The Wailing Wind - Leaphorn & Chee 17 (5 page)

I need to find it to save my dignity, she thought. To restore my self-respect. To show those jerks I'm not a dummy.

"Pretty bad," Bernie said. "I need to save my job."

Hostiin Yellow was pushing the piles of her seeds into a single heap, returning them to her sack. He said: "I need to say something to you about this gold. Gold has always brought trouble for the Dineh. It makes the
belagaana
crazy. General Carlton thought we had a lot of gold in our mountains, so he had the army round up us Navajos and move us away on that long walk to Bosque Redondo. They drove the Utes out of
Colorado
to get the gold in their mountains. And drove the tribes out of the
Black Hills
, and pretty much killed the California Indians. Everywhere they find gold, they destroy everything for it. They tear up our Mother the Earth, they break the cycle of life for everything."

Bernie nodded.

He handed her the sack. "It makes people crazy," he said. "And crazy people are dangerous. They kill each other for gold."

"My uncle," Bernie said. "I think you are telling me Mr. Doherty was murdered because of that gold. And I think you know where he got all those stickers in his pants. Can you just tell me?"

He shook his head. "I'll think about it," he said. "Right now, I think you should let the other policemen find that place."

Bernie nodded. But she could tell from his expression that he didn't interpret that gesture as consent. She sat and watched him.

And Hostiin Yellow watched her. As hunter for the white men, his Girl Who Laughs had lost her laughter. Why must she care who had done this crime? If a
belagaana
did it, let the
belagaana
punish him if they must. If it was a Navajo—one who still lived by Changing Woman's laws—then he would come to be cured of the dark wind that had caused him to kill. But no good to tell this young woman all this. She knew it. And Girl Who Laughs would live her life her own way. That, too, was Navajo. He was proud of that, too. And of her.

She was glancing away from him now, at something outside the window. Her face reminded him of the old photograph in the museum at Window Rock—the women who had endured their captivity at Bosque Redondo. The narrow, straight nose, the high cheekbones, the strong chin. None of the roundness here that the gene pool of the Zuñis, Hopis, and Jemez had contributed to the Dineh. Beauty, yes. Dignity, too. But nothing soft about Girl Who Laughs.

Hostiin Yellow sighed.

"Girl Who Laughs, you have always been stubborn. But I want you to listen to me now," he said. "The
belagaana
have always killed for gold. You already know that. You have seen it. But have you thought about how some people kill for religion?"

Bernie considered that, looking for a connection and seeing none. Hostiin Yellow was studying her.

"Are you hearing what I say?"

Bernie nodded again. "Yes," she said. But she really wasn't. "You mean like the Israelis and the Palestinians? And the people in the Balkans, and…"

Hostiin Yellow's expression told her he was disappointed.

"Like people in Ganado or Shiprock or Burnt Water or
Albuquerque
or
Alabama
or anywhere," he said. "When the wind inside turns dark and tells them it must be done."

Bernie tried for an expression that would suggest she understood. It didn't seem to work.

"You have seen what the coal mining has done to our Earth Mother on Black Mesa. And other places. Have you seen what these modern placer mines do? Great jets of water washing away everything. The beauty is gone. Our sisters the plants, our brothers the animals, they're all dead or washed away. Only the ugly mud is left."

"I saw a documentary about that high water-pressure placer mining. On public television. It made me sad. And then it made me angry," Bernie said.

"Think and consider," Hostiin Yellow said. "If it makes you angry, it might make some people angry enough to kill. Think about it. What if those are the people you are looking for? What do they do if you find them?"

Chapter Five

Leaphorn stopped his pickup beside a patrol car bearing the decal of the Apache County Sheriff's Department, which told him the scene of the Doherty homicide was officially decided to be in
Arizona
and not in
San Juan County
,
New Mexico
, a few feet to the east. The car was empty. Fifty feet beyond it, fenced off behind a yellow crime scene tape, was Doherty's blue king-cab truck with a burly fellow in a deputy uniform sitting on its tailgate looking at Leaphorn. Who did he know in the
Apache
County
department? The sheriff, of course, an old-timer, and the undersheriff, but neither of those would be out here. Once Leaphorn had known all the deputies, but deputies come and go, changing jobs, getting married, moving away. Now he knew fewer than half of them. But he could see he knew this one, who was walking toward him. It was Albert Dashee, a Hopi Indian better know as Cowboy. And he was grinning at Leaphorn.

"Lieutenant," Deputy Dashee said. "What brings you up here to the scene of our crime? I hope you're going to tell me that New Mexico admitted the Arizona border is actually over there"—Dashee pointed to the west side of the arroyo—"and San Juan County has to do the babysitting for the Federals instead of me."

"No," Leaphorn said. "I was just feeling curious about this homicide. I thought I'd come up and see if I could take a look."

"I can think of two reasons you might be curious," Dashee said, still grinning.

"Two?"

"One is the Bureau blaming Jim Chee's girlfriend for messing up the scene. And one is the Bureau looking for a way to connect this with Wiley Denton killing that con man. Killing McKay. You were always interested in that one."

"Let's just say I'm like an old retired fireman who can't stay away when something's burning." He was thinking how impossible it was to keep a secret, maintain even a shred of privacy, in the small world of police work. "You're looking well, Cowboy," he said. "I haven't seen you since that
Ute
Mountain
casino robbery business."

Their chat lasted maybe five minutes, and then Leaphorn walked to the tape, looked at the truck, and said: "Found the body in the front seat. That right?"

"Curled up on the seat cushion," Dashee said. "Head against the driver-side door, feet the other way. Like sleeping. Hell, I'd have figured it just like Bernie did. Another drunk." He held the tape down so Leaphorn could step easily over it. "In case anybody asks, I said you can't come in without permission from the agent in charge."

Leaphorn peered through the window, touching nothing. He looked in the truck bed, through the small side window into the passenger cab. Crouched to examine the tire treads and to look under the vehicle with Cowboy trailing along, watching him and talking.

"Oops," Cowboy said. "I hear my radio," and he was trotting away to his car.

Leaphorn slipped the tobacco tin from its sack and pushed it into a secluded and weedy corner. That done, he circled the truck, examining the maze of tracks left by ambulance people and the swarm of investigators who followed.

Then Cowboy was back.

"They're sending a tow for the truck," Cowboy said, moving back toward the tape. "You finished here? Seen anything interesting?"

"Not much," Leaphorn said. "I guess you noticed that tobacco tin over there by the brush." He pointed. "I thought maybe it might have fallen out of the truck when the medics were taking the body out. Then it could have got kicked over there."

Dashee examined Leaphorn a moment. "Where?"

Leaphorn walked over. Pointed.

Dashee squatted, peered, looked up at Leaphorn, nodded, and straightened up.

"Funny the crime scene crew didn't notice that," he said, looking at Leaphorn. "Don't you think?"

Leaphorn shrugged. "City boys, those agents," Leaphorn said. "Lawyers, accountants. Very good at what they're good at. How good would we be working a mail fraud case in
Washington
?"

Dashee was rewarding Leaphorn with a broad grin tinged with skepticism and directing him back over the crime scene tape, back toward Leaphorn's pickup, opening the door for him.

Leaphorn got in, started the engine, then turned it off.

"You said the Bureau was connecting this case with Wiley Denton killing the con man. Do they think Doherty was trying to work some sort of swindle like McKay?"

"The Federals don't confide much in us sheriff deputies," Dashee said.

"But they talk to the deputy's boss when they have to and sheriffs like to share the information."

Dashee grinned. "I've heard a couple of agents were at
Fort
Wingate
following Doherty's tracks, and they found out he was very interested in the archives out there. And they found Wiley Denton's telephone number in Doherty's notebook."

Denton
's number. Leaphorn's eyebrows raised.

"Really? If my memory is good from five years ago,
Denton
had an unlisted number."

"He still does," Dashee said.

Leaphorn let this new information digest for a moment.

"And those archives he was looking into. The Navajo Nation's?" The Navajo Nation had been using one of the multitude of explosives bunkers at the old fort to store its old records and documents. But why would Doherty have an interest in those? None Leaphorn could think of.

"No," Cowboy said. "He was checking into the old fort archives. Especially records going back to the 1860s. When the prospectors were making all those fabulous gold discoveries, and coming in wanting the fort to protect them from us savage and hostile redskins."

Interesting, Leaphorn thought. "I guess you have to sign in to get access. Is that how they knew he was looking?"

"Better than that," Dashee said. "They even knew what pages he looked at. Found his fingerprints."

"On old paper?"

"I didn't believe it either. But Osborne—" Dashee stopped. "I didn't say his name. He ain't supposed to be telling stuff like this to a civilian cop. But anyway Special Agent John Doe was telling me about a technique they use now that picks up the fingerprint oil off of all sorts of rough surfaces. On smooth surfaces, like glass or metal, it evaporates after a day or two. On cloth or paper it absorbs. He said they even recovered the fingerprints off cloth wrappings of one of those Egyptian mummies."

Leaphorn was checking his memory relative to the
Prince Albert
can. Had he been careful enough? Probably. But how about Chee? And how about Officer Bernie Manuelito?

He heard the diesel sound of the tow truck coming to haul Doherty's king cab off to where it could be given the fine-tooth-comb laboratory treatment. He restarted his engine, waved at Dashee, and headed home.
Fort
Wingate
, he was thinking. So Doherty's path toward sudden death had taken him there. Had McKay's fatal journey also involved a stop at the obsolete old fort? His own futile hunt for the young and beautiful Mrs. Wiley Denton had taken him there. He would pull out his old file and see if the notes he'd made on that frustrating visit to the fort would tell him anything.

Chapter Six

As always, Leaphorn awoke at middawn before the edge of the sun rose over the horizon. It was a Navajo hogan habit, dying out now, he presumed, as fewer and fewer of the Dineh slept in their bedrolls on hogan floors, went to bed early because of lack of electric lighting, and rose with the sun not only for the pious custom of greeting Dawn Boy with a prayer but because hogans were crowded and tradition made stepping over a sleeping form very bad manners.

Normally Leaphorn spent a few minutes waking up slowly, watching the sunlight turn the high clouds over the mountains their various shades of pink, rose, and red, and remembering Emma—who had suggested in her gentle way that their first view of the day should be of the sun's arrival just as Changing Woman had taught. This was another Leaphorn habit—awakening with Emma on his mind. Before her death he'd always reached over to touch her.

For months after her funeral, he continued that. But touching only her pillow—reaching for the woman he loved and feeling only the cold vacuum her absence had left—always started his day with grief. He'd finally dealt with that by switching to her side of the bed so this habitual exploration would take his hand to the windowsill. But he still came awake with Emma on his mind, and this morning he was thinking that Emma would approve of what he intended to do today. He intended to see if he could find some way to get a handle on what had happened to pretty little Linda Denton.