Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  "Look, chief, it's going to be hard enough to deal with coming and going without you there to rub the circumstances in her face."

  "I don't intend to do any rubbing. I'm going to go see her now. We'll meet you at the river."

  "Nate." She finished dragging on her boots. "Maybe you think the Lunacy PD has to be represented here, for whatever cop reason, but send Otto or Peter. Fair or not, you're the last person Carrie wants to see today."

  "We'll meet you at the river." He was halfway to the door of the room they were temporarily sharing, when it struck. He turned, grinned.

  "Rock and Bull. I'm slow, but I just got it. Must be all the moose talk. Rocky and Bullwinkle."

  "You are slow. Or you had a deprived childhood."

  "No. I just figured they were macho names, like, I don't know, boxers. The Rock, Raging Bull, whatever."

  Her lips tipped up at the corner. Why was it he could charm her even when she was annoyed with him. "The Rock's a wrestler."

  "Close enough. See you in an hour."

  He'd already informed his staff—who had the same pessimistic attitude as Meg—that he'd be making the trip to Anchorage that morning. So he drove straight to Carrie's.

  The door swung open before he was halfway up the walk. She stood in a black sweater and pants, blocking the door. "You can just turn around and go back to your car. I don't have to talk to you, and I don't have to let you into my house."

  "I'd like five minutes, Carrie. I sure as hell don't want to stand out here shouting what I have to say to you through a closed door. I don't think you'd like that either. It'd be easier on both of us if you give me that five minutes inside, especially since I'm going to be on the plane with you in an hour."

  "I don't want you with me."

  "I know that. If you still feel that way after you hear what I have to say, I'll send Peter instead."

  He could see the struggle on her face. Then she turned, walked away, leaving the door open to him and the brisk cold.

  He walked in, shut the door. She stood in her living room, her back to him, her arms folded against her chest tight enough that he saw her knuckles whiten against her own biceps.

  "Are your kids here?"

  "No, I sent them to school. They're better off with the routine, with their friends. They need some normal. How can you come here like this?" She whirled around. "How can you come here and harass me on the day I'm going to bring my husband's ashes home? Don't you have any heart, any compassion?"

  "I'm here officially, and what I'm going to say to you is confidential."

  "Officially." She all but spat it. "What do you want? My husband's dead. He's dead and he can't defend himself against the terrible things you say about him. You won't say those things in his house. This is Max's house, and you won't say those horrible lies about him here."

  "You loved him. Did you love him enough to give me your word that what I do say here won't be repeated? To anyone. Anyone, Carrie."

  "You'd dare ask me if I loved—"

  "Just yes or no. I need your word."

  "I've got no interest in repeating your lies. Say whatever you have to say and get out. I'll promise to forget you were even here."

  It would have to do. "I believe Max was on the mountain with Patrick Galloway at the time of Galloway's death."

  "Go to hell."

  "I also believe there was a third person with them."

  Her mouth trembled open. "What do you mean, a third person?"

  "Three of them went up, two of them came down. I believe that third person is responsible for Galloways murder. And I believe he killed Max or induced Max to kill himself."

  While she stared, her hand groped out, fumbled its way to the back of a chair. Her body seemed to sink into it. "I can't understand you."

  "I can't give you all the details, but I need your cooperation. . . I need your help," he amended,

  "to prove what I believe. There was a third man, Carrie. Who was it?"

  "I don't know. God, I don't know. I—I told you someone killed Max. I told you he didn't kill himself. I told Sergeant Coben. I keep telling him."

  "I know. I believe you."

  "You believe me." Tears gushed out of her eyes, rained down her cheeks. "You believe me."

  "I do. But the fact is the ME's ruled it suicide. Coben may have his doubts, and he may have his instincts, even a certain amount of circumstantial evidence, but he doesn't have the investment we do. He doesn't have the room or the time to push on this the way I do. We're going to need to go back, a long time. You're going to need to try to remember details, feelings, conversations. It's not easy. And you're going to need to, keep this to yourself. I'm asking you to take a risk."

  She brushed at tears. "I don't understand."

  "If we're right, and someone killed Max because of what happened

  on that mountain, that someone may be watching you. He may wonder

  what you know, what you remember, what Max might have told you."

  "You think I could be in danger?"

  "I think I want you to be very careful. I don't want you discussing this with anyone, not even your kids. Not your best friend, not your priest. No one. I want you to let me go through Max's things, his personal papers. Everything—here and at the paper. And I don't want anyone to know about it. I want you to go back and think about that February. What you did, what Max did, who he spent time with, how he behaved. Write it down."

  She stared at him with something that looked like hope fighting through the grief. "You're going to find out who did this to him? To us?"

  "I'm going to do everything I can."

  She mopped at her cheeks. "I said terrible things about you to— to anyone who'd listen."

  "Some of them were probably true."

  "No, they weren't." She pressed her fingers to her eyes now. "I'm so confused. I'm sick, sick in my heart, in my head. I made myself hire Meg to take me, to bring us back, because I needed to prove I didn't believe . . . that I wasn't ashamed. But part of me was." She dropped her hands, and her eyes were shattered. "If he was up there, he must have known . . ."

  "We re going to work all that out. Some of the answers may be hard, Carrie, but it's better than just having questions."

  "I hope you're right." She got to her feet. "I need to fix myself up a little." She started out, then stopped and turned around. "That business with the moose, out at the school? Max would've loved that. He would have loved writing that up. 'Troublemaking Moose Expelled from Lunacy High,' or something like that. That sort of story just tickled him. A man like that, a man who could find such pleasure in something so foolish, he couldn't have done what was done to Pat Galloway."

  * * *

  "Iwanted to marry him almost as soon as I met him. I liked the way he'd talk and talk about starting up a town paper, how it was important to record the little things, just as much as the big ones."

  Carrie looked out the window in her seat beside Meg, and Nate could see her gaze was on the mountains. "I came here to teach, and I stayed because it got inside me. I wasn't a very good teacher, really, but I wanted to stay. And I liked the odds—a lot more men than women. I was looking for a man." She slid a sideways glance at Meg.

  "Who isn't?"

  Carrie laughed a little, but the sound was hoarse. "I wanted to get married and have kids. One look at Max and I decided he'd fit the bill. He was smart, but not too smart, cute, but not so handsome I'd worry other women would be after him. A little wild—more that he wanted to be wild—but the sort you knew you could fix up with some time and effort."

  She broke off, and her hitching breaths were an obvious fight against tears.

  "Do women make checklists of stuff like that? You know, like you do on a house you're thinking of buying. Fixer-upper. Solid foundation but needs new trim. That kind of thing?" Nate asked.

  Carrie let out a watery giggle, pressed her hand to her lips.

  "We do. Or I sure did the closer I got to thirty. I didn't love him right off,
I mean not like some huge, hot burst. But I got him into bed, and that part was good. Another check in the plus column."

  There was another beat of silence, then Nate cleared his throat. "Ah, are those particular checks size-specific or color-coded?"

  "Don't worry, Burke, you get a nice fat check in that column, too," Meg interjected. She flipped him a glance that was full of appreciation and understanding. He was keeping it light and easy for the widow.

  As much as he could. She looked over at Carrie. "You always looked good together. Like a team."

  "We were a good team. Maybe I never got that big, hot burst, but I'll tell you when I fell in love with him—really, absolutely, no-going-back in love with him. It was when he held our daughter for the first time. The look on his face when he lifted her up that first time, the way he looked at me when he did. All that shock and wonder, the thrill and the terror, all of it on his face. So I didn't get an explosion, but what I got was warm and steady and real.

  "He didn't kill your father, Meg." She looked out the window again.

  "The man who held that baby the way he did, he couldn't have killed anyone. I know you have reason to think different, and I want you to know how much I value and appreciate your . . . kindness in taking me today."

  "We both lost someone we loved. It wouldn't prove anything if we slapped each other about it."

  Women, Nate thought, were tougher and more resilient than any man he knew. Including himself.

  * * *

  He tracked down Coben as soon as they landed, and though it felt callous, he left Meg with Carrie to deal with the arrangements and release of Max's ashes.

  "Thomas Kijinski aka Two-Toes. He looks like the best bet. There's a pilot, Loukes, works out of Fairbanks now, and a couple others Galloway used occasionally." He set the list he'd made on Coben's desk. "But Kijinski pops for me. He ends up dead, a couple of weeks after Galloway."

  "Stabbing, investigated and deemed a mugging." Coben drew in a breath. "Kijinski played with some bad boys. He gambled pretty heavy, was suspected of running drugs. Time of his death he had markers out for somewhere in the neighborhood of ten large. Investigating officer believed one of his IOUs was collected in flesh, but he couldn't prove it."

  "And you're buying that kind of coincidence?"

  "I'm not buying anything. The fact is, Kijinski lived a bad life and met a bad end. If he happened to be the pilot who took Galloway on his last climb, he isn't going to tell us about it."

  "Then it shouldn't be a problem for you to give me a copy of the file on him."

  Coben sucked air through his nose again. "I've got the press on my ass on this, Burke."

  "Yeah, I've caught some of the reports. I've given some reporters an official statement."

  "You've seen crap like this?" He yanked a copy of a tabloid out of a drawer, tossed it down. The headline screamed:

  ICE MAN RECOVERED FROM FROZEN GRAVE

  There was a picture of Galloway, as he'd been in the cave, in lurid color under the boldface type.

  "You had to expect shit like this," Nate began.

  "One of the recovery team had to take that shot. One of them cashed in, made a few bucks by selling it to the tabloids. My lieutenant's breathing down my neck. I don't need you doing the same."

  "There was a third man on the mountain."

  "Yeah, there was, according to Galloway's journal. Of course, we can't prove he died after that last journal entry. With sixteen years between, we've got a lot of room on time of death. Could've been then, or a month after. Six months after."

  "You know better than that."

  "What I know." Coben lifted one hand. "What I can prove." Then the other. "ME ruled suicide, and my lieutenant likes it. Too damn bad Hawbaker didn't name names in his note."

  "Give me the file, and I'll get names. You can smell it the same as I can, Coben. If you want to close the lid on the stink, that's up to you. But I've got a memorial to go to and a woman with two kids who deserves to know the truth, so she can learn to live with it. I can take a few days and go hunting for information here in Anchorage, or you can give me the file and let me get back to Lunacy."

  "If I'd wanted to close the lid, I wouldn't have given you Galloway's journal." Frustration rippled around him in nearly visible waves. "I've got brass to answer to, and they want the lid closed. The prevailing theory is that Hawbaker killed Galloway, and the third man—the one who was injured according to the journal. And if you look at this straight on, that's what plays. Why would Galloway's killer spare an injured man, a potential witness? Hawbaker does them both. Then fear of exposure, remorse, and he offs himself."

  "That's tidy."

  Coben flattened his lips. "Some like it tidy. I'll get you the file, Burke, but you keep your personal investigation low-key. The lowest. The press, my lieutenant, anybody gets wind you're poking around, and I'm helping you, it comes down on me."

  "Done."

  * * *

  Meg was so saturated with Carrie's grief that she didn't mind spending another evening waiting tables. Given a choice, she'd have preferred to load up her dogs and fly out to the bush. Somewhere.

  Anywhere she could spend a couple of days completely alone, away from the pulls and tugs of people and all their needs.

  That, she thought as she swung into the overheated kitchen at The Lodge, was the Galloway gene.

  Take off, flip it off, shrug it off. Life's too short for hassles.

  But there was enough of something else in her—Christ, she hoped it wasn't Charlene—to make her stay and see it through.

  She hooked her orders on the turntable for Big Mike. Two meat loafs, a vegetarian special and the salmon surprise.

  She picked up the completed orders from her last trip in, balanced them with such ease it made her wince. Nothing against waitpersons the world over, she thought as she carried the food out, but she wished she wasn't so good at it. It wasn't on the scope for her, even as a fallback career.

  God, she wanted the air, some silence. Her dogs. Her music. Some sex.

  She was ready to pop.

  She worked another two hours, through the clatter, the complaints, the gossip, the bad jokes. She could feel the pressure building up inside her, the desperate need to get out, get away. When the crowd thinned out, she caught Charlene at the kitchen door.

  "That's all you get for tonight. I'm taking off."

  "I need you to—"

  "You're going to have to need somebody else. Shouldn't be hard for you." She headed for the stairs.

  She wanted a shower, and by God, she was packing up her things