“His folks are away. I’m there to take care of him,” she snapped, as if she felt herself put upon by a crisis she had not contracted to face.

“Can they be reached?”

“No,” she said decisively.

The young man put his stranger’s hand on the boy’s rigid little shoulder. But he too was rejected. Freddy’s eyes, brilliant with hatred, clung to the enemy. Hatred doesn’t cry.

“Listen,” said the tall cop, “if you could hang onto him for a minute . . .”

“Not I . . .” said Russell.

The thin cop came back. “Looks like the dog got poison. When was he found?”

“Just now,” the kids said.

“Where? There?”

“Up Hannibal Street. Right on the edge of ole Matlin’s back lot.”

“Edge of my lot!” Matlin’s color freshened again. “On the sidewalk, why don’t you say? Why don’t you tell the truth?”

“We are! We don’t tell lies!”

“Quiet, you guys,” the cop said. “Pipe down, now.”

“Heaven’s my witness, I wasn’t even here!” cried Matlin. “I played nine holes of golf today. I didn’t get home until . . . May?” he called over his shoulder. “What time did I come in?”

The girl on the porch came slowly down, moving awkwardly on her uneven legs. She was in her twenties, no child. Nor was she a woman. She said in a blurting manner, “About three o’clock, Daddy Earl. But the dog was dead.”

“What’s that, Miss?”

“This is my step-daughter . . .”

“The dog was dead,” the girl said, “before he came home. I saw it from upstairs, before three o’clock. Lying by the sidewalk.”

“You drove in from Hannibal Street, Mr. Matlin? Looks like you’d have seen the dog.”

Matlin said with nervous thoughtfulness, “I don’t know. My mind . . . Yes, I . . .”

“He’s telling a lie!”

“Freddy!”

“Listen to that,” said May Matlin, “will you?”

“She’s a liar, too!”

The cop shook Freddy. Mr. Matlin made a sound of helpless exasperation. He said to the girl, “Go keep your mother inside, May.” He raised his arm as if to wave. “It’s all right, honey,” he called to the woman in the chair, with a false cheeriness that grated on the ear. “There’s nothing to worry about, now.”

Freddy’s jaw shifted and young Russell’s watching eyes winced. The girl began to lurch back to the house.

“It was my wife who put in the call,” Matlin said. “After all, they were on me like a pack of wolves. Now, I . . . I understand that the boy’s upset. But all the same, he cannot . . . He must learn . . . I will not have . . . I have enough to contend with, without this malice, this unwarranted antagonism, this persecution . . .”

Freddy’s eyes were unwinking.

“It has got to stop!” said Matlin almost hysterically.

“Yes,” murmured Mike Russell, “I should think so.” Judge Kittinger’s white head, nodding, agreed.