No one would tell him anything except that he had committed a class one misdemeanor by concealing a weapon from common view, a weapon that Budget had freed from beneath the seat and checked to see how many cartridges were inside the cylinder. With growing panic Bubba watched a tow truck turn off Midlothian Turnpike and park beside his Jeep.

Bubba tapped his manacled hands against his window. Budget glared in at him. West stopped talking. Bubba tapped again. Budget opened the front passenger's door and leaned inside the car.

'What?' Budget asked in a most unfriendly way.

'I need to use the bathroom.' Bubba lowered his voice because he didn't want West to hear.

'Yeah, yeah,' Budget said with no compassion.

'I can't wait,' Bubba told him quietly.

'You're gonna have to.'

'Can't.' Bubba gritted his teeth, pressing his buttocks together tightly.

'Too bad.' Budget shut the door.

Hammer rolled up in her midnight-blue Crown Victoria as a detective and two crime-scene technicians searched for evidence. The twenty-four-hour money stop had been cordoned off with yellow tape, and two more officers were standing sentry around a red Jeep Cherokee. West and another officer were talking by a patrol car, a suspect in back.

Hammer parked and got out as a blue medical examiner's van turned off Midlothian Turnpike and drove slowly through the Kmart parking lot, heading to the crime scene.

'Chief.' Budget greeted Hammer.

'What's going on?' Hammer asked West.

'We've got a white female shot in the head behind the Kmart, found at 0832 hours inside her vehicle, a baby in the back seat, strapped in a car seat.'

'God,' Hammer said. 'The baby all right?'

'Screaming, seems feverish,' West replied.

'How young?' Hammer asked.

She stared through the patrol car window at the suspect, a white man with thinning brown hair and a pudgy, flushed face. She thought he looked rather ill.

'I'd say less than a year old,' Budget replied. 'Child Protective Services just removed her from the scene, taking her to Chippenham Hospital to make sure she's okay while we try to find next of kin.'

'We might have a lead on that,' West said. 'There was a note in the victim's purse. Possibly written by the mother. Something about the baby's doctor whose office might be on Pump Road. The note refers to a sick baby named 'Loraine'. We're also making arrangements for temporary foster care, which we hope we won't need.'

Hammer stared at the red Jeep, noting the Confederate flag bumper sticker. She noted the BUB-AH vanity plate. She took a closer look at the suspect. He was shirtless and wearing camouflage pants.

'What's the victim's name?' Hammer asked.

Budget flipped back pages of his notepad.

'Ruby Sink,' he said. 'Seventy-two years old with a Church Hill address.'

'Miss Sink?' Hammer interrupted in horror. 'Oh my God! She's one of my neighbors. I can't believe it.'

'You knew her?' Budget was startled.

'Not well. Dear God! She's on the Hollywood Cemetery board of directors. I just talked to her.'

'Christ!' West said, throwing Bubba a killing look.

'Another ATM?' Hammer asked as a terrible darkness settled over her.

'We know she withdrew two hundred dollars at 0802 hours,' Budget answered. 'We found the receipt. The cash is gone.'

Pieces were fitting together, although not without a little forcing. Hammer recalled the fragmented cell phone conversation between two men named Bubba and Smudge. They were planning to rob and murder a woman. The name Loraine and something about pumps were in the mix. Hammer had supposed their intended victim was black. But perhaps she had misunderstood. Hammer stared at the suspect again.

'Tell me about him,' she said.

'Butner Fluck the fourth, but goes by Bubba,' West replied. 'Oddly enough, Brazil and I responded to a B and E at his house just yesterday. A lot of guns allegedly stolen from his workshop.'

'Interesting,' Hammer said.

'Appears he was parked here at the time the homicide occurred,' Budget added.

'Did he see anything?' Hammer asked.

'Says he didn't. I recovered a forty-four Magnum that was concealed under the seat. One of these eight-inch-barrel jobs with a scope. Recently fired, four rounds missing. Plus, I'd stopped him maybe a half hour earlier, pulled him over to the exact spot where his Jeep is now…'

'Wait a minute.' Hammer held up her hand. 'Start over.'

'I know it's rather bizarre,' West tried to clarify. 'But the suspect was driving erratically shortly after seven this morning and Officer Budget pulled him over here, exactly where the Jeep is now. No outstanding warrants, nothing on him. He was charged with reckless driving and released. Less than an hour later, the victim's discovered behind Kmart.'

'I heard the call over the radio and responded,' Budget explained. 'And there's the same Jeep right where I'd seen it last, the suspect hiding on the floor, the gun in plain view.'

'So he never moved after you pulled him,' Hammer said. 'The Jeep was right here when the victim was robbed at the money stop and then murdered behind Kmart.'

'That's how it appears,' West said.

'What about his demeanor?' Hammer stared at Bubba.

'Extremely agitated, sweating profusely,' Budget replied. 'He has blood on his tee shirt. We said we'd like to take the shirt to the lab, but he was under no obligation to let us. He was compliant.'

'Anything else that might link him to the homicide?' Hammer asked.

'Not so far. Not until we can see if the bullets in the victim were fired from his gun. But it's kind of doubtful, to be honest. The shells we found in the car are nine-millimeter, ejected from a pistol.'

'This is all very strange,' Hammer said. 'And it sounds like all we've really got on him is a class one misdemeanor.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

Hammer stared again at the fat man in the back seat of the cruiser. He stared back at her with exhausted, miserable eyes.

'Well, it doesn't appear to me that we have probable cause to hold him,' Hammer said with extreme disappointment.

'We don't,' West agreed. 'But we couldn't be sure of that at first.'

'It's hard for me to imagine he was sitting here while a woman was robbed and never saw a thing,' Hammer remarked angrily as she thought again of Bubba and Smudge and their broken conversation.

'Nobody ever sees a thing,' West said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Governor Mike Feuer was a tall, lanky man in his early sixties, with piercing eyes that burned with compassion and fierce truth. Republicans often compared him to Abraham Lincoln without a beard. Democrats called him The Fuhrer.

'I understand completely. And of course I'm upset, too,' he was saying into a secure phone in the back of his bulletproof black limousine as he rode through downtown.

'Governor, have you seen it already yet?' Lelia Ehrhart's voice came over a line that could not be tapped or picked up by cell phones, scanners or CB radios.

'No.'

'You must be able to.'

He sighed, glancing at his watch. Governor Feuer had ten meetings scheduled today. He was supposed to call at least six legislators who were fighting hard for and against House and Senate bills flowing through a typically turgid General Assembly.

He was supposed to be prepped for an interview with USA Today, sign a proclamation, meet with his cabinet, be briefed by the House Finance Subcommittee and hold two press conferences. It was his mother's eighty-sixth birthday and he had yet to get around to sending flowers. His back was acting up again.

'If you could just have time to take to drive through and see it for yourself in person, Governor,' said Ehrhart. 'I think you'll be shocking, and if you aren't taking a look today, it's a risk because it has eventually to be removed at some point to be restored. It won't do any good at the most if you are looking later, because by then it will be original again.'