“I want my ring.”

“Everybody, remain where you are and don’t touch anything,” said a cop as he boarded.

Officer Saunders hoped the chief wouldn’t notice him as he climbed out of his cruiser.

“Where were you?” she asked him as she briskly walked past. She then commented to West, “Don’t you find that a little odd? Usually they’re all over the place when we’re around.”

West didn’t understand it, either, but she did have more respect for the chief’s skirts and pumps. Not only had they not slowed her up enough to matter, but the shoes, at least, had come in handy. She was proud of her boss as they walked back inside the Presto to pay their bill. The men at the counter were smoking now, still arguing, and oblivious to what had just gone down next door at the Greyhound station. Not that a bunch of drug dealers cared about innocent people getting robbed, West thought. She threw them another menacing look as her boss drank one last swallow of her unsweetened iced tea and glanced at her watch.

“Well, I guess we’d better be getting back,” Hammer suggested.

Andy Brazil had heard about the incident at the bus station when it crackled over his scanner while he was working on a substantial story about the long-term consequences of violence on victims and the relatives left behind. By the time he ran down the escalator, got into his car, and raced to the six hundred block of West Trade, the drama apparently had ended in an arrest.

He was trotting past the Presto Grill when West and Hammer were walking out of it. Startled, Brazil stopped and stared at both of them. In the first place, he didn’t understand why two of the most prominent people in the city would eat in such a dive. Nor could he fathom how they could continue with lunch when lives were in danger not fifty yards away, and they had to have known. West was carrying her police radio.

“Andy.” Hammer nodded her greeting to him.

West shot him a glance that dared him to ask questions. He noted that both were in handsome business suits and that the chief’s black leather handbag included a secret compartment for her pistol. He supposed her badge was somewhere in there, too, and he liked the way her calves knotted as she briskly walked off. He wondered what West’s legs looked like as he hurried on to the bus station. Cops were busy taking statements, and this was no small chore. Brazil counted forty-three passengers, not including the driver, who proved to be a pretty great interview.

Antony B. Burgess had been a professional bus driver for twenty-two years and had seen it all. He had been mugged, robbed, hijacked, and stabbed. He’d been shot at the Twilight Motel in Shreveport when he picked up a she who was a him (sh’im) by mistake. He told all this to Brazil and more, because the blond dude was nice as hell, and discerning enough to recognize a raconteur when he met one.