by Nora Roberts
I'm going to marry, especially before he's bought me a really expensive ring. You still mad at me?"
"Not so much. I will always have that image of you standing out there in your red panties with that red shirt open and blowing back in the wind while you held a rifle. But after a while, it's going to be erotic instead of terrifying."
"I really do love you. It's the damnedest thing. Okay." She scrubbed her hands hard over her face.
"We can't leave that carcass out there. It'll bring all kinds of other interested visitors, and the dogs will be rolling over it in the morning. I'm going to call Jacob, have him help me deal with it, and he can see if he can find any signs from whoever left the bait."
She saw his face, stepped forward.
"I can see your brain working. Jacob was here today and with bear meat. He wouldn't have done this, Nate. I can give you several specific reasons why, over and above the fact that he's a good man who loves me. First, he'd never put my dogs in jeopardy. He loves them and respects them too much.
Second, he knew I was coming home tonight. I touched base with him after I did the engine work.
Third, if he wanted you dead, he'd just jam a knife in your heart and bury you somewhere you'd never be found. Simple, clean, straightforward. This? This was sneaky and cowardly and not a little desperate."
"I agree with you. Call him."
* * *
In his office the next morning, Nate studied his most recently collected evidence. Some scraps of white plastic, which looked like the same material used at The Corner Store to bag produce, some scraps of meat he'd sealed in an evidence bag.
And a silver earring.
Had he seen it before? That earring? There was something on the fringes of his memory, a finger tap on the brain, trying to wake it up.
A single silver earring. Men wore them more now than they once had. Fashions changed and evolved, and even a suit wouldn't be smirked at for sporting an earring these days.
But sixteen years ago? Not as mainstream, not as common for a man. More a hippy sort of thing or a musician, an artist, a biker, a rebel. And this wasn't a discreet little stud or a tiny sporty hoop, not with that cross dangling.
It made more of a statement.
It wasn't Galloway's. He'd checked the photographs, and Galloway had died with a hoop in his ear.
Best he could tell, using a magnifying glass, Galloway's other ear had been unpierced.
He'd check with the ME to be sure.
But he knew what he was looking at belonged to the murderer.
The little back piece—what the hell did they call that—was missing. He could see, in his mind's eye, that faceless figure, rearing back with the ax, and the little earring falling off, unnoticed. Bringing the ax down, bringing it home.
Had he stood there, watching Galloway's shocked face as his friend had slid bonelessly down that icy wall? Had he stood there, staring, studying? Shocked himself or pleased? Thrilled or appalled? Hardly mattered, Nate thought. The job was done.
Take the pack, check it? No point in leaving supplies or the money, if the money was in there. Have to be practical. Have to survive.
How long before he'd noticed the loss of the earring? Too late to go back and check, too insignificant a detail to worry about.
But it was always the details that built the case—and the cage.
"Nate?"
Still holding the earring, he reached for his intercom. "Yeah?"
"Jacob's here to see you," Peach told him.
"Send him back."
He didn't get up but instead leaned back in his chair as Jacob came in and closed the door behind him. "Expected you to come by this morning."
"There are things I want to say I didn't want to say last night in front ofMeg."
Jacob wore a buckskin shirt over faded jeans, and the thin string of beads around his neck held a polished, brown stone. His silvered hair was drawn back in a long tail. His exposed lobes sported no jewelry.
"Have a seat," Nate invited, "and say them."
"I'll stand and say them. You'll use me to finish this, or I'll do what I have to do on my own. But this will end." He stepped forward, and for the first time in their acquaintance, Nate saw undisguised rage on Jacob's face.
"She is my child. She's been mine more years than she was Pat's. This is my daughter. Whatever you think about me, whatever you wonder, you will know that. I'll be a part of finding who put her in danger last night, one way or the other."
Nate rocked forward in his chair, rocked back again. "You want a badge?"
He saw Jacob's hands ball into fists, then open again, slowly, just as slowly as the rage went under some enigmatic mask. "No. I don't think I'd like a badge. Too heavy for me."
"Okay, we'll keep my . . . use of you unofficial. That suit you better?"
"It does."
"These people you were asking questions of, ones who told you about the money? Is it possible wind of that blew back here to Lunacy?"
"More than possible. People talk, especially white people."
"And if that wind blew, it wouldn't be a stretch to conclude, due to your connection to Galloway and to Meg, that you'd pass the information to me."
Jacob shrugged.
"Why not just shut you down before you got it to me?"
And now Jacob smiled. "I've lived a very long time and am very hard to kill. You haven't and aren't.
This business last night was sloppy and stupid. Why not just shoot you in the head when you're alone by the lake? Weigh you down with stones and sink you. I would."
"I appreciate that. He doesn't use the direct approach. No, not even with Galloway," Nate said as Jacob looked at the board. "That was a moment of madness, of greed, of opportunity. Maybe all three. It wasn't planned."
"No." Considering now, Jacob nodded. "There are easier ways to kill a man than climbing a mountain."
"One stroke of the ax," Nate continued. "One. Afterward, he's too . . . delicate to yank it out again, to dispose of the body. That would be too direct, too involved. Same with Max. Stage a suicide. Max was responsible as he is—he can look at it that way. The dog? Just a dog, a cover, a distraction—and an indirect slap at Steven Wise. He won't come at me face-to-face."
He pushed the earring across the desk. "Recognize that?"
Jacob frowned over it. "A bauble, a symbol. Not a Native one. We have our own."
"I think the killer lost it sixteen years ago. Long forgotten. But he'll remember it if he sees it again.
I've seen it before. Somewhere." Nate picked it up, let the cross twirl. "Somewhere."
* * *
He carried it with him. It wasn't strictly procedure, but Nate kept the earring in his pocket as he went about town business.
He said nothing to anyone about the incident at Meg's, and he asked her and Jacob to do the same.
A little game with a killer, he thought.
In that burgeoning spring while the days lengthened and the green overtook the white, he went about his duties, talked with the people of his town, listened to their troubles and complaints.
And checked the earlobes of all the men he came in contact with.
"They can close up," Meg told him one night.
"What?"
"The holes in your ear—or wherever you decide to skewer yourself." She danced her fingers lightly over his penis.
"Please." He couldn't quite submerge the shudder and made her laugh. Wickedly.
"I've heard it can really add something to the . . . thrust."
"Don't even think. What do you mean, close up?"
"They can heal up. If you haven't had it for long, and you quit wearing anything in it, they"—she made a slurping sound—"close up again."
"Son of a bitch. Are you sure?"
"I used to have four in this one." She tugged her left ear. "Got an urge and jabbed a third and fourth hole in."
"Yourself? You did it yourself?"
"Sure. What am I, a weenie?" She rolled over on him,
and since she was naked, his mind wandered away from the conversation before he dragged it back again.
"I wore four for a few weeks, but it started to be too much trouble, so I ditched the extras. And they closed up." She reached over to turn on the light, then angled her head. "See?"
"You could've told me that before I looked at earlobes all over town and made notes on who had piercings."
She rubbed his earlobe. "You might look cute with one."
"No."
"I could do it for you."
"Absolutely no. Not in the ear or anywhere else."
"Spoilsport."
"Yeah, that's me. I've got to rethink this now, since my short list is no longer viable."
She rose up to straddle him, to take him in. "Think later."
* * *
He dropped into The Lodge and spotted Hopp and Ed having a meeting over buffalo salad.
He stopped at their booth. "Can I interrupt a minute?"
"Sure, slide in." Hopp made room for him. "We're going over what you'd call fiduciary matters.
Gives me a headache and perks Ed here right up. We're trying to figure out how to stretch the budget to building a library. Section off part of the proposed post office for it, at least for now. What do you think?"
"Sounds like a nice idea to me."
"We're agreed on that." Ed dabbed at his lip with a napkin. "But we need a little more elastic in the budget to make the stretch." He winked at Hopp. "I know that's not what you want to hear."
"We get people involved, get donations for materials, for labor. We get books donated or go begging for them. People pull together if you get them excited about a project."
"You can count me in," Nate told them. "If and when. Meanwhile, I got a fiduciary type of question myself. I was going to drop by to see you, Ed. Bank question, goes back a few years, so it may tax your memory."
No hole in his ear, Nate thought as Ed nodded.
"When it comes to banking, my memory's long. Hit me."
"It deals with Galloway."
"Pat?" He lowered his voice, glancing around the restaurant. "Maybe we shouldn't discuss this here. Charlene."
"It won't take long. I've got a source saying Galloway got himself a good pile of cash playing poker when he was in Anchorage."
"Pat loved to play poker," Hopp commented.
"That he did. I played with him more than once. Small stakes, though," Ed added. "I can't imagine him winning much."
"Source says otherwise. So I was wondering, did he send any money back, into his account here in town, before he went on that climb?"
"Not that I recall. Not even a paycheck. We were a smaller operation in those days, as I told you before." His eyes narrowed in thought. "Though by the time Pat left, we'd built an actual vault and had two part-time tellers. Still I was involved in nearly every transaction."
Rubbing his chin, he sat back. "Pat didn't bother with the finances. He wasn't one to come into the bank to deposit, or withdraw for that matter."
"How about when he left town for work? Did he usually send money back?"
"Now, he did, sometimes. I do remember Charlene coming down once, even twice, every week—
more than two months—checking to see if he had anything direct deposited after he left that time. If there was any big money, which I tend to doubt, he might've banked it there, or just as likely stuffed it in a shoe box."
"I'll go with Ed on the second," Hopp said. "Pat never did think twice about money."
"People who come from it usually don't." Ed gave a shrug. "Then there's us," he said with a wink at Hopp, "who have to do some finagling if we want to have a town library."
"I'll let you get back to that." Nate scooted out. "Thanks for the time."
"He ought to spend his time on town business." Ed shook his head as he lifted his coffee.
"I guess he figures this is."
"We need May Day, Hopp, if we're going to get that library."
"Agreed. So far he's keeping it low-key. He's just going to have to see it through until he's satisfied it was Max who killed Pat. Tenacious Ignatious," she said. "That's how I'm thinking of him these days.
Boy just won't let go. It's a good quality to have in your chief of police."
* * *
Jacob had been right: Some people wouldn't talk to cops. Even with Jacob there, Nate hadn't been able to squeeze any more juice out of the trip he took to Anchorage.
Not that it was a wasted trip.
He hadn't gone to see Coben. He should have, he admitted as Jacob skimmed over the lake. He should have taken the earring in, but he hadn't.
He wanted a little more time there. A little more time to pull it together.
He let his shoulders relax when the plane was on the water. "Thanks for going with me. You want me to secure the plane? You coming in?"
"You know how?"
"It's a boat with wings at this point. I know how to secure a boat to dock."
Jacob nodded toward Meg, who walked down to meet them. "You have other business."
"Yeah, I do. See you later then."
He stepped out onto the flotation, praying he didn't lose his balance and mortify himself by pitching into the lake. But he stepped safely on one end of the dock just as Meg stepped on the other.
"Where's he going?" she called out, when Jacob glided away.
"Said there was other business." He reached for her hand.