Most of the doors in the hallway were open. They led to different examining rooms. She saw cushioned tables on which she’d sat as a child, pedaling her legs. The doctor’s little wheely chair. The cabinets where he’d grabbed bottles and needles. In one of the rooms, she saw green Legos that had been made into an alligator, and she smiled. Some things didn’t change.

Dr Smeltz’s name was on a plaque in the middle of one door. She opened it, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her, turning on the lights. The office smelled of Dr Smeltz, which meant it smelled of coffee and those little chocolate mints he kept for patients, but which he mostly ate himself. Peach saw a bowl of them on a table near his computer. She couldn’t resist taking one and biting down on the candy shell. The taste brought a wave of memories.

Something in the office made a loud chunk, and she had to cover her mouth to keep from screaming. When it happened again, she saw rainwater dripping from the ceiling into an orange bucket. She giggled at her overreaction, but it reminded her that she had broken into an office building and was mounting an illegal search. She couldn’t waste time.

She spotted the doctor’s locked steel filing cabinets. Like she had in Ogden Bush’s office, she did a search of the desk, and it took her less than five minutes to find a key. She unlocked the filing cabinet on the wall and opened the middle drawer, which was labeled with a handwritten D–F.

Peach pawed through bulging folders. The files were squeezed together so tightly that she could barely separate them. Dr Smeltz had been practicing in Lake Wales since the 1970s, and the spidery ink on some of the folders had faded. Papers were yellowed. The alphabetizing wasn’t always perfect. Peach went from front to back, checking each folder, but found no files on Diane Fairmont. The name Fairmont didn’t appear at all.

Ms Fairmont’s maiden name was Hempl. Dr Smeltz had probably treated her before she married Birch. Peach repeated her search on the drawer labeled G-I, but again, the effort was fruitless. She began to feel frustrated, and her nervousness grew as time passed. The last cabinet on the wall had three unlabeled drawers. She checked them, but they were empty except for unmarked file folders and a box of markers. Finally, she unlocked the other filing cabinets on the wall and began to search all of the remaining drawers.

She expected to find her own medical file, but she never got there. She had reached the M files when she heard voices.