Right now, for example, as he and Sam were driving through the same snowfall in southern New Hampshire Joe had kicked from his boots in Brattleboro, he was struck by how distinguishable this precipitation was from other forms, and how they all had peculiarities of moisture, density, appearance, and a dozen other characteristics that everyone lumped under the same bland title. Nature was a wonder to him, and programs concerning it his favorite thing to watch on TV, even though he did so alone. His two kids just found it weird, and Sue refused to join him on the basis that every program concluded with some animal eating another.

“You like snow?” he asked Sam.

Living with Willy, she was used to catching fly balls. “Sure, in moderation. This is okay.”

She was driving and had the wipers on intermittent only. The snow was free of rain, not coming down hard, and unaccompanied by wind. Given time, it would be just the kind to balance two or three inches high on the twig of every tree, making of their surrounding world in the next morning’s sunrise a sparkling, meringue-like opera set.

But not so close to spring. In reality, by morning, all this was forecast to be replaced by rain again, the set doomed before the curtain even rose.

“You already missing it?” she asked him.

“Oh, no. I take it as it comes. I can live without breaking my neck on the ice, but winter or summer, they each have their appeal. I like the warmth and hate the bugs; love the snow and hate to shovel.”

He consulted their ever-ready atlas of confusing routes taken, overlaid above the road map, and told her, “Next right.”

She glanced at him. “There is no right. You mean coming up?”

“Slow down,” he said, squinting. “It’s got to be a driveway or a dirt track. Yeah. There.”

She checked the rearview mirror and slowed to a crawl. “You sure?”

He gestured with the map. “I’m just the messenger.”

Gingerly, she entered an undisturbed, thickly covered track and began creeping along it into a pristine curtain of falling snow.

“I hope to hell there’s a turnaround at the end of this.”

There was better than that. Emerging like a black-and-white photograph in an old-fashioned developer tray, the ghostly image of an ancient wooden barn took shape.

“This is creepy,” she said half to herself. “I’m happy it’s not after dark.”

“You see any other buildings?” Lester asked, turning around in his seat and checking all windows.

Sam pulled to a stop fifteen feet from the barn’s door. It wasn’t large, not much beyond an oversized shed. Made of raw wood, a story and a half tall, equally wide and deep, its roof under the snow looked stressed and imperiled.

Both of them left the car without saying a word, their coats unbuttoned so they could reach their weapons if necessary. Moving deliberately, each proceeding down an opposing exterior wall, they checked for footprints, sounds, and any movement.