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eyes with a beefy hand, his gaze coming to rest on Sophie.
    "Alton, since you were the last through the door, you can be first in the hot seat. What've you got?"
    Sophie tucked a strand of strawberry-blond hair behind her ear and glanced down at her notes. "A prison-reform group released a study showing that most Coloradans oppose incarcerating people for nonviolent drug crimes like possession. I can look at our prison population, figure out how many beds it would free up and how much money the state would save if we put nonviolent drug offenders into treatment instead of behind bars. I'm guessing a solid ten inches."
    Syd Wilson, the managing editor, tapped the numbers into her calculator, doing the magical math that made the news fit, her short salt-and-pepper hair streaked with bright purple this morning. "Photos?"
    Sophie shook her head. "We might be able to work up a graph. I'll see what kind of data I can find."
    Tom turned to Natalie. "Benoit?"
    Natalie Benoit had come to Colorado from New Orleans after losing everything but her life in Hurricane Katrina. Her eyewitness coverage of the tragedy at a New Orleans hospital had made her a Pulitzer finalist, and Tom had hired her on the spot. With long dark hair, big aqua eyes, and a charming New Orleans accent, she was pretty in a way that drew people to her. Yet she didn't seem to date and rarely socialized with the rest of the reporters. Some people thought she was stuck up, but Kat knew that wasn't true. There was something tragic about Natalie, a grief that she kept hidden. Kat didn't know what it was, and it wasn't her place to pry. But she sensed it all the same.
    Natalie flipped through her notes. "A rookie cop got shot early this morning responding to a domestic-violence call. He has a wife and a new baby. Right now he's still critical. I thought I'd look into it, talk to his family, get the latest stats on domestic violence. Probably a good fifteen to twenty inches."
    Tom turned to his left. "Ramirez, isn't that what you shot this morning?"
    Joaquin Ramirez, the photographer assigned to the I-Team, nodded. Usually the most cheerful person in the room, his face was lined by fatigue, his dark eyes full of shadows. "It was down the street from my house. I got pretty much the entire thing. The bastard shot him from the upstairs window when the officer was walking up to the door. Didn't even warn him."
    "The shooter turned the gun on his wife and then himself a short time later," Natalie said. "He died. His wife is going to make it--thank God."
    Syd punched in the numbers. "Front page?"
    Tom nodded. "Let's start it below the fold and jump to a photo spread on page three. Nothing too graphic. People need to be able to read the paper while they eat their cornflakes. Harker, what's going on downtown?"
    Matt Harker, the city reporter, sat up straighter and smoothed his wrinkled tie--the same wrinkled tie he'd worn every day since Kat had come to work at the paper. With freckles on his face and reddish hair, he had a boyish look that seemed to contradict his abilities as a serious reporter. "I got a tip over the weekend that the city's finance director has been embezzling the employee pension fund."
    Joaquin gave a low whistle. "That's big."
    "I spent most of yesterday with some leaked records and a forensic accountant, and it seems the tip is solid. I need to make a few calls, talk to the city attorney, but I think we can run with it today. Fifteen inches maybe?"
    Syd tapped her calculator. "Photos?"
    "A couple of head shots."
    Tom's gaze fixed on Kat. "How's the solar-energy story coming, James?"
    "I need to put it on hold." Kat drew a steadying breath. "On Saturday night, Boulder police raided an inipi --a sweat lodge ceremony--that a group of Indian people were holding on Mesa Butte just east of Boulder. Native people have been using the site, which is considered sacred, for hundreds of years. The city has long known that Indians hold ceremonies there, but they've