“Cora Lee’s good with kids,” Juana said. “Our little girl could hang out with Lori and Dillon while they work on their playhouse for the contest. With a couple of guards…” She looked down at the child snuggled with Joe. “It’s a beautiful big playhouse, big enough for you to really play house in, two stories, a slide, a ladder…And the dogs…A big brown poodle who’ll lick you all over, I bet. And a spotted, firehouse dog…”

The child looked up at her trustingly with, Joe thought, a spark of anticipation-but a spark that was quickly gone again, drowned by sadness.

This was a hard call, Joe knew, to adequately protect their small, frightened witness, and yet put her in a friendly and comforting environment where she’d loosen up enough to talk, to tell them what she’d seen. With a six-year-old child, time was of the essence-before the event morphed, in a child’s naturally imaginative mind, into any number of dark and twisted fantasies only loosely based on the facts.

Max said, “Maybe a couple of hours up there, to be with the other girls and play with the dogs. I’m not sure about overnight. See what the senior ladies say. We can’t jeopardize anyone, nor put the older girls in danger.

“Take McFarland with you,” he told Juana. “The young lady seems to like him.” Max smiled. “When Cora Lee sees this little girl, she won’t be able to resist.” He buzzed the dispatcher, asked her to get Jimmie McFarland on the radio.

“I’ll call Cora Lee,” Juana said. “She…” She paused when the dispatcher buzzed through, and Max switched on the phone speaker.

It wasn’t McFarland, but Officer Sand on the line.

“I’m bringing in a homeless man, he was asleep in the alley behind Green’s Antiques, an empty billfold shoved under the newspapers he was sleeping on. His shoes are way big for him, look like they could fit my casts, and there appears to be blood on one. Old jogging shoes,” she said with excitement, “waffle soles. Looks like a speck of garden dirt-and some shiny red flecks.

“Says he lifted them from a Dumpster out on the highway, early this morning, that his own shoes were worn-out and sopping wet. He seems more than usually nervous, looked all around when I cuffed him and put him in the car.”

“Get him in here,” Max said.

“Holding cell?”

“Let’s call him a person of interest. See if you can get any identification, then bring him on back to my office, tell him we just want to talk.” Max clicked off the phone. He was smiling.

Davis glanced at the child. “You want us out of here?”

Max shook his head. “First reaction’s worth a lot-her reaction, and his.”

The child was still stroking Joe. She smelled nice, the cat thought, a sweet little-girl scent. Snuggled up with her, Joe Grey began to feel protective-so protective that he began to wonder if the prisoner would try to hurt her, and he felt his claws tense.

But what could some old tramp do with four cops guarding the little girl? Still he waited, nervous and alert, until, ten minutes later, Eleanor Sand escorted the ragged, smelly old man into Max’s office.

The old fellow entered hesitantly, Eleanor walking behind him. He smelled so ripe and looked so rough that Joe wanted to rise up defensively in front of the child. Instead he slipped off the couch, sensibly out of the way. These officers wanted the little girl’s reaction, not that of a cat; and they wanted the tramp’s first reaction to her, without distraction. And Joe sat down quietly beside the couch, unobtrusive but ready to leap and defend her.

From the floor beside Dallas ’s chair, Joe studied the old guy. He sure as hell could use a bath. His wrinkled old clothes were worn-out and dirty, his long gray hair tied in a ponytail, his head bald on top and sunburned. Wrinkled cheeks with an inch of stubble. And the smell of unwashed body and clothes was overlaid with the acrid stink of wood smoke as if from innumerable campfires.

On any cold morning Joe could see, from the treetops and highest roofs of the village, smoke rising down along the Molena River where homeless men slept, building up their campfires to get warm and to make coffee.

Well, the old guy had his coffee this morning. He was carrying a full Styrofoam cup that Eleanor must have picked up in the squad room.

He wore no shoes. They would be in the sealed bag that Eleanor had probably dropped off in the evidence room. Padding onto the Persian rug in bare feet, he looked warily at Dallas and the chief and then his eyes widened in surprise at the child on the couch. Everyone was still, watching the two of them.

The child looked at him without interest. Not frightened, not at all alarmed. Her only reaction was a wrinkled nose, from the smell of the old man. He looked at her, caught sight of Joe, and scowled around at the four officers.

“Didn’t expect to see no kid in a police station. Sure didn’t expect cops to keep no cat-well, hell, didn’t expect to see no Christmas tree neither, out there in the entry.”

“You know the girl?” Eleanor said softly.

He shook his head. “Never seen her.” He looked at Eleanor with the beginnings of alarm, and backed away a step. “How would I know her? Why would I know her? I ain’t done nothing, I never laid eyes on the kid.”

“Just asking,” Eleanor said quietly. “Where did you get the shoes?”

“Told you. Dumpster, couple miles out, on the highway. By that tourist café out there.”

“That’s what you told me. What else did you take from the Dumpster?”

Joe expected, knowing Eleanor, that she had already sent an officer back to search the Dumpster for anything suspicious, anything with visible blood.

“That empty billfold is all else I found,” the old man said testily. “Don’t know what good a billfold does me, ain’t got nothing to put in it. I thought maybe to sell it.”

Dallas rose, pushed Joe Grey gently aside, and motioned the old guy to sit down. He filled up the old man’s coffee cup from the pot on the credenza, and then settled on the couch so the child was between him and Davis. Sand stood leaning in the doorway. Joe, anticipating an informative interrogation, slipped back under the credenza.

The old man, very likely imbuing the leather chair with a permanent stink, looked at Dallas and Eleanor, and raised a bushy eyebrow. “You worried about that kid?”

No one answered.

“I might know something about kids-not her, exactly. Other kids-guess she might be one of ’em.”

The officers waited, silently alert.

“Something that might be…of interest, as you like to say.”

“Go on,” Max said.

“Mighty cold morning,” the old fellow said. “Long time since I’ve had a good hot breakfast.” He watched without expression as Dallas slipped a twenty from his pocket, added a ten, and handed it over. The old guy sighed. “Might be pretty valuable information.”

Dallas fished out another ten and passed it across. “That’s it. Let’s hear it.”

“That orphans’ school up toward the hills? That one that movie star owned?”

“The Patty Rose School,” Dallas said.

“Big tan mansion with these brown timbers crisscrossing the walls?”

“We know the place,” Max said.

“Guy watching them kids up there, I seen him twice standing in the woods peeking out. I, ah…got me a little shelter place up there. Place I can go sometimes, out of the storm. Rain coming bad, I go up there.”

“Why weren’t you there last night?” Dallas said.

“Came up the highway last night, headed right into the village to get me something to eat. I don’t go there much, they watch that place. All locked up, but they watch it. Last night, found me a bit of overhang to sleep under.” He looked hard at Dallas. “I wouldn’t want to lose my good shelter, up there. Winter ain’t over yet. That wind and rain, fellow could die of pneumonia.”

“That stone building?” Max said.

The old man nodded.

“We’ll see no one runs you off, at least for a while-if the school finds nothing wrong. No fires inside there. Understand?” Again, the old man nodded. “Can you describe this man?” Max said. “Tell us when and where you saw him?”