"But what if it worked? Andy Brazil…"

"Who?" West scowled.

"Very, very determined," Hammer went on, 'completed our academy for volunteers, highest marks we've ever had. Impressed the hell out of the instructors. Does that mean he won't burn us, Virginia? No, no. But what I'm not going to have is this young reporter out there screwing up an investigation, getting the wrong view of what we do. He's not going to be lied to, stonewalled, hit on, hurt. "

West put her head in her hands, groaning. Hammer returned to her desk and sat.

"If this goes well," the chief went on, 'think how good it could be for the department, for community policing here and around the world.

How many times have I heard you say, "If only every citizen could ride just one night with us" "

"I'll never say it again." West meant it.

Hammer leaned over her desk, pointing her ringer at a deputy chief she admired and sometimes wanted to shake for thinking too small.

"I want you out on the street again," she ordered.

"With Andy Brazil. Give him a dose he won't forget."

"Goddamn it, Judy!" West exclaimed.

"Don't do this to me. I'm up to my ears decentralizing investigations. The street crime unit's all screwed up, two of my captains out. Goode and I can't agree on anything, as usual…"

Hammer wasn't listening. She put on reading glasses, and began reviewing a memo.

"Set it up today," she said.

Andy Brazil ran hard and fast. He blew out loudly, checking the time on his Casio watch as he sprinted around the Davidson College track, in the small town of the same name, north of the big city. It was here he had grown up and gone to school on tennis and academic scholarships. He had lived at the college all his life, really, in a dilapidated frame house on Main Street, across from a cemetery that, like the recently turned coed school, was older than the Civil War.