The Wailing Wind Part 3

6.

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.

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, sup-pressing 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 misp.r.o.nounced."

"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, st.u.r.dy 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 a.s.sociation-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 s.p.a.ces," 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 embarra.s.sed to even mention this."

"Go ahead. Halloween gets my attention."

"The McKinley County sheriff's 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 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 Zuni. She thought they were hearing a skinwalker, or another of the Navajo version of witches, or maybe that Zuni 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, long time."

7.

The first name on Leaphorn's old list was a Zuni 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."

Garcia paused, recalling it, bracing himself against the west wind that was blowing dust around their ankles. "I guess it was just the Halloween idea in our heads. Kids, you know. But it was spooky. Just getting real dark, and a cold wind blowing. At first I thought it was the wind, whistling around those bunkers. But it wasn't that."

"What do you think it was?"

He shook his head. "Why don't we talk about this where it's warm," he said. "Get Gracella in on it, too. She might remember it better than I do."

"Is that Gracella deBaca?" If it was, Leaphorn had found the fourth person on his list.

"Gracella Garcia now," Garcia said, looking proud of that.

Leaphorn followed Garcia's pickup home and got a free lunch of excellent posole posole generously seasoned with pork. Gracella was on maternity leave from her job at the McKinley County hospital, and to Leaphorn's unpracticed eye she seemed extremely close to motherhood. Her account of that twilight Halloween was much like her husband's-as Leaphorn had expected. They would have relived the affair and more or less agreed on the memory. generously seasoned with pork. Gracella was on maternity leave from her job at the McKinley County hospital, and to Leaphorn's unpracticed eye she seemed extremely close to motherhood. Her account of that twilight Halloween was much like her husband's-as Leaphorn had expected. They would have relived the affair and more or less agreed on the memory.

"It was very, very scary," Gracella said, as she dished Leaphorn another dipper of posole posole. "Tomas pretends he thinks it was just some sort of a practical joke for Halloween. That's what the cops told us." She gave her husband a stern look. "But he knows better," she said. "He's just macho. Doesn't want to admit he believes in La Llorona."

Garcia let that pa.s.s. They'd been over this before.

"I'm not saying it wasn't Gracella's mythical lost mother, but how about the music?"

"We always get to that," Gracella said. "I'm not even sure I heard the music. Maybe you talked me into that."

"What sort of music?"

"Not my kind," Garcia said. "I'm into hard rock, or heavy metal. This sounded like cla.s.sical stuff."

"You could barely hear it," Gracella said. "The wind was blowing. Sometimes you thought you heard like a piano playing. Sometimes not."

"The wailing and the music came together?" Leaphorn asked.

"I better explain," Garcia said. "We were hurrying along, cutting across where the rows of bunkers are lined up. And we heard a scream. Or sort of like a scream from a long ways off. So we stopped and tried to listen. And we heard it again. Plainer this time. More like wailing." He glanced at Gracella. "Right?"

She nodded.

"So we stopped and just stood there awhile," she said. "We heard it some more. And we decided to turn around and go back and report it to the police. While we were talking about that, the wailing stopped. And then after a while we heard the piano music. Tomas thought that proved it was just Lloyd Yazzie trying to scare people. Playing a recording, you know?"

"Why Lloyd Yazzie?"

"He was a guy in the band," she said. "And the music sounded like a piece we practiced. A real jerk."

After that, nothing. The wind had risen. They walked back to McGaffey and got the teacher to call the sheriff.

"What do you think was causing it?" Leaphorn asked.

They looked at each other. "Well," Gracella said. "n.o.body has proved there aren't any ghosts."

Garcia laughed, which irritated Gracella.

"Okay," she said. "You can laugh. But remember that one deputy didn't laugh. He thought it was serious, and he came back to talk to us later."

Garcia's expression dismissed that. "That was old Lorenzo Perez," he said. "That was after Mr. Denton was in jail and started running those advertis.e.m.e.nts asking his wife to come home. Lorenzo thought Mr. Denton had got jealous and killed her, and he was running those advertis.e.m.e.nts to make himself look innocent."

"I don't care," Gracella said. "Anyway, he didn't act like he thought it was just a joke."

The last name on Leaphorn's list seemed to have vanished with time-apparently part of the nomadic movement of belagaana belagaana families who follow jobs around the country. He spent the rest of the afternoon taking a look at part of the 130 square miles that make up what was, when Leaphorn was a lot younger, the Fort Wingate Army Ordnance Depot, finding the approximate place where the Garcias had their fright, and trying to imagine what might have been happening to cause it. When Leaphorn had driven past this place on U.S. 66 as a very young man, it had been busy. Its bunkers, built for World War II, had been full of the sh.e.l.ls and gunpowder of the Vietnam War. With the end of the Cold War it had been "decommissioned" and had slipped into a sort of semighost town ident.i.ty. The Navajo Nation stored records in a couple of bunkers; the army used a bit of it on the edge of the Zuni Mountains to launch target missiles to be shot at by the Star Wars scientists at White Sands Proving Grounds; other agencies used a bunker here or there for their purposes, and TPL, Inc., had machinery set up in others converting the rocket fuel still stored there to a plastic explosive useful in mining. families who follow jobs around the country. He spent the rest of the afternoon taking a look at part of the 130 square miles that make up what was, when Leaphorn was a lot younger, the Fort Wingate Army Ordnance Depot, finding the approximate place where the Garcias had their fright, and trying to imagine what might have been happening to cause it. When Leaphorn had driven past this place on U.S. 66 as a very young man, it had been busy. Its bunkers, built for World War II, had been full of the sh.e.l.ls and gunpowder of the Vietnam War. With the end of the Cold War it had been "decommissioned" and had slipped into a sort of semighost town ident.i.ty. The Navajo Nation stored records in a couple of bunkers; the army used a bit of it on the edge of the Zuni Mountains to launch target missiles to be shot at by the Star Wars scientists at White Sands Proving Grounds; other agencies used a bunker here or there for their purposes, and TPL, Inc., had machinery set up in others converting the rocket fuel still stored there to a plastic explosive useful in mining.

What made the old fort interesting to those who persisted in hunting the several legendary gold mines of the adjoining territory was its checkered history. The so-called "fort" had originated about 1850 when the Americans were replacing the Mexicans as landlords of the territory. It was called Ojo del Oso then, after the spring where travelers had stopped and bears came down out of the Zuni Mountains to get a drink. Next it was called Fort Fauntleroy, honoring a colonel who had served bravely in the Mexican war. But said colonel went south in 1860 to serve bravely in the Confederate Army, causing the name to be changed to Wingate, after an officer free of secessionist loyalties. During the efforts of Carlton to round up the Navajos into the concentration camp at Bosque Redondo and clear the Four Corners mountains for prospectors hunting the gold he coveted, it had been used as a sort of holding pen for Dineh families being herded eastward into captivity. It played the same role in reverse when President Grant let the tribe go home to their "Dine' Bike'yah," their land between the sacred mountains, in 1868.

The gold prospectors of the time had come often to the fort. They found a little gold here and there, but the huge bonanza discoveries always seemed to be "lost" before they could be exploited. They produced more legends than wealth. As Leaphorn recalled its history, the fort had been expanded from 100 square miles to 130 square miles in 1881 for reasons no one seemed to understand. It had been used as a sort of internment camp for Mexicans fleeing Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution, as a center for sheep research, as a vocational school for Indians, etc.; but its major role came as the place where the military could store immense amounts of high explosives that, as Leaphorn's uncle had explained it to him, "wouldn't kill n.o.body important if they blew away this whole part of the world."

There had been times when the fort was busy, with trains rolling in and out on the network of spur tracks from the main lines and hundreds of employees kept busy with the loading. But on this afternoon, as Leaphorn drove under the rusty iron arch over the main entrance, all was quiet. Two pickups were parked down a side street in front of a warehouse, and a car sat in front of the modest old headquarters building. Leaphorn parked beside it, went up the steps into the office, and looked around. He hadn't been here in years-since the first year he had been called in from Crownpoint and a.s.signed to run the special investigations office in Window Rock. But nothing seemed to have changed.

A gray-haired woman arose from behind the counter, where apparently she had been filing something. She hadn't changed much either-had already been wrinkled and gray last time he'd seen her close up. Teresa Hano was her name. He was amazed that he remembered it.

"Good to see you again, Lieutenant," she said. "You law enforcement people seem to be taking a lot of interest in us all of a sudden. What brings you out here? And in plain clothes, too."

And now he was surprised she remembered him. He laughed, patted his denim jacket, said: "This is what I'm wearing all the time now. No more policeman."

"No?" she said. "I was guessing you're interested in the killing of the Doherty boy. If you were, I couldn't tell you anything much. Nothing I didn't already tell the FBI men."