Northern Lights

for no good reason.
    He could barely run a little cop shop that dealt mainly with traffic violations and breaking up shoving matches, and suddenly he was the big, bad cop who was going to close the books on a murder that took place sixteen years ago and disprove a nearly textbook suicide?
    Yeah, sure, then he'd track down this nameless, faceless killer, sweat a confession out of him and hand him over to Coben, all tied up in a big pink ribbon.
    "What bullshit. You can barely pass for a cop now, what makes you think . . ."
    He trailed off, staring dully down at the snow that gleamed under the beam of his light. And the tracks that marred its surface.
    "Funny. Must've circled around somehow."
    Not that he gave a good damn. He could wander around aimlessly all night, just like he wandered around aimlessly most days.
    "No." He closed his eyes, broke into a light sweat at the physical effort it took to push away from that void. "Not going back there. That's the bullshit. Not going back down in that hole."
    He'd take the antidepressants if he had to. Do yoga. Lift weights. Whatever it took, but he couldn't go back down there again. He'd never crawl his way free if he went back down this time.
    So he just breathed, opening his eyes, watching his breath stream out white and vanish. "Still standing," he murmured, then looked down at the snow again.
    Snowshoe tracks. Curious, and using the curiosity to hold back the dark, he stepped back, compared those tracks with the ones in front of him. They looked the same, but it was a little tough to gauge any differ ence in the beam of his flashlight—and considering the fact he wasn't some wilderness tracker.
    But he was sure enough he hadn't tromped around in the woods, circled, and somehow ended up walking over his own path—coming in the opposite direction.
    "Could be Meg's," he murmured. "She might've walked out here anytime, just like I'm doing now."
    The dogs ran back, zoomed over the tracks and toward the lights of the house. To satisfy himself, Nate changed his direction, which almost set him on his ass, and followed the tracks.
    But they didn't go all the way through the woods. A fist balled in his belly as he followed the way they'd stopped, where someone had obviously stood, looking through the trees toward the rear of the house— and the hot tub where he and Meg had relaxed the night before.
    And the dogs had set up a racket in the woods, he remembered now.
    He followed their trail, backtracking now. He saw other tracks. Moose, maybe, or deer? How would he know? But he decided, on the spot, he would damn well learn.
    He saw depressions in the snow and imagined the dogs had lain there, rolled there—and again the tracks he followed indicated someone had stood, feet slightly apart, as if watching the dogs.
    As he circled around with the trail, he could see where it would lead him now. To the road, several yards from Meg's house.
    He was well out of breath by the time he'd followed it to the bitter end. But he knew what he was looking at. Someone had walked, or driven, on that road. Entered the woods well out of sight of a house, then had hiked through those woods—purposely, he thought, directly to Meg's.
    Hardly a neighbor paying a call, or someone looking for help due to a breakdown or accident. This was surveillance.
    What time had they gone out to the tub the night before? Ten, he thought. No later than ten.
    He stood on the side of the road, with the dogs snuffling along the snow-packed ground behind him.
    How long, he wondered, to walk back to the road? It had taken him more than twenty minutes, but he imagined you could halve that if you knew what you were doing. Another ten, tops, to get to Max's house, take the gun from the glove compartment. Five more to get into town.
    Plenty of time, he thought, plenty to get into the unlocked door, type a note on the computer.
    Plenty of time to do murder.

 
     
     
     
    SIXTEEN
     
     
     
     
     
     
    NATE WASN'T SURPRISED to find Bing Karlovski had a sheet. It wasn't a big shock to his system to find charges of assault and battery, simple assault, aggravated assault, resisting arrest, drunk and disorderly, on that sheet.
    Running names, whether or not he officially had a case, was basic procedure. Patrick Galloway might have died while Nate was still learning to handle his first secondhand car, but Max Hawbaker had died on his watch.
    So he ran Bing. He ran Patrick Galloway and printed out his record of minor drug