The Wailing Wind - Leaphorn & Chee 17 (24 page)

"Remember this," he said, and showed Leaphorn the pistol, one of those 1902 model .45 automatics the U.S. Army had been using through every war up to Desert Storm. "If the security man at the gate wants to talk, don't."

The security man offered no opportunity for conversation. He simply grinned and waved them through.

Leaphorn had long since abandoned the notion that Wiley Denton wouldn't actually shoot him and had been concentrating on coming up with some sort of action to abort that. He'd read too much and had seen too many movies about the training of the Green Berets in efficient killing to have much hope of overpowering Denton. He might be rusty, being half a lifetime away from ambushing Vietcong on the Cambodian side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but he was incurably bigger, burlier, and, alas, younger than Leaphorn. He'd finally settled on getting Denton to bunker D2187 so filled with dread (or hope) concerning what they might find there that he would be—despite his training—incautious for a required moment or two. During which Leaphorn would do something suitable, which he hoped he could think of.

Now, however, the problem was finding bunker D2187 in the vast maze of weed-grown railroad tracks, crumbling asphalt access roads, and rows and rows of great grassy humps. While these were neatly spaced two hundred yards apart as the army had required, the rolling terrain of the Zuñi Mountains foothills defeated the West Pointian obsession with straight and unbroken lines. After two wrong turns, one of which led them into an old but still unbroken security fence, Denton began to lose patience.

"I'm beginning to get skeptical about this," he said. "Where do you think you're going?"

"We're going to a block of bunkers labeled 'D,'" Leaphorn said.

"These have a 'G' over the doors," Denton said. "Are you lost, or are you just bulling me?"

Leaphorn backed around, made the first possible right turn onto a street where the asphalt paving was so worn it was mostly reduced to gravel. The first bunker he passed bore the label D2163 (faded by years of weather) over its massive door. After a slow quarter mile of counting off numbers, Leaphorn pulled his pickup off the gravel and parked in front of bunker D2187. Finally! It actually existed. He took a deep breath and blew it out.

"This is it?" Denton asked.

Leaphorn took his flashlight from the glovebox, opened his door, got out, and studied the bunker door—a great, heavy slab of steel covered with peeled and rusty-looking army paint. Fastened to the bunker's bare cement front to the right of the entry were two steel boxes, mounted side by side, labeled respectively "1" and "2." A metal tube ran up the concrete face of the bunker into box 2, and another such tube linked box 2 to box 1, from which five similar tubes emerged. One ran up the face of the bunker and disappeared over the roof. The four others ran downward, three of them disappearing through the front of the bunker at floor level and the other running along the ground and up the wall and linking to a device on one of the bottom hinges.

Denton now had joined him in this inspection.

"The one going over the roof probably served the ventilating pump they have on top of these bunkers," Denton said. "The others probably involve some sort of an alarm system, humidity or temperature sensors, or maybe an alarm to signal if the door opened without the proper code." He produced a contemptuous snort. "And you haven't got the code."

"Nobody has the code," Leaphorn said. "It's been decommissioned for years. The army base up in Utah that is supposed to keep an eye on things uses it now and then to shoot off target rockets down to White Sands for that Star Wars foolishness. No need for security anymore."

As he was explaining that, he was thinking the door seemed altogether too secure. Another steel box, slightly rusted, was welded to its center. Near the bottom was a bolt locking device. The bolt seemed to be missing. The only thing Leaphorn was sure he understood was the steel locking bar that swung across the door and, when clamped down, prevented it from being opened.

Leaphorn took two steps toward the door.

"Hold it," Denton said. "You want me to believe you're going to get into that vault?"

Denton was holding the .45, still cocked, now pointed at the ground about halfway between him and Leaphorn.

"We'll see," Leaphorn said, and walked to the door.

It wasn't a fast walk. Leaphorn had become belatedly aware that he had managed to make himself an ally to Denton if Denton planned to kill him and get away with it. The thunderstorm brewing over the Zuñis was producing lightning now and would probably dump enough rain to erase their tracks. The rumble of thunder echoed along the rows of bunkers, and the updrafts feeding the cloud were producing gusty winds. He had brought Denton to an absolutely perfect place for Denton to shoot him. No one would be near enough to hear a pistol shot even on a quiet day. Denton could probably drive out through the main gate with no more than a wave, or if he thought the security man would be curious, he could find a way out easily enough on the Zuñi Mountains side, where ranchers had been using their wire cutters for years to get their cattle into the free grazing.

Now that he was closer, Leaphorn could read the faded little sign posted over the box on the door: lock door. Bad news. He checked the small box on the door, which he now saw was like those used in prisons as containers for coded locking devices. But, good news, this box was empty.

Then he noticed at his feet a section of thick wire. He picked it up. It had been cut. Still on the wire was a circular metal tab. Leaphorn found the place where the wire had been run through a flange on the door and a matching flange on the doorjamb. This tab had been the official seal.

"Okay, Leaphorn," Denton said. "Enough of this screwing around. I think this is a sort of setup. You're killing time. Waiting for somebody to come."

It was just then that Leaphorn remembered both the pliers and the crowbar. McKay had used the pliers to cut the wire. As he looked at the metal locking bar in place across the door, he understood why McKay had bought the crowbar. He needed it as a "cheat bar," to apply leverage to push the blocking bar up out of the slots that held it. But what had McKay done with it? He'd found the pliers in McKay's car. Once the wire was cut, he had no more need for them here. But if he'd left Linda Denton locked in this bunker, he'd need the crowbar to get her out.

Denton was standing right behind Leaphorn now, and he pressed the pistol against Leaphorn's spine.

"Back in the truck," he said. "Now, or I kill you here."

As he heard that, Leaphorn saw the crowbar, lying in the weeds against the concrete wall.

He pointed to it.

"Marvin McKay bought that bar at a
Gallup
hardware store the day you killed him," Leaphorn said. "Put that damned pistol back in your pocket, and we'll pick up the crowbar and use it to find out what happened to your wife."

Again, the pressure of the pistol against Leaphorn's back disappeared.

"What are you talking about?"
Denton
said.

"I'm getting the crowbar. I'll show you."

Leaphorn picked up the heavy steel bar and examined the locking arrangement a moment. Using the flange as a fulcrum, he put the bar end under the locking bar and pulled down with his full weight. The locking bar slid upward.

"Now, pull the door open."

Denton
did.

They stood engulfed in a rush of warm, stale air, and peered into a vast, empty darkness. Nothing but a clutter of cartons against the left wall, and two black barrel-like containers that once had probably held some sort of explosive.
Denton
was holding the pistol down by his side now.

"You think she's in there?"

The only light in the bunker followed them through the doorway. It dimly illuminated a gray concrete floor, which stretched sixty empty feet to the great half circle of gray concrete that formed the back wall.

Leaphorn walked in just a few steps before he noticed
Denton
wasn't following. He was still standing, slumped, staring at the door post.

"What'd you find?" Leaphorn said, and walked back toward the door.

Denton pointed, but his eyes were closed.

Words were scrawled on the concrete. Leaphorn turned on his flashlight and illuminated: bump i am so sorry.

"You know who this 'Bump' is?"

"I'm Bump,"
Denton
said. "Because of my nose." He touched a finger to the disfigurement.

"Oh," Leaphorn said.

"She said she loved that bump on my nose. That it reminded her of the kind of man I was."
Denton
tried to laugh at that, but couldn't manage it. "Had to be Linda who wrote it," he said. "Nobody else called me that."

Leaphorn touched the scrawl. "I think she must have written this with her lipstick," he said.

"I'll go find her,"
Denton
said. "Linda," he shouted, and rushed off into the gloom with the shout echoing and echoing in the huge empty tomb.

They found Mrs. Linda Denton, née Linda Verbiscar,lying primly on a sheet of heavy corrugated cardboard behind the empty drums.

She was facedown, with her head turned sideways. The cool, utterly dry, almost airless climate of the sealed bunker had converted her into a mummy.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

What hostiin peshlakai had told Chee, he had recited in the presence of Ms. Knoblock, his court-appointed attorney, and Mr. Harjo, who seemed to be serving as her interpreter as well as Agent Osborne's. And Peshlakai spoke, as seemed to be his habit, in general and ambiguous terms.

"But what it all boiled down to, Bernie, when you read between the lines, and you went ahead and completed a few sentences for him, was that Wiley Denton murdered Doherty with our friend Peshlakai aiding and abetting—if not actually pulling the trigger."

Bernie looked very sad when she heard that. "Putting that old man in prison," she said. "That would be awful. That would kill him."

"Probably," Chee said. "But I don't think Harjo actually understood a lot of it. Not from the way he was translating it to Ms. Knoblock."

Bernie gave him a sidelong glance. "And you didn't butt in and explain things to them. Right? You seem to be implying something, well, something sneaky."

"I don't know what I'm implying," Chee said. "But I know for sure that Peshlakai had no idea he was getting himself involved in a murder."

"How did he get tied up with
Denton
anyway?"

"Just by living where he did. He'd see
Denton
coming up the canyon, nosing around, digging out sand samples and that sort of thing. And he must have warned
Denton
that he shouldn't go up to the headwaters area of
Coyote
Canyon
because of the holy places there. He would be violating taboos, and that would make him sick. And so
Denton
was sympathetic, or seemed to be, and said he'd help Peshlakai guard the place.
Denton
gave Peshlakai a cellphone, showed him how to use it, and told him when he saw anyone prowling around up the canyon, he should call."

"So he called him when Doherty showed up at the placer site?"

"Exactly," Chee said. "And
Denton
carne. Whereupon one of them shot Doherty."

"With Peshlakai's rifle?"

"Unfortunately. Peshlakai didn't say so, but Osborne's crime scene crew finally recovered the slug with their metal detectors. It matched that old thirty-thirty, just like the bullet he fired to scare you away."

Bernie shuddered, remembering that. "And they put Doherty's body back in his truck," Bernie said. "And then one of them drove it up to where I found it, and the other one came along in
Denton
's car, and then everybody went home. Everybody except Thomas Doherty."

"Peshlakai didn't get into explaining that, or say who actually fired the shot."

Bernie sighed. "I don't guess it matters much. Whether he's killer or conspirator. He's way too old to last long in prison."

"He wouldn't want to," Chee said.

Bernie rubbed her hand across her face. "I hate this," she said. "Just hate it. So many people get hurt."

"I know," Chee said. A long silence followed. Chee broke it with what sounded a little like a laugh.

"What?" Bernie said.

"I sounded like I was agreeing with you, but I really wasn't. You were feeling pity for the victims, and sometimes the ones we arrest are the worst victims of all. I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking about us."

"What do you mean?"

"You might have been killed in
Coyote
Canyon
," Chee said. "That's been a nightmare ever since you told me."

"No one would have blamed you for it," Bernie said.