Northern Lights

up those ends?"
    "No."
    "I want to get the body back to Anchorage, start the tests. And I want to be there when they recover Galloway's body."
    "I'd appreciate a call on that when you have him. His daughter's going to want to see him. And her mother's going to be pretty insistent about taking custody of the body."
    "Yeah, I've already heard from her. Once he's down, and positively ID'd, we'll let the family fight that end out. His daughter can come down for a visual, but his prints are on file. A couple of minor drug busts. We'll know if it's Galloway once we have the body."
    "I'll bring her in, I'll tie up your loose ends and I'll do what I can to play mediator with the deceased's family. In return I want copies of every piece of paperwork on both these cases. That includes case notes."
    Coben looked back at the neat house on its blanket of snow. "You seriously think somebody staged this suicide to cover up a sixteen-yearold crime?"
    "I want the copies."
    "Fine." Coben pulled open the passenger door. "Your lieutenant said you had good instincts."
    Nate sat behind the wheel. "And?"
    "Good doesn't always mean right."

 
     
     
    FIFTEEN
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    HE HAD TO WORK with what he had, and that included his two deputies and his dispatcher. He pulled them all into his office, along with the necessary extra chairs.
    There was a plate of peanut-butter cookies and a pot of fresh coffee on his desk, courtesy of Peach. And he thought: Why the hell not?
    He took a cookie, gestured with it toward his deputies before biting in. "First, the results of the canvass."
    "Pierre Letreck thinks he might've heard what sounded like a gunshot." Otto pulled out his notebook and made a business out of flipping through pages. "He says he watched a movie on cable. Claimed at first it was The English Patient, and I said, 'Pierre, don't hand me that shit, you never watched anything of the kind.' And he said, 'How the hell do you know what I watch in the privacy of my own home, Otto?' To which I responded—"
    "Just give me the bottom line, Otto."
    Otto scowled, looked up from the notebook and his careful reading. "Just trying to be thorough. What he watched, which he told me after considerable interrogation, was some skin flick called A lien Blondes. He thought it went off around midnight, and he was in the bathroom tak ing a . . . relieving his bladder," he amended after a loud throat-clearing from Peach. "He heard what he thought was a gunshot and, being of a curious nature, looked out the bathroom window. At that time he saw no one, but did notice Max's—the deceased's—truck parked in back of the paper. He then completed his business and retired for the night."
    "He thinks somewhere in the vicinity of midnight?"
    "Chief ?" Peter raised his hand. "I checked the listings, and the movie ended at twelve-fifteen. According to Mr. Letreck's statement, he went straight from his living room to the bathroom and heard the single shot almost immediately."
    "Did he notice anything else? Any other vehicles?"
    "No, sir. Otto made him go through it a couple of times, but he stuck with the statement."
    "Anybody else hear anything, see anything?"
    "Jennifer Welch thinks she might have." Otto flipped more pages. "She and Larry, her husband, were sleeping, and she says she thinks she might've been wakened by a noise. They've got an eight-month-old baby, and she says she sleeps pretty light. As soon as she woke up, the baby started crying, so she doesn't know, for sure, if it was the baby or a noise that woke her up. But the timing's about the same as Pierre's. Said she looked at the clock when she got up to get the baby, and it was about twelve-twenty."
    "Where are these two houses in reference to The Lunatic 's back office?" Nate gestured to the chalkboard he'd picked up at The Corner Store and hung on his wall. "Draw it out for me, Otto."
    "I'll do it." Peach hauled herself to her feet. "Neither of these two can draw worth a damn."
    "Thanks, Peach." Nate looked back at his deputies. "Were these the only two you could find who heard anything?"
    "That's it," Otto confirmed. "We got Hans Finkle, who said his dog started barking sometime in the night, but he just threw a boot at it and didn't notice the time. Fact is, most people aren't going to pay any mind to a gunshot."
    "Are any of you aware of Max having words with anybody lately?"
    At the negative responses, Nate looked over at the blackboard. Peach was taking him literally, he noted.