Northern Lights

pops, loitering, trespassing.
    He worked steadily down his list, discovering that Harry Miner had a disorderly conduct and injury to property. Ed Woolcott had a sealed juvie, a DUI. Max had racked up a few trespassing, disorderly conducts and two possession pops.
    John Malmont, two D&Ds. Jacob Itu came out clean and Mackie Sr. had a fistful of D&Ds, simple and aggravated assaults, and injuries to property.
    He didn't spare his deputies and saw that Otto had mixed it up a few times in his younger days with disorderly conducts, assault and battery— charges dropped. Peter, as he'd suspected, was as clean as fresh snow.
    He made lists, notes, and added them to his file.
    He played it by the book, as much as he was able. The problem was, as he saw it, he hadn't read the book starring the small-town chief of police nipping his way up the investigative food chain behind a State cop.
    He considered it wise, or at least politic, to filter all his inquiries through Coben. Hardly mattered, Nate decided when he hung up the phone, as none of those inquiries could be answered. Yet.
    Anchorage was urban, which meant it had all the bogging red tape and backups of an urban area. Autopsy results, not yet in. Lab results, not yet in.
    The fact that the chief of police of Lunacy knew in his gut Maxwell Hawbaker had been murdered didn't carry much weight.
    He could take the easy way and let it drag him down. Nate figured he'd taken the easy way for a long time now. Or he could use his underdog status to rise to the occasion.
    Sitting at his desk, with the snow falling soft and steady outside his window, Nate couldn't quite see the way to rise.
    He had little to no resources, little to no autonomy, a force that was green as a shamrock and an evidentiary trail that pointed its bony finger straight to suicide.
    Didn't mean he was helpless, he reminded himself as he got up to pace. To study his case board. To stare hard into the crystal eyes of Patrick Galloway.
    "You know who did you," he murmured. "So let's find out what you can tell me."
    Parallel investigations, he decided. That's the way he was going to proceed. As if he and Coben were running separate investigations that ran along the same lines.
    Rather than sticking his head out the door, he went back and made use of the intercom. "Peach, call over to The Lodge and tell Charlene I want to talk to her."
    "You want her to come over here?"
    "That's right, I want her to come over here."
    "Well, it's still breakfast time, and Charlene sent Rose home. Ken thinks the baby might come a little earlier than expected."
    "Tell her I want her to come over as soon as possible, and that I shouldn't have to keep her long."
    "Sure, Nate, but it might be easier if you just went over and—"
    "Peach. I want her here, before lunchtime. Got that?"
    "All right, all right. No need to get snippy."
    "And let me know when Peter gets back from patrol. I need to talk to him, too."
    "Awful chatty today."
    She cut off before he could comment.
    He wished he'd gotten better pictures of the snowshoe prints. By the time he'd driven into town, picked up the camera, driven back to Meg's, fresh snow had been falling. He didn't know what the hell a bunch of snowshoe tracks was going to tell him, and he hesitated to pin them up.
    But it was his case board, for what it was worth.
    He was tromping around in the dark, just as he'd been tromping around in the woods the night before. But if you kept going, you got somewhere eventually. He grabbed a few tacks and pinned up his shots.
    "Chief Burke." Apparently Peach had taken a cue from him, as her formal tones came through his intercom. "Judge Royce is here, and he'd like to see you if you're not too busy."
    "Sure." He grabbed the buffalo plaid blanket he'd brought in as a makeshift drape for his board. "Send him back," he said, and tossed the red-and-black checks over the board.
    Judge Royce was mostly bald, but wore the thin fringe that circled his dome long and white. He had Coke-bottle glasses perched on a nose as sharp and curved as a meat hook. He had what the polite might call a prosperous build, with a wide chest and a heavy belly. His voice, at seventy-nine, resounded with the same power and impact as it had in his decades on the bench.
    His thick, dung-colored corduroy pants swished as he walked into Nate's office. With them he wore a matching corduroy vest over a tan shirt. And the off-key adornment of a gold loop in his right ear.
    "Judge. Coffee?"
    "Never say