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.
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,
