Northern Lights

if you need to." But Nate stood where he was, looking down at the dog. At the fur matted with blood and still dripping with rain.
    "Sorry, Nate. You'd think a doctor could handle himself better than this." He sucked in air, pushed it back out of his lungs. "What do you want me to do?"
    "Joe and Lara are going to be coming along in a minute. I need you to keep them out of here until I finish."
    "What are you going to do?"
    "My job. Just keep them out until I'm done."
    He lifted his camera, took more pictures. He wasn't a coroner, but he'd stood over enough dead bodies, witnessed enough autopsies to guess that the knife strike had been executed from over the dog's head, a little behind. A left-to-right stroke. Straddled him, lifted his head up, sliced.
    Blood jets out, coats the gloves, maybe the sleeves, maybe even splashes back some. Dog goes down, bury the knife in him. Ditch the gloves, walk away.
    A couple of minutes, with the rain giving cover, with a couple hundred people—maybe a little more—inside the building, focused on Jimmy Stewart.
    Risky, he thought as he dusted the handle of the knife for prints, but calculated. Cold.
    There was nothing on the knife but blood. He bagged it, then dug up a plastic sack. He put the knife and the photographs inside. And went out to speak to the Wises.
    The rain had turned to a thin, wet snow by the time Nate tracked down Bing. He found him in his enormous garage by his log house. His weather radio was on as he tinkered under the hood of his truck.
    There were a couple of other vehicles inside and what looked like a small engine or a motor up on blocks. One of the drawers on a huge, rusted, red toolbox was open. Above a long counter was a peg-board holding more tools, with a calendar beside it featuring a mostly naked blonde with enormous breasts.
    A muscular-looking sewing machine—sewing machine?—sat on a wood table in the far corner. And over that was a moose head.
    The place smelled like beer stirred with smoke and grease.
    Bing squinted over at Nate, one eye closed against the smoke that drifted up from the cigarette clamped in his lips. "We get more rain tomorrow, the river's going to come up and kiss Lunatic Street. Gonna need the sandbags I got back of the truck."
    Sandbags, Nate thought with a glance at the sewing machine. He couldn't quite picture Bing sewing up sandbags, but he supposed there were bigger wonders in the world.
    "You left the movie early."
    "Seen enough. Gonna be busy by morning. What's it to you?"
    Nate stepped forward, held out the bagged knife. "Yours?"
    Bing drew the cigarette out of his mouth as he turned. He'd have to have been blinded by more than a little smoke to miss the blood on handle and blade.
    "Looks like it." He tossed the cigarette down, heeled it to pulp on the oil-stained concrete. "Yeah, it's my knife. Looks like it's been used some, too. Where'd you find it?"
    "In Joe and Lara's dog, Yukon."
    Bing took one step back. Nate saw it, the quick, jerking step of a man who'd been sucker punched. "What the hell you talking about?"
    "Somebody used this to slit that dog's throat, then jammed it in his chest so I wouldn't have any trouble finding it. What time did you leave the movie, Bing?"
    "Somebody killed that dog? Somebody killed that dog?" Awareness slid over the shock in his eyes. "You're saying I killed that dog?" His fist tightened over the wrench still in his hand. "Is that what you're saying?"
    "You take a swing at me with that, I'll take you out. You want to spare yourself that humiliation, because believe me, I can do it. Put it down. Now."
    Rage trembled over his face, quaked visibly through his body. "You've got yourself a big, bad temper, don't you, Bing?" Nate said softly. "The kind that's earned you some assaults on your record, had you spending a few nights here and there behind bars. The kind that's pushing you right now to crack my skull like an egg with that wrench. Go ahead, try it."
    Bing heaved the wrench across the room where it smashed a chip out of the cinder-block wall. He was breathing like a steam engine, and his face was red as brick.
    "Fuck you. Sure I punched a few faces, cracked a few heads, but I'm no goddamn dog killer. And if you say I am, I don't need a wrench to bust your head open."
    "I asked you what time you left the movie."
    "I went out to catch a smoke at intermission. You saw me. You started
    in on how we had to prep for possible flooding. I came back here. Loaded those damn sandbags." He