His buddy the bigamist baker said he was sad.

His buddy the bigamist baker also counseled him to marry to cheer himself up. Consider the source.

They were in his office in the post, Kate across the desk with her feet up on it and Mutt sitting next to Jim, her eyes closed in bliss as he fondled her ears. For a brief moment Kate imagined those hands fondling her own ears, and with an effort brought her attention back to the matter at hand. They were doing the devil‘s advocate thing, Kate taking the role of devil. Typecasting. You don‘t want him to have been the victim of foul play, do you?

I really don‘t, Jim said.

Even if he might have been?

He looked at her, puzzled. Kate, everything you‘ve said points to suicide. Lyda Blue didn‘t recognize the writing on Gammons‘s note.

He rolled his eyes. She didn‘t recognize his printing.

She was reaching and the bad part was she knew it. On a lesser woman her expression would have been called a pout. What‘s really bothering you? he said. Hell, she said, impatient more with her own qualms than with him questioning them. I don‘t know, Jim, I guess I‘m just suspicious of anything this neat. Father Smith finds the truck. We find the body. The ME finds the identity. The girlfriend and the coworkers say he was depressed. Case closed. She made a face. We all want it to be a suicide because it‘s coming on summer and we‘re so busy we don‘t even have time to sleep and suicide would be so much less bother for us. She jerked her shoulders, like she was trying to shake something off. Life is seldom neat. I direct your attention to the Occam‘s razor of police work, he said. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

What about that round I found in the pickup?

Kate. Come on. Show me a truck anywhere in the Bush that doesn‘t have a round of ammunition rolling around on the floor.

Where‘s the gun? And who did it belong to?

Lacking evidence he was shot, that doesn‘t seem relevant.

Where did he keep his truck? He couldn‘t get it out to the mine, he had to leave it parked somewhere in town.

Probably, Jim said. Again, relevance?

She thought of whatever it was that Lyda had started to tell her at the airstrip, but she could imagine his reaction if she repeated that nonconversation to him here. I won‘t close this case if you tell me not to, Kate, he said. I just don‘t see anywhere to go with it.

Nope, Dan O‘Brian said from the doorway. He flopped down in the chair next to Kate and put his feet up next to hers. Fine bunch of detectives we have here. I was eavesdropping and you didn‘t even notice. So you heard back from the ME? Yep, Jim said. According to Brillo, the guy you found was A positive. Which matches Gammons‘s health records in his employee file, Kate said. So it is him, Dan said.