Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  "Tell you what. Let's take the night off from all of it. Just go to the movies, eat popcorn and fool around."

  "I've got more questions than I have answers. I'm going to have to ask you some of them. You may not like them."

  "Then let's definitely take the night off. We've got to deliver this stuff. I'll see you later."

  She hopped in the cab of the truck and sent Nate a quick wave as Jacob pulled out. But she watched him in the side-view mirror until they'd turned.

  "He looks worried," Jacob commented.

  "His kind always worries. Why do I find that so attractive?"

  "He'd like to shield you. No one else ever did." He smiled a little when she turned to stare at him.

  "I taught you, listened to you, cared for you. But I never shielded you."

  "I don't need to be shielded. Or want to be."

  "No, but knowing he would attracts you."

  "Maybe. Maybe." She'd have to think about that one. "But his wants and mine are bound to ram headlong into each other before long. Then what?"

  "That depends on which one's still standing after the collision." With a half laugh she stretched out her legs. "He doesn't stand a chance."

  * * *

  She'd hoped to have time to get home, clean herself up, polish herself up, and set the stage for a night of marathon sex. It was a way to keep things interesting and basic and, she admitted, thoughtless. But she believed it wouldn't hurt him to be thoughtless for a little while.

  He thought entirely too much, and it was contagious.

  But she didn't have time, not after delivering all the cargo, collecting her fees. She had to settle for popping the corn in The Lodge's kitchen while Big Mike serenaded her with show tunes.

  It wasn't a hardship to listen to Big Mike sing as he worked. She caught up on the news as Rose passed in and out of the kitchen, and she cooed over pictures of Willow and new shots of Big Mike's toddler.

  It was, she thought, almost like being home in the warmth of the active kitchen, listening to chatter and music. And there was the added benefit of being able to pilfer a slice of Big Mike's applesauce cake.

  "Got yourself a movie date," Big Mike said between tunes. "Romantic."

  Meg ate the cake with her hands, standing beside the stove. "Could be, unless he hogs the popcorn."

  "Got little stars in your eyes, little stars and hearts."

  "Uh-uh," she managed with her mouth full.

  "Sure do. Him, too." He made kissy noises—an odd sound, Meg thought with a laugh, coming out of a buff, bald black man. "I got them in my eyes the first time I saw my Julia. Still do."

  "So here you are, baking great applesauce cake for a bunch of sourdoughs."

  "I like baking cake." He plated fried fish, red potatoes and French-cut green beans. "But for Julia and my little Princess Annie, I'd do just about anything. This is a good place to live, a good place to work, but if you got love, any place is."

  He segued from show tunes to the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love," while Meg polished off the cake and Rose came in for orders.

  It was a good place to live, Meg mused as she filled a paper bag with the popcorn, shook it to distribute butter and salt. She was just going to have to figure out what to do about the love.

  She walked over to Town Hall in a chilly damp that promised rain.

  Nate was late, which surprised her. He hustled in just as the lights dimmed.

  "Sorry. Had a call. Porcupine. Tell you later."

  He tried to settle into the movie, to the mood, to the moment. But his thoughts kept circling around.

  He'd connected Ed and Bing on his board that morning. Drawn together by stolen fishing gear. Something that had all the earmarks of a prank or a kid's adventure. There were dozens of other connections, linking person to person.

  They were all around him, sitting in the dark, watching Jimmy Stewart play a cop after a breakdown.

  Been there, done that, Nate mused. Stewart would spiral down, too. He'd suffer and he'd sweat his way into an obsession.

  And he'd get the girl, lose the girl, get the girl, lose the girl. A merry-go-round of pain and pleasure.

  The girl was the key.

  Was Meg? As Patrick Galloway's only child, wasn't she the living symbol of him? If not the key, another link?

  "How long are you going to circle before you land?"

  "What?"

  "Looks like a holding pattern to me." Meg angled her head, and he realized the lights were back on for intermission between the features.

  "Sorry. Zoned out."

  "I'll say. You didn't get close to your share of the popcorn." She rolled up the bag, left it on the seat. "Let's get some air before the second feature."

  They had to take it in the open doorway, like most of the movie crowd. The clouds that had rolled in had burst open sometime during Kim Novak's transformation. The rain Meg had scented gushed out of the sky, pummelled the ground.

  "We'll have some flooding," Meg said, frowned through the clouds of smoke from those brave and drenched souls who stood just outside with cigarettes cupped in umbrellaed palms. "And black ice on the roads when the temperature drops a little more."

  "If you want to get home now, I'll take you. I'll need to come back, keep an eye on this."

  "No, I'll stay for the second feature, see how it goes. Just as easy turn to snow again."

  "Let me check on a couple of things. I'll meet you back inside."

  "There's a cop for you, ever vigilant." She saw his face change, rolled her eyes. "Not a complaint, Burke. Jesus. I'm not going to whine and go pouty if I end up watching a movie by myself. And I can get myself home if I need to. I can even handle the rest of tonight's planned entertainment on my own if you're not around to service me. I have fresh batteries. You look at me and see her, it's going to piss me off."

  He started to say he hadn't, but she was already walking away. And it would've been a lie anyway. Conditioned response, he thought, and tried to roll the weight of it off his shoulders.

  Still carrying it, he picked Peter, Hopp, Bing, The Professor, out of the crowd.

  He spent intermission, and a little beyond it, coordinating and confirming procedure for flooding.

  By the time he rejoined Meg, Grace Kelly was trying to convince Jimmy Stewart to pay more attention to her than the people in the apartment he could see from his rear window.

  He took Meg's hand, linked fingers. "Knee jerk," he murmured in her ear. "Sorry."

  "Leave off the knee and you've got it right." But she turned her head, brushed her lips over his. "Watch the movie this time."

  He did or tried to. But just as Raymond Burr caught Grace Kelly snooping around his apartment, the door banged open behind them.

  Light ran in behind Otto, causing most of the audience to boo and shout at him to close the damn door. He came in fast and wet, ignoring the curses as he zeroed in on Nate.

  Nate was already up and moving toward him.

  "You need to come outside, chief."

  For the second time that day, Nate went out in his shirtsleeves, this time to the sizzle of sleet on pavement and the icy sting of it on his skin.

  He saw the body immediately and, dragging the hair out of his face, moved through the wet to the curb.

  He thought at first it was Rock or Bull, and his heart went thick in his throat. But the dog that lay in blood and freezing rain was older than Meg's, with more white in his coloring.

  The knife that had been used to slash his throat lay buried in his chest.

  He heard someone scream from behind him. "Get them back inside," he ordered Otto. "Control the situation."

  "I know this dog, Nate. It's Joe and Lara's old dog, Yukon. Harmless. Barely got a tooth left in his head."

  "Get these people back inside. Either you or Peter bring me out something to cover him up with."

  Peter came on the run moments after Otto went in. "Jacob gave me his slicker. God, chief, it's Yukon. It's Steven's dog, Yukon. This isn't right. Thi
s just isn't right."

  "Do you recognize the knife? Look at the handle, Peter."

  "I don't know. There's a lot of blood, and . . . I don't know."

  But Nate knew. His gut told him it was going to be a buck knife. It was going to be Bing's missing buck knife. "We're going to take this dog down to the clinic. You're going to help me load him in the back of my car. But you're going to go over and get the camera first so we can record this scene."

  "He's dead."

  "That's right, he's dead. We're going to examine him at the clinic, after we record the scene here. Once we have him loaded, I need you to go back inside, tell Joe and Lara their dog's with me, and where.

  Go get the camera now."

  He looked up, caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. When he straightened, he saw Meg on the sidewalk, holding his jacket.

  "You forgot this."

  "I don't want you out here."

  "I've already seen what somebody did to that poor dog. Poor old Yukon. It's going to break Lara's heart."

  "Go back inside."

  "I'm going home. I'm going home to my own dogs."

  He grabbed her arm. "You're going back inside, and when I've cleared it, you're going to The Lodge."

  "This isn't a police state, Burke. I can go where I want to go."

  "You're going to do what the hell I tell you. I'm going to know exactly where you are, and it's not going to be alone, five miles out of town. There's ice on the roads, hazardous conditions, flash flooding, and somebody who'd be cold enough to cut this dog's throat from ear to ear. So you get your ass back inside until I tell you otherwise."

  "I'm not leaving my dogs out—"

  "I'll get your dogs. Get inside, Meg. Get inside, or I'll haul you in and lock you in a cell."

  He waited five thrumming seconds with nothing but the crackling hiss of sleet striking the ground. She spun around, stormed back in.

  He waited where he was, outside in the rain, beside a dead dog until Peter came roaring back.

  He took the camera, took several Polaroids, tucking them into the pocket of his jacket.

  "Help me load this dog, Peter. Then you go in, follow the orders I gave you. I want you to tell Otto to escort Meg to The Lodge and see that she stays there until I say different. Is that clear?"

  Peter nodded. His Adam's apple bobbed, but he nodded. "Ah, Ken's inside, chief. I was sitting just behind him during the movie. Do you want him out here now?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, send him out. He can ride with me."

  He shoved his dripping hair out of his eyes while thin fog twined around his ankles. "I'm going to count on you to keep order, Peter. I want you to disperse the crowd inside, send everyone on their way. Advise them to go home, let them know we're taking care of things."

  "They're going to want to know what—what happened."

  "We don't know what happened yet, do we?" He looked back at the dog. "Keep everyone calm. You're good at talking to people. You go in there and talk to your people. And, Peter, pay attention to who's in there. I want you and Otto to make a list of everyone who's inside."

  And, Nate thought, I'll know everyone who isn't.

  They loaded the dog into the vehicle. As Peter hurried back into Town Hall, Nate crouched down by his right rear tire. Beside it, just under the axle, was a pair of bloody gloves.

  He opened the door, dug out an evidence bag. Lifting the gloves by the cuffs, he sealed them.

  They would be Bing's, he thought. As the knife would be.

  A knife and gloves Bing had reported stolen only hours before.

  Twenty-Three

  "It would've been quick." Ken stood over the dog. And scrubbed his hands over his face.

  "The neck wound did it," Nate prompted.

  "Yeah. Yeah. Jesus, what kind of sick son of a bitch does this to a dog? You said, ah, you said the chest wound didn't show much blood. He was gone when whoever did this rammed the knife into the chest. You slice the neck like that, sever the jugular, that's game point."

  "Bloody. Blood would've gushed."

  "Yeah. God."

  "Rain washed away some of it—most of it—but not all. And he was still a little warm when we found him. He'd been dead, what, maybe an hour, if that?"

  "Nate." Shaking his head, Ken took off his glasses, polished them on the tail of his shirt. "This is way out of my league. Your guess on that would be as good, if not better, than mine. But yeah, an hour's about right."

  "Intermission'd been over around an hour. He wasn't there when we went out between movies. And there was too much blood left for him to have been killed somewhere else and dumped. You knew this dog?"

  "Sure. Old Yukon." His eyes went shiny, and he rubbed them dry. "Sure."

  "He give anybody any trouble? Snap at somebody that you know of? Bite anyone?"

  "Yukon? Barely got enough teeth left to gum up his own food. Friendly dog. Harmless. Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time keeping it together." He turned away for a moment, struggling for control. "Max . . . well, Max was horrible. A human being, for God's sake. But this dog . . . This dog was old and sweet. And defenseless."

  "Sit down for a minute if you need to." But Nate stood where he was, looking down at the dog. At the fur matted with blood and still dripping with rain.

  "Sorry, Nate. You'd think a doctor could handle himself better than this." He sucked in air, pushed it back out of his lungs. "What do you want me to do?"

  "Joe and Lara are going to be coming along in a minute. I need you to keep them out of here until I finish."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "My job. Just keep them out until I'm done."

  He lifted his camera, took more pictures. He wasn't a coroner, but he'd stood over enough dead bodies, witnessed enough autopsies to guess that the knife strike had been executed from over the dog's head, a little behind. A left-to-right stroke. Straddled him, lifted his head up, sliced.

  Blood jets out, coats the gloves, maybe the sleeves, maybe even splashes back some. Dog goes down, bury the knife in him. Ditch the gloves, walk away.

  A couple of minutes, with the rain giving cover, with a couple hundred people—maybe a little more—inside the building, focused on Jimmy Stewart.

  Risky, he thought as he dusted the handle of the knife for prints, but calculated. Cold.