Northern Lights

into a little room with a couple of chairs and a wallmounted 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-andseventy-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 might've 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