Northern Lights

his pass at it, but not now. Not when anyone walking by would see he was inside and wonder why.
    "I'll come back for that. He kept an office at home?"
    "A little one. I haven't been through his things. I keep putting it off."
    "Anybody at your place now?"
    "No. Kids are in school."
    "Is it all right with you if I go in now, look around? If I need to take anything, I'll write you up a receipt."
    "You go ahead." She went to her purse, fished out keys and took one off a ring. "This is to the back door. You keep it as long as you need it."
     
     
    HE DIDN'T WANT TO PARK in front of the Hawbaker house. Too many people talked about something just that small.
    Instead, he parked by a bend in the river. He didn't notice any cracks in the ice and wondered if he'd jumped the gun on the ones in town. He hiked the back way, through a patch of woods. Colder here, he thought, colder under the trees where the sun couldn't fight through. There were tracks—snowmobile, skis. Cross-country team, he decided, from the high school. He spotted other tracks that weren't human and hoped he wasn't going to come face-to-face with the moose he'd run off.
    He didn't know enough about them to be sure they didn't hold grudges.
    The snow was deeper than he'd anticipated and made him curse himself for not slapping on his snowshoes. So he did what he could to use the tracks.
    He saw a streak he thought might be a fox and, when he stopped to catch his breath, spotted a herd of shaggy-coated deer. They trudged along, no more than fifteen feet to his north. He could only assume he was downwind as they didn't so much as give him a glance. So he stood watching them until they wound their way out of sight.
    He worked his way to Carrie's back door, past what he assumed was a garden or toolshed, around the building on stilts that would be their cache. Someone had cleared the back stoop, and there was a stack of firewood, covered with a tarp, by the door.
    He used the key and stepped inside a combination mudroom and laundry area. Since his boots were wet and caked with snow, he took them off, leaving them and his coat.
    The kitchen was clean, almost to a gleam. Maybe that's what women did, or some women, when they were coping with grief. They got out the cleanser and the mop. And the polishing cloth, he thought as he continued through the house, the vacuum cleaner. There wasn't a speck of dust to be found. Nor any of the usual clutter of living.
    Maybe that was the point. She wasn't ready to live again yet.
    He went up, identified the kids' room by the posters on the walls, the disorder on the floor. For now, at least, he bypassed the master bedroom where the bed was carefully made and a patchwork throw was draped over the back of a chair.
    Did she sleep there now, unwilling, unable to lie down on the bed she'd shared with her husband?
    Beside the bedroom was Max's office. And here was the clutter, the dust and debris of normal living. The desk chair had a strip of duct tape along one of the seams—the everyman's repair job. The desk itself was scarred and battered, an obvious second- or thirdhand purchase. But the computer on it looked new or very well tended.
    There was a desk calendar, one of those cubes that followed a theme and gave you a picture and a saying each day. Max's was a fishing theme, and it had a cartoon man holding up a minnow-sized fish and claiming it was bigger when he'd hooked it.
    The date was January nineteenth. Max hadn't made it back home to rip it off to reveal the next day's joke.
    There was no message written on it, no handy clue such as: Meet [insert name of killer] at midnight.
    Nate bent to go through the trash can under the desk. He found several other pages of the cube, some with notes.
    IDITAROD ART—POV DOG?
    BATHROOM TAP DRIPPING. CARRIE PISSED. FIX!
    And the one from the day before his death, the one covered with scribbles of one word: PAT.
    Nate took it out, placed it on the desk.
    He found several envelopes indicating Max had sat there, paying bills on one of the days shortly before he died, a couple of candy wrappers.
    He went through the desk drawers, found a checkbook—$250.06 on the balance after the bill-paying stint—two days before he died. Three passbooks for savings accounts. One for each of his children, one joint for him and his wife. He and Carrie had a $6,010 nest egg.
    There were envelopes, return address labels. Rubber bands, paper clips, a box of staples. Nothing out of the ordinary.
    In the