The Wailing Wind Part 17

Chee walked down the floor, pistol pointed. Bernie had recovered his flashlight and was walking with him, the light focused on Denton.

"Wiley," Leaphorn said. "Hand your pistol over to Sergeant Chee. You don't need it now."

Denton pulled the pistol out of the waistband of his trousers. "Take it," he said, and handed it to Chee.

"And the letter," Leaphorn said. "Let me keep that for you. You'll always want it."

Denton handed Leaphorn the letter, turned away from Chee, and put his arms behind his back.

"Mr. Denton," Chee said. "I arrest you for the murder of Thomas Doherty. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say may be used against you."

"Oh!" Bernie exclaimed. "What did you do to your arm? It's bleeding."

"Banged it on the doorjamb," Chee said. "I'll take Mr. Denton out to the car and call this in." He was looking at Linda on her cardboard resting place. "Send an ambulance, I guess." He tugged at Denton's sleeve.

"Just a minute," Denton said, and turned to Leaphorn. "Let me read that last part again."

Leaphorn looked at Denton's hands, cuffed behind his back, said: "I'll read it to you."

"No. You don't need to do that," Denton said. "I can remember every word of it."

In the reflected light of the flash, Leaphorn's face looked old and exhausted. "Wiley," he said, "remember something else, too. Remember you didn't want this to happen. Remember this was because of a lot of misunderstanding."

"I'm remembering something else, too. That remark you made to me about Shakespeare. I asked the woman at the library about Oth.e.l.lo Oth.e.l.lo, and she got me a copy. He was just about as stupid as me. But with me, I didn't have someone egging me on. I did it to myself. Looking for a treasure when I already had one."

"Come on," Chee said, and he and Wiley walked through the darkness toward the brilliant sunlight of the open door.

Bernie had been staring down at the body. She shook her head and turned away. "It's hard to believe this," she said. "She starved to death here in the dark. It's just too awful. What was McKay doing? Using her as a hostage, I guess. But why didn't Mr. Denton come and get her? What happened?"

"Denton shot McKay before he had time to tell him where he was holding Linda. Denton said he didn't believe any of it," Leaphorn said. "Don't you think we should get out of here?"

"What did Linda say?" Bernie asked, pointing to the paper in Leaphorn's hand. "Could I read it?"

Leaphorn didn't answer that.

"I guess not," she said. "But could you tell me whether she was angry?"

"I guess you would say it was a love letter," Leaphorn said. "She apologized for introducing McKay to Denton, said she didn't know McKay was an evil man. She said that since Denton hadn't come for her, she was afraid McKay had killed him, and he would never then be able to read her letter. But she would slip off into dreams now and then, and she would dream of Denton being in a hospital, recovering. If he did, she knew he would come and she would try to stay alive until then. And if she failed him again, she wanted him to know that she always loved him and that she was sorry."

Leaphorn turned off the flashlight. He didn't want to see Bernie's face.

"She was sorry," Bernie said in a choked voice. "She said she she was sorry?" was sorry?"

The reflected light from the doorway showed Leaphorn that Bernie's eyes were wet. Time to change the subject.

"What happened to Jim's arm?"

"Oh," she said. "When he saw Denton holding that pistol, he jumped into me. He knocked me out of the doorway."

"Hurt you?"

"No, it didn't hurt me," Bernie said, her tone indignant. "He was trying to protect me."

"I think we need to get out into the suns.h.i.+ne," Leaphorn said.

"I should stay," Bernie said. "I'm on duty. Stay with the body until the crime scene crew gets here."

"I'll stay with you then," Leaphorn said. "Aren't you concerned about the chindi chindi? Linda's ghost would have been locked in here with no way out."

"Lieutenant Leaphorn," Bernie said. "Haven't you forgotten? When one dies, their good goes with them. Only the bad is left behind to form the ghost. I doubt if Linda Denton left much of a chindi chindi."

They stood beside the body for a while, with nothing to say. Bernie focused her flash on a little black plastic case partly obscured by Linda Denton's skirt and glanced at Leaphorn-a questioning look.

"That's some sort of miniature disk player," Leaphorn said. "She loved music, and Denton had just given it to her. Birthday present, I think he said."

"I guess that was the source of the music those kids heard. If it hadn't been for the wind wailing that night-" With that Bernie found a tissue in her pocket and wiped her eyes. "Hadn't been for the wind they would have known they were hearing Linda and not a ghost."

Leaphorn nodded. "We have that story of our own, you know, about the Hard Flint boys twisting the good air into evil."

"Right now I'm thinking my mother was right," she said. "There's just too much evil in this business for me. Too much sorrow."

"You wouldn't have any trouble getting another job," Leaphorn said. "Something where you help people instead of arresting them."

"I know," Bernie said. "I'm thinking about it. I'm going to quit this. I'd like to make people happy."

Leaphorn pointed toward the bunker door. Through it, they could see Sergeant Jim Chee putting Wiley Denton in his patrol car. "You know, Bernie, you could start that 'making people happy' career right now. Tell that young man out there what you've just told me."

Bernie looked out into the sunlight, at Chee talking to Denton through the car window. She looked back at Leaphorn, shrugged, spread her hands in that gesture of defeated frustration.

Leaphorn nodded. "I know," he said. "When I was a lot younger, an old Zuni told me their legend about that. Two of their young hunters rescued a dragonfly stuck in the mud. It gave them the usual wishes you get in these stories. One wished to be the smartest man in the world. The dragonfly said, 'So you shall be.' But the second hunter wanted to be smarter than the smartest man in the world."

On this Leaphorn paused, partly for effect, partly to see if Bernie had already heard a version of this, and partly to see if she had cheered up enough to be listening. She was listening.

"So the dragonfly converted the second hunter into a woman," Bernie said, laughing and nodding at Leaphorn.

"I'm retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, but I'm still commissioned as a McKinley County deputy sheriff," he said. "I can stay here with the body."

Then he watched her walk toward the open door. Toward the dazzling sunlight. Toward Jim Chee.

HarperCollins e-Book Exclusive Extras Leaphorn, Chee, and the Navajo Way I thought you might like to know the roots of my two favorite characters - Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (now retired) and Sgt. Jim Chee, both of the Navajo Tribal Police. thought you might like to know the roots of my two favorite characters - Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (now retired) and Sgt. Jim Chee, both of the Navajo Tribal Police.

Leaphorn emerged from a young Hutchinson County, Texas, sheriff who I met and came to admire in 1948 when I was a very green "crime and violence" reporter for a paper in the high plains of the Panhandle. He was smart, he was honest, he was wise and humane in his use of police powers - my idealistic young idea of what every cop should be but sometimes isn't.

When I needed such a cop for what I intended to be a very minor character in The Blessing Way The Blessing Way (1970), this sheriff came to mind. I added on Navajo cultural and religious characteristics, and he became Leaphorn in fledgling form. Luckily for me and Leaphorn and all of us, the late Joan Kahn, then mystery editor of what was then Harper & Row, required some substantial rewriting of that ma.n.u.script to bring it up to standards and I - having begun to see the possibilities of Leaphorn - gave him a much better role in the rewrite and made him more Navajo. (1970), this sheriff came to mind. I added on Navajo cultural and religious characteristics, and he became Leaphorn in fledgling form. Luckily for me and Leaphorn and all of us, the late Joan Kahn, then mystery editor of what was then Harper & Row, required some substantial rewriting of that ma.n.u.script to bring it up to standards and I - having begun to see the possibilities of Leaphorn - gave him a much better role in the rewrite and made him more Navajo.

Jim Chee emerged several books later. I like to claim he was born from an artistic need for a younger, less sophisticated fellow to make the plot of People of Darkness People of Darkness (1980) make sense - and that is mostly true. Chee is a mixture of a couple of hundred of those idealistic, romantic, reckless youngsters I had been lecturing to at the University of New Mexico, with their yearnings for Miniver Cheevy's "days of old" modified into his wish to keep the Navajo Value System healthy in a universe of consumerism. (1980) make sense - and that is mostly true. Chee is a mixture of a couple of hundred of those idealistic, romantic, reckless youngsters I had been lecturing to at the University of New Mexico, with their yearnings for Miniver Cheevy's "days of old" modified into his wish to keep the Navajo Value System healthy in a universe of consumerism.

I'll confess here that Leaphorn is the fellow I'd prefer to have living next door and that we share an awful lot of ideas and att.i.tudes. I'll admit that Chee would sometimes test my patience, as did those students upon whom I modeled him. But both of them in their ways, represent the aspects of the Navajo Way, which I respect and admire. And I will also confess that I never start one of these books in which they appear without being motivated by a desire to give those who read them at least some insight into the culture of a people who deserve to be much better understood.

-Tony Hillerman

The Novels, As Annotated by T.H.

Leaphorn novels: The Blessing Way The Blessing Way; Dance Hall of the Dead Dance Hall of the Dead; Listening Woman Listening WomanChee novels: People of Darkness People of Darkness; The Dark Wind The Dark Wind; The Ghostway The GhostwayLeaphorn/Chee novels: Skinwalkers Skinwalkers; A Thief of Time A Thief of Time; Talking G.o.d Talking G.o.d; Coyote Waits Coyote Waits; Sacred Clowns Sacred Clowns; The Fallen Man The Fallen Man; First Eagle First Eagle; Hunting Badger Hunting Badger; The Wailing Wind The Wailing WindStandalone novels: The Fly on the Wall The Fly on the Wall; Finding Moon Finding Moon

All t.i.tles were published in New York by Harper & Row, until 1993's Sacred Clowns Sacred Clowns, by which time the house, still based in New York, had become HarperCollins.

The Blessing Way (1970) (1970) Lt. Joe Leaphorn must stalk a supernatural killer known as the "Wolf-Witch" along a chilling trail of mysticism and murder.

TH: It was easy enough to make the Enemy Way ceremony germane to the plot. It is used to cure illness caused by exposure to witchcraft and my villain was trying to keep the Navajo away from his territory by spreading witchcraft fears. The problem was devising a way for Joe Leaphorn to connect the ceremony and the killer. The solution came to me when I noticed the peculiar pattern of sweat stains on a felt hat caused by a silver concho hatband. With that in mind, I skip back to an early chapter, write in Leaphorn at a trading post seeing the villain buying a hat to replace one stolen and wondering why someone would steal an old hat and not the expensive silver. That done, I then skip forward to the "scalp shooting" phase of the ceremony, have Leaphorn notice the "scalp" is a sweat-stained hat, find the "scalp shooter" who has delivered the hat to the ceremony, learn from him where (and why) he stole the hat, and thereby solve the mystery.

The Fly on the Wall (1971) (1971) A dead reporter's secret notebook implicates a senatorial candidate and political figures in a million-dollar murder scam.

TH: Motivating my unheroic hero [reporter John Cotton] to pursue a news story after a death threat was the problem. I hit on having him flee to New Mexico, go fis.h.i.+ng at my favorite little stream in isolated Brazos Meadows, and realize the death threat was merely a ruse to get him away from the state capital to somewhere he could be murdered quietly. Thus he knows his only hope is to solve the crime.

Dance Hall of the Dead (1974) (1974) An archaeological dig, a steel hypodermic needle, and the strange laws of the Zuni complicate Lt. Leaphorn's investigation into the disappearance of two young boys.

TH: The problem here was how to have Leaphorn understand what was motivating the behavior of George Bowlegs, a fugitive Navajo boy. To do this I had Joe gradually understand Zuni theology as a Navajo (or a white mystery writer) would, and realize the boy was trying to make contact with the Zuni Council of the G.o.ds. Thus the boy (and Leaphorn) would come to the Shalako ceremony, at which these spirits make their annual return to the pueblo, and thus I would have my excuse to describe this incredibly beautiful ceremony.

Listening Woman (1978) (1978) A baffling investigation of murder, ghosts, and witches can be solved only by Lt. Leaphorn, a man who understands both his own people and cold-blooded killers.

TH: This book taught me that inability to outline a plot has advantages. The plan was to use Monster Slayer and Born for Water, the hero twins of the Navajo Genesis story, in a mystery involving orphaned brothers (a "spoiled priest" and a militant radical) who collide in their campaigns to help their people. I would use a shaman, the last person to talk to my murder victim before he is killed, as a source for religious information meaningless to the FBI but revealing to Leaphorn. After a series of first chapters that led nowhere, I wrote a second chapter in which Leaphorn stops the villain for speeding and, more or less out of whimsy, I have him see a big ugly dog in the backseat of the car, intending to use the delete key on my new (and first) computer to delete said dog later. That unoutlined dog became crucial to the plot. No more trying to outline.

People of Darkness (1980) (1980) An a.s.sa.s.sin waits for Officer Jim Chee in the desert to protect a vision of death that for thirty years has been fed by greed and washed by blood.

TH: Older, wiser, urbane Leaphorn refused to fit into my plan to set a plot on the Checkerboard Reservation, in which the government gave alternate square miles of land to the railroads and in which Navajo was intermixed with a plethora of whites, Zunis, Jemez, Lagunas, etc., and a dozen or so missionary outposts of different religions. Since Joe wouldn't be surprised by any of this I created younger, less culturally a.s.similated, Jim Chee.

The Dark Wind (1982) (1982) Officer Jim Chee becomes trapped in a deadly web of a cunningly spun plot driven by Navajo sorcery and white man's greed.

TH: One of the many facets of Navajo culture that appeals to me is the lack of value attached to vengeance. This "eye for an eye" notion pervading white culture is looked upon by the Dineh as a mental illness. I planned to illuminate this with a vengeance - motivated crime - the problem being how to have Joe, who doesn't believe in vengeance, catch on. The answer came to me in the memory of a long interview I once did with a private detective about his profession. I never used any of that, but a card trick he showed me proved to be just what I needed. My villain, a trading post operator, showed the same trick to Chee, and when he solved it he knew how the crime was done.

The Ghostway (1984) (1984) A photo sends Officer Chee on an odyssey of murder and revenge that moves from an Indian hogan to a deadly healing ceremony.

TH: The trigger for this book was a roofless stone hogan with adjoining shed in a little spring-fed pocket on Mesa Gigante, which dominates the Canoncito Navajo Reservation. I happened across it one autumn afternoon, noticed a hole had been knocked in its north wall, the traditional exit route for the body when death has infected the hogan. But why had the dying person not been moved outside before he died, so the chindi could escape?

Skinwalkers (1986) (1986) Three shotgun blasts in a trailer bring Officer Chee and Lt. Leaphorn together for the first time in an investigation of ritual, witchcraft, and blood.

TH: How do I awaken Jim Chee, sleeping in his cot beside the paper-thin aluminum wall of his trailer home, so he will not be killed when the a.s.sa.s.sin fires her shotgun through said wall? Everything I try sounds like pure psychic coincides - which I detest in mysteries. Nothing works until I remember the "clack, clack" sound made when a friend's cat goes through the "cat door" on his porch. I write in a spooky stray cat, for whom Chee makes this cat door (thereby establis.h.i.+ng him as a nice guy and giving me a chance to explain Navajo "equal citizens.h.i.+p" relations.h.i.+ps with animals). The cat, spooked by the a.s.sa.s.sin's approach, darts from its bed under a pinon into the trailer and awakens Chee. At book's end, when I need to terminate a budding romance, the cat serves a wonderfully symbolic role. This was the first book in which I used both Leaphorn and Chee. It made a great leap forward in sales and hit a bunch of bestseller lists, but not the crucial one in The New York Times The New York Times.

A Thief of Time (1988) (1988) When two corpses appear amid stolen goods and bones at an ancient burial site, Leaphorn and Chee must plunge into the past to unearth the truth.

TH: My "breakout book" (described elsewhere in considerable detail) was a "breakout" in more than sales and eventually led to the Public Service Award of the U.S. Department of the Interior, an honorary members.h.i.+p for life in the Western Literature a.s.sociation, the American Anthropology a.s.sociation's Media Award, and the Center for the American Indian's Amba.s.sador Award, a beautiful bronze of a Comanche warrior holding his coup stick. in considerable detail) was a "breakout" in more than sales and eventually led to the Public Service Award of the U.S. Department of the Interior, an honorary members.h.i.+p for life in the Western Literature a.s.sociation, the American Anthropology a.s.sociation's Media Award, and the Center for the American Indian's Amba.s.sador Award, a beautiful bronze of a Comanche warrior holding his coup stick.

Talking G.o.d (1989) (1989) A grave robber and a corpse reunite Leaphorn and Chee in a dangerous arena of superst.i.tion, ancient ceremony, and living G.o.ds.

TH: A book modified by coincidences. While writing Chapter Three I stop because it's time for Sunday Ma.s.s. But the problem stays with me during the ceremony - how to describe a corpse found beside the railroad outside Gallup. I notice an elderly Hispano usher with an aristocratic face dressed in an expensive but well-worn suit. He becomes the victim. But such a man refuses to fit my gang murder plot and turns the book into a Central American political conspiracy a.s.sa.s.sination. Next, old writing friend Bill Buchanan (s.h.i.+ning Season, Execution Eve Execution Eve, etc.) mentions a man responding to Bill's refrigerator sale want-ad was not a potential buyer but a lonely fellow needing to exchange words with a fellow human. That, too, sticks in my mind. I use it. It turns my a.s.sa.s.sin into a terribly lonely man and provides a much better ending. The first chapter was no problem at all. I have an urban wannabe Navajo send a Smithsonian official a box of her ancestor's bones, dug from an ancient Episcopal graveyard, for her to display along with the bones of his ancestors. I received "good-for-you" applause from about twenty tribesmen for that one.