Clearly, Hammer's battle plan was a northern one, but as fate would have it, when she presented her proposal to Richmond's city council, it was preoccupied with infighting, mutiny and usurpations. At the time, it didn't seem like such a bad thing to let someone else solve the city's problems. So it was that Hammer was hired as interim chief for a year and allowed to bring along two talents she had worked with in Charlotte.

Hammer began her occupation of Richmond. Soon enough stubbornness set in. Hatred followed. The city patriarchs wanted Hammer and her NIJ team to go home. There was not a thing the city needed to learn from New York, and Richmonders would be damned before they followed any example set by the turncoat, carpetbagging city of Charlotte, which had a habit of stealing Richmond's banks and Fortune 500 companies.

Deputy Chief Virginia West complained bitterly through painful expressions and exasperated huffs as she jogged around the University of Richmond track. The slate roofs of handsome collegiate Gothic buildings were just beginning to materialize as the sun thought about getting up, and students had yet to venture out except for two young women who were running sprints.

'I can't go much farther,' West blurted out to Officer Andy Brazil.

Brazil glanced at his watch. 'Seven more minutes,' he said. 'Then you can walk.'

It was the only time she took orders from him. Virginia West had been a deputy chief in Charlotte when Brazil was still going through the police academy and writing articles for the Charlotte Observer. Then Hammer had brought them with her to Richmond so West could head investigations and Brazil could do research, handle public information and start a website.

Although one might argue that, in actuality, West and Brazil were peers on Hammer's NIJ team, in West's mind she outranked Brazil and always would. She was more powerful. He would never have her experience. She was better on the firing range and in fights. She had killed a suspect once, although she wasn't proud of it. Her love affair with Brazil back in their Charlotte days had been due to the very normal intensity of mentoring. So he'd had a crush and she had gone along with it before he got over it. So what.

'You notice anybody else killing himself out here? Except those two girls, who are either on the track team or have an eating disorder,' West continued to complain in gasps. 'No! And guess why! Because this is stupid as shit! I should be drinking coffee, reading the paper right now.'

'If you'd quit talking, you could get into a rhythm,' said Brazil, who ran without effort in navy Charlotte P.D. sweats and Saucony shoes that whispered when they touched the red rubberized track.

'You really ought to quit wearing Charlotte shit,' she went on talking anyway. 'It's bad enough as is. Why make the cops here hate us more?'

'I don't think they hate us.' Brazil tried to be positive about how unfriendly and unappreciative Richmond cops had been.

'Yes they do.'

'Nobody likes change,' Brazil reminded her.

'You seem to,' she said.

It was a veiled reference to the rumor West had heard barely a week after they had moved here. Brazil had something going on with his landlady, a wealthy single woman who lived in Church Hill. West had asked for no further information. She had checked out nothing. She did not want to know. She had refused to drive past Brazil's house, much less drop by for a visit.

'I guess I like change when it's good,' Brazil was saying.

'Exactly.'

'Do you wish you'd stayed in Charlotte?'

'Absolutely.'

Brazil picked up his pace just enough to give her his back. She would never forgive him for saying how much he wanted her to come with him to Richmond, for talking her into something yet one more time because he could, because he used words with clarity and conviction. He had carried her away on the rhythm of feelings he clearly no longer had. He had crafted his love into poetry and then fucking read it to someone else.

There's nothing for me here,' said West, who put words together the way she hung doors and shutters and built fences. 'I mean let's be honest about it.' She wasn't about to paint over anything without stripping it first. 'It sucks.' She sawed away. Thank God it's only for a year.' She pounded her point.

He replied by picking up his pace.

'Like we're some kind of MASH unit for police departments,' she added. 'Who were we kidding? What a waste of time. I don't remember when I've wasted so much time.'

Brazil glanced at his watch. He didn't seem to be listening to her, and she wished she could get past his broad shoulders and handsome profile. The early sun rubbed gold into his hair. The two college women sprinted past, sweaty and fat-free, their muscular legs pumping as they showed off to Brazil. West felt depressed. She felt old. She halted and bent over, hands on her knees.

That's it!' she exclaimed, heaving.

'Forty-six more seconds.' Brazil ran in place like he was treading water, looking back at her.

'Go on.'

'You sure?'

'Fly like the wind.' She rudely waved him on. 'Damn it,' she bitched as her flip phone vibrated on the waistband of her running shorts.

She moved off the track, over to the bleachers, out of the way of hard-bodied people who made her insecure.

'West,' she answered.

'Virginia? It's…' Hammer's voice pushed through static.

'Chief Hammer?' West said loudly. 'Hello?'

'Virginia… You there?' Hammer's voice scattered more.

West pressed a hand over her other ear, trying to hear.

'… That's bullshit…' a male voice suddenly broke in.

West started walking, trying to get into a better cell.

'Virginia…?' Hammer's voice barely crackled through.

'… can do it anytime… usual rules apply…' The male voice was back.

He had a southern drawl and was obviously a redneck. West felt instant hostility.

'… time to… kill… Got to… or score…' The redneck spoke in distorted blurts.

'… an ugly dog not worth… lead to shoot it…" A second redneck suddenly answered the first redneck. 'How much…?'

'Depends on… Maybe a couple hundred…" '… Just between us…" '… If… body… finds…'

'… not invited…'

'What?' Hammer's voice surfaced and was gone.

'… Use a… cold nose… Not your piece… shit…! Blue…'

'Chief Hammer…" West started to say more, then caught herself, realizing the rednecks might be able to hear them, too.

'… coons…" The first redneck came back. '… not one born too smart for… Dismal Swamp…" '… Got that right, Bubba… We covered… a blanket…" 'Okay, Smudge… buddy… early morning?'

West was silently shocked as she listened to two men plan a homicide that clearly was racially motivated, a hate crime, a score to settle that involved robbery. It sounded as if the murder would go down early in the morning. She wondered if a cold nose was slang for a snub-nosed revolver and if blue referred to a gun that was blue steel versus stainless steel or nickel-plated. Clearly, the psychos planned to wrap the body in a blanket and dump it in the Dismal Swamp.

Static.

'… Loraine…' Bubba's fractured voice was back. '… At old pumps… cut engine… headlights off so don't wake…'

Static, and the cell cleared.

'Chief Hammer?' West said. 'Chief Hammer? Are you still there?'

'Bubba…' the second stranger crackled again. 'Somebody's on…'

Static, scratch, blare, blip.

'Goddamn it,' West muttered when her phone went dead.

Bubba's real name was Butner Fluck IV. Unlike so many fearless men devoted to pickup trucks, guns, topless bars and the Southern Cross, he had not been born into the tribe of Bubbas, but rather had grown up the son of a theologian in the Northside neighborhood of Ginter Park, where old mansions were in disrepair and Civil War cannonballs on porches were popular. Butner came from a long line of Burners who always went by the nickname 'But', and it was lost on his erudite father, Dr. But Fluck III, that calling his son But in this day and age set the child up for problems.