Hennepin County child protection called me at 9:40 that morning, roughly fourteen hours after Dr.

Mbeki filed.

The investigator’s name was Renata Alvarado.

She had eleven years in the job and the flattest telephone manner I have ever encountered, and I understood by about the third minute that this was a skill and not a personality.

She asked me for a factual account and she stopped me twice when I editorialized.

“Ma’am, I need what you saw, not what you concluded.”