by Nora Roberts
It had been a long time since he’d been on Traffic, and he’d never had to do an accident reconstruction in the dark, in the snow, at somewhere under zero degrees. But when he played his light over the road, studied the tracks, Hawley’s version hit closer to home.
“Fact is, you’ve been drinking. We’re going to have to do a sobriety test. You insured?”
“Yeah, but—”
“We’ll sort it out,” Nate repeated. “Let’s get out of the cold.”
Nate drove back to town with Hawley and Ed sitting, stonily silent, in the back. He pulled off at the clinic, left Otto with them while they got patched up and went back to the station for a Breathalyzer.
While he was there, he called up the driving records of both parties. Working out the solution in his head, he carted the Breathalyzer back to the clinic.
There were a couple people in the waiting room. A young woman with a sleeping baby, an old man wearing dirt brown coveralls and gnawing on a pipe.
There was a woman sitting at a chair behind a low counter. She was reading a paperback novel with a mostly naked couple in passionate embrace on the cover. But she looked up when he entered.
“Chief Burke?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Joanna. Doc said you could come on back when you got here, if you want. He’s in exam room one doing Hawley. Nita’s in two, stitching Ed.”
“Otto?”
“He’s using the office. Checking on Bing and the tow.”
“I’ll take Hawley. Which way’s that?”
“I’ll show you.” She marked her book with a shiny foil tab, then got up to lead him to the door directly to her right. “Right in there.” She gestured, then gave a quick knock. “Doc? Chief Burke’s here.”
“Come on in.”
It was a standard exam room—table, little sink, rolling chair. The doctor wore an open flannel shirt over a thermal, and glanced over from his work on the cut over Hawley’s eye.
He was young, mid-thirties, trim and fit-looking, with a sandy beard to go with the thatch of curly hair. He wore little round metal glasses over green eyes.
“Ken Darby,” he said. “I’d shake hands, but they’re busy.”
“Nice to meet you. How’s the patient?”
“Few cuts and bruises. You’re a lucky bastard, Hawley.”
“Say that when you see my truck, goddamn it. That damn Ed drives like an eighty-year-old city woman who lost her bifocals.”
“I’m going to need you to blow into this.”
Hawley eyed the Breathalyzer dubiously. “I ain’t drunk.”
“Then it won’t be a problem, will it?
Hawley grumbled but complied as Ken fixed a butterfly bandage on the cut.
“Well, Hawley, you’re right on the edge here. Makes this a judgment call for me as to whether or not I charge you with driving under the influence.”
“Ah, crock of shit.”
“But the fact is, since you’re on the border here, and show no signs of being under the influence, particularly, I’m going to issue you a warning instead. Next time you go ice fishing and have a couple belts, you don’t get behind the wheel.”
“Ain’t got no damn wheel to get behind.”
“Since I can’t write the moose a citation, your insurance company’s going to have to battle it out with Ed’s. You’ve got a couple of speeding tickets on your plate, Hawley.”
“Speed traps. Anchorage bastards.”
“Maybe. Once you get that wheel back, you keep your speed to the posted limit and get yourself a designated driver when you’re drinking. We’ll get along fine. Are you going to need a lift home?”
Hawley scratched his neck while Ken treated a scrape on his forehead. “Guess I will. I need to take a look at my truck, talk to Bing.”
“Come by the station after you’re done. We’ll get you home.”
“Guess that’s fair as it gets.”
ED WASN’T AS PLEASED with the decision. He sat on the exam table, the air bag burns scoring his cheeks, and his lip puffy from where he’d bitten into it on impact.
“He’d been drinking.”
“He was under the legal limit. The fact is, the culprit here’s a moose, and I can’t give a ticket to the local wildlife. It comes down to bad luck. Two vehicles meeting a moose on a stretch of road. You’re both insured, which is more than the moose is, I’d expect. Neither one of you is seriously injured. Comes down to it, you both got off lucky.”
“I don’t consider having my new car in a ditch and my face smashed by an air bag lucky, Chief Burke.”
“I guess it’s a matter of perspective.”
Ed slid off the table, jerked up his chin. “And is this how we can expect you to handle law enforcement in Lunacy?”
“Pretty much.”
“It seems to me we’re paying you to do little more than warm a seat in your office.”
“I had to warm the seat in my vehicle to come out and look at the wreck.”
“I don’t like your attitude. You can be sure I’m going to discuss this incident and your behavior with the mayor.”
“Okay. Do you need a ride home or to the bank?”
“I can get myself where I’m going.”
“I’ll let you get there, then.”
He met up with Otto outside the exam room. Otto’s only sign of having heard the conversation was a lift of eyebrows. But when they walked out together, he cleared his throat.
“Didn’t make a friend there.”
“And I thought I was being so friendly.” Nate shrugged. “You can’t expect a man to be in a cheery mood when his car’s smashed and he’s getting his face sewn up.”
“Guess not. Ed’s a bit of a blowhard, and he likes to throw his weight around. Got more money than anybody else in the borough and doesn’t like you to forget it.”
“Good to know.”
“Hawley’s all right. He’s a good man in the bush, and he knows how to climb. Colorful enough to please the tourists who want to take on a mountain and keeps to himself most of the time. He drinks, but he doesn’t drink himself drunk. My opinion? You handled that fair.”
“That matters. Appreciate it. You write this up, Otto? I think I’ll ride out, check on the tow.”
Checking on the accident scene was an excuse, but nobody had to know but himself.
He found Bing with a gnarled plug of a man working on digging the SUV out of the ditch. Duty meant he had to stop, get out and walk over to ask if they needed any more help.
“We know what we’re doing.” Bing tossed a shovelful of snow on Nate’s boots.
“Then I’ll let you keep doing it.”
“Asshole,” Bing muttered under his breath as Nate walked back to his car.
Nate turned, considered briefly. “Is asshole a step up or step down from cheechako?”
The little man snorted out a laugh but only shoved the blade of his shovel into the snow, leaned on it as Bing measured Nate. “Same damn thing.”
“Just checking.”
Nate got back in the car and left Bing sneering after him.
He kept driving, away from town, around the sharp curve of the lake.
Meg lived out this way, he’d checked, and since he could see her plane resting on the frozen surface, he was in the right place.
He turned into what looked like it might be a road hacked out of the trees and bumped his way along it to a house.
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. The seclusion wasn’t a surprise, nor were the heart-stopping views in all directions. Those went with the territory.
But the house was pretty, a kind of sophisticated cabin, he supposed. Wood and glass, covered porches, bright red shutters framing the windows.
A walkway had been dug through the snow from drive to front porch. He could see where other paths had been tramped down from the house to outbuildings. One of those buildings, midway from the house to the edge of the forest, rose on stilts.
On the por
ch was a neatly stacked mountain of split wood.
The sun was coming up now, gloriously, bathing the scene with that eerie dawn. Smoke pumped out of three stone chimneys into the lightening sky.
Fascinated, he shut off the engine.
And heard the music.
It filled the world. A strong, sweet female voice, twined around strings and pipes lifted with sunrise over the endless white.
It soared over him when he stepped out of the truck and seemed to come from the air or the earth or the sky.
Then he saw her—the sharp red of her parka, walking over the white, away from the frozen lake with two dogs trotting beside her.
He didn’t call out to her, wasn’t sure he could have. There was a picture here, and his mind clicked the shutter. The dark-haired woman in red, wading through the pristine white with two beautiful dogs flanking her, and the glory of the morning mountains at her back.
The dogs saw, or scented, him first. Barking cut the air, sliced through the soaring music. They shot toward him like two blurry gray bullets.
He considered leaping back into his truck and wondered if that would cement his status as cheechako asshole.
There was always the possibility that his outer gear was thick enough to protect his skin from canine teeth should it become an issue.
He stayed where he was, saying, good dogs, nice dogs, over and over in his head like a mantra.
He braced for a leap, hoped it wouldn’t be at his throat. Both dogs spewed snow into the air, then stopped a foot in front of him, bodies quivering, teeth showing. Full alert.
Both pair of eyes were blue, ice crystal blue, like their mistress’s.
Nate’s breath streamed out, a cloud on the air. “Well, God,” he murmured. “You’re a couple of beauties.”
“Rock! Bull!” Meg shouted out. “Friend.”
The dogs relaxed immediately and moved forward to sniff at him.
“Will they take my hand off if I touch them?” he called.
“Not now.”
Taking it on faith, he stroked a gloved hand over each head. Since they seemed to enjoy it, he crouched down and gave them both a good rub while they pressed against him.
“You got balls, Burke.”
“I was hoping that wouldn’t be the part they’d chomp on. Are they sled dogs?”
“No.” Her cheeks were pink with cold when she reached him. “I’m not a musher, but they come from a good line of them. They just live the high life out here with me.”
“They have your eyes.”
“Maybe I was a husky in a former life. What’re you doing out here?”
“I was just . . . what’s that music?”
“Loreena McKennit. Like it?”
“It’s amazing. It’s like . . . God.”
She laughed. “You’re the first man I’ve met who’ll admit She’s a woman. Out for a holiday drive?”
He straightened. “Holiday?”
“New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh. No. Had a little vehicular out on Lake Drive. I’m looking for the primary witness. Maybe you’ve seen him. Big guy, four legs, funny hat.” He made antlers out of his fingers.
Cutie, she wondered, why do your eyes look so sad even when you smile? “As it happens, I’ve seen a couple of guys like that in the vicinity.”
“In that case, I should come in, take your statement.”
“I might enjoy having you take my statement, but it’ll have to wait. I’ve got to fly. I was just bringing the dogs back, about to shut off my music.”
“Where you going?”
“I’m taking some supplies into a village in the bush. I’ve got to move if I want to get there and back before party time.” She cocked her head. “Want to ride along?”
Nate glanced toward the plane and thought: In that? Not even for a chance to sniff at your neck. “I’m on duty. Maybe another time.”
“Sure. Rock, Bull, home! Be right back,” she told Nate.
The dogs raced off, and Nate realized one of the outbuildings was an elaborate doghouse, decorated with totem figures painted in a primitive-art folksy style.
High life, all right.
Meg disappeared into the cabin. A moment later, the music shut off.
She came out again with a pack slung over her shoulder.
“See you, chief. We’ll see about you taking my statement sometime.”
“Looking forward to that. Fly safe.”
She tossed her hair back, hiked down to the plane.
He stayed, watching her.
She tossed the pack inside, climbed up.
He heard the engine catch, the stunning roar of it bursting through the stillness. The prop whirled, and the plane began to skate over the ice, circling it, circling, tipping onto one ski and circling until it lifted off, nosed up and climbed.
He could see the red of her parka, the black of her hair, through the cockpit window, then she was just a blur.
He tipped his head back as she circled, in the air now, and dipped a wing in what he assumed was a salute.
Then she was spearing off, over the white, into the blue.
FIVE
NATE COULD HEAR the celebration getting underway. Music—a kind of jivey honky-tonk—piped up the stairs, even through the floor vents of his room. Voices hummed, seemed to press against the walls and floorboards. Laughter slapped out, as did the occasional thud he took as dancing feet.
He sat alone, in the dark.
The depression had crashed down over him, without warning, without a snicker. One minute he’d been sitting at his desk reading through files, and the next the smothering black weight had dropped down on him.
It had happened that way before, with no vague sense of unease, no creeping sadness. Just that swamping wave of black rolling him under. Just that harsh switch from light to dark.
It wasn’t hopelessness. The concept of hope had to be a factor before you could embrace its absence. It wasn’t grief or despair or anger. He could have handled or battled any of those emotions.
It was a void. Immeasurable, black, airless, and it sucked him in.
He could function through it; he’d learned how. If you didn’t function, people wouldn’t leave you alone and their concern and worry only drove you deeper into the pit.
He could walk, talk, exist. But he couldn’t live. That’s how it felt to him, when he was in the silky clutches of it. He felt like walking death.
The way he’d felt in the hospital after Jack, with the pain bubbling up under the drugs, and the awareness of what had happened smearing the path to oblivion.
But he could function.
He’d finished the day, locked up. He’d driven back to The Lodge, walked up to his room. He’d spoken to people. He couldn’t remember what or who, but he knew his mouth had moved, words had come out.
He’d gone up to his room, locked the door. And sat in the winter black.
What the hell was he doing here, in this place? This cold, dark, empty place? Was he so obvious, so pathetic, that he’d chosen this town of perpetual winter because it so perfectly mirrored what was inside him?
What did he possibly expect to prove by coming here, pinning on a badge and pretending he still cared enough to do a job? Hiding, that was all he was doing. Hiding from what he was, what he’d been, what he’d lost. But you couldn’t hide from what was with you, every minute of every day, just waiting to leap out and laugh in your face.
He had the pills, of course. He’d brought them with him. Pills for depression, pills for anxiety. Pills to help him sleep, down deep where the nightmares couldn’t follow.
Pills he’d stopped taking because they made him feel less of who he was than the depression or anxiety or insomnia.
He couldn’t go back, couldn’t go forward, so why not sink here? Deeper and deeper, until eventually he couldn’t, wouldn’t, crawl out of the void anymore. He knew, a part of him knew, he was comfortable there, all settled into the dark and the empty, wallowing in his own misery.
>
Hell, he could set up housekeeping there, like one of the crazies living in an empty refrigerator box under a bridge. Life was pretty simple in a cardboard box, and nobody expected you to do anything.
He thought of the old saw about a tree falling in the woods and twisted it around to suit himself. If he lost his mind in Lunacy, would he ever have had it to lose?
He hated the part of him that thought that way, the part of him that wanted to live there.
If he didn’t go down, someone would come up. That would be worse. He cursed at the effort it took just to get to his feet. Had those little stirrings inside him, those quick sparks of life been a kind of mocking? Fate’s way of showing him what it was to be alive, before it kicked him into the hole again?
Well, he still had enough anger to crawl out this time, this one more time. He’d get through this night, this last night of the year. And if there was nothing in the next, he sure as hell wasn’t any worse off.
But tonight he was on duty. He closed a hand over the badge he’d yet to take off and knew it was ridiculous that a cheap piece of metal should steady him. But he’d taken even that, and he’d go through the motions.
The light burned his eyes when he switched it on, and he had to deliberately step away before he gave into the temptation to just turn it off again. Just settle down in the dark again.
He went into the bath, ran the water cold. Then splashed it on his face to fool himself into believing it washed away the fatigue that snaked around the depression.
He studied himself in the mirror for a long time, searching for any tells. But he saw an average guy, no worries. A little tired around the eyes, maybe, a little hollow in the cheeks, but nothing major.
As long as everybody saw the same, that would be enough.
The noise washed over him when he opened his door. As with the light, he had to force himself to move forward instead of retreating back into his cave.
He’d given both Otto and Peter the night off. Eat, drink and be merry. They both had friends and family, people to sweep out the old with. Since Nate had been struggling to sweep out the old on his own for months, he didn’t see why that should change tonight.