Maybe the child had been stowed in someone’s home as a bargaining chip of some kind. Maybe one of the ranch hands was raising her. I could make up all kinds of stories in my head, but none of them was more likely than another.

“Where was Rich Joyce that evening?” Manfred asked.

“The man just said he was gone,” Bowden said. “His truck wasn’t there.”

“He didn’t know his caregiver was pregnant? He didn’t notice?”

Bowden shrugged. “That never came up. I don’t know what she told Mr. Joyce. Some women just don’t show that much, and if she was trying to hide it . . .”

Manfred and I looked at each other. We didn’t have any other questions.

“Goodbye, Dr. Bowden,” I said, standing. He couldn’t hide his relief that we were leaving.

“Are you going to the police?” he asked. “You know, even if they exhume poor Ms. Parish, they won’t be able to tell a thing.” He was regretting having talked to us. But he was also relieved. This guy had had a hard time for the past eight years, living inside his own skin. I, for one, was glad of that.

“I don’t know,” Manfred said, very thoughtfully. He’d had the same reaction. “We’re considering it. If the child came to no harm, it’s possible you may keep your license.”

A horrified Dr. Bowden was staring at us as we went down the hall and out through the waiting room. There were three more patients there, and I felt sorry for them. I wondered what kind of care the doctor would give now that he was definitely on the upset side. He’d had two visits in one day about an event he must have hoped was buried forever; that would be enough to rattle any man, even one made of better stuff than Tom Bowden.

“That guy is a human sewer,” Manfred said when we were in the elevator. He was very angry, his face red with strong emotion.

“I don’t know if he’s quite that bad,” I said, feeling at least ten years older than my companion. “But he’s weak. And he’s a joke, based on the standards a doctor ought to uphold.”

“I wouldn’t be so surprised if it was the 1930s,” Manfred said, surprising me. “That sounds like a story you’d read in a collection of old ghost stories. The knock on the door in the middle of the night, the stranger who comes to take you to a mysterious patient in a big house, the dying woman, the baby, the secrecy . . .”