Since her own two boys had grown and left the nest, Juana had seldom held a small child in her arms. Maybe someday there’d be grandchildren, but not for a while. Both her boys were cops, neither one married yet. When that time came, she wondered what kind of grandmother she’d make. Well, she wasn’t holding her breath. At this point both her sons were married to their work, Randy as a detective with the Tacoma Sheriff’s Department, and Jed with California Highway Patrol.

Guess I’m married to my own work, she thought, amused. Still, as a widow and an empty nester, she found it surprisingly satisfying to shelter this little girl, to hold her and to put her to bed, tucking her safe under the quilt. The child was such a fragile little thing, thin as a baby bird. Shoulder-length hair as black as a raven’s wing, and skin as pale and clear as milk. Long black lashes, and when she was awake, those huge black eyes staring up at you, so sad, filled with such hopelessness.

In the hospital, and then in the car coming home, the child hadn’t spoken. She had made not a sound even when the woman doctor examined her, an examination that had to be frightening. Juana had called ahead and asked for a woman, and found that Terry Wayne was on duty. Juana’s white-haired, cheerful friend had been waiting for them at the emergency-room desk, and Juana, not knowing what the child had been through, was relieved not to have to deal with a male doctor.

Terry hadn’t kept the child long. The little girl was so frightened, and so tired and cold. Just long enough to wrap her in warm blankets, and then gently examine her to determine that she had not been molested and had no physical wound that Terry could find. Nor could Terry find any malformation of the throat or mouth that would account for the child’s silence.

Last night was not the time to run complicated hearing or speech tests, even if they had been available, at that hour. Terry thought the speech problem was simply trauma. Whether the child had been so traumatized by the murder that she’d stopped speaking, or whether this was an older condition, they couldn’t guess. They only knew that the child was still very afraid, and cold and clinging, and jumpy at any loud sound. The two other doctors on emergency duty had wanted to keep her in the hospital, but Terry wouldn’t hear of that. Even with a private room and a guard at the door, a hospital setting made Juana uneasy. She could make the child more comfortable in her apartment, make her feel that maybe someone cared what happened to her; and both she and Max felt that the child was safer with an armed officer, and with extra patrol around the building.

Max would be setting up a round-the-clock schedule for the few woman officers in the department to take shifts staying here with the child. That would be hard on the officers, taking double shifts, even if they could get some sleep while they babysat, and it would be hard on the department’s budget, which was always tight-but at the moment there was no viable alternative. No one in the department wanted to dump this child into the gaping jaws of the state bureaucracy. Watching the sleeping child, one hand curled now in a more relaxed gesture, not clenched rigidly, and her black lashes thick and soft on her pale cheeks, Juana told herself again that the child’s silence was indeed caused by trauma and that with rest and love and quiet, she would speak again-and, thinking like a cop, and then maybe we’ll have a witness.

A frail, frightened little witness. How much would a six-year-old remember as it had really happened? How much would she be able to make clear to an adult? To a judge or jury?

How much of the testimony of a six-year-old child would grown-ups believe?

All night the child had clung to her, at first hadn’t wanted anyone else to touch her, her dark eyes huge with dread, her ivory skin clammy and damp. Was it her father who had been shot? Shot as they stood looking up at the wonderful Christmas tree?

For the rest of this child’s life, what would her Christmases be like? Chestnuts and blood. Bright lights and rocking horses heralding death.

But Juana had known one thing from the first moment she saw the little girl. She wasn’t taking her to Children’s Services. Not now, not in the morning that was fast approaching. Neither she nor the chief nor Dallas liked the lax security at Children’s Services, even in the Protective Division. Although some of the caseworkers were conscientious and understanding, too many were hard-nosed paper pushers, political climbers, or just plain incompetent. As if the children in their care were so many packages to be sorted, held in will-call, and delivered when required.

Some ugly stories about Children’s Services had reached the department, and then when young Lori Reed was found last year hiding in the library basement, and had refused to have anything more to do with the caseworkers, and after Juana and the chief had talked with Lori and looked into the handling of the child, they felt even more strongly that the County Department of Children’s Services would benefit from a good housecleaning. Nine vanished children who had never been found and whose cases were still open. A boy in foster care for five years when all Children’s Services had to do was pick up the phone and check information, in order to to locate the child’s relatives in Seattle. And too many “accident” cases among the foster homes, logged in to hospital emergency. Children with old scars, and with new bruises that could not be accounted for.

Lori Reed, after spending nearly a year on the East Coast, in the custody of Children’s Services and a number of foster homes, before being returned to her father, had told Juana other ugly stories that enraged her.

Lori had run away from a seriously depressed father who, in his secret and unrevealed fear for Lori, had inadvertently terrified her. He had boarded up their windows, padlocked the doors, and had forbidden her to leave the house even to go to school. With Lori’s mother dead of cancer, with no one to explain to her the real cause of her father’s distress, and with her fear of being sent to another foster home, the twelve-year-old had taken matters into her own hands-had packed a blanket and some food, and found a very clever and safe place to hide.

But Lori Reed was twelve, not six years old, and had been far more skilled and resourceful in solving the problems that were dumped on her. This child was hardly more than a baby.

And the fact that she might be the only witness to a murder was more than sufficient reason not to turn her over to a lax bureaucracy where anyone could get at her.

Without opening the draperies, Juana stepped behind them and looked out through the slider to the balcony; standing in the shadows, in the predawn silence, looking down at the village, she considered other options than keeping the child too long in her apartment, where the coming and going of officers might be noted.

She thought of the Patty Rose Orphans’ Home, a very caring private facility. But, though the child could lose herself among the other children, the home didn’t have sufficient security. The Patty Rose Home was not a jail, the kids were not locked in, and, conversely, visitors were not locked out or rigidly screened. Even with an officer assigned to guard her, the Patty Rose Home was not a good choice.

She thought about Cora Lee French and her housemates, with whom Lori Reed lived until her father would be released from prison. Lori was an understanding little girl, and might be good for the younger child. It was a big house, up in the hills away from the village, with plenty of room for the child and an overnight officer, and Juana wondered if the senior ladies would be interested.

Maybe a rotation, from one private residence to another, always with a guard. This little girl was too precious to be hurt again. Juana had to remind herself that this was police business, that besides her personal fear for the child, the little girl was their only witness to a crime.