Northern Lights

greet him, with Rock carting one of the mastodon bones they liked to gnaw on. It looked fresh to Nate, and he left the dogs playing an energetic tug-of-war with it as he went inside.
    Nate could smell blood before he was halfway to the kitchen. Instinctively his hand went to the butt of his weapon.
    "I brought meat," Jacob said without turning around.
    There were a couple of thick planks of something bloody on the counter. Nate relaxed his hand.
    "She doesn't have much time to hunt these days. Bear are awake. It's good meat for stew, meat loaf."
    Bear meat loaf, Nate thought. What a world. "I'm sure she'll appreciate it."
    "We share what we have." Jacob continued calmly wrapping bear meat in thick white paper. "She told you I was with her most days during the time her father was taken."
    "Was taken? That's an interesting way to put it."
    "His life was taken from him, wasn't it?" Jacob finished wrapping the meat, then picked up a black marker and wrote a date on the packages. It was such a housewifely gesture that Nate blinked.
    "She told you this, but you don't trust her memory, or her heart."
    "I trust her."
    "She was a child." Jacob washed his hands in the sink. "She could be mistaken, or could, because she loves me, be protecting me."
    "She could."
    Jacob dried his hands, picked up the packages of meat. When he turned, Nate saw he wore an amulet around his neck. A dark blue stone over a faded denim shirt.
    "I've talked to people." He walked into the little mudroom where Meg kept a small chest freezer. "People who aren't so willing to talk to police. People who knew Pat and Two-Toes." He began to stack packages in the freezer. "I'm told, by these people who will talk to me and not the police, that when Pat was in Anchorage, he had money. More money than was usual for him."
    He closed the freezer, walked back into the kitchen. "I'm having a whiskey now."
    "Where'd he get the money?"
    "He worked a few days at a cannery, took an advance on his pay, I'm told. He used it to play poker." Jacob poured three fingers of whiskey into a glass. Held a second glass up, with a question on his face.
    "No, thanks."
    "I believe this may be true, because he liked to play, and though he often lost, he would consider it . . . payment for the entertainment. It seems this time he didn't lose. He played two nights, and most of one day. Those who talk to me say his winnings were big. Some say ten thousand, others twenty, others more. It may be like a fish and grows bigger with the telling. But there's agreement that he played and won and had money."
    "What did he do with the money?"
    "That, no one knows, or admits to knowing. But some say they saw him last drinking with other men. This isn't unusual, so no one can say who the men were. And why should they remember such a thing over so long a time?"
    "There was a whore."
    Jacob's lips curved, just a little. "There always is."
    "Kate. I haven't been able to locate her."
    "Whoring Kate. She died, maybe five years ago. Heart attack," Jacob added. "She was a very large woman and smoked two, maybe three, packs of Camels a day. Her death wasn't much of a surprise."
    Another dead end, Nate thought.
    "Did these people who talk to you but not to cops tell you anything else?"
    "Some say Two-Toes flew Pat and two others, or three others, no more than that, to climb. Some say to climb Denali, some say No Name, some say Deborah. The details aren't clear, but there's memory of the money, the pilot, the climb and two or three companions."
    Jacob sipped his whiskey. "Or I could be lying and be the one who climbed with him."
    "You could," Nate acknowledged. "It'd be ballsy. A man who hunts down a bear's got balls."
    Jacob smiled. "A man who hunts down a bear eats well."
    "I believe you. But I could be lying."
    This time Jacob laughed and downed the rest of the whiskey. "You could. But since we're in Meg's kitchen, and she has love for us both, we can pretend to believe each other. She has more light now. She's always been bright, but now she's brighter, and she burns off the shadows in you. She can take care of herself. But . . ."
    He took the glass to the sink, rinsed it, set it to drain, then turned back. "Take care with her, Chief Burke. Or I'll hunt you down."
    "Noted," Nate replied when Jacob walked out.

 
     
     
     
    TWENTY-EIGHT
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    NATE BIDED HIS TIME. It seemed he had plenty of it. Since he made it a point to stop by The Lodge restaurant and see Jesse daily, it wasn't a