorn held up two fingers.

"Doherty did some of his research out at the
Fort
Wingate
archives. Probably McKay did, too. Natural enough, because in those days when prospecting was booming, the fort was the only military base out here. It was supposed to provide them protection from us Indians."

Louisa frowned. "Yes. Seems natural they would. But that doesn't seem to mean much. What are you looking for?"

Leaphorn then held up three fingers—one of them bent.

"Now we come to the vague and foggy one. When
Denton
shot McKay it was Halloween evening." He stopped, shook his head. "I'm sort of embarrassed to even mention this."

"Go ahead. Halloween gets my attention."

"The
McKinley
County
sheriffs department had two calls that evening. One was the
Denton
shooting McKay business out here." Leaphorn pointed to
Denton
's house on the map. "And the other was a call from McGaffey reporting a woman screaming and wailing out on the east side of
Fort
Wingate
."

"Oh," said Louisa. "The Wailing Woman legend comes into play at last. Right?"

"Not quite yet." Leaphorn said. "And maybe we should call it the Wailing Wind legend. Question of what, or who, was doing the wailing. Anyway the sheriff sent a deputy out and called
Fort
Wingate
security people. They scouted around and couldn't find anything and decided it was just some sort of Halloween prank."

"So how do we get to the Wailing Woman legend?"

"Months later," Leaphorn said. "
Denton
had started doing his time in that federal white-collar prison in
Texas
and he began running ads in the
Gallup
Independent,
Farmington
Times
, and so forth. Personal ads, addressed to Linda, and signed Wiley, saying he loved her and asking her to come home. I asked around, learned that Linda Denton hadn't been around since the killing. That seemed odd. I checked. Never reported missing, except her parents had talked to the sheriff about it—thinking something must have happened to her."

"No wonder," Louisa said. "What happened next?"

"Nothing," Leaphorn said. "She was a mature married woman. No mystery to the killing.
Denton
did it. Confessed he did it. Worked out a plea bargain. Dead case. The official theory was that Mrs. Denton had been working with McKay and when the deal went sour and he got shot, she just took off. No crime. No reason to look for her."

"But you did."

"Well, not exactly. I was just curious."

"So am I," Louisa said. "About when you're going to tell me about how this old Hispanic legend of the tragedy of a lost lady got involved in this gold mine swindle."

"I heard about that Halloween evening call, got the name of the caller, and went out to see her. She's a teacher out at
McGaffey
School
. Said these kids showed up at her house that Halloween night—students of hers. They told her about cutting across the corner of the fort to get out to the road and catch a ride into
Gallup
, and they heard these awful terrifying moans and crying sounds. She said they seemed genuinely frightened. She'd called the sheriff."

"And his deputy found absolutely nothing?"

Leaphorn chuckled. "Nothing. But she told me it turned out to have a healthy benefit because two of the kids were Hispanics, who connected the sounds with the Wailing Woman ghost story, and one was a Zuñi. She thought they were hearing a skinwalker, or another of the Navajo version of witches, or maybe that Zuñi spirit who punishes evildoers, and the white girl thought it might be an ogre, or vampire, or one of their things. So the word spread around
McGaffey
School
, and it put an end to the student body's practice of taking that forbidden shortcut."

"Did you talk to any of the kids?"

"Somebody from the sheriff's office did."

"You didn't."

"Not yet," Leaphorn said. He picked up the old notebook, flipped through it.

"I still have the names. You want to go with me?"

"Golly," she said. "I wish I could. I've got to meet with an old man named Beno out at Nakaibito. He's supposed to know a story about his great-grandmother being captured by the Mexicans when she was a child. His daughter is bringing him into the trading post there to talk to me. Could it wait?"

"It could," Leaphorn said. "But it's already waited a long, longtime."

Chapter Seven

The first name on Leaphorn's old list was a Zuñi girl whose father worked at
Fort
Wingate
and who was now a student at the
University
of
New Mexico
and out of reach. The second was Tomas Garcia, now a husband and father. Leaphorn found him at his job with a
Gallup
lumber company.

Garcia threw the last bundle of asphalt shingles on the customer's flatbed truck, turned up his shirt collar against the dusty wind, and grinned at Leaphorn. "Sure, I remember it," he said. "It was a big deal, getting interviewed by a deputy sheriff when you're in high school. But I don't think it ever amounted to anything. At least not that any of us ever heard about."

"You mind going over it again? They didn't put much in his report."

"There wasn't much to put," Garcia said. "I guess you know the layout at Wingate. Miles and miles of those huge old bunkers with dirt roads running down the rows. It's easy to get through that fence the army put up in the olden days when it was storing ammunition out there, and we'd cut through there to get to the highway when we wanted to go into Gallup. That evening one of the kids was having a sort of Halloween party in town. So we were going to that. Catch a ride in, you know. Cutting across through the bunkers, we started hearing this wailing sound."