The Wailing Wind

'And something else, Joe,' Bellman continued, 'I got a feeling you're going to get interested in this one before it's over.'

Leaphorn opened his mouth, closed it. He wanted Bellman to drive away before Louisa came out with her trophy, or without it, rushing up and giving Bellman more ammunition for his gossip mill. 'Guess who I saw with old Joe Leaphorn out at the T.G.H. trading post?' Bellman would be saying. But now Leaphorn was curious. He blurted out a 'Why?'

'The stuff they found in Doherty's truck. Bunch of maps, some computer printouts about geology and mineralogy, a whole bunch of Polaroid photographs taken in canyons, that sort of material.'

Leaphorn didn't comment.

'Had a folder full of reprints of articles about the Golden Calf Mine,' Bellman added. 'I'll bet that will remind you of old Wiley Denton and what's his name? The con man Wiley killed five years ago. McKay, wasn't it?'

'Marvin McKay,' Leaphorn said. Yes, it did remind him, but he wished it hadn't. The Wiley Denton case was one he'd like to forget if he could. And he probably could, if he could ever find out what had happened to Wiley Denton's wife.

Chapter Three

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Sergeant jim chee came out the side exit of the Navajo Tribal Police headquarters in a mood compatible with the weather—which was bad. The gusting west wind slammed the door behind him, saving Chee the trouble, blew up the legs of his uniform pants, and peppered his shins with hard-blown sand. To make things worse, the anger he was feeling was as much against himself—for complicating the problem—as against the Chief for not just telling the fbi to mind its own business and against Captain Largo for not handling this himself.

Part of the dust blown against Chee was now being stirred up by a civilian pickup truck being parked in one of the clearly marked 'Police Vehicle Only' spaces. It was a familiar truck, blue and banged up, rust spot on the right fender—the truck of Joe Leaphorn, now retired but still the Legendary Lieutenant.

Chee took two steps toward the truck and was abruptly beset by the familiar mixed feelings of irritation, admiration, and of personal incompetence he always had around his former boss. He stopped, but Leaphorn had his window down and was waving to him.

'Jim,' he shouted. 'What brings you down to Window Rock?'

'Just a little administrative problem,' Chee said. 'How about you? Here at the office, I mean?'

'I was just scouting around for somebody to buy me lunch,' Leaphorn said.

They got a table at the Navajo Inn, ordered coffee. Chee would eat a hamburger with fries as always, but he pretended to study the menu while struggling with his pride. All during the long drive down U.S. 666 from his Shiprock office in answer to the Chief's summons, he'd considered going by Leaphorn's place and asking for some advice. This idea had been rejected on various grounds—unfair to bother the lieutenant in his retirement, or he should be able to deal with it himself, or it would make him look like a nerd in the eyes of his former boss, or… Finally he'd rejected the idea—and then there was Leaphorn waving at him through the dust.

He glanced over the menu at Leaphorn, whose own menu still lay unopened on the table.

'I always have an enchilada,' Leaphorn said. 'People fall into habits when they get older.'

That seemed to Chee as good an opening as any. 'You still have that habit of being interested in odd cases?'

Leaphorn smiled. 'I hope you mean the killing of that Doherty boy. I'm sort of interested in that.'

'What do you hear?' Chee asked, thinking it would be just about everything—except maybe the final twist to his own problem.

'What I read in the Gallup Independent and the Navajo Times, which was what the fbi was telling. No suspect. And I guess no known motive. Doherty apparently shot somewhere else, hauled to where he was found in his own pickup truck. That's about it.'

'How about what's on the rumor circuit?'

'Well, it's said that the fbi's not happy with how the crime scene was handled.' Leaphorn was grinning at him. 'And if I was into betting, I'd bet that's what brought you down to see the Chief today.'

'You'd win,' Chee said. 'The dispatcher sent Officer Manuelito out to check on an abandoned truck. Bernie looks in and sees the body. Doherty slumped over on the driver's side. No blood. No sign of violence. Just like ten thousand drunks you've seen pulled over to sleep it off. When Doherty doesn't wake up, Bernadette reaches in to check an ankle for a pulse. It's cold. So then she calls in and asks for an ambulance and hangs around waiting for it.'

Chee stopped. Leaphorn waited. He sipped his coffee.

Chee sighed. 'And she says she walked around some, collecting seed pods and that sort of thing. Bernie's a botany buff. The ambulance guys pull the body out and then, finally, the blood gets noticed. Of course by that time everybody has walked all over everything. But there wasn't a way in the world Bernie could—' He stopped. With Leaphorn, there was never any need to explain anything.

He waited for Leaphorn to tell him that Bernie should have looked more closely at the situation, should have taped off the site. But of course Leaphorn didn't. He just sipped a little more of his coffee and put down his cup.

'I ran into Delo Bellman yesterday at Two Grey Hills. He said Doherty had a bunch of stuff with him relating to gold mining. Some articles about that famous old Golden Calf diggings. He said it would remind me of the Wiley Denton case. Wiley shooting that con man. That sound right?'

Chee nodded, made a wry face. 'As you may have heard I'm not all that popular with the Bureau these days. But the grapevine told me it looked like Doherty might have been looking into that McKay homicide himself. I heard some of the stuff the Federals found in his briefcase must have been copied out of the evidence files in that homicide.'

'He was old Bart Hegarty's nephew,' Leaphorn said. 'And it's an old dead case. He could have gotten that