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.

“… um, alive,” Officer Pelham finished.

“Yes,” said the man with the string tie. “Of course. And we’re all, all of us, the listeners and all of us here on the mobile unit, praying with you that little Chuck will be found in time, before …”

Andy looked down at the mouth harp in his hands. He had a vague smile. He glanced in the car window, then back to his harmonica.

From the car radio, Officer Pelham’s voice came on: “… because it gets all thick—the blood. You bleed that much and it don’t run no more. It makes like a jelly, you know? And it gets—but you said not to get too gory, huh? Describin’ things like that, that’s pretty hard.”

Sawyers’ voice: “And you were at the Stevens’ house, earlier?”

And Pelham’s: “Oh, no. I didn’t have anything to do with that—no, but I was at Webster’s gas station …”