check to see if he was going to pasture. >> reporter: a nondescript little place out on the montana prairie. a bit worn around the edges. >> do you know where he shot himself? >> he doesn't know. >> is he still alive? >> there's blood everywhere. >> reporter: the sort of place a young vet could live cheap while he built his business. >> well, if you can have somebody go check and see if he's still alive. i have paged the ambulance. >> reporter: when the local sheriff's deputies arrived, they found the body in the middle of the kitchen floor lying on its back. blood had pooled under its head. on one foot was a shoe of the sort people wear in the water. the other was bare. a .357 magnum was on the floor not far from the dead man's left hand. marlene protsman saw all this, too, same time as the deputies. but she could tell right away, as apparently they could not, that she'd been wrong on the 911 call. the man did not shoot himself. >> bryan had a cut on his nose.