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to reach across the table, collecting empty plates, glasses, and discarded napkins—more comfortable with her hands busy.
    Ben Caswell periodically worked with Alex, and socially he and Linda fit well with Alex and Jessie, for both couples enjoyed bridge, fishing trips, meals at one home or the other, and spirited conversation. Jessie and Linda planned similar small gardens in the late Alaskan spring, starting vegetables and flowers indoors from seed, sharing, and setting them out when all danger of frost was past in late May or early June. Cas and Alex had an ongoing, relaxed competition over who caught the most salmon each summer. The foursome had a relationship they valued and—like many residents of the farthest north state—viewed as extended family.
    “Let’s talk the whole thing over a little,” Ben now suggested. “If we assume that the calls are part of it, you’ve had three different things: calls, the traps—with their tags—and the note. Anything else?”
    “Not so far.”
    “Okay. Is there anything at all that may provide a clue to the identity of whoever’s responsible? One at a time—calls first.”
    He laid a spoon down on the table in front of him to represent the phone calls.
    “They all have that same scrap of sound at the end. It might be something the lab could identify if they had a recording and could slow it down…do their magic stuff.”
    “How about caller ID?” Linda asked. “You don’t have it, do you?”
    Alex shook his head. “Never had a reason to get it.”
    “What is caller ID exactly?” Jessie asked Linda. “Do you have it?”
    “It shows the number and name of most of your callers, and lists them so you can see who’s calling before you answer or before your answering machine takes over. It has a memory, so you can tell who called even if you’re not home.
    “We got it last year, when somebody got our unlisted number and kept waking us up in the wee hours. Turned out to be a teenager down the street with a dog that Ben had chasedout of our yard several times before he threatened to call Animal Control. The next time the kid tried his get-even game we knew exactly who it was, and his father put a stop to it.”
    “You said most . Who doesn’t it list?”
    “Well, it doesn’t list cellular phone identification or the ones from phone booths. It reads ‘Out of Area’ for long distance calls, but who’s going to harass you long distance?”
    Cas returned to his mental list and laid a fork down next to the spoon.
    “The tags on the traps might turn out to be something, but from the look of them—and the traps—there’s not a chance of fingerprints, as you said. The writing on the tags won’t be worth much. Block letters, capitals, make handwriting identification very dicey—especially with such a small sample. Might be useful in combination with something else that you don’t have yet.”
    “There’s going to be nothing on this, either,” Jensen anticipated, bringing the package box and wrappings to the table in its evidence bag. He laid the note, similarly protected, beside Caswell. “I’ll take it in for testing just in case I’m wrong, but anyone capable of thinking something out this well is going to know enough to wear gloves. Television and movies have spoiled the fingerprint game.”
    “Well, DNA has replaced some of it,” Ben noted. “This note is pretty unidentifiable—plain computer paper anyone could pick up anywhere. Could have come from one of thousands of laser printers in the area. Your mother addressed the package, so re-using the wrapping paper negated the need to write or print the address. Too bad. I’d like to see more of that block printing. Maybe there would have been something.”
    Thoughtfully, he laid a knife beside the fork and spoon—three different parts of the same puzzle.
    Jessie suddenly sat up straight and looked at him, her eyes wide.
    “What?” Alex asked. “You think of something?”
    She got up so quickly