Scott had hauled in one of her bookstore employees for public drunkenness at around 3:00 a.m., and she was waiting for the young man to sober up enough so she could take him back to his dorm. The crime committed by twenty-year old Mitchell Webb, the college student currently snoring loudly on the couch in Scott’s office, consisted of standing outside the apartment building where his ex-girlfriend Yvonne lived, singing “Let’s Stay Together” in an effort to win her back. This idea had taken several shots of tequila to seem promising. Mitchell, with his dreadlocks and multiple piercings, had frightened some of the older residents of the neighborhood, and a concerned citizen had telephoned Scott. The chief of police was a little more sympathetic to Mitchell, and felt more as if he was rescuing the young man from further embarrassment than apprehending a dangerous criminal. Scott called Maggie partly because he didn’t want to get Mitchell in trouble with his parents or the college administration, but mostly so he could get Maggie out of bed and into the station.
