have done it.' Ozzie laughed. 'Denton was busy at home killing McKay.'
Now Leaphorn's phone call found Lorenzo Perez at home, and Perez remembered Lieutenant Leaphorn.
'Hey,' he said. 'Hey, now. Talking to you takes me back a ways. You remember that time we caught that rustler that had rebuilt his house trailer so he could drive calves into it?'
Leaphorn remembered it, but he managed to steer Perez into the Halloween call. 'They say you took the call on that one. It always seemed funny to me. Like more than a prank.'
This produced a silence. Leaphorn cleared his throat. 'Lorenzo. You still there?'
'I hope you're not just joking me,' Perez said, sounding grim. 'I've had enough of that.'
'I'm not. I think something serious was going on out there that night.'
'Well, I got joked about it, and made fun of, until I got just damn sick of it,' Perez said. 'I kept looking into it when I could. Kept trying to get the sheriff to get the army to do some sort of a general search. We didn't have the manpower to do it, of course, hundred and something thousand acres, lots of old empty buildings and damn near a thousand of those huge old bunkers. But the army could have done it. Would have, I'll bet you, if the sheriff had just got serious about it and made some sort of demand. But he just laughed. Said they didn't even have a missing person report. Nothing at all to go on.'
'I'd like to talk to you about it,' Leaphorn said.
They met at the coffee shop in the Gallup Mall.
Perez was one of those New Mexico Hispanics whose face suggests Castile and the Conquistadores more than Mexico. His gray hair was cut bristle-short, as was his mustache, and his very dark eyes examined Leaphorn as if looking for some sort of understanding.
'Driving over,' he said, 'I was thinking I don't know what I can tell you that's going to help whatever you're doing. I just talked to the kids that night, talked to them several other times, in fact, and kept going out there and nosing around. But I don't know how I can convince you that we had a murder, or something like it, committed out there that night.'
Having said that, he picked up his menu, glanced at it, put it down, and shook his head. 'I hate things I can't understand,' he said.
'Me, too,' Leaphorn said. He told Perez of his arrangement with Wiley Denton, of what the students he'd talked to had told him, and of his own hunch that Linda Denton might have been the wailing woman.
'About the only thing I can tell you that you might not know is that Wiley Denton told me he'd given Linda an expensive little disk player. One of those things with headphones that you carry around with you. When she left that morning to go to a lunch with some women friends, she took it with her.'
'No,' Perez said. 'I didn't know that. The kids thought they heard music. At least Gracella Garcia did.'
'And Mrs. Hano out at the Fort Wingate archives office told me McKay was out there that morning checking on something or other and that he had a woman in the car with him.'
'Hey,' said Perez, leaning forward. 'Mrs. Denton?'
'She said she didn't know who it was. She just noticed a woman seemed to be sleeping in the car, and that McKay told her it was his wife.'
'Did you check on that?'
'It wasn't McKay's wife,' Leaphorn said. 'She was at work in Gallup. McKay called her there.'
'So he was lying to Mrs. Hano.'
'So it would seem,' Leaphorn said.
'Gracella was the one who seemed so certain about hearing music,' Perez said. 'A couple of the others thought it might have been the wind whistling, or maybe their imagination.'
'I noticed that,' Leaphorn said.
'She seemed like a pretty level-headed—' Perez stopped. 'Wait a minute. When did Mrs. Hano talk to McKay? See the woman sleeping in his car?'
'About noon, I think,' Leaphorn said. 'I've got it in my notes.'
'Gracella told me she'd noticed a car out there middle of the afternoon. She said they see army vehicles and trucks out there now and then, but this was a light-colored civilian sedan. What color was McKay's car?'
'I have no idea,' Leaphorn said. 'But I'll see if I can find out.'
Chapter Twenty-Three
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Learning the color of Marvin McKay's sedan proved to be so easy that Leaphorn found his whole attitude toward this dismal affair with Denton brightening. Deputy Price had told him no one had claimed McKay's few personal belongings. Not surprising since, aside from the few dollars in his wallet, they had little if any value. And then Price had described Peggy McKay as a common-law wife—which meant that, sans any proof of her relationship, getting personal items back would be complicated. But the car was another matter.
It had been parked at Denton's place, and it almost certainly remained parked there for days since this homicide wasn't one that received any normal criminal investigation. McKay wasn't charged with anything. His role was victim. Who cared about his car? Sooner or later, George Billie might have gotten tired of looking at it, called the sheriff, and had it towed away. Or maybe wired the ignition, drove it away himself, and sold it to the car strippers.
Leaphorn made another call to Denton's place.
'No,' said Mrs. Mendoza, 'he's still not home. Like I told you.'
'Maybe you could help me, then,' Leaphorn said. 'Do you remember the car Mr. McKay drove? What color it
