Okay, thanks to copy and paste, here's something I shared elsewhere a while back.

"Sir, can you help me?”

I could feel my back stiffen as the woman’s voice came to me from the side street I was crossing. I had played trumpet with the jazz band at a pub in Fresno’s Tower District. Then we had sandwiches and beers with the owner of the pub after closing. Panhandlers and prostitutes were common here in the entertainment district, and I really didn’t have a lot of patience for either one. I kept walking, and looking straight ahead.

“I know you from church” the voice said “I hate to ask, but I’m afraid and don’t have any place to go.”

I turned to look in the direction of the voice. About fifty feet away, and walking towards me, was a young woman, a girl really. I did recognize her from church, but I didn’t really know her. I’d seen her a few times, and we had exchanged greetings, but that was about all.

She was wearing her night clothes, and had a toddler in her arms. And she was leading a little girl of maybe 3-4 years old by the hand, also dressed for bed.

“It’s my husband” she said, “He’s drunk, and passed out right now, but I know he’s going to hurt us. I need to get someplace to call my folks, and wait till they come pick me up”

Her voice was shaking, and by now, she was close enough that I could see the look of panic on her face. Even though I’m a man, enough so that men less than half my age still respect my stature, I know better than to get involved in other people’s marital problems. My brother had been a cop for seven years, till he was shot dead responding to a domestic violence call. I had a really bad feeling about this, but I couldn’t leave these kids on the street at 3:30 in the morning. I just couldn’t.

“We have to walk” I said, eyeing the three year-old suspiciously, “It’s about eight blocks”

“We can make it” she said, as she took the little girl’s hand.

We walked in an awkward silence. I wanted to ask her about herself, her kids, her relationship…I just couldn’t think of a way to break the ice. It seems weird. I was escorting her to my house, to save her from a peril I knew nothing about, but I couldn’t think of any way to ask her about it, and she wasn’t offering. I offered to carry the little girl, mostly to pick up the pace, but also because I wasn’t sure she could walk that far.

“Mica, would you like Max to carry you?” it surprised me that she knew my name, but I guess I do stand out in a crowd.

Mica smiled, and I picked her up. It was good to be moving a little faster.

I just kept king about how odd this must look; a man in a zoot suit, with silver hair and a trumpet case, walking in the middle of the night with a young woman and two small children. It crossed my mind that in my father’s time, I might well be lynched for being in this position.

I felt a little uneasy as I approached the house. The fact that there were no streetlights on my block had never really bothered me, but it felt eerie this time. I was also king about explaining the situation to my wife, and realized I didn’t even know this woman’s name.

“Alyson” she replied “You’re carrying Mica, and this is James”.

James was awake now, and starting to squirm. He was older than I originally thought, and was probably getting close to two years old. Alyson set him down and took his hand, walking slowly. We were across the street from my house now, which required crossing a wooden bridge over a little ditch. The huge lot next to, and behind mine was vacant, with dozens of little hills of fill dirt left by dump trucks. Like the lack of streetlights, this had never bothered me either, but now the whole environment made me feel vulnerable.

We made our way across the bridge and up my driveway, and I led the way through the side door of the garage. This was the way I always entered the house. Across the garage, and through the now enclosed breezeway game room, I opened the kitchen door. Carly was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

“These kids need our help, honey” I said, as I realized that none of my traveling companions had come into the kitchen with me. I stood, looking expectantly at the open door to the game room, but nobody came through. I walked back to the door and looked into the game room. Mica was standing by the garage door, alone. I walked through the garage to the still open door and looked out. James was sitting on the ground just outside the door. Alyson was nowhere to be seen.

Carly was behind me now, clearly wondering where these babies came from. I picked up James, who started crying, and headed into the house. Did Alyson really just dump her kids on me? Why the hell would anyone do that?

We went back into the kitchen, and I told Carly the whole story. For the first time in the 49 years I’ve known her, she got up and locked all the doors.

“If she wants in here with her kids” she said “she can knock on the door”.

Then the conversation turned to what to do with these kids. We clearly couldn’t just keep them, waiting for somebody, sometime, to maybe come get them. And, although we have several grandkids, we’re really not prepared to care for small children. We decided we’d call CPS ‘first g’ in the morning, which was still a couple hours away. Carly decided that she’d go down to the store and get ‘finger food and juice boxes’, to keep the kids distracted till somebody came for them. She was out in the garage, in the car when the phone rang. Nobody ever calls the land line these days, but it was ringing at quarter till 5 in the morning.

It was a man, asking if Alyson and the kids were there! How did he know? Startled, I told him that she had been, but she disappeared. He hung up. Then it hit me…how in the holy hell did he get my home phone number?

A couple minutes later the land line rang again. I answered, expecting the same man to be calling back. But this time it was a woman’s voice, again asking for Alyson. I told her the whole story, right up to the part about the first phone call. I told her we were calling CPS in a couple of hours, when they open.

She said “You don’t need to do that. I’ve already called the police. They’ll be there soon”.

I sat on the couch, confused. None of this made any sense at all. Nobody knew that Alyson was coming to my house, and I didn’t even really know her or her family. NO! This just don’t make sense!

The knock on the front door startled me. I got up to answer it. The man on the other side identified himself as a police detective, and as I opened the door, I remembered that the phone number was still on the sign for the now closed lawnmower shop!

The young detective was wearing an ill-fitting, cheap suit, tennis shoes, and broken eyeglasses, taped at the bridge. He said he was there to investigate a missing person report, and asked if he could look around the house. I stepped out onto the front porch with him as I pulled the locked door shut behind me. Then I asked if he has a search warrant. He said he didn’t need one, just to look around outside, and wanted me to help him check the mounds of dirt in the lot next door. A chill ran down my spine as I realized, without a doubt, that this was no police officer, and was involved with Alyson’s disappearance.

“No problem” I said, although I was sure emotion was betraying me.

I took a step towards the lot next door, and then stopped. “You want to go check around the back of the house first, while I start to hobble over towards next door? I don’t move too fast these days.” I nodded in the other direction.

“Good idea” he said, as he started off around the back.

I turned and sprinted towards the bridge as I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. The 911 operator answered quickly, and I was giving my address and asking for police as he came around from behind the house, looking right at me. By now I was almost to the bridge and at full jogging speed. Even at 68, I still run daily, and can still do the mile in under 7 minutes. As I ran up onto the little wooden bridge, and my ‘detective’ was starting to run after me, something caught my attention. There in the dry ditch, under a tumbleweed, and sticking out from under an old wooden pallet, was a hand, with salmon pink nail polish.