Thirty-six hours earlier

Barely controlling his fury, Detective Lieutenant Mike Stone got up from the hard metal chair and crossed to the interrogation room door. Hand on the knob, he turned back, his hard blue eyes snapping angrily to the blubbering heavyset man on the other side of the table.

"Mr. Delaney, Inspector Lessing here is going to take your statement." He strove to keep his voice, and his anger, under control. "You're doing the right thing."

He yanked the door open and exited into the bullpen, managing to close the door gently and quietly. Shaking his head, both in relief and to expel any residual anger, he pulled his tie loose and undid the collar button as he strode towards his office.

Assistant Inspector Steve Keller glanced up from the typewriter beside his desk. "Well?"

Mike slowed his stride. "Well, he confessed… finally." He looked back as he got to the open office door and shrugged off his suitcoat to hang it on the rack. "It really was only a matter of time… he may have beaten his wife to death but he's essentially a coward."

"Well, Gerry'll be happy you saved him from having to go to court." Steve pulled the report out of the typewriter and turned in the swivel chair towards his boss. "If you have a few minutes, you might want to go over this."

Rolling up his shirtsleeves, Mike had circled the desk and was just about to slip the .38 off his belt to put in the top drawer. He stopped and raised his eyebrows quizzically.

Steve got to his feet, a slight smile playing over his lips. "The Warner case, remember?"

Re-animated, Mike set the revolver in the drawer as his face lit up. "Oh yeah, we put that one to bed too, hunh? We're on a roll, buddy boy – two murders solved in one day."

Chuckling, Steve entered the small glass-walled office and sat in the guest chair as Mike dropped heavily into his own. The younger man tossed the report on the desk then ran his hands wearily through his hair. Mike turned the report around then patted his shirt pockets in a futile search for his reading glasses. He sighed heavily then, catching Steve's eye, looked imploringly at the suit jacket hanging on the rack over the younger man's shoulder.

With an exaggerated sigh and a chuckle, Steve got to his feet and stepped to the rack, running his hands over the jacket until he felt the glasses in the inside pocket. He was just starting to take them out when the phone on Mike's desk rang.

"Homicide, Stone."

Steve turned back to the desk, glasses in hand, to see the smile as well as the colour disappear from his partner's face. Mike reached for the pad and pen on the other side of the desk and made a few quick notes. "We'll be right there." He slammed the receiver down as he started to get to his feet, ripping the top sheet off the pad.

"There's been a bank robbery over on Stockton!" he barked loud enough for everyone in the bullpen to hear. All extraneous noise ceased; he knew he had everyone's attention. "The security guard's been killed and a bank teller and one of our motorcycle officers are down. Three suspects that they know of. I want everybody there, now! Bank of America, Stockton at Green!"

Steve, having tossed the reading glasses onto the desk, had taken Mike's suitcoat and fedora off the rack and was holding them out. Mike got the .38 out of the drawer and snapped it back onto his belt, then took the jacket and hat from his partner with a curt nod. They strode quickly across the bullpen, Steve grabbing his own jacket as he passed his desk, trotting to keep up with his fast-moving superior.

# # # # #

The tan Galaxie, siren wailing and cherry on the passenger side roof flashing, maneuvered past the cordon of uniformed officers and slid to a stop beside a black-and-white with its doors open. An SFPD motorcycle was lying on its side in the middle of the road.

Several more black-and-whites and a couple of unmarked cars were parked haphazardly up and down the busy financial district street. As Mike got out, a uniformed sergeant approached him at a jog. "The teller and our boy are on their way to St. Mary's, Mike. It looks like they're both gonna make it."

Mike nodded grimly as he fell into step beside the grey-haired officer heading towards the granite building, Steve right behind. A young patrolman held the heavy glass front door open for them as they stepped into the busy but unnaturally quiet bank. Stunned employees, some of them crying, were being interviewed by both uniformed and plainclothes officers.

Near the front door, a white sheet covered the body of the security guard. They stopped beside it and Mike knelt, lifting a corner of the sheet so both he and his partner could see the dead man's face and torso.

"He took one round to the chest… probably hit his heart," Sergeant Moran said quietly as the two homicide detectives stared at the weather-beaten face, glazed eyes open and staring sightlessly at the ceiling. "If he was lucky he didn't know what hit him…"

Mike let the sheet fall gently back down and got to his feet, looking around the bank.

"What do you know so far, Sandy?"

"Well, there were at least three of them. Two of 'em came in here already masked and guns drawn. One of them was carrying a large black duffel bag and they ordered the tellers to fill it. He stayed with the tellers and the other one got on top of that… that island or whatever you call it there…" Moran gestured towards the tall counter that housed the deposit and withdrawal slips, "so he could control the rest of the room, I guess."

Steve had been looking around at the ceiling and he gestured towards a rather large camera in one corner. "Does that thing work?"

"Yeah. We've had a look at the videotape. It's grainy and far away. You can't see much but these guys didn't seem to be worried about it. Their masks covered everything from what we can figure out so far."

"How did all the shooting start, does anybody know?" Mike asked, his eyes still raking the large room.

Moran shook his head. "Conflicting stories so far, but consensus seems to be the guard here," he gestured towards the body on the floor, "was on a break and wasn't aware anything was going on, and when he came back into the bank, he reached for his weapon and the guy on the… island thing shot him."

"How did the teller and our guy get hit?"

"So far it seems like one of the tellers got hysterical when the guard got shot and they couldn't get her to calm down, then all hell broke loose when one of the other tellers went for the alarm button. They shot her in the arm then they booked it out of here and were heading for their car when our guy came around the corner. He didn't even have a chance to stop his bike… He took one in the left shoulder but it's a through-and-through and he should be okay."

"Did anybody get a make on the car?" Steve asked, glancing over his shoulder towards the street.

Moran nodded. "Late model dark blue sedan, might be a Chrysler… an Imperial maybe. We're gonna have some of the eyewitnesses on the street to come in and have a look at some pictures."

"Good idea… and good work," Mike said with a confirming nod as he started to move deeper into the bank, his eyes still raking the room and taking in every detail. He glanced at his partner and exhaled heavily. "It's gonna be a long night, buddy boy, a long night."

# # # # #

The sun was well down by the time the two weary homicide detectives returned to the Hall of Justice. Mike had given up trying to smother his yawns as he followed his younger partner across the parking lot and through the side door of the seven-storey building.

As they turned down the corridor towards the lobby, Steve glanced over his shoulder and smiled empathetically. "I take it you don't want to take the stairs tonight…?"

Mike shot him an irritated frown which quickly melted into a wry smile and a shake of his head. "You got that right," he chuckled quietly, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets and hat tipped back on his head. "I think I'd fall asleep before the third floor."

Laughing, Steve punched the UP button as they arrived at the bank of elevators. They had already been up for over sixteen hours, having been woken in the middle of the night to respond to the fatal domestic dispute at the Delaney home, and they both knew they would probably not be getting much, if any, sleep until the three bank robbers were in custody.

The stakes had suddenly been raised when the full background of the slain security guard had been revealed. Arthur Penson was a retired San Jose Police Department robbery lieutenant who had moved to The City after his wife's death to be near his daughter, whose husband had been killed in Vietnam. He had taken on the bank security job to help his daughter raise her three young children.

So now everyone in the SFPD was taking his murder personally; it was like a death in the family. They wouldn't stop until the killers were caught, no matter how long it took.

Mike and Steve stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor and turned towards Homicide. They had spent the last six hours at the scene and the hospital, talking to bank employees and witnesses, watching the videotape of the robbery – which added nothing of consequence – and visiting the two shooting victims at St. Mary's.

All they had managed to conclude was that there were three perpetrators – two in the bank, one in the car – and that they had fled the scene with a little more than a hundred thousand dollars in unmarked used bills in a late model dark blue Chrysler Imperial. They didn't even have the luxury of a partial license plate number.

It was going to be a hard slog.

"You know," Steve said morosely as he opened the glass-paned door and led the way into the darkened Homicide bullpen, snapping on the overhead fluorescents, "they had enough time after they blew out of there before the first black-and-white showed up to head towards either bridge and get that car outa town."

"Oh, I know," Mike sighed heavily as he crossed slowly, hands still in his pockets, towards his office. Not even bothering to turn on the light, he circled the desk and dropped heavily into the chair. "I've been thinking about that. I want Oakland and Sausilito notified, and we may even go further than that. What do you think?"

Steve was leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed. "I think that's a good idea. I'll get right on it. And I'm gonna take a page out of your book and wake someone at DMV." He chuckled as he pushed away from the door and turned back to his desk.

"Thanks." Laughing softly, Mike took his hands out of his pockets and leaned across the desk, picking up the phone and dialing three numbers. As he waited for the line to engage, he took the fedora off and dropped it on the blotter. "Rudy! I really didn't expect you to be there, I was gonna leave a message… Yeah, we just got back. Listen, can I come up and see you? There's too much to tell you over the phone… Yeah, I'll be right up."

He hung up and got to his feet with a weary sigh. Grabbing the hat, he walked heavily through the bullpen, past his young partner now on the phone himself. Their eyes met briefly before Mike opened the heavy outer door and disappeared into the corridor.

They both knew it could be a long time until either of them would be going home.