The Wailing Wind Part 13

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 d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n 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."

23.

Learning the color of Marvin McKay's sedan proved to be so easy that Leaphorn found his whole att.i.tude 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 relations.h.i.+p, 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 was?"

"I don't pay much attention to cars," said Mrs.Mendoza, sounding out of patience.

"I just thought you might have remembered what color it was."

"Why don't you ask his lady about that car? I think she has it. Anyway, she came up here and drove it off."

"Well, thank you," Leaphorn said. "I will." And he put down the phone and sat a moment feeling stupid. Of course. There would be no reason for the police to impound that vehicle. Judging from what he knew about McKay, the car was probably owned by Peggy. And judging from what he knew about public officials in general, there was no reason to believe anyone would have taken on the authority of having it towed into storage.

Peggy McKay answered the telephone on the first ring. Yes, she remembered Leaphorn, and yes, she had gotten a friend to drive her out to Denton's place to recover her car. What kind of car was it? A pale-blue Ford Escort. Yes, she still had it.

Leaphorn thought of the remarkable messiness of Mrs. McKay's house. "Do you know if the car has been through a car wash since your husband's death?"

Hesitation now, while Peggy McKay considered that.

"Not really," she said. "I hosed it off myself last spring after a muddy spell."

"I'd like to come over and take a look at it, if that's all right with you," Leaphorn said.

"Sure. Why not? I'll be home all day."

Just out of the driveway, he saw Louisa's car rolling up the street and stopped. So did she, and rolled down her window.

"I'm going into Gallup to talk to Mrs. McKay again," he shouted. "Then maybe if he's home, I'll go see Denton."

"Why?"

"I want to tell him he's a liar and I don't want anything to do with him," Leaphorn said.

"Good for you," said Louisa. "And when you get back I've got some information for you."

"Like what?" Leaphorn said. But she had closed the window and was parking her car under her favorite tree across the street.

Peggy McKay hadn't bothered to park her Ford Escort in the shade. It sat in her drive, with its windows rolled down and its grimy pale-blue finish bearing evidence that it hadn't been through a car wash since its hosing last spring. Mrs. McKay appeared in her doorway as Leaphorn got out of his pickup.

"Feel free," she said, pointing to the car and laughing, "but don't get it dirty."

"Thanks," Leaphorn said.

"Have you had any luck? I mean, finding Mrs. Denton?"

"Not yet," Leaphorn said. He opened the pa.s.senger's-side door of the Escort. The interior reminded him of Mrs. McKay's living room.

"I'm not sure whether I told you," she said, coming down from the porch into her driveway. "I think Denton got off way too easy for shooting Marvin. I think it was a plain premeditated murder."

She was staring at Leaphorn, awaiting a response.

"The whole thing left a lot of unanswered questions," he said. And, when that didn't seem adequate, added: "Some pieces left out of the puzzle."

"What are you looking for in my car?"

"I guess you could say I'm just hoping to find one of the missing pieces."

"To find Linda Denton?"

"Yes," Leaphorn said.

"Not in that car, you won't," Mrs. McKay said. She walked back into her house and shut the door.

Leaphorn made another quick inspection of the front-seat area, looked into the back-seat s.p.a.ce, opened the trunk of his own car and extracted the cardboard box he kept there to stash his grocery purchases and prevent them from rattling around. He put the box on the driveway and began extracting odds and ends from Mrs. McKay's floorboards-starting with a Baby Ruth wrapper, a crumpled tissue, a paper cup, a wrapper from a McDonald's hamburger, and a cigarette b.u.t.t. Leaphorn inspected each item, at least with a glance, before adding it to his pile. By the time he had completed his search of both sides of the front seat and moved to the back, his box was almost half filled with wildly a.s.sorted trash, evidence that Mrs. McKay was a regular customer of various fast-food establishments and a person who saved Wal-Mart advertising sections, discount coupons, empty cigarette packages, and even the high heel from a black slipper. The only thing he found under the floor mats was a torn section from an Arizona road map, and it seemed to have no relevance.

Some of the stuff he set aside on a handkerchief he'd spread on the front seat-but very little. That included the quarter and dime he'd extracted from behind the pa.s.senger's-side seat, an a.s.sortment of long blonde hairs he'd carefully picked from under the pa.s.senger's-side headrest, a set of pliers he'd extracted from the glovebox, and a Chase Hardware sack and the sales slip he'd found crumpled inside it.

Leaphorn took time now to inspect the pliers and the slip. The slip had been issued the day before McKay was killed and covered the pliers (an expensive $24.95 set), a crowbar, and a roll of plumber's tape. He had found neither the tape nor the crowbar in the car. Leaphorn found himself imagining Linda Denton being hit on the head with one and bound with the other, and he made a mental note to ask Mrs. McKay about the purchases.

With the larger trash items out of the way, he removed the rear seat. Under it he found more trash, but nothing more interesting than an advertising flier for last year's Navajo Tribal Fair. Then he borrowed the flashlight from the glovebox, slid belly down onto the front floorboards, and pursued a close-up search there. The light and his probing hand harvested three business cards he'd missed (all from a State Farm Insurance salesman), a sock, another lost dime, what seemed to be a white marble but was actually a gum ball, a bright-red bead, and a small disk of clear gla.s.s that Leaphorn presumed at first was the lost face of a cheap watch.

He was wrong about that. When he held it up for inspection, he saw it was a lens. In fact, it was a progressive-focus lens prescribed and ground for those who need one focal length for reading, another for driving and other distances. Leaphorn slipped it into an envelope he saved from the trash, added the strands of hair, and sat awhile thinking. He was remembering one of the photographs on Wiley Denton's wall. Beautiful young Linda, her long blonde hair disheveled by the breeze, smiling at the photographer, wearing silver-rimmed gla.s.ses.

24.

Leaphorn gave Mrs. McKay the coins, showed her the lens he'd found, asked her if she or any of her friends wore such gla.s.ses, and when she could think of none, he avoided her obvious question by refusing to speculate and saying he'd try to find out. Then he showed her the sales slip from the hardware store.

"Any idea what these were for?"

"What's this," Mrs. McKay said, peering at the slip. "Is that 'crowbar'?"

"That's the way I read it."

"We don't have one. I don't even know what it is."

"It's a steel bar with a sort of hook end used for prying things," Leaphorn said. "How about the other items?"

"I can hardly believe it," she said, and laughed. "We have a drip under the sink. For months we had a drip, and Marvin said not to worry, he'd fix it. I guess he finally got around to it." But as she tried to go on, her voice broke. She looked away. "I mean, I guess he was going to."

Leaphorn had intended to borrow Mrs. McKay's telephone to call home, but grief prefers privacy. He drove out to a motel parking lot on old U.S. 66 and called his Window Rock number from the pay phone. Louisa answered.

"Are you at Wiley Denton's house?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said. "That's my next stop."

"He's in oil and gas leases, that sort of thing, isn't he? If he is, ask him if he knows anything about the owners.h.i.+p of Mock Land and Cattle Company or Apache Pipe."

"What's up?" Leaphorn asked. "I think that cattle company is Bill Mock's outfit. Or used to be. Probably owned by his heirs now. He operated a good-sized feedlot operation in Sandoval County, and a ranch."

"Feedlot?"

"Where buyers fatten up range cattle before they send them off to become sirloins and hamburgers," Leaphorn said. And Apache Pipe, I think that's Denton. Years ago, he went into it with the Jicarilla tribe to finance the gas-collection system for the gas wells, but I heard he bought out the tribe's interest."

"Denton's," said Louisa. "How about that."

"Tell me," Leaphorn said.

"That land on top of Mesa de los Lobos is the typical Checkerboard Reservation jumble, which won't surprise you. Much of the north slope of the mesa is reserved Navajo land, and a lot of the south side was in the allocation the government gave to the railroad. Some of that somehow went back into public domain owners.h.i.+p-probably some swapping back and forth with private owners.h.i.+p, and you Navajos bought back a piece of it, and other chunks were sold off by the railroad to various private owners. I'll guess you knew a lot of that already."

"Some of it," Leaphorn said.

"The parcel I think you and Sergeant Chee might be interested in is a six-section block at the head of the Coyote Canyon drainage. Somebody named Arthur Sanders and Sons bought it from the outfit handling land sales for the railroad in 1878. That must have become Sanders Cattle, because in 1903 William L. Elrod bought it from them. Since then, there's two more transfers of t.i.tle, looks like due to deaths and inheritances, but the company with the t.i.tle to the six sections is still Elrod Land and Cattle Company. You got that?"

"I've got it," Leaphorn said. "I imagine Chee will want to find out if the Elrod people know what's going on down at the bottom end of their canyon. And thanks. This must have been a lot of hard work for you."

"Hold it. Hold it," Louisa said. "I haven't got to the hard-work part yet, where it gets complicated."

"Oh?"

"Elrod also has a grazing lease on a small tract of Bureau of Land Management land adjoining its property. There's some sort of legal question about whether that lease will be renewed. Argument over whether Elrod overgrazed it, I think it is. Anyway, Elrod dropped its application to renew on that, and the existing lease expires September one."

"September one," Leaphorn said. "Couple more weeks to run then. Any significance to that?"

"I don't know, but maybe. There's an option to buy, contract to sell recorded, which is tied to the Bureau of Land Management lease. Effective when the lease expires. The clerk at the BLM office said Apache would probably apply for the lease, but hasn't yet. She said the little tract is just a sort of cut-off corner, and she didn't think anyone else would want it."

"The purchase price didn't happen to be on the record?"