Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  intense eyes. His hair was silvered, worn in a single braid. His boots were sturdy, his clothes work-rough, with a long brown vest over flannel and wool.

  Nate judged his age at somewhere on the high side of fifty, with a look of health and fitness, and ropy strength.

  "Mr. Itu." Nate gestured to a chair. "What can I do for you?"

  "Patrick Galloway was my friend."

  Nate nodded. "You want coffee?"

  "No. Thank you."

  "The body hasn't yet been recovered, examined or positively identified." Nate sat behind his desk. It was the same spiel he'd been giving everyone who'd come in or caught him on the street, at The Lodge, over the past couple of days. "The State Police are in charge of the investigation. They'll notify next-of-kin, officially, when the identification's verified."

  "Meg would not mistake her father."

  "No. I agree."

  "You can't leave justice to others."

  That had been his creed once. The creed that had sent both him and his partner into an alley in Baltimore.

  "It's not my case. It's not my jurisdiction or my province."

  "He was one of us, as his daughter is. You stood in front of the people of this place when you came and promised to do your duty to them."

  "I did. I will. I'm not letting it go, but I'm well down the feeding chain on this."

  Jacob stepped closer, his only movement since coming into the room. "When you were Outside, murder was your business."

  "It was. I'm not Outside anymore. Have you seen Meg?"

  "Yes. She's strong. She'll use her grief. She won't let it use her."

  As I do? Nate thought. But this man with his intense eyes and ruthlessly controlled anger couldn't see what was inside of him.

  "Tell me about Galloway. Who would he have gone climbing with?"

  "He'd know them."

  "Them?"

  "A winter climb on No Name would need at least three. He was reckless, impulsive, but he wouldn't have attempted it with less than three. He wouldn't have climbed with strangers. Or not only strangers." Jacob smiled slightly. "But he made friends easily."

  "And enemies?"

  "A man who has what qthers covet makes enemies."

  "What did he have?"

  "A beautiful woman. A quick-witted child. An ease of manner and lack of ambition that allowed him to do as he pleased most of the time."

  Coveting another man's woman was often a motive for murder between friends. "Was Charlene involved with anyone else?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Was he?"

  "He may have enjoyed another woman from time to time when he was away from home, as some men will. If he enjoyed one in town, he didn't tell me of it."

  "He wouldn't have had to tell you," Nate responded. "You'd have known."

  "Yes."

  "And so would others. A place like this may have secrets, but that's not the kind that stays buried for long." He considered another moment. "Drugs?"

  "He grew a little marijuana. He didn't deal."

  Nate lifted his eyebrows. "Just grass?" When Jacob hesitated, Nate leaned back. "Nobody's going to bust him for it now."

  "Primarily grass, but he wasn't likely to turn down anything that came to hand."

  "Did he have a dealer? In Anchorage, say?"

  "I don't think so. He rarely had the money to spend on that sort of indulgence. Charlene held the purse, and she held it tight. He liked to climb and to fish and to hike. He liked to fly but had no interest in learning to pilot. He'd work when he needed money. He disliked restrictions, laws, rules. Many do who come here. He wouldn't have understood you."

  The important thing, as Nate saw it, was for him to understand Patrick Galloway.

  He asked more questions, then filed away the notes he'd made after Jacob left.

  Then it was time to deal with the more mundane matter of a couple of adolescent shoplifters.

  With that, a pair of missing skis and a fender bender, he stayed busy until the end of shift.

  He was taking the evening off, leaving Otto and Pete on call. Unless there was a mass murder, he was off the clock until morning.

  He'd given Meg her few days. He hoped she was ready for him.

  It was his own fault, he decided, that he'd gone back to The Lodge to pick up a change of clothes—in case he stayed out at Meg's.

  Charlene caught him while he was still in his room.

  "I need to talk to you." She scooted around him at the door and walked over to sit on the bed. She wore all black—a snug sweater and snugger pants and those skinny heels she liked to teeter around in.

  "Sure. Why don't we go down and have some coffee?"

  "This is private. Would you close the door?"

  "Okay." But he stood by it, just in case.

  "I need you to do something. I need you to go to Anchorage and tell those people they have to release Pat's body to me."

  "Charlene, they haven't recovered the body yet."

  "I know that. Haven't I been on the phone with those bureaucrats and insensitive bastards every day? They're just leaving him up there."

  When her eyes filled, Nate's stomach sank.

  "Charlene." He looked around, a little desperately for some tissue, a towel, an old T-shirt, and ended up going into the bath. He came out with a roll of toilet paper and pushed it into her hand. "Getting people up there, and making the recovery, is a complicated business."

  He didn't want to add that a few days, one way or the other, wasn't going to make a damn bit of difference. "There've been storms up there and high winds. But I talked with Sergeant Coben myself today. If it's clear, they hope to send a team up in the morning."

  "They said I'm not next-of-kin, because we weren't legally married." She yanked off several sheets of tissue, buried her face in the wad.

  "Oh." He puffed out his cheeks, blew out a breath. "Meg—"

  "She's not legitimate." Voice cracking, Charlene waved the soggy wad. "Why should they give him to her? They'll send him back to his parents, back east. And that's not fair! That's not right! He left them, didn't he? He didn't leave me. Not on purpose. But they hate me, and they'll never let me have him."

  He'd seen people squabble over the dead before, and it was never pretty. "Have you talked to them?"

  "No, I haven't talked to them," she snapped, and her eyes dried up cold. "They don't even acknowledge me. Oh, they've talked to Meg a few times, and they gave her some money when she turned twenty-one. Little enough when they've got piles of it. They didn't bother with Pat when he was alive, but you can bet your ass they'll want him now that he's dead. I want him back. I want him back."

  "Okay, why don't we take this one step at a time." He saw no choice, so he sat down beside her, draped an arm over her shoulder so she could cry on his. "I'll keep in touch with Coben. I'm going to tell you the body's not going to be released for a while anyway. It could be some time. And it seems to me that as his daughter Meg has as much right as his parents."

  "She won't fight for him. She doesn't care about things like that."

  "I'll talk to Meg."

  "Why would anybody kill Pat? He never hurt anybody. But me." She gave a watery laugh, the sort that sounded both sad and wistful. "And he never meant to. He never meant to make you cry or make you mad."

  "He make a lot of people mad?"

  "Me, mostly. He made me crazy." She sighed. "I loved him like crazy."

  "If I asked you to think back, really think back, to the weeks around the time he left, could you? The details of it, even the little ones."

  "I guess I could try. It was so long ago, it barely seems real anymore."

  "I want you to try, take a couple of days and really think back. Write things down when they come to you. Things he said, did, the people he was with, anything that seemed different. We'll talk about it."

  "He's been up there all this time," she whispered. "Alone in the cold. How many times have I looked at that mountain over the years? Now, every time I do, I'l
l see Pat. It was easier when I hated him, you know?"

  "Yeah, I guess I do."

  She sniffled, straightened. "I want his body brought here. I want to bury him here. That's what he'd have wanted."

  "We'll do everything we can to make that happen." Since she was softened up with the tears, and not currently hitting on him, it might be the time to press for information. "Charlene, tell me about Jacob Itu."

  She dabbed at her eyelashes. "What about him?"

  "What's his story? How did he hook up with Pat? It helps me to have a picture."

  "So you can find out what happened to Pat?"

  "Exactly. He and Jacob were friends?"

  "Yeah." She sniffled again, a bit more delicately. "Jacob's sort of. . . mysterious. At least I've never understood him."

  Judging from the sulky look, that meant she'd never been able to get him into bed. Interesting, Nate decided. "He strikes me as a loner."

  "I guess." She shrugged now. "He and Pat hit it off. I think he was sort of, I don't know, amused by Pat mostly. But they liked all that hunting and fishing and hiking crap. Pat was good at all the outdoorsy stuff. He and Jacob used to go out into the bush for days while I was back here dealing with a baby and work and—"

  "So that was the bond, the connection," Nate interrupted.

  "Well, and they both hated the government, but so does everybody else around here. He and Pat liked doing the living-off-the-land stuff together, but under it, it was Meg."

  "What was Meg?"

  "Well. . ."

  She shifted toward him into what Nate recognized as gossip mode.

  He stayed where he was, sitting intimately on the bed with her, unwilling to change the dynamics until he'd gotten what he was after.

  "Jacob used to be married."

  "Is that so?'

  "Ages ago. Eons. Back when he was like eighteen, nineteen, living in this little village in the bush outside of Nome." Her face was animated now as she gave her little hair toss and settled in to give him the dish. "I got all this from Pat—and here and there. Jacob never has much to say to me."

  She started to sulk again, to poker up. "So he was married," Nate prompted.

  "Some young thing, same tribe. They grew up together and everything—one of those soul mates deals. She died in childbirth. Her and the baby—the girl. She went into labor too early, a couple of months early, and there were complications. Whatever, I can't remember exactly what went wrong, but they couldn't get her to a hospital, not in time anyway. It's sad," she said after a beat, and her eyes, her face, her voice softened with genuine sympathy. "It's really sad."

  "Yes, it is."

  "Pat said that's why he became a bush pilot. If he'd had a plane, or they'd been able to get one in time, maybe . . . So he moved out here, said he couldn't stay there because there his life was over. Or something like that. Anyway, when we came around, when he saw Meg, Jacob said her spirit spoke to his. He wasn't even high," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Jacob didn't get high. He says that sort of thing. He told Pat that Meg was his spirit child, and Pat thought that was cool. It seemed weird to me, but Pat was okay with it. He figured it made him and Jacob brothers."

  "Did he and Pat ever argue about anything? About Meg, for instance?"

  "Not that I ever heard of. Of course, Jacob doesn't argue. He just freezes you with those long—what do you call it?—inscrutable," she decided. "Those inscrutable stares. I guess he stepped up with Meg when Pat left. But Pat didn't leave."Tears welled in her eyes again. "He died."

  "I'm sorry. I appreciate the information. It always helps to get a picture."

  "You talk to Meg." Charlene got to her feet. "You talk to her about making those Boston people see Pat belongs here. You make her see. She won't listen to me. Never did, never will. I'm counting on you, Nate."

  "I'll do what I can."

  She seemed to be satisfied with that, and left Nate sitting on the side of the bed, picturing himself being squeezed flat by two difficult females.

  * * *

  He didn't call her. She might put him off or just not answer the phone. The worst she could do if he showed up on her doorstep was send him away again, and at least he'd have seen for himself if she was okay.

  He drove along the tunnel of road with the walls of snow on either side. The sky had cleared some, as predicted, so there was a faint glimmer of moon and starlight. It drizzled on the mountains that filled his view, glinted off his glimpses of the river.

  He heard the music before he made the turn to her house. It filled the dark, soared through it and swallowed it. Just as the lights beat back the night. She had them on, all of them, so the house, the grounds, the near trees were lit like fire. And through it, the music streamed and flew.

  He thought it was some sort of opera, though that kind of music wasn't his strong point. It was wrenching, the sort of thing that broke the heart even as it, somehow, lifted the soul.

  She'd cleared a walkway, a good three feet wide. He could imagine the time and effort that had taken. Her porch was clear of snow, and a wood box beside the door was full.

  He started to knock, then decided nobody could hear a knock over the music. He tried the door, found it unlocked, eased it open.

  The dogs, who'd been sleeping despite the music, leaped up from the rug. After a few quick, warning barks, tails wagged. To Nate's relief, they appeared to remember him and pranced over to greet him.

  "Good, great. Where's your mom?"

  He tried a couple of shouts, then made his way through the first floor. There were cheery fires burning in both the living room and kitchen— and something simmering on the stove that smelled like dinner.

  He started to take a peak—maybe a sample—when he caught a movement through the window.

  He moved closer. He could see her now, clearly in the flood of lights. She was bundled head to foot, trudging back through the snow on the fat, round snowshoes they called bear claws. As he watched she stopped, lifted her head to the sky. She stood, staring up, music pouring over her. Then she threw her arms back to the sides and fell backward.

  He was at the door in one bounding leap. Wrenching it open, he shot out, jumped the steps, skidded on the frosty path she'd cleared.

  She popped up when he shouted her name.

  "What? Hi, where'd you come from?"