Northern Lights

Seen plenty of people I know there. I do my business and they do theirs."
    "You play hard-ass on this, you'll be the one who pays for it."
    The heat burned into his eyes. "You don't want to go threatening me."
    "You don't want to go stonewalling me." Nate leaned back with his coffee. "You figured you should be the one wearing this badge."
    "Better than some cheechako, one that got his own partner killed. One that woulda washed out if that thin blue line hadn't held him up."
    It seared straight into his gut, but he drank the coffee, held Bing's eyes. "Been doing your homework, I see. But the fact is, I'm wearing the badge. I've got enough right now to take you in, charge you and lock you up for what was done to that dog."
    "I never touched that dog."
    "If I were you, I'd put a little more effort into remembering where I was when Patrick Galloway left town."
    "Why do you want to beat this dead horse, Burke? Make you feel important? Max killed Galloway, and everybody knows it."
    "Then it shouldn't bother you to verify your own whereabouts."
    Rose came over with a slab of meat loaf, a mountain of mashed potatoes and a small sea of gravy. "Anything else I can get for you, Bing?" She set a bowl of snow peas and tiny onions beside the plate.
    Nate saw him struggle, watched him draw himself back. His voice was even, a shade on the gentle side when he answered. "No thanks, Rose."
    "You enjoy that. Chief, just let me know if you want anything."
    "I'm through talking to you," Bing said, and forked up a huge bite of meat loaf.
    "How about some lunchtime small talk, then? What do you think of Star Wars ?"
    "Huh?"
    "You know, the movies. Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader."
    "Fucking idiot," Bing mumbled under his breath and scooped up gravy drenched potatoes. " Star Wars, for Christ's sake. Let me eat in peace."
    "Great story, memorable characters. Under all the jazz, it's about destiny—and betrayal."
    "It's about making a killing at the box office and merchandising." Bing waved his fork before he dug in again. "Buncha guys flying around in spaceships, whapping each other with light swords."
    "Sabers. Light sabers. The thing is, it took some time, some sacrifice, some loss, but . . ." He slid out of the booth. "The good guys won. See you around."

 
     
     
     
    TWENTY-FIVE
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    THERE WERE ELEVEN SENIORS in the last-period English lit class. Nine of them were awake. John let the two snoozers catch their lateafternoon catnap while one of the more alert mangled the Bard's words in her reading of Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot," scene.
    He had enough on his mind, and supervising the discussion on Macbeth was only a small part of it.
    He'd been leading discussions like this for twenty-five years, since the first time he stepped nervously in front of a classroom of students.
    He'd been only a few years older than those he'd taught back then. And perhaps more innocent and eager than the majority of his students.
    He'd wanted to write great and awesome novels, filled with allegories on the human condition.
    He hadn't wanted to starve in a garret, so he'd taught.
    He'd written, and though the novels were never as great or awesome as he'd hoped, he'd published a few. Without teaching he might not have starved in that garret, but he wouldn't have eaten well.
    He'd felt the demands—and, God help him, the joys—of teaching overwhelming for the intellectual young man who wanted to write great novels. So he'd taken the leap, the brave and foolish leap, and had run to Alaska. There he would experience, he'd live simply, he'd study the human condition in that primitive place, that wide-open isolation it represented to him. He'd write novels about man's courage and tenacity, his follies and his triumphs.
    Then he'd come to Lunacy.
    How could he have known, a young man not yet thirty, the true meaning of obsession? How could he have understood—that bright, idealistic and pathetic young man—that one place, one woman could chain him? Could keep him willingly shackled no matter how they defied and denied his needs?
    He had fallen in love—become obsessed, he was no longer sure there was a difference—the moment he'd seen Charlene. Her beauty was like a golden willow, her voice a siren's song. Her reckless and joyful sexuality. Everything about her enchanted and engulfed him.
    She was another man's woman, the mother of another man's child. But it made no difference. His love, if that's what it was, hadn't been the pure