The cop started to glance back, and Sawyers practically followed him around with the microphone. “Well, you were one of the first ones in, then—”

“I was the second,” the cop said, turning back. He pushed his cap up and scratched his forehead. “I don’t think I can describe it without gettin’ gory. The woman had been all hacked up. First we thought the man was just shot, but when we turned him over, it looked like he got hacked up too. It’s just a mess in there! I mean, I’ve seen killings before, but this is about the worst one I ever …”

The fisherman with the harmonica, and the first assistant, had come over to watch from near the police car. They stopped about three feet from me. After a few more moments, the fisherman said: “I thought he was gonna let me play my mouth harp. You said before, I was maybe gonna get a chance to play my mouth harp on the radio.” He turned the instrument around in his horny black hands, frowning. “That’s what you said.” Suddenly he lifted it to his mouth and blew a clutch of bending blues notes, loud and twisting—they ended squawking: the assistant had grabbed the harp away and was making Shushing motions.

Sawyers, the policeman, and the second assistant glanced over. But they went on talking.

And from the radio, Andy’s voice: “… because Harry always liked my music, you know. I’d see him, sometimes when he’d come by, just stop and listen. Miss Mona, too. It’s just terrible. An’ she gonna have another baby—”

And, from the radio, Sawyers’: “Thank you, Andy. Thank you, very much. We’re going to talk now with Officer Horace Pelham …”

I looked back into the center of the circle of spectators. Officer Pelham was saying: “… no, but I was at the Webster’s gas station. I didn’t have anything to do with the Stevens’ place, so I don’t know what it was like there. But I tell you, I just never seen anything like that inside, here. We’re just hopin’ now that the baby is all right, or maybe just hurt a little. What everybody is afraid of, of course, is that he’s been killed, or that the Harkner kid—”

“The alleged Harkner kid,” the man with the string tie said, then frowned when that didn’t sound right. “Allegedly it might be Dennis Harkner …” He frowned at that too.

“Yeah,” the policeman said. “Anyway—we’re just hoping that he didn’t go and kidnap the baby. That’s a pretty terrible thought. I mean, you don’t even know which one would be worse, the kid being killed, or being carried off with someone like that. We’re lookin’ all around, hopin’ that we can find it while it’s still—”

From the car radio came a blast of harmonica music.

The man with the string tie glanced over again.

The assistant beside Andy gave an immense shrug, then pointed into the open car window.