Jim stirred when she set the tray down on the coffee table. "Hey," he said, yawning. "Guess I fell asleep."

"Yeah," she said. "Soup's on."

"Be right back." He gently assisted Gal from his lap and stepped outside. Mutt, with similar intentions, and finding herself on the wrong side of the door, barked once. The door opened and she slipped out.

"Mutt's causing havoc with the local wildlife," Jim said when he came back in. "I saw her flush out a couple of spruce hens. Good thing the girls aren't here to see."

"What a phony. She's not that hungry; she chowed down on the better part of a moose yesterday."

"Dogs just wanna have fun."

"That dog does. Have some soup and crackers."

"Thanks."

They ate in silence. "Thanks," he said again when he was finished, sitting back and combing his hair back with one hand. "Sorry I fell asleep. I didn't think I was that tired."

"You up all night with the perp?"

"Higgins? Pretty much."

"That's his name?"

"Riley K. Higgins, that's him."

"What set him off?"

"He's not talking." He buttered another cracker. "He's pretty pitiful, really. We got a make on his prints. He's a vet, two tours in Vietnam, never really got back to the world. Came from Carbondale, Illinois, originally. His dad's dead. I talked a little to his mom."

"How was she?"

He bit into the cracker and chewed meditatively. "Like her son died in Vietnam and she's been mourning his loss ever since. She sounds frail. I didn't talk to her long. I called the local police chief. He said Higgins was on the street, got picked up for pretty much everything at one time or another—indecent exposure for peeing in an alley, drunk in public, disturbing the peace. Got beat up once, bad enough to be in the hospital and dry out. Didn't take. He also got run in for drugs a time or two, but only marijuana, nothing serious. Nothing expensive anyway. Nothing violent, either, which bothers me some. Usually there's a pattern you can trace back when something like this happens.

"The chief said he disappeared last summer. Said the family's a good bunch and that they had done everything they could for him, but he thinks that by the time Higgins disappeared, they were tired and maybe a little relieved that he was gone. He's got a sister and a brother, nieces and nephews. All still live in Carbondale. Mom, too. None of them made much of an effort to find him." On the verge of buttering another cracker, Jim lost his appetite and put down the knife. "I don't know what he was doing here. He doesn't seem to have any visible means of support."

"He might have been one of Dina's projects."

" 'Projects?' "

Kate nodded. "They had those cabins up the hill, empty all winter. It bothered Dina, and maybe Ruthe, too, although she used to give Dina a hard time about Dina's big idea."