The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3

by Nora Roberts

  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 house, 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 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 could 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 tromping 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 on the steaming surface of his coffee, sipped. “Never in my life had a decent cup of cop coffee.”

  “Me either. Are you here to ask me to resign?”

  “I’m cantankerous. You get to be when you hit eighty, so I’m practicing. But I’m not stupid. Not your fault Max is dead, poor slob. Not your fault there was a note on his computer claiming he killed Pat Galloway.”

  His eyes were very alert behind those thick lenses as he nodded at Nate. “Yeah, she told me that one, and she’s trying to talk herself into you making that up, so you can tie things up neat and tidy. She’ll get past that. She’s a sensible woman.”

  “And you’re telling me this because?”

  “It might take her a little while to remember how to be sensible. Meanwhile, she might try to make trouble for you. It’ll help her through the grief. I’m going to smoke this cigar.” He pulled a fat one out of his shirt pocket. “You can fine me for it once I have, if you’ve a mind to.”

  Nate pulled open a desk drawer, dumped out the contents of a tin of push pins. Rising, he walked over, handed it to the judge as an ashtray.

  “You knew Galloway?”

  “Sure.” The judge puffed the cigar to life and filled the air with its subtle stink. “Liked him well enough. People did. Not everybody, as it turns out.” He glanced toward the draping blanket. “That your dead board under there?”

  When Nate didn’t respond, he puffed and sipped, puffed and sipped. “I tried capital cases, back in the dark ages. Presided over them when I was wearing robes. Now unless you think I climbed up No Name when I was past sixty and put an end to a man half my age, you should be able to cross me off your list of suspects.”

  Nate leaned back. “You had a couple of simple assault pops.”

  Royce pursed his lips. “Been doing your homework. A man who’s lived as long as I have, lived up here as long as I have and hasn’t gotten into a tangle couldn’t be a very interesting man.”

  “That may be. A man who’s lived here as long as you could probably handle the climb if he put his mind to it. And an ax against an unarmed man makes up for any age difference. Theoretically.”

  Royce grinned around his cigar. “You got a point. I like to hunt and spent some time with Pat out in the bush a time or two, but I don’t climb. Never did. You can verify that if you ask around.”

  It only took once, Nate thought, but filed the statement away. “Who did? Who did climb with him?”

  “Max did, as I recall, first season he was here. Ed most likely did, and Hopp—both of them once or twice, on easy, summer climbs, I’d say. Harry and Deb. They both like to climb. Bing’s been up a few times. Jacob and Pat did a lot of climbing, a lot of hiking and camping together—or working as a team to guide paying customers. Hell, more than half the people in Lunacy take a whack at the mountains. More than that who’ve been here and gone. He was a good climber, from what I’m told. Made some of his living—such as it was—taking people up.”

  “A winter climb. Who around here would’ve been capable of a winter climb on that mountain?”

  “Don’t have to be capable so much as willing to challenge the elements.” He puffed and sipped some more. “You going to show me the board?”

  Since he could find no reason not to, Nate got up and removed the blanket. The judge sat where he was a moment, lips pursed. Then he pushed his bulk out of the chair and moved closer.

  “Death robs youth, most times. You don’t expect it to preserve it. He had potential. Wasted most of it, but Pat still had enough potential to make something of himself. He had that pretty, ambitious woman, a smart, charming child. Had brains, had talent. Problem was he liked to play the rebel so he pissed most of that away. A man would have to get fairly close in to dig an ax into another man’s chest that way, wouldn’t he?”

  “Seems to me.”

  “Pat wasn’t much of a scrapper. Peace, love, and rock and roll. You’re too young to know the era, but Pat was the sort who embraced all that crap. Make love, not war, flowers in your hair and a roach clip in your pocket.” The judge sniffed. “Still, I can’t see him standing there quoting Dylan or whatever when somebody came at him with an ice ax.”

  “If he knew who it was, trusted him, didn’t take it seriously. There are a lot of possibilities.”

  “Max being one of them.” The judge shook his head as he shifted his attention to the photographs of Max Hawbaker. “I wouldn’t have thought so. Get to be my age, nothing much surprises you, but I wouldn’t have thought it of Max. Physically, Pat could have swatted him down like a fly. Which you’ve thought of,” the judge said after a moment.

  “Harder to swat flies armed with deadly weapons.”

  “Point. Max was a decent enough climber, but I wonder if he was good enough to get down that mountain, in February, without the help of someone with Pat’s skill. I wonder how he managed that and how he lived with settling down here, marrying Carrie, raising his kids, knowing Pat was up there—that he was responsible for killing him.”

  “The argument’s going to be he couldn’t live with it.”

  “Sure is handy, isn’t it? Pat’s body’s found through more luck than sense, and a few days later, Max confesses and kills himself. Doesn’t explain, doesn’t spell it all out. Just I did it, I’m sorry. Bang.”

  “Handy,” Nate agreed.

  “But you’re not buying it.”

  “I’ll be saving my money for the time being.”

  WHEN THE JUDGE LEFT, Nate made additional notes. He’d need to talk to several more people now, including the mayor, the deputy mayor and some of the town’s most prominent citizens.

  He wrote PILOT on his pad. Circled it.

  Galloway had gone, reportedly, to Anchorage to pick up some winter work. Had he found any?

  If Galloway had been playing it straight with Charlene, had fully intended to come back after a few weeks, that would narrow the time of the murder to February.

  A big if, but working with that theory, it would be possible—with time and legwork, to verify that Max had been out of Lunacy during that time frame.

  If so, for what purpose?

  If so, had he gone alone? How long had he been gone? Had he come back alone, or with a companion?

  He was going to have to pick his way through Carrie’s memories for the answers. She wasn’t going to be amenable just now. Maybe she’d talk to Coben, but if the ME ruled suicide, would Coben bother to follow up?

  There was a knock, and even as Nate rose to cover the board again, Peter stepped in. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yeah. Close the door. Question.”

  “Yes, sir, chief.”

  “You know any reason somebody would be out snowshoeing in the woods by Meg’s place, in the dark?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m just guessing here, but I don’t think most people would go out shoeing around in the woods, in the dark, for sport.”

  “Well, I guess you could, if you were going to visit someone or something, or couldn’t sleep. I don’t get it.”

  He gestured to the board. “I found those tracks last night, when I was out practicing, giving the dogs a last run. I followed them from the road, about fifty yards up from Meg’s place, and to the edge of the woods by the back of her house.”

  “Sure they weren’t yours?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “How do you know they were made at night? Somebody, most anybody, might have taken a hike there any time. Wanted to do some hunting or take a walk across from the lake.”

  Good points, Nate conceded. “Meg and I were out there the night Max died. Took a dip in her
hot tub.”

  Peter looked politely at the wall, cleared his throat. “Well.”

  “While we were out there, the dogs got antsy. Took off into the woods. They were barking like they’d scented something, carried on long enough that Meg was on the point of calling them back, but they settled down. Now before you point out they could have treed a squirrel or chased down a moose, I found a spot where it looked like they’d rolled around in the snow, and the tracks, the snowshoe tracks, indicated somebody stopped and stood there. I’m not Daniel frigging Boone, Peter, but I can follow the dots.”

  He tapped a finger on the photographs. “Somebody entered the woods, far enough from Meg’s as not to be seen. Then walked in a reasonably direct line—as someone would who knew the layout and had a purpose—toward the back of her house. The dogs’ behavior indicates they recognized this individual and considered him or her friendly. This individual then stopped at the edge of the screen of trees.”

  “If, um, I was hiking around and happened to spot you and Meg . . . taking a dip in her hot tub, I’d probably be, you could say, hesitant to make myself known. I’d probably back off and leave, with the sincere hope you didn’t spot me. It’d be embarrassing otherwise.”

  “Seems to me it’d be less embarrassing altogether not to go sneaking around by her house in the dark.”

  “It would.” Studying the pictures, Peter pulled on his bottom lip. “Maybe it was somebody setting or checking traps. It’s really Meg’s property, right there by her house, I mean, but a little poaching maybe. She wouldn’t like it, because of her dogs. I bet she had the music going.”

  “She did.”

  “So, somebody might’ve headed toward the house, just to see, especially if he was checking traps.”

  “Okay.” It was reasonable. “How about you and Otto taking a run out there, see if you can find any traps. If you do, I’d like to know who set them. I don’t want to see one of the dogs hurt.”