"Then please wait over there. Doctor will be with you shortly."

He went back and sat down, sighing. He got up again, walked over to the window, and looked at his car. The cop had gone, but now there was a fluttering tag under the windshield wiper. Baker drummed his fingers on the windowsill. These little towns, you get in trouble, anything could happen. And the longer he waited, the more his mind spun scenarios. The old guy was in a coma; they couldn't leave town until he woke up. The old guy died; they were charged with manslaughter. They weren't charged, but they had to appear at the inquest, in four days.

When somebody finally came to talk to them, it wasn't the petite doctor, it was the cop. He was a young policeman in his twenties, in a neatly pressed uniform. He had long hair, and his nametag said JAMES WAUNEKA. Baker wondered what kind of a name that was. Hopi or Navajo, probably.

"Mr. and Mrs. Baker?" Wauneka was very polite, introduced himself. "I've just been with the doctor. She's finished her examination, and the MRI results are back. There's absolutely no evidence he was struck by a car. And I looked at your car myself. No sign of any impact. I think you may have hit a pothole and just thought you hit him. Road's pretty bad out there."

Baker glared at his wife, who refused to meet his eye. Liz said, "Is he going to be all right?"

"Looks like it, yes."

"Then we can go?" Baker said.

"Honey," Liz said, "don't you want to give him that thing you found?"

"Oh, yes." Baker brought out the little ceramic square. "I found this, near where he was."

The cop turned the ceramic over in his hands. "ITC," he said, reading the stamp on the side. "Where exactly did you find this?"

"About thirty yards from the road. I thought he might have been in a car that went off the road, so I checked. But there was no car."

"Anything else?"

"No. That's all."

"Well, thanks," Wauneka said, slipping the ceramic in his pocket. And then he paused. "Oh, I almost forgot." He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it carefully. "We found this in his clothing. I wondered if you had ever seen it."