by Nora Roberts
He would have to find a way to confess to Meg that he'd invaded her privacy. Or find a way to have her show him the photos without letting her know he'd already seen them.
He'd decide which later.
Now it was time to let the restless dogs out for a last run. And since he was just as restless, it seemed a good time to practice his snowshoeing.
He went out with the dogs. Instead of racing off, they trotted along beside him as he walked out to get his snowshoes out of the car.
* * *
Peter had shown him the basics and had proven to be a patient teacher. Nate still fell on his face—or ass—now and then and sometimes got the shoes bogged down, but he was making progress.
He strapped them on, took a few testing strides. "Still feel like an idiot," he confided to the dogs.
"So let's keep tonight's practice session between us."
As if in challenge, the dogs bounded off toward the woods. It would be a hell of a hike, Nate decided as he pushed a flashlight into his pocket, but exercise helped beat back depression. And, if he was lucky, would tire him out enough to let him sleep through any dreams that wanted to haunt him.
He used the house lights and the stars to reach the edge of the woods. His progress was slow and not particularly graceful. But he made it and was pleased he was only slightly out of breath.
"Getting back in shape. Some. Still talking to myself, though. But that doesn't mean anything."
He looked up so that he could see the northern lights, could watch them spread their magic. Here he was, Ignatious Burke of Baltimore, snowshoeing in Alaska under the northern lights.
And pretty much enjoying it.
He could hear the dogs thrashing around, letting loose with the occasional bark. "Right behind you, boys."
He pulled out the flashlight. "Too early for bear," he reminded himself. "Unless, of course, we've got an insomniac in the area."
To reassure himself, he patted his side and felt the shape of his service weapon under the parka.
He set off, trying to get into an easy rhythm instead of the awkward step-clomp-step he fell into if he wasn't paying attention. The dogs raced back, danced around him, and he was pretty sure they were grinning.
"Keep it up and there'll be no dog biscuits for you. Go do whatever dog business you've got to do. This is thinking time for me."
Keeping the lights of the house visible through the trees to his left, he followed the dog tracks. He could smell the trees—the hemlock he'd learned to identify—and the snow.
Not that many miles west, or north, there would be no trees, so he'd been told. Just seas of ice and snow, rolling forever. Places where no roads cut through that sea.
But here, with the smell of the forest, he couldn't imagine it. Could hardly conceive that Meg, who had a sexy red dress in her closet and baked bread when she brooded, was out there, somewhere in that sea even now.
He wondered if she'd looked up at the northern lights, as he had. And thought of him.
With his head down, the flashlight beam shining ahead, he pushed his body into the steady pace and let his mind wander back to the photos of that sunny day.
How long after that summer picnic had Patrick Galloway died in ice? Six months? Seven?
Were those pictures with Christmas lights from his last holiday?
Had one of those men who'd smiled or mugged for the camera been wearing a mask, even then?
Or had it been impulse, insanity, the momentary madness of temper that had brought that ax down?
But it had been none of those things that had left a man in that cave for all these years, preserved in the ice and permafrost.
That took calculation. That took balls.
Just as it took both calculation and balls to carefully stage a suicide.
Or it could all be bullshit, he admitted, and the note left could be God's own truth.
A man could hide things from his wife, from his friends. A man could hide things from -himself. At least until that despair, that guilt, that fear wrapped around his throat and choked him off.
Wasn't he chasing this case for the same reason he was out here in the dark, in the cold, tramping around on oversized tennis rackets? Because he needed to be normal again. He needed to find who he'd been before his world had caved in on him. He needed to break out of his own cocoon of ice and live again.
Everything pointed to suicide. All that was arguing against it were his own instincts. And how could he trust them after letting them lie stagnant so long?
He hadn't worked a murder in close to a year, hadn't done much more than ride a desk for his last months with BPD. And now he wanted to turn a suicide into a homicide because, what, it made him feel useful?
He could feel the weight bearing down on him as he thought of the way he'd pushed his opinions onto Coben, the way he'd issued orders despite the doubts in his deputies' eyes. He'd invaded Meg's privacy, for no good reason.
He could barely run a little cop shop that dealt mainly with traffic violations and breaking up shoving matches, and suddenly he was the big, bad cop who was going to close the books on a murder that took place sixteen years ago and disprove a nearly textbook suicide?
Yeah, sure, then he'd track down this nameless, faceless killer, sweat a confession out of him and hand him over to Coben, all tied up in a big pink ribbon.
"What bullshit. You can barely pass for a cop now, what makes you think. . ."
He trailed off, staring dully down at the snow that gleamed under the beam of his light. And the tracks that marred its surface.
"Funny. Must've circled around somehow."
Not that he gave a good damn. He could wander around aimlessly all night, just like he wandered around aimlessly most days.
"No." He closed his eyes, broke into a light sweat at the physical effort it took to push away from that void. "Not going back there. That's the bullshit. Not going back down in that hole."
He'd take the antidepressants if he had to. Do yoga. Lift weights. Whatever it took, but he couldn't go back down there again. He'd never crawl his way free if he went back down this time.
So he just breathed, opening his eyes, watching his breath stream out white and vanish. "Still standing," he murmured, then looked down at the snow again.
Snowshoe tracks. Curious, and using the curiosity to hold back the dark, he stepped back, compared those tracks with the ones in front of him. They looked the same, but it was a little tough to gauge any difference in the beam of his flashlight—and considering the fact he wasn't some wilderness tracker.
But he was sure enough he hadn't tromped around in the woods, circled, and somehow ended up walking over his own path—coming in the opposite direction.
"Could be Meg's," he murmured. "She might've walked out here anytime, just like I'm doing now."
The dogs ran back, zoomed over the tracks and toward the lights of the house. To satisfy himself, Nate changed his direction, which almost set him on his ass, and followed the tracks.
But they didn't go all the way through the woods. A fist balled in his belly as he followed the way they'd stopped, where someone had obviously stood, looking through the trees toward the rear of the house— and the hot tub where he and Meg had relaxed the night before.
And the dogs had set up a racket in the woods, he remembered now.
He followed their trail, backtracking now. He saw other tracks. Moose, maybe, or deer? How would he know? But he decided, on the spot, he would damn well learn.
He saw depressions in the snow and imagined the dogs had lain there, rolled there—and again the tracks he followed indicated someone had stood, feet slightly apart, as if watching the dogs.
As he circled around with the trail, he could see where it would lead him now. To the road, several yards from Meg's house.
He was well out of breath by the time he'd followed it to the bitter end. But he knew what he was looking at. Someone had walked, or driven, on that road. Entered the woods well out of sight of a hou
se, then had hiked through those woods—purposely, he thought, directly to Meg's.
Hardly a neighbor paying a call, or someone looking for help due to a breakdown or accident. This was surveillance.
What time had they gone out to the tub the night before? Ten, he thought. No later than ten.
He stood on the side of the road, with the dogs snuffling along the snow-packed ground behind him.
How long, he wondered, to walk back to the road? It had taken him more than twenty minutes, but he imagined you could halve that if you knew what you were doing. Another ten, tops, to get to Max's house, take the gun from the glove compartment. Five more to get into town.
Plenty of time, he thought, plenty to get into the unlocked door, type a note on the computer.
Plenty of time to do murder.
Sixteen
Nate wasn't surprised to find Bing Karlovski had a sheet. It wasn't a big shock to his system to find charges of assault and battery, simple assault, aggravated assault, resisting arrest, drunk and disorderly, on that sheet.
Running names, whether or not he officially had a case, was basic procedure. Patrick Galloway might have died while Nate was still learning to handle his first secondhand car, but Max Hawbaker had died on his watch.
So he ran Bing. He ran Patrick Galloway and printed out his record of minor drug pops, loitering, trespassing.
He worked steadily down his list, discovering that Harry Miner had a disorderly conduct and injury to property. Ed Woolcott had a sealed juvie, a DUI. Max had racked up a few trespassing, disorderly conducts and two possession pops.
John Malmont, two D&Ds. Jacob Itu came out clean and Mackie Sr. had a fistful of D&Ds, simple and aggravated assaults, and injuries to property.
He didn't spare his deputies and saw that Otto had mixed it up a few times in his younger days with disorderly conducts, assault and battery— charges dropped. Peter, as he'd suspected, was as clean as fresh snow.
He made lists, notes, and added them to his file.
He played it by the book, as much as he was able. The problem was, as he saw it, he hadn't read the book starring the small-town chief of police nipping his way up the investigative food chain behind a State cop.
He considered it wise, or at least politic, to filter all his inquiries through Coben. Hardly mattered, Nate decided when he hung up the phone, as none of those inquiries could be answered. Yet.
Anchorage was urban, which meant it had all the bogging red tape and backups of an urban area.
Autopsy results, not yet in. Lab results, not yet in.
The fact that the chief of police of Lunacy knew in his gut Maxwell Hawbaker had been murdered didn't carry much weight.
He could take the easy way and let it drag him down. Nate figured he'd taken the easy way for a long time now. Or he could use his underdog status to rise to the occasion.
Sitting at his desk, with the snow falling soft and steady outside his window, Nate couldn't quite see the way to rise.
He had little to no resources, little to no autonomy, a force that was green as a shamrock and an evidentiary trail that pointed its bony finger straight to suicide.
Didn't mean he was helpless, he reminded himself as he got up to pace. To study his case board. To stare hard into the crystal eyes of Patrick Galloway.
"You know who did you," he murmured. "So let's find out what you can tell me."
Parallel investigations, he decided. That's the way he was going to proceed. As if he and Coben were running separate investigations that ran along the same lines.
Rather than sticking his head out the door, he went back and made use of the intercom. "Peach, call over to The Lodge and tell Charlene I want to talk to her."
"You want her to come over here?"
"That's right, I want her to come over here."
"Well, it's still breakfast time, and Charlene sent Rose home. Ken thinks the baby might come a little earlier than expected."
"Tell her I want her to come over as soon as possible, and that I [v shouldn't have to keep her long."
"Sure, Nate, but it might be easier if you just went over and—"
"Peach. I want her here, before lunchtime. Got that?"
"All right, all right. No need to get snippy."
"And let me know when Peter gets back from patrol. I need to talk to him, too."
"Awful chatty today."
She cut off before he eould comment.
He wished he'd gotten better pictures of the snowshoe prints. By the time he'd driven into town, picked up the camera, driven back to Meg's, fresh snow had been falling. He didn't know what the hell a bunch of snowshoe tracks was going to tell him, and he hesitated to pin them up.
But it was his case board, for what it was worth.
He was tromping around in the dark, just as he'd been tramping around in the woods the night before.
But if you kept going, you got somewhere eventually. He grabbed a few tacks and pinned up his shots.
"Chief Burke." Apparently Peach had taken a cue from him, as her formal tones came through his intercom. "Judge Royce is here, and he'd like to see you if you're not too busy."
"Sure." He grabbed the buffalo plaid blanket he'd brought in as a makeshift drape for his board.
"Send him back," he said, and tossed the red-and-black checks over the board.
Judge Royce was mostly bald, but wore the thin fringe that circled his dome long and white. He had Coke-bottle glasses perched on a nose as sharp and curved as a meat hook. He had what the polite might call a prosperous build, with a wide chest and a heavy belly. His voice, at seventy-nine, resounded with the same power and impact as it had in his decades on the bench.
His thick, dung-colored corduroy pants swished as he walked into Nate's office. With them he wore a matching corduroy vest over a tan shirt. And the off-key adornment of a gold loop in his right ear.
"Judge. Coffee?"
"Never say no." He settled himself in a chair with a windy sigh. "Got a mess on your hands."
"Seems it's on the hands of the State authorities."
"Don't shit a shitter. Two sugars in that coffee. No cream. Carrie Hawbaker was by to see me last night."
"She's going through a bad time."
"Your husband ends up with a bullet in his brain, yep, it's a bad time. Pissed at you."
Nate handed the coffee over. "I didn't put the bullet in his brain."
"Nope, don't figure you did. But a woman in Carrie's state doesn't quibble at taking a shot at the messenger. She wants me to use my influence to have you removed from office, and, hopefully, run out of town on a rail."
Nate sat, contemplated his own coffee. "You got that much influence?"
"Might. If I pressed the matter. Been here twenty-six years. Could say I was among the first lunatics in Lunacy." He blew once