Northern Lights

know."
    "Why don't you come back to my office. Peach, hold off anything that comes in, except an emergency, for the next few minutes."
    "All right, chief. Lara." She gripped Lara's hand in hers. "I couldn't be more sorry."
    Lara managed a short bob of her head before she shot her chin into the air and sailed into Nate's office. "I want some answers."
    "Lara, I want you to sit down."
    "I don't want—"
    "I want you to sit down." His tone was quiet, but the authority in it had her dropping into a chair.
    "The town voted for this police department. Voted to bring you in and to pay the tax that pays your salary. I want you to tell me what you're doing. Why you're not out there right now looking for that son of a bitch."
    "I'm doing everything I can do. Lara," he said in that same quiet tone before she could speak again. "Don't think for a minute that I'm taking this lightly. That any of us are. I'm pursuing it, and I'll keep pursuing it until I can give you those answers."
    "You've got the knife. The knife that—" Her voice broke, and her chin bobbled, but she sucked in air, pushed back her shoulders. "You ought to be able to find out who owned that knife."
    "I can tell you that the knife was reported stolen yesterday morning, along with other items. I've talked to the owner, and I'm going to get statements from people who were in Town Hall last night. I can start with you."
    "You think one of us killed Yukon?"
    "That's not what I think. Sit down, Lara," he said when she leaped to her feet. "You were both at movie night. So let's go over what you saw, heard."
    She lowered, slowly this time. "We left him outside." Tears swam into her eyes. "He was getting so he couldn't hold his bladder, so we left him outside. It was only for a few hours, and he had his doghouse. If we'd left him in—"
    "You don't know if it would've made a difference. Whoever did this could've broken in, taken him out. From what I've heard, you gave that dog nearly fourteen good years. You've got nothing to blame yourself for. What time did you leave the house?"
    Lara bowed her head, stared at her hands as her tears plopped onto them.
    "Right after six," Joe said, and began to rub his wife's shoulder.
    "You go straight to Town Hall?"
    "Yeah. We got there about six-thirty, I guess. Early, but we like to sit close to the front. We dumped our jackets on the chairs. Three, four rows back, on . . . on the left side. And we socialized awhile."
    Nate took them through it. Who they had talked with, who had sat near them.
    "Anyone ever complain to you about the dog?"
    "No." Joe sighed. "Well, maybe a few times when he was a puppy. He used to bark if a leaf stirred. And he got out once and chewed up Tim Tripp's boots from off his back stoop. But that was years ago, and Tim got kind of a kick out of it because the damn boots were almost bigger than Yukon. He settled down, after he got out of the puppy stage, he settled down."
    "How about the two of you? Have you had a problem with anyone lately? An argument?"
    "I got into it some with Skinny Jim over the Iditarod. It got pretty heated. But that sort of thing happens. People get worked up over the Iditarod, and they've got their favorites."
    "I had to call Ginny Mann into the school because her boy hooked twice." Lara fumbled out a tissue. "She wasn't happy about it or with me."
    "How old's her boy?"
    "Eight." She blinked rapidly. "Oh God, Joshua couldn't have done that to Yukon, Nate. He's a good kid—just doesn't much like school, but he wouldn't have killed my dog because he was mad at me. And Ginny and Don, they're good people. They couldn't . . ."
    "Okay. If you think of anything else, you let me know."
    "I want—I want to apologize for the way I jumped on you before."
    "Don't worry about that, Lara."
    "No, it wasn't right. It wasn't right and it wasn't . . . You saved my son's life."
    "I wouldn't go that far."
    "You helped save it, and that's the same thing to me. I shouldn't've come in here the way I did. Joe tried to calm me down, but I wouldn't be calmed. I loved that damn dog."
     
     
    AFTER THEY'D LEFT, Nate uncovered his case board. As he pinned up the pictures he'd taken the night before, Peter came in. "Okay, chief ?"
    "Yeah."
    "I feel like I should've been able to handle Mrs. Wise. I got twisted up. I, well, Steven and I hung out together a lot, and . . . I grew up with that dog. My dad, he has the sled dogs, and they're great. But not the same as a pet. Even when Steven went to college, I'd go