The Wailing Wind
First edition cover
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| Author | Tony Hillerman |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Peter Thorpe |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Series | Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police Series |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Set in | Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation in Southwestern United States |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
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Publication date
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2002 |
| Media type | Print and audio |
| Pages | 232 + maps |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 48383430 |
| Preceded by | Hunting Badger, 1999 |
| Followed by | The Sinister Pig, 2003 |
The Wailing Wind is the fifteenth crime fiction novel in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee Navajo Tribal Police series by Tony Hillerman, first published in 2002. It is a New York Times best-seller.
The case of a murdered man, found in a truck on a canyon wash, immediately links to a past shooting and a lost woman tied to myths of lost gold mines, so the retired Joe Leaphorn involves himself along with Bernadette Manuelito of the Navajo Tribal Police.
Navajo Tribal Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito investigates an abandoned vehicle in Apache County, Arizona. She finds the body of Thomas Doherty in the truck. She identifies seeds on his clothing and shoes when checking that he is dead, seeds not from plants nearby. Awaiting an ambulance, Manuelito collects seeds for her garden, placing them in an old tobacco tin she finds nearby. When the body is moved, it becomes clear he was murdered, and the FBI steps in. Manuelito gives the tobacco tin to her boss, now that the area is a crime scene.
Sergeant Jim Chee contacts retired police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn for advice on how to resolve the problem of the old tin, now evidence removed from a crime scene. This renews Leaphorn's interest in a case involving Wiley Denton, a Gallup oil and gas magnate who shot and killed Marvin McKay. McKay was bringing evidence to Denton of the location of the old Golden Calf gold mine, to earn money from Denton. Denton served time for the killing, claiming self-defense. Denton contacts Leaphorn to find Denton's wife, who disappeared the day of the shooting. After questioning Denton, Leaphorn agrees to search for his wife. First, Leaphorn visits the scene where Doherty's body was found, discreetly replaces the tin with its sand / gold contents, and then points it out to Cowboy Dashee, the officer at the site.
Manuelito finds the place of Doherty's murder, based on the seeds and the ashes from the 1999 fire, and sees old Placer gold mining artifacts. A bullet whizzes past her head, but she sees no shooter. Later, the empty hogan nearby is found to belong to Hostiin James Peshlakai, who is arrested by the FBI, as the shells match his gun. Leaphorn interviews Peggy McKay, drawing a new profile of McKay and his encounter with Denton. Peggy was not believed by the investigators at that time. McKay's personal effects, still in police storage, do not match the story of the killing as told by Denton. Specifically, McKay's jacket has no pocket large enough for the gun Denton said McKay carried and no blood stains, and the map in his briefcase shows a different place than Denton reported to Leaphorn. Peggy says now and said then that he never carried a gun. Retracing McKay's steps the day of his death, Leaphorn finds that a woman waited in his car as McKay sought materials from the archive at Fort Wingate. He said the woman was his wife, but his wife was not with him; McKay called her to give updates of the time he would arrive home. Leaphorn searches McKay's car to find blonde hairs, the lens of eyeglasses and a receipt for tools. It begins to look like premeditated murder by Denton. Two events occurred the day McKay was murdered, on a past Halloween; the second was a report of a woman wailing, heard by four high school students who were crossing Fort Wingate army munitions depot, a vast place with a long history, used for archives in the bunkers. Leaphorn interviews two of the students who reported the wailing sound and the faint sound of music. Teresa Hano at the archives tells him that Doherty had been there looking at records related to gold mines, as had McKay years earlier.
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