- A "child-left-alone" call turns up a horrifying case of child neglect. A 6-year-old girl is left home with her baby brother and both parents are unable to provide for their children.
- A call regarding stolen milk turns into a call about child neglect. When the officers knock on the door to question a suspect, they find a 6 year old girl Charlie alone. She says she doesn't know where her mother is and her dad no longer lives there. When the officers tell her they are removing her, she tells them she can't leave Sissy an infant in the bathtub. A man arrives she calls daddy but he is only a friend of the mother. He is arrested on outstanding traffic warrants and juvenile finds the kids have been beaten. Charlie says daddy did it. They are called back to the apartment to find the father beating the mother and they learn the mother is beating the kids.—Anonymous
- Malloy and Reed attend to a call from a woman named Abbie Jenks, who believes that there is a neglected child in the apartment across the hall from her. Upon their arrival, they learn that Miss Jenks has less than pure motives for her call. Nonetheless, they do find a barely adolescent girl named Charlie Phelps alone in the apartment, she who has been on her own for at least 24 hours. Charlie seems to love her mother, Jeanette Phelps, whose whereabouts Malloy and Reed try to ascertain although Charlie does not know where she is, but Charlie says she overhears her mother say that she in turn does not love Charlie back. They also learn that Charlie's father is no longer formally in the picture, although he does visit on occasion when Jeanette is not around. Throw into the mix a third adult, a man by the name of Philip Bartell who Charlie does refer to as "daddy" and who stops by while Malloy and Reed are there, and what they find stashed away in the bathtub, and the story in its entirety is one of heartbreak, especially hard on Reed who has not yet had to deal with such a case in his young career.—Huggo
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