Dirty snow from the Christmas-night snowstorm lingered in shady places along the herringbone brick pathways of the Mall, but despite what the calendar said, the day was pleasant in the sun. That’s where I was sitting enjoying an afternoon interlude when Diane sauntered up to me at about ten after. She was carrying two huge shopping bags. I gave her a hug and a kiss on one cheek. She gave me one of the bags to carry. In many ways-mostly but not entirely good-Diane and I were like an old married couple.

We began walking, the sun low against our backs. From the heft of the bag in my hand, I surmised that she had been scouring the sales for either bricks or bullion.

“This doesn’t happen to me, you know,” she said. “This is the sort of thing that happens to you. This stuff with this mystery girl and Hannah. This murder and kidnapping and cops and criminals crap I seem to be mixed up with. It’s your specialty, not mine.”

I was tempted to argue that it was debatable that Hannah had been murdered, and that it seemed more likely that Mallory was indeed a runaway and not a kidnap victim. But Diane’s bigger point was close to the truth. Karma did seem to deliver mayhem to my door with disturbing regularity.

“If it’s what you think it is, I’m mixed up in it, too, Diane.”

For a moment she was quiet. She either didn’t quite hear me, she didn’t quite believe me, or she was busy discounting my words as an unwelcome empathic gesture.

Finally, she replied, “Sure, you were part of the Hannah thing. I know, I know. I know you were there. And well, now you’re part of this other thing, but that’s only because I’ve dragged you into it. Listen, if you’d rather I talk to someone else about this, I understand. But I really felt I needed a second opinion about what to do next, and I don’t know anyone else who has as much experience with crazy therapy crap as you do.”

Crazy therapy crap? Once again I was tempted to argue her premise, but recognizing the futility, I said, “The truth is that I was a little bit mixed up in the Mallory thing already, even before we talked.”

She heard me that time. Her voice grew conspiratorial. “What?”

I shook my head and kept walking. “I need to make this a consultation, too. My knowledge is clinical, just like yours.”

She’d grown tired of the forced-infantry-march nature of our pace and abruptly stopped walking. Once I realized she had stopped I did, too, and turned back to face her. Over the top of her head the sun was looming just above the highest peaks of the Front Range in the southwest sky. The light was sharp but gentle. It felt only faintly warm on my face.

“Tell me,” she said.

It was a shrink phrase, psychotherapy shorthand for “go on” or “don’t stop there” or “damn your resistance, spill the beans.”

“This is for real-a professional consultation-you can’t tell anyone.”

“Holy moly,” she said.

I wished I had my sunglasses on my eyes instead of in my jacket pocket. I was squinting into the sun. Holy moly? “Is that a yes?”

“I’m thinking. You get into the weirdest things, Alan. I’m not sure I want any part of whatever it is.”

She was playing with me. “Sure you do,” I said.

“You’re right, I do. I’m a glutton for punishment. Okay, go ahead and consult with me.” She raised her chin an inch and tilted it up to the side as though she were opening herself for a right cross. I opened my mouth to reply just as she changed her strategy. “No, no, let me guess.” She made a face that a bad acting student might make to try to portray someone cogitating, contorted it a few times for dramatic effect, and finally said, “Nope, I give up.”

“Years ago, I saw the Millers, Mallory’s parents-those Millers-for an assessment. One session only. Turned out to be a long eval, over two hours. I saw them as a couple, immediately recognized that Mrs. Miller’s individual problems were… significant, and referred her on to Mary Black for ongoing treatment and some serious pharmacological intervention. I never saw them again. Mary took over from there. Mr. Miller came back sometime later to thank me for my help. But I never laid eyes on the kids, don’t even remember if I knew their names.”

Diane was a smart lady. She made all the appropriate connections instantly. “That must be how Mallory knew about Hannah, right? Right? I bet the crazy mother parked Mallory in the waiting room while she had her psychotherapy sessions and her med consultations with Mary. Don’t you think? If Hannah had seen a little girl alone in the waiting room she would have chatted her up. You know she would have. She would have made friends with her. Especially if she saw her sitting out there alone on a regular basis. That’s the connection. That’s it.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s probably it.” Hannah’s kindness was almost as legendary as her obsessiveness. I had no trouble manufacturing a vision of Hannah on her knees in the waiting room connecting with a lonely or frightened little girl who was waiting for her mother to finish an appointment with her psychiatrist.

Hi, sweetheart, what’s your name?

I’m Mallory.

I’m Hannah. You waiting for your mom to finish her meeting?

“Holy moly,” Diane repeated.

Diane started walking down the Mall again. I tagged along behind. “Holy moly” was a new phrase for Diane. I was already beginning to hope that-like most everything designed by Microsoft-it came equipped with built-in obsolescence.

I said, “I’d bet mortgage money that her disease isn’t stable. Rachel Miller sabotaged every last treatment that Mary Black tried years ago.”

Diane added an edge to her tone and said, “Why do you say ‘disease’? Almost everyone else says ‘illness.’ ”

“A lot of other people say ‘clients.’ I say ‘patients.’ Do you know why? ‘Patient’ is from the Latin. It means ‘one who suffers.’ It fits what we do.”

She smiled, and shifted her voice into sarcasm mode. “I bet if a new client walked into your office and had to listen to you parsing Latin all day long, she’d become one-who-suffers in no time at all. You didn’t answer my question.”

“Other people say ‘illness’?”

“They do.”

It probably wasn’t true. Diane’s penchant for assuredness about this kind of thing often had scant correlation to reality. Regardless, it took me only about three steps to arrive at an answer to her question. “Think about it. The word is disease. Dis. Ease. It’s apropos, don’t you think, to what we deal with every day?”

In my peripheral vision I could tell that Diane had shaken off my explanation with the same ease with which she’d just ridiculed the tiny bit of Latin I recalled from high school. I consoled myself with the fact that she was equally dismissive as she discounted her husband Raoul’s opinions about just about everything political.

Thankfully, she moved on to a fresh thought, and said, “In case you didn’t know it, she’s in Las Vegas. The girl told Hannah that her mother is living in Las Vegas. She gets phone calls from her every once in a while. Her father doesn’t know that they’re in touch as much as they are. It’s a source of conflict. The girl wasn’t sure what to do.”

“Vegas?” I asked, but it was more of an “ah-ha!” exclamation than a question. I was thinking, Of course Rachel Miller is in Las Vegas. Where else would someone go who is addicted to weddings?

“You don’t sound that surprised, Alan. Does she gamble? Is that part of her pathology, her dis-ease?”

“No,” I said, refusing to bite. “She goes to weddings. That’s what the presenting complaint was for the couple’s therapy: Rachel Miller went to lots and lots of weddings. She thought she was a special guest at all of them. It was the center of her delusional world. I suspected that she had command hallucinations but she didn’t admit to hearing voices during our one interview. Her husband told me she did, that she heard voices.”