“Temporary mix-ups aren’t our concern. We mean situations like this. You’re saying there have been none at all.”

She straightened like a witness on the stand. “Yes. None.”

“And you have been unable to find Olivia’s records? Despite a thorough search?”

“Yes, Olivia’s—”

“Ms. Taylor-Jones.”

She bristled but didn’t wrest back control of the conversation. She didn’t seem to know how.

Ricky continued. “So you’ve searched—thoroughly—and been unable to find them. Have you turned up any records of children that could have been her? I’m presuming you’ve looked at that angle—other girls Olivia’s age?”

“My father had two other female patients within a year of Ms. Taylor-Jones’s age. Both continued with him throughout their childhoods, and there is no chance that their records are hers—or that their records are the ones mislabeled as hers.”

“Because of the spina bifida? It’s a rare-enough condition that it would be remembered, correct? Likely by anyone who worked with the child in those records.”

She didn’t answer.

“Dr. Escoda?” Ricky said. “Am I right? Anyone employed at that time would recall the girl with that condition.”

“It—it’s been twenty years. My father wasn’t a young man even then, and his employees weren’t young, either, and—”

“You’ve spoken to them. You’ve asked about the girl in the file.”

“My father ran a very small practice. He believed in absolute patient-doctor confidentiality, so—”

“So he would not have discussed the case with outsiders. But his nurses would know.”

“He only employed three during that time, and two have passed on—”

“But you’ve spoken to the third.”

Dr. Escoda glanced my way. I met her gaze expectantly.

“Dr. Escoda,” Ricky said. “If you have not spoken to this former nurse, then we will, whether you provide us with her name or not.”

“I have, but . . . she’s seventy and not in the best of health.”

“Alzheimer’s? Dementia?”

“No, but—”

“Any mental impairment related to her health issues?”

“No apparent ones, but—”

“What did she say?”

Now the doctor snuck a look my way, pleading with me to get her out of this, only to realize I was the last person who’d spare her.

“She said . . .” Dr. Escoda swallowed. “She remembered when the Larsens were arrested. She called my father, to make sure she was hearing right—she was certain she couldn’t be. When my father found out, he immediately contacted child services.”

“Child services?” I said.

“To be . . .” She swallowed again and cast another anxious look my way. “To be certain they knew how to care for you. Because of your condition. Because the Eden Larsen he had treated six months earlier had severe spina bifida.”

—