Northern Lights by Nora Roberts
wasn't her mother, ready to roll with whoever came along. But she wasn't a woman looking to share home and hearth for the long term either.
That's what he was about, and she'd known it. She'd known what was behind those sad, wounded eyes the first time she'd looked into them.
She'd had no business sleeping with a man who'd want or expect more than sex.
Wasn't her life complicated enough right now without feeling obliged to make adjustments for anybody else? For a man, for God's sake.
She'd been smart to take the extra jobs, and she loved the feeling of being flush. She'd been smarter yet to stay away from him and Lunacy for a couple extra days. Settle herself down.
God knew she needed to be settled for what she was about to do.
She hadn't contacted Nate, but she'd contacted Coben.
The body had been recovered and brought to the facilities in Anchorage.
Now she was on her way to the morgue to identify her father.
Alone. Another deliberate act. She'd been living her life, handling her affairs, dealing with her own details alone nearly as long as she could remember.
She had no intention of changing that now.
If it was her father in the morgue—and she knew in her gut it was— then he was her responsibility, her grief and, in a strange way, her release.
This she wouldn't share, even with Jacob. The only person she loved absolutely.
What she was doing was a formality, more a courtesy. Coben had made certain, in his flat and polite way, she knew that. Patrick Galloway had a record, and his prints were on file. Officially, he'd already been identified.
But she was next of kin and permitted to see him, to confirm the identity, to sign papers, give her statement. Deal with it.
When she arrived, she paid off the cab. Steeled herself.
Coben was there, waiting.
"Ms. Galloway."
"Sergeant." She offered her hand, found his cool and dry.
"I know this is difficult and want to thank you for coming."
"What do I have to do?"
"There's some paperwork to clear. We'll streamline it, make this as quick as we can."
He led her through it. She signed where she needed to sign, accepted her visitor's badge and hooked it on her shirt.
She kept her mind blank as he led her down a wide, white corridor and did her best to ignore the vague and persistent odors that snuck into the air.
He took her into a little room with a couple of chairs and a wall-mounted TV. There was a window, covered on the other side by tight, white blinds. Bracing herself, she walked to it.
"Ms. Galloway." He touched her shoulder, lightly. "If you'll look at the monitor."
"Monitor?" Confused, she turned, stared at the dull, gray screen. ,' "The television? You're going to show him to me on television. Christ, ;, don't you think that's more ghoulish than just letting me . . . "
"It's procedure. It's best. When you're ready."
Her mouth had gone dry, with a sandy coating that tasted foul. She was afraid to try to swallow it, afraid that it would simply come up again, erupt out of her in ripe sickness before she'd even begun.
"I'm ready."
He lifted a phone from the wall, murmured something. Then, picking up a remote, aimed it at the screen and clicked.
She saw him only from the tops of his shoulders. They hadn't closed his eyes, was her first, panicked thought. Shouldn't they have closed his eyes? Instead, they were staring, the icy blue she remembered filmed over. His hair, moustache, the stubbly beard were all the pure, dark black she remembered.
There was no ice now to silver them, to sheen like glass over his face. Was he still frozen? she thought dully. Internally? How long did it take for heart and liver and kidneys to thaw out when a hundred-and-seventy-pound man had been frozen solid?
Did it matter?
Her stomach shuddered, and she felt a tingling in the tips of her fingers, the tips of her toes.
"Can you identify the deceased, Ms. Galloway?"
"Yes." There was an echo in the room—or in her head. Her voice seemed to go on forever, shimmering back, tinny and soft. "That's Patrick Galloway. That's my father."
Coben clicked off the screen. "I'm very sorry."
"I'm not finished. Turn it back on."
"Ms. Galloway—"
"Turn it back on."
After a brief hesitation, Coben complied. "I should warn you, Ms. Galloway, the media—"
"I'm not worried about the media. They're going to splash his name around whether I worry about it or not. Besides, he mightVe enjoyed that."
She wanted to touch him, had prepared herself for that. She couldn't say why she'd wanted that contact—her skin against his skin. But she could wait, wait until they'd done what they needed to do to the shell of him. When they had, she'd give him that last touch, the touch she'd denied herself in childish pique so many years ago.
"All right. You can turn it off."
"Would you like a minute? Would you like some water?"
"No. I'd like information. I want information." But her legs betrayed her, going loose at the knees so she had to let herself fold into a chair. "I want to know what happens now, how you intend to find the person who killed him."
"It might be best if we discussed this elsewhere. If you come back with me to—"
He broke off when Nate stepped into the room. "Chief Burke."
"Sergeant. Meg, you should come with me. Jacob's waiting upstairs."
"Jacob?"
"Yeah, he flew me in." Without waiting for assent, Nate took her arm. He pulled her up, led her from the room. "I'll get Ms. Galloway to the station, sergeant."
Her vision was blurry. Not tears, but shock, she realized. It was seeing her father dead on that screen, dead on TV, as if his life, the end of it, had been some sort of episode.
A cliff-hanger, she thought giddily. One hell of a cliff-hanger.
So she let him guide her and said nothing to him, nothing to Jacob, nothing at all until they walked outside.
"I need some air. I need a minute." Pulling her arm free, she walked half a block. She could hear the traffic, busy, city traffic, and could see out of her periphery the smears and blurs of color from people passing her on the sidewalk.
She could feel the cold on her cheeks, and the thin winter sunlight that filtered through those thickly overcast skies on her exposed skin.
She drew on her gloves, put on her sunglasses and walked back.
"Coben contacted you?" she asked Nate.
"That's right. Since you've been out of touch, there are some things you need to know before we talk to him again."
"What things?"
"Things I don't want to discuss on the damn sidewalk. I'll get the car."
"Car?" she said to Jacob when Nate strode away.
"He rented one at the airport. He didn't want you in a cab. He wanted you to have some privacy."
"Considerate. Which I'm not. You don't have to say it," she went on when Jacob stood in silence.
"I can see it in your eyes."
"He tended your dogs while you were gone."
"Did I ask him to?" She heard the bitchiness in her voice and swore. "Damn it, damn it, Jacob, I'm not going to feel crappy for living my life the way I've always lived it."
"Did I ask you to?" He smiled a little, and the pat of his hand on her arm nearly broke the wall she'd built viciously against tears.
"They put him on a television screen. I couldn't even look at him, not really."
She walked to the curb when Nate pulled up in a Chevy Blazer. And climbing in, squared her shoulders. "What do I need to know?"
He told her of Max in the detached, straightforward style he would have used to inform any civilian with a need to know in regards to a case. He continued to speak, continued to drive with his eyes on the road, even when she turned her head to stare at him.
"Max is dead? Max killed my father?"
"Max is dead. That's
"I don't believe it." There was too much churning inside her, too much beating against that defensive wall. "You're saying Max Hawbaker went homicidal all of a damn sudden, stuck an ice ax in my father's chest, then climbed down the mountain and strolled back into Lunacy? That's just bullshit. That's stupid cop tie-it-up-and-forget-it bullshit."
"I'm saying that Max Hawbaker is dead, that the ME ruled it a suicide, determining same from physical evidence, and that there was a note written on the computer—which was decorated with some of Max's blood and brains—that claimed responsibility. If you'd bothered to contact anyone over the last few days, you would have been apprised and updated."
His voice was flat, and so, she noted, were his eyes. Nothing there, nothing that showed. She wasn't the only one with walls. "You're being awfully careful not to express your opinion, Chief Burke."
"It's Coben's case."
He left it at that and pulled into a visitor's slot at the parking lot of the State Police.
* * *
"Hawbaker's death has been ruled a suicide," Coben stated. They gathered in a small conference room. Coben had his hands folded on a file on the table. "The weapon was his, and his prints—only his prints— were found on it. Gunpowder residue was found on his right hand. There was no sign of break-in or struggle. A whiskey bottle and a mug thereof were on his desk. Autopsy results prove he'd consumed just over five ounces of whiskey prior to his death. His prints—and only his— were on the keyboard of the computer. The wound, the position of the body, the position of the weapon, all indicate self-infliction."
Coben paused. "Hawbaker was acquainted with your father, Ms. Galloway?"
"Yes."
"And you're aware he had occasion to climb with your father from time to time?"
"Yes."
"Were you aware of any friction between them?"
"No."
"You may also be unaware that Hawbaker was fired from the paper in Anchorage for drug use. My investigation indicates that Patrick Galloway was known to use recreational drugs. As yet, I've found no evidence that your father sought or had gainful employment in Anchorage, or elsewhere, after he left Lunacy, purportedly to seek same."
She spared him a glance. "Not everyone works on the books."
"True. It would appear that Hawbaker, whose whereabouts during the first and second week of February of that year cannot as yet be determined, met Patrick Galloway and together they sought to climb the south face of No Name. Supposition would be that during that climb, perhaps influenced by drugs and physical distress, Hawbaker murdered his companion and left the body in the ice cave."
"It could be supposed that pink pigs fly," Meg returned. "My father could have snapped Max in two without breaking a sweat."
"Physical superiority wouldn't hold up against an ax, particularly in a surprise attack. There was nothing in the cave that indicated a fight. We will, of course, continue to study and evaluate all evidence, but sometimes, Ms. Galloway, the obvious is the obvious because it's truth."
"And sometimes crap floats." She got to her feet. "People always say suicide's a coward's way. Maybe that's valid. But it seems to me it takes a certain amount of guts and determination to put the barrel of a gun to your head and pull the trigger. Either way, Max doesn't fit the bill for me. Because either way is extreme, and he just wasn't. What he was, Sergeant Coben, was ordinary."
"Ordinary people do the unspeakable every single day. I'm sorry about your father, Ms. Galloway, and I give you my word that I'll continue to work the case to its conclusion. But at this time, I have nothing more to tell you."
"Another minute, sergeant?" Nate turned to Jacob and Meg. "I'll meet you outside." He closed the door behind them himself. "What else do you have? What aren't you telling her?"
"Do you have a personal connection with Megan Galloway?"
"Undetermined at this particular time and irrelevant. Give and take, Coben. I can tell you that there are a good half dozen people still living in Lunacy who could have climbed with Galloway that winter, people Max knew as friends and neighbors and who could have sat in that office with him on the night of his death. The ME's determination was made on facts, but he doesn't know the town, the people. He didn't know Max Hawbaker."
"And you barely did." Coben held up a hand. "But. I have evidence there were three people on that mountain at the probable time of Galloway's death. Evidence that only two of them were in that cave. Evidence I believe was written by Galloway's own hand."
He pushed the file toward Nate. "He kept a journal of the climb. There were three of them up there, Burke, and I'm dead sure Hawbaker was one of them. I'm not sure he was the second man in that cave. There's a copy of the journal in the file. I'm having an expert verify it's Galloway's writing from another sample, but eyeballing it, I'd say it is. It's up to you if you want to share that with his daughter."
"You wouldn't."
"Against the grain some to share it with you. Just like it is to admit you've got more Homicide experience than I do and a better handle on the people of that town. Lunacy fits, Burke, because I'd say you've got at least one certifiable lunatic living under your nose."
* * *
He flew back with Meg, with the file tucked under his parka. After he'd read it, he'd decide if he'd tell her about it. Decide if he'd tell anyone.
Since he couldn't quite pull off the denial that he was in the air, he did what he could to enjoy the view.
Snow. More snow. Frozen water. Icy beauty with dangerous pockets. Not unlike his current pilot.
"Is Coben an asshole?" she asked abruptly.
"I wouldn't say so."
"Is that because you cops stick together, or is it an objective opinion?"
"Some of both, maybe. Following the evidence doesn't an asshole make."
"It does if either of you seriously believes Max whacked my father with an ax. I expected better from you."
"See where expectations get you?"
She took the plane into a deep, left dip that had his stomach sloshing toward his throat. Before he could object, she dipped right.
"You want me puking in your cockpit, you just keep it up."
"Cop ought to have a stronger stomach." She nosed down with such speed he could see nothing but that white world hurtling toward them— and his own mangled body in twisted, burning wreckage.
His vicious, violent cursing had her laughing as she shot the