She rounded her desk, folded her hands on the blotter, and regarded me like a scheduling error she needed to fix.

“Birdie’s mother, Bernadette, called me at home last night,” she began, precise as a scalpel.

“She was furious.

She says you’ve been interrogating her daughter, upsetting the child, implying terrible things about her husband, Dwight.” I kept my feet planted.

“Good.

Did she happen to explain why a six-year-old was in too much pain to sit in a chair?” Halcombe’s lips thinned.