Northern Lights

Instead of racing off, they trotted along beside him as he walked out to get his snowshoes out of the car.
    Peter had shown him the basics and had proven to be a patient teacher. Nate still fell on his face—or ass—now and then and sometimes got the shoes bogged down, but he was making progress.
    He strapped them on, took a few testing strides. "Still feel like an idiot," he confided to the dogs. "So let's keep tonight's practice session between us."
    As if in challenge, the dogs bounded off toward the woods. It would be a hell of a hike, Nate decided as he pushed a flashlight into his pocket, but exercise helped beat back depression. And, if he was lucky, would tire him out enough to let him sleep through any dreams that wanted to haunt him.
    He used the house lights and the stars to reach the edge of the woods. His progress was slow and not particularly graceful. But he made it and was pleased he was only slightly out of breath.
    "Getting back in shape. Some. Still talking to myself, though. But that doesn't mean anything."
    He looked up so that he could see the northern lights, could watch them spread their magic. Here he was, Ignatious Burke of Baltimore, snowshoeing in Alaska under the northern lights.
    And pretty much enjoying it.
    He could hear the dogs thrashing around, letting loose with the occasional bark. "Right behind you, boys."
    He pulled out the flashlight. "Too early for bear," he reminded himself. "Unless, of course, we've got an insomniac in the area."
    To reassure himself, he patted his side and felt the shape of his service weapon under the parka.
    He set off, trying to get into an easy rhythm instead of the awkward step-clomp-step he fell into if he wasn't paying attention. The dogs raced back, danced around him, and he was pretty sure they were grinning.
    "Keep it up and there'll be no dog biscuits for you. Go do whatever dog business you've got to do. This is thinking time for me."
    Keeping the lights of the house visible through the trees to his left, he followed the dog tracks. He could smell the trees—the hemlock he'd learned to identify—and the snow.
    Not that many miles west, or north, there would be no trees, so he'd been told. Just seas of ice and snow, rolling forever. Places where no roads cut through that sea.
    But here, with the smell of the forest, he couldn't imagine it. Could hardly conceive that Meg, who had a sexy red dress in her closet and baked bread when she brooded, was out there, somewhere in that sea even now.
    He wondered if she'd looked up at the northern lights, as he had. And thought of him.
    With his head down, the flashlight beam shining ahead, he pushed his body into the steady pace and let his mind wander back to the photos of that sunny day.
    How long after that summer picnic had Patrick Galloway died in ice? Six months? Seven?
    Were those pictures with Christmas lights from his last holiday?
    Had one of those men who'd smiled or mugged for the camera been wearing a mask, even then?
    Or had it been impulse, insanity, the momentary madness of temper that had brought that ax down?
    But it had been none of those things that had left a man in that cave for all these years, preserved in the ice and permafrost.
    That took calculation. That took balls.
    Just as it took both calculation and balls to carefully stage a suicide.
    Or it could all be bullshit, he admitted, and the note left could be God's own truth.
    A man could hide things from his wife, from his friends. A man could hide things from himself. At least until that despair, that guilt, that fear wrapped around his throat and choked him off.
    Wasn't he chasing this case for the same reason he was out here in the dark, in the cold, tromping around on oversized tennis rackets? Because he needed to be normal again. He needed to find who he'd been before his world had caved in on him. He needed to break out of his own cocoon of ice and live again.
    Everything pointed to suicide. All that was arguing against it were his own instincts. And how could he trust them after letting them lie stagnant so long?
    He hadn't worked a murder in close to a year, hadn't done much more than ride a desk for his last months with BPD. And now he wanted to turn a suicide into a homicide because, what, it made him feel useful?
    He could feel the weight bearing down on him as he thought of the way he'd pushed his opinions onto Coben, the way he'd issued orders despite the doubts in his deputies' eyes. He'd invaded Meg's privacy,