Part 3 (1/2)

6.

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, sup-pressing 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 misp.r.o.nounced.”

”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, st.u.r.dy 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, expectantly.

”A connection,” she said. ”Does it connect to the Legend of the Wailing Woman or just to Gallup's richest man shooting his swindler?”

”Probably neither,” Leaphorn said. ”It's very shaky, very foggy.” But as he said that he knew he would tell her about it, discuss it with this white woman. With that knowledge came the familiar guilty feeling. This had been one of the ten thousand reasons he'd loved Emma-this business of laying the problems and troubles of his work before her and finding as he talked, as he measured her reactions, the fog tended to lift and new ideas emerge.

He shouldn't share with another woman this special link he'd had with Emma. But he had done it before with Louisa-a sign of his weakness. And so he turned his notebook to a blank page, got out his pen, and began drawing.

Louisa laughed. ”A map,” she said. ”Why did I know there would be a map.”

Leaphorn found himself grinning. It was a habit he was often kidded about. The dominant feature on the wall in his Criminal Investigation Division office at Navajo Tribal Police headquarters had been an enlarged version of the Indian Country map of the American Automobile a.s.sociation-a map defaced with hundreds of pinheads, their colors identifying incidents, events, or individuals whom Leaphorn considered significant. The black pins represented places where Navajo Wolves had been reported being seen or where complaints of other witchcraft activities of these mythical ”skinwalkers” had been registered. The red ones marked homes of known bootleggers, blue ones dope dealers, white ones cattle thieves, and so forth. Some were footnoted in the precise and tiny script he used, others coded with symbols only Lieutenant Leaphorn understood. Everyone in the law-and-order community seemed to know of this map, and of the smaller versions Leaphorn kept in his vehicle-mapping out whatever case he happened to be working on at the time.

”I can't deny it,” Leaphorn said. ”I admit I like maps. They help me sort out my thinking. And on this map, here's Wiley Denton's mansion, where he shot McKay. The straight line is Interstate Forty and the railroad running into Gallup. And over here ...” He drew a large rectangle. ”Here is Fort Wingate.” He created more squares, circles, and symbols and used the pen as a pointer, identifying them.

”Gallup,” he said. ”And over here's where Doherty's body was found, and this is McGaffey School.”

Louisa examined the sketch. ”Lots of big empty blank s.p.a.ces,” she said. ”And you haven't told me what McGaffey School has to do with any of this. And where's your mark for the Wailing Woman?”

Leaphorn tapped a spot on the edge of his Fort Wingate square closest to the McGaffey square. ”I think that should be about here,” he said.

Louisa looked surprised. ”Really? I hope you're going to explain this now.”

”Maybe not,” Leaphorn said. ”I'm afraid you might take it seriously.”

”I won't,” she said, but her expression denied that.

”Think of it in terms of connections,” Leaphorn said. ”There seem to be three, with one of them very fuzzy.” He held up one finger. ”Two shooting victims. Both had collected information on that legendary lost Golden Calf mine. McKay seemed to have claimed he'd found it. Doherty seemed to be looking for it. McKay goes to meet Denton and Denton shoots him. Doherty had Denton's unlisted telephone number written in his notebook.”

Leaphorn paused.

Louisa nodded, held up one finger, said: ”One connection.”

Leaphorn held up two fingers.

”Doherty did some of his research out at the Fort Wingate archives. Probably McKay did, too. Natural enough, because in those days when prospecting was booming, the fort was the only military base out here. It was supposed to provide them protection from us Indians.”

Louisa frowned. ”Yes. Seems natural they would. But that doesn't seem to mean much. What are you looking for?”

Leaphorn then held up three fingers-one of them bent.

”Now we come to the vague and foggy one. When Denton shot McKay it was Halloween evening.” He stopped, shook his head. ”I'm sort of embarra.s.sed to even mention this.”

”Go ahead. Halloween gets my attention.”

”The McKinley County sheriff's department had two calls that evening. One was the Denton shooting McKay business out here.” Leaphorn pointed to Denton's house on the map. ”And the other was a call from McGaffey reporting a woman screaming and wailing out on the east side of Fort Wingate.”

”Oh,” said Louisa. ”The Wailing Woman legend comes into play at last. Right?”

”Not quite yet.” Leaphorn said. ”And maybe we should call it the Wailing Wind legend. Question of what, or who, was doing the wailing. Anyway the sheriff sent a deputy out and called Fort Wingate security people. They scouted around and couldn't find anything and decided it was just some sort of Halloween prank.”

”So how do we get to the Wailing Woman legend?”

”Months later,” Leaphorn said. ”Denton had started doing his time in that federal white-collar prison in Texas and he began running ads in the Gallup Independent, Farmington Times Farmington Times, and so forth. Personal ads, addressed to Linda, and signed Wiley, saying he loved her and asking her to come home. I asked around, learned that Linda Denton hadn't been around since the killing. That seemed odd. I checked. Never reported missing, except her parents had talked to the sheriff about it-thinking something must have happened to her.”

”No wonder,” Louisa said. ”What happened next?”

”Nothing,” Leaphorn said. ”She was a mature married woman. No mystery to the killing. Denton did it. Confessed he did it. Worked out a plea bargain. Dead case. The official theory was that Mrs. Denton had been working with McKay and when the deal went sour and he got shot, she just took off. No crime. No reason to look for her.”

”But you did.”

”Well, not exactly. I was just curious.”

”So am I,” Louisa said. ”About when you're going to tell me about how this old Hispanic legend of the tragedy of a lost lady got involved in this gold mine swindle.”

”I heard about that Halloween evening call, got the name of the caller, and went out to see her. She's a teacher out at McGaffey School. Said these kids showed up at her house that Halloween night-students of hers. They told her about cutting across the corner of the fort to get out to the road and catch a ride into Gallup, and they heard these awful terrifying moans and crying sounds. She said they seemed genuinely frightened. She'd called the sheriff.”

”And his deputy found absolutely nothing?”