"It's not good," he warned with a shrug.

"Why is it I didn't need you to tell me that?" West irritably said.

Balancing her burdens, she knocked with the toe of her Bates hi-gloss black

shoe and nudged up the door handle with a knee, coffee almost spilling but caught in time. Inside, Hammer sat behind her overwhelmed desk, surrounded by framed photographs of children and grand babies her mission statement, Prevent the Next Crime, on the wall behind her.

She was early fifties, in a smart hounds tooth business suit, her telephone line buzzing relentlessly, but she had more important matters on her mind at the moment.

West dumped her load on one chair and sat in another one near the brass Winged Victory award the Inter national Association of Chiefs of Police had presented to Hammer last year. She had never bothered to get a stand or give it an honored place. In fact, the trophy, which was three feet high, continued to occupy the same square of carpet next to her desk, as if waiting for a ride to someplace better. Judy Hammer won such things because she wasn't motivated by them. West removed the lid off her coffee, and steam wafted up.

"I already know what this is about," she said, 'and you know what I think. "

Hammer gestured to silence her. She leaned forward, folding her hands on top of her desk.

"Virginia. At long last I have gotten the support of city council, the city manager, the mayor," she started to say.

"And every one of them, including you, is wrong," West said, stirring cream and sugar into her coffee.

"I can't believe you've talked them into this, and I can tell you right now, they're going to find some way to screw it up because they don't really want it to happen. You shouldn't want it to happen, either. It's a damn conflict of interests for a police reporter to become a volunteer cop and go out on the street with us."

Paper crackled as West unwrapped a greasy Bojangles biscuit that Hammer would never raise to her lips, not even back in the old days when she was underweight and on her feet all day long, working the jail, juvenile division, crime analysis, records, inspections, auto theft, all those exciting assignments women got back in the days when they weren't allowed in patrol. She did not believe in fat.