September 4, 1973
Seattle

"So then, whoosh! and the Dennari gang is out for the count. Bang! Pow! and its rivals are bitin' the dust. I tell ya, Dan, if real cop life was as easy as it was in the movies, we'd have this city cleaned up in no time." Harry leaned back in the squad car and sighed. "Yup, nuthin' like the grunge work we do."

His partner, Daniel, snorted. "You're just sore because Sarge put you on traffic duty again. You know this job isn't what it's cracked up to be."

"Huh. Well, if I'd known we'd just be picking up drunks and teenage drivers from hell, I'd 'a never took the job."

"We're rookies, Harry. Regular cops. We're supposed to get all the stuff nobody else wants. I dunno if I'd ever want car chases or shootouts or something like that."

Harry spluttered. "That's just you, Mr. Friendly Policeman. Why don't you ask Sarge if you can go back to walkin' your beat?"

Shrugging, Daniel replied, "I'd like to. Everybody on my beat liked to talk to me, even that crazy woman with the fifteen cats. But Sarge says we're in a pinch with Jackson and Harrison gone."

"Sarge says, Sarge says," Harry grumbled. "I'm tired of listening to what Sarge says."

Daniel looked at his watch. "Well, we're off duty in half an hour. I s'pose you can bring it up with him then."

Shaking his head, Daniel replied, "No, thanks. You know well as I do that talking to Sarge is like talking to a brick wall."

* * * * *

Daniel walked leisurely along the streets, his hands in his pockets. Though off duty he was still in uniform, and a group of chattering middle-aged tourists moved off respectfully to one side. He smiled and nodded in a friendly way and the tourists smiled back. Daniel had a way with people and everyone knew it. He wished Sarge would put him back on his beat. He didn't like squad car work. Drive up the streets, drive down the streets. Yell at the kids. Pick up the occasional homeless man, "bums", whom Harry always somehow managed to make even more disagreeable than they were before. Harry had that effect on people. Daniel missed the settlement of tiny houses, the strange woman's cats, and the little black girl who called him "Mr. Policeman" and sometimes gave him a handful of dandelions as he passed her house. Once she had rubbed them under his chin, declaring in her high piping voice that if it turned yellow, that meant you were in love...

Daniel stopped in his tracks. He'd heard a small sound coming from one of the alleys, which he had heard on his beat many times before. It was the unmistakable sound of a child crying.

It wasn't the howl that followed a skinned knee, or the loud screech of a teased younger sibling, or the irritated whine of a spoiled child. It was the low, despairing sob of a child that had been terrified in some disaster, like a burned home or a lost family member. He had heard it only once or twice before, and each time the sound had pierced his heart. He turned and stepped into the alley, two or three steps, and the sound stopped. Realizing the child must be holding its breath in fear, he called out, "Hello there, I'm not going to hurt you."

He looked round and saw nothing. "I'm a policeman, and I want to help you. Can you come out where I can see you?" He paused and looked around again.

He heard soft footsteps, and a small girl of maybe five years peered out from a pile of trash bags near one corner. Her clothes were filthy and torn, and her arms and legs were scratched and bleeding. She looked fearfully up at him out of tearful blue eyes, and locks of disheveled black hair curled over her face. Her gaze rested on his uniform, and some of the fear left her eyes.

He crouched down next to her. "Hello, there. My name's Daniel. What's yours?"

She said nothing.

"It's okay. Did your mommy tell you not to talk to strangers? She said you can talk to a policeman, right? Do you know where your mommy is?"

The last question made her break into fresh sobs.

"Hey, it's okay," he said soothingly. "Are you lost?"

She nodded.

"Do you know where you live?"

She considered that. Daniel watched her as she looked thoughtfully at the wall. Then she shook her head.

Perhaps her family moved and she doesn't know where the new house is, Daniel thought to himself. "Why don't you come with me down to the station. Then maybe we can find your family."

She gave him a mournful look that he didn't understand. Then, after a thoughtful pause, she took his hand.

September 6, 1973
Seattle

"That's right, Aunt Fleming, I found her in an alley. What? Yes, Missing Persons is working on it, but they don't seem to be getting anywhere. As a matter of fact, it looked to me like they just filled out a file and stuffed it in a cabinet."

Daniel was sitting at home, phone in one hand and a pad of paper in the other, scribbling abstract designs on the paper. He watched the neighbor girl, Melissa, as she sat on the floor and tried to entice the lost girl from the alley into playing house with her dolls.

"Well, what did you give Missing Persons to work with?" Daniel's aunt, Diane Fleming, answered from her phone in California. "Considering all the children that get kidnapped all over the nation each year, they've got their hands full as it is."

"Not much," Daniel sighed. "She won't talk, not even to tell me her name. You think maybe she's been...hurt or something?"

"Any broken bones or bruises?"

"Not that I can see."

"Then don't worry about it. She may have seen something that shocked her, though usually when they're that young they go catatonic on you."

Daniel looked over at the girl, who was engrossed in examining a big pink convertible that belonged to Melissa's dollhouse set. She was definitely not catatonic.

"She seems fine," Daniel told Diane, "except of course for the fact that she doesn't talk. You think maybe she's mute or something? Or maybe...I don't know...a little slow mentally?"

"Is she alert?"

"Oh yes, very much so."

"Then there's nothing wrong with her mind. She was all upset when you found her, wasn't she? And you've no idea where her parents are, correct? Well, I tell you what. I think her parents died in a freak accident, and it shocked her into silence. I bet that's just what it was. Remember that one girl we had over here, who lost her family in a flood? She didn't speak for weeks."

Daniel frowned. That seemed a little farfetched. "How do we know for sure if her parents are dead? And what should I do in the meantime? As much as I like kids, I can't care for one full-time. I've already taken two days off work, and can't afford any more."

"Good heavens, Daniel, just bring her over here. I'd be glad to have her."

"But we don't know for sure that she's an orphan. What if her parents show up and want her back? I can't just send her off to California when her parents might be still searching for her here in Washington."

"She needs a place to live, doesn't she?" Diane told him crisply. "I won't let anyone carry her off, not for a while, anyway. If her parents show up, refer them to me, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. I think her parents are gone."

"Well, all right," he said reluctantly, but inside he was relieved as he turned to watch the small girl play in the living room.

September 12, 1973
Outside San Francisco

Driving leisurely on the Northern California freeway, Daniel cast a glance toward the girl sitting in the front seat of the car. She was watching the scenery roll by outside her window, captivated by the vineyards and brightly colored bushes at the roadside. She was wearing a jacket and dress he had borrowed from Melissa, since she obviously had no decent clothes of her own. She seemed to sense that he was watching her, and turned around to look at him.

Daniel shifted his eyes to rest on the freeway once more. Something about the girl's gaze made him uncomfortable. It seemed to pierce right through him, like the gaze of an old man he'd once known, who had been in one of the World Wars and seen things bad beyond telling. The old guy would look right through you, seeing something you couldn't, and yet seemed to read your thoughts inside your mind as well.

She also seemed to know, somehow, that Daniel wasn't planning on keeping her; and her innocent wisdom made him feel guilty, like he had no right to just shrug her off to someone else. But it wasn't that he didn't want her; he just couldn't keep her. He couldn't give her the care that Diane could.

"Diane'll take good care of you," he told her aloud, to allay her fears of being abandoned. She merely watched him, her eyes two deep pools of sapphire blue. "Diane's nice. There'll be lots of other little girls to play with, too. You'll like her," he told the girl, almost pleading with her. He was never sure if she understood him or not.

She looked at him for a few moments more, then shifted her gaze back to the window.

* * * * *

"No name, no parents, and she never speaks a word. Poor child, she must have gone through something awful," Diane Fleming told her nephew, shaking her head.

Diane was not yet sixty years old, but her hair had already turned completely gray. Her wire glasses and old-fashioned dress gave her a schoolmarm look, and she did indeed teach the girls in her care, but she was a kindly old woman.

The girl looked curiously around the parlor room of the Golden Gate Girls' School and Orphanage. The other girls were outside for the moment, since Diane had wanted the new girl to get acquainted with herself and the house before introducing her to the other girls. "Don't worry, Daniel. I'll take good care of her," she said.

"Can I visit her?" Daniel asked.

"Of course."

The girl glanced up at him with a look of anxiety. She knew what was coming, and instinctively she took his hand.

Diane smiled at her. "Here, little one," she said kindly, taking the girl's other hand. "I know you'll be upset at Daniel leaving, but we can take better care of you here. We'll go for walks in the park, with other little girls like you. Have you ever been to San Francisco? It's a beautiful city. It has gardens, with pretty flowers and little ponds with ducks and swans in them..."

The girl seemed interested, but gave Daniel a questioning look.

"I'll come and visit, I promise. I'll miss you." He gently unclasped the hand that held hers. She let it go, and tightened her grip on Diane's.