Northern Lights

how irrelevant it might seem. What you heard, what you saw, what you thought. Peter, I know you were a kid, but people don't always see kids, and they say things, do things around them without thinking."
    He finished pinning up the photographs, Galloway on one side of the board, Hawbaker on the other. "There's one vital piece of information I want. Where was Max Hawbaker when Galloway left town?"
    "Not that easy to pin that down, after all this time," Otto said. "And the fact is Galloway could've been killed a week after he left. Or a month. Or six damn months."
    "One step at a time."
    "Hard as it is to take when you've drunk beer and fished out of the same hole with somebody, if Max confessed to murder, then shot himself, what are we trying to prove?" Otto pressed.
    "That's supposition, Otto. It isn't fact. The facts are we've got two dead men, some sixteen years apart. Let's just work from there."
     
     
    NATE DIDN'T EVEN STOP by his room on the way out of town. There would be too many questions he couldn't, or wouldn't, answer waiting at The Lodge. Better to evade them until he'd worked out an official line.
    In any case, he wanted the open space, the frosty dark and the icy shine of the stars. The dark was beginning to suit him, he thought. He couldn't remember what it was like to begin or end his workday with any hint of the sun.
    He didn't want the sun. He wanted Meg.
    He had to be the one to tell her, the one to shake her world a second time. If, once he had, she tried to shut him out, he'd have to push to stay inside.
    He'd managed, with little effort, to close people out for months. He wasn't quite sure if the ease of his solitude had been because he'd been unable to hear people trying to break down the walls, or if there'd simply been no one who'd cared enough to try.
    Either way, he knew how painful it was to come back. How all those atrophied emotions and sensations burned and twisted as they struggled back to life. And he knew he cared enough to do whatever it took to spare her from that.
    And there was more. He could admit that as he drove alone, with only the rumble of the heater breaking the silence. He needed her knowledge, her memories of her father to fill in gaps in the picture he was creating.
    Because he needed the work, the headachy, exhausting, frustrating buzz of police work. Those muscles were flexing again, painfully. He wanted that pain. Needed it. Without it, he was afraid, very afraid, he'd just slide silently back into the numbness again.
    Lights were on in her house, but her plane wasn't there. He recognized the truck outside as Jacob's. A whip of worry slapped down his spine as he pushed out of his car.
    The door of the house opened. He saw Jacob in the stream of light an instant before the dogs flew out. Over their noisy greeting, he called out: "Meg?"
    "Picked up another job. She'll be camping out tonight in the bush with a hunting party she took in."
    "That typical?" Nate asked when he reached the porch.
    "Yes. I came to see to her dogs, and check the heat block on her car. That, too, is typical."
    "She called you then?"
    "Radioed. There's stew if you're hungry."
    "Wouldn't mind."
    Jacob walked back to the kitchen leaving Nate to close the door. The radio was on, tuned to KLUN. The dj announced a round of Buffy Sainte-Marie as Nate tossed his coat over the arm of a chair.
    "You've had a long day," Jacob commented as he spooned up stew.
    "You've heard, then."
    "Nothing travels swifter than bad news. A selfish last act, to take his own life so brutally, leaving his wife to find the shell. The stew's hot, the bread's good."
    "Thanks." Nate sat. "Was Max a selfish man?"
    "We all are, and most selfish when we despair."
    "Despair's personal, that's not necessarily the same as selfish. So, do you remember when Max came here to start the paper?"
    "He was young and eager. Persistent," Jacob added, and poured coffee for both of them.
    "Came here by himself."
    "Many do."
    "But he made friends."
    "Some do," Jacob said with a smile. "I wasn't one of them, particularly, though we weren't enemies. Carrie courted him. She set her sights on him and pursued. He wasn't handsome or rich or brilliant of mind, but she saw something and wanted it. Women often see what doesn't show."
    "Guy friends?"
    Jacob raised his eyebrows as he slowly sipped his coffee. "He seemed to be comfortable with many."
    "I heard he used to climb. You ever take him up?"
    "Yes. Summer climbs on Denali and Deborah, if I