The Wailing Wind
Tony Hillerman
 When Navajo Tribal Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito investigates an abandoned vehicle in Apache County, Arizona and discovers a body, the available evidence indicates the death is due to natural causes. While awaiting personnel from the medical examiner's office, Officer Manuelito indulges her interest in botany and collects seeds, placing them in an old tobacco tin she finds nearby. But when the body is removed from the vehicle several hours later by medical personnel, it is discovered that the death is a homicide and Officer Manuelito realizes she has inadvertently contaminated or destroyed evidence. Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee, Officer Manuelito's superior officer, contacts retired Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn for advice on how to resolve the destroyed/contaminated evidence problem. This renews Leaphorn's interest in an old case involving Wiley Denton, a Gallup oil and gas magnate who shot and killed, in self-defense it was claimed, Marvin McKay who claimed to have found the famous Golden Calf lost gold mine. When Denton, recently released from prison after serving a short sentence, contacts Leaphorn to find Denton's wife, a friend of Marvin McKay who disappeared the day of the shooting and has not been heard from since, the stage is set for a mystery involving forest fires, protection of Navajo religious sites, lost gold mines, and moth-balled munitions bunkers.