Randall Shane. Yards of him.

“I really messed up this time,” Shane says, looking forlorn. “I may have killed an innocent man.”

“We’ll see about that,” Naomi says. “My office. Now.”

What Naomi calls her office is really our command center. Think mission control, without all the giant screens, but with a similar sense of purpose, and the ability to communicate with just about anybody, anywhere, over any system, as well as extract data, voluntary or not. The style is spare and cool. Lots of dark laminates, cove lighting, discreetly recessed panels, stacks and servers hidden away. There’s never any doubt about who is in command, either. You can tell because she gets the pivoting seat behind the big curved desk with all the touch screens and gizmos, and we peons get the straight-back chairs with the wide unpadded armrests that are adequate for a laptop or a notebook, or in my case an unfinished cup of Beasley’s coffee and a legal pad.

Randall Shane wouldn’t fit in the peon chairs without a very large shoehorn, so he roams the big high-ceilinged room and finally, at boss lady’s insistence, parks on the far edge of the command desk, his long chino-clad legs crossed at the ankle and his large, muscular arms folded across his very substantial chest. Not a weightlifter type, from the lean-waisted look of him, just built to a larger scale than most. Making all six feet of Jack Delancey seem short and slight in comparison. The neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper Van Dyke beard gives Shane the look of a supersize jazz musician. The watery blue eyes are soulful, but pure cop, always watching.