You know me, she said, rising to her feet. Have we met?

He shook his head. We‘ve never met. I‘m Dick Lempe, Mr. Gammons‘s default attending physician. We haven‘t met, no, but we‘ve all heard the stories. You cut quite the dash when you were working for the DA‘s office. The ER staff speak of you with—he paused—great feeling. You are remembered as being good for business. He looked around. There is supposed to be a dog.

She stayed home this trip, Kate said. You‘ve been told that Dewayne Gammons was in a depressed state prior to his disappearance?

Yeah. We‘re only just now finding out about depression, what causes it, what we can do about it. We know that—

What causes it? You mean something physical? I thought it was a psychological thing. A state of mind.

The doc shook his head again. There are a lot of identified causes, family history, pessimistic personality, illness, trauma. He looked at her. Stress. I understood he had been found in pretty severe conditions.

Kate remembered the starving, gibbering scarecrow who had burst into her clearing on the Fourth of July. You could definitely say that.

Well, that would tend to aggravate an already depressive condition. So he was depressed before, and his adventure in the Bush pushed him into catatonia.

You diagnosing my patient, Ms. Shugak?

Sorry, doc, she said. Just trying to get a handle on his condition. A body was found where we think he went into the woods. We thought it was him, until he showed up a month later. There was only one vehicle at the scene, his, so we‘re guessing they drove out together, but it is just a guess. I really need to talk to him, get him to tell me what happened.

The doc yawned hugely, jaws cracking. Sorry, I‘ve been up all night with another patient. Mr. Gammons is not talking, Ms. Shugak. I don‘t think he‘s going to talk until he‘s good and ready. He looked across the room again at the silent man. And I think you‘d better be prepared for that to take a long time.

Why do you say that?

He smiled his tired smile again. I‘ve been doing this a long time. Oh, I almost forgot. He pulled out a buff file folder and handed it to her.

What‘s this? she said.

A picture of one of the wounds he came in with.

She opened the folder and stared down at the photograph. She looked up, a question in her eyes.

He nodded. We think he was shot. It was low on his abdomen and to the right. It didn‘t hit anything important and it went right through. It had actually healed up pretty well by the time he got to us, nice healthy scabbing, one of the few wounds he had that wasn‘t infected. The doc shook his head again, too experienced to question the vagaries of the human body. We flooded him with intravenous fluids and antibiotics. I swear he fought back. It was like he was willing himself to die. We only let him up today.