V. Ardanowski hummed as she waited for Amy Friel to arrive at the police station. School was out now, and it was a good day to have Amy tag along. V. looked forward to it. Amy was a nice kid, and rather smart.

When Amy got there, V. took her around the station, starting in her own office. She introduced her to Hannah Scott and explained Hannah's job, with some help from Hannah. Hannah was the local FBI agent, and helped them with tough cases or got involved in cases that involved federal jurisdiction. Amy asked what kind of cases had federal jurisdiction. That was a smart question, V. thought.

"Cases that involve interstate elements," Hannah explained. "For instance, if a kidnapping occurs in New York, but in carrying out that crime, the perpetrator takes the victim across state lines, it is a federal crime, too."

"Oh, that's why they refer to crossing state lines," Amy said.

"Exactly," Hannah said. "Or you have fraud scams where people use the mail, and it's the federal government that handles the post office."

She showed Amy the database they could use to look for missing persons.

"You remember Zander?" V. said to Amy.

"Of course," Amy said. "I was with him and bunch of others when I was supposedly missing."

"Well, once upon a time, Zander was a missing person, and we figured out who he really was with this database. He was using the name 'Smith' so that made it harder, but we still did it," Hannah said.

"Wow," Amy said. "It looks to me like you could find anybody with that thing."

V. took Amy to briefly meet Commissioner Scorpio and then to meet Detective Taggart.

Amy went with V. and Detective Taggart to the city hall of records, where they looked up some permits. It seemed that they were evidence in some case. Then, they went to interview a doctor about the injuries someone had suffered in an assault. Later, they went to jail to talk to the Defendant.

V. gave Amy a ride home at the end of the day.

"So what do you think?" V. asked her.

"It looks interesting. You're not chained to a desk all day."

"You can be sometimes," V. said. "There are days when you do a lot of paperwork. But those are fairly few. Sometime, you don't have much to do and so you pull out the cold cases."

"The unsolved murders?"

"Yep, though there aren't many of those. There's a lot of unsolved auto theft."

"Is it busy right now?"

"Not much. It'll pick up, though. A lot of stuff happens in summer."

"Kids out of school have time to cause trouble?"

"Sometimes. Though there are fights in the school, sometimes. Drug dealing."

"Is there a lot of that at PCH?"

"There isn't a lot of it, but there's some and it's dangerous," V. said.

"Man, that's scary," Amy said. "School seems so ordinary to me, you know? I don't think I know any kids who would be dealing drugs."

"Usually they are low level, and when we find them, we try to get to tell them who the adults are."

When they got to the house, Amy asked V. to come in. Her father wasn't there yet. But that was part of her plan.

Amy got two glasses of iced tea and invited V. to sit in the back yard.

"This is such a nice yard," V. said. "So pretty. So much – greenery."

"My mom loved it," Amy said. "She planted all kinds of flowers and stuff. We used to have vegetables."

"You didn't keep it up?"

"No, I wish we had."

"Maybe you can get it started again," V. suggested. "I come from the country, I can help if you don't know how."

"Really, would you do that?" Amy asked.

"Sure, it would be fun."

They talked about the police station for a little while, and then Amy said, "Would you like to have a look at the garden?"

"Sure," V. said, getting up with alacrity.

Amy made her way out to the garden. "This is where she had wildflowers. Look, some of them still bloom. Virginia Bluebells, and Bloodroot."

"My mom plants both of those," V. said.

"My mom used to have tulips here," Amy said. "All kinds of colors."

They tramped through the garden, making comments on this or that plant.

"Oh," said Amy. "That's the stuff Dad planted for Mom."

V. looked down. She took hold of the leaves. Marijuana. Definitely.

Amy was looking at something else.

"Oh, I messed up," she said. "I hope I didn't get Dad in trouble."

"I'm a cop," V. said. "But that doesn't mean I don't have a heart. So this helped your mom when she was sick?"

"Yeah, it's a good painkiller, apparently," Amy said. "No one's used it since. But somehow we don't have the heart to clear it out, you know?"

"Sure," V. said, feeling sad for them.

"But I guess you have to arrest him," Amy said.

"I'll talk to him about it," V. said. "I couldn't arrest him."

"Oh, yes," Amy said. "That would be really cool if you would just talk to him about it."