Mayhem at the Bus Stop
                             Tales from the City
                        Copyright 1997 by Dave Laird

Each day add to the endless list of gruesome victims in Spokane, it would
seem. Some, by their actions, have left themselves accessible to fate while
others do nothing overt make themselves victims, but by virtue of being in
the wrong place the wrong time, become trapped circumstances beyond their
control, dancing to music over which there is no conductor. 

Approximately one o'clock each morning the Greyhound bus from Central Idaho
rolls to a stop on West First in Spokane, with the sigh of a tired old
soldier completing yet another tour of duty. The watchers, those lurking in
the shadows behind the early morning street lights, are the only witnesses
as the Spokane Greyhound Bus Depot creaks to a halt. 

To first-time visitors to Spokane, their initial view of the city is
strained, as they must peer through accumulated grit and haze that floats in
the air where the big buses have ceaselessly groaned and moved throughout
the previous day. Passengers wipe the sleep out of their eyes and adjust
their private parts as they try to adjust to the sickly yellow quartz
halogen lighting that beats down on them in invisible waves of sickly
gray-green.

Even at one in the morning, there is a pre-recorded voice that greets them
briskly with welcoming messages from somewhere long ago. Welcome to Spokane,
tourist.

Yesterday morning, the twin brothers Mayhem and Madness, specialists in acts
of passion and violence, were riding the bus, and disembarked at the
Greyhound Depot, along with least one other passenger, Alicia Granby. Ms.
Granby had come Spokane with the hopes of starting her somewhat
disfunctional life over again. This was her first stop on an itinerary aimed
toward self-improvement, as she was going to enrolled in a drug and alcohol
abuse treatment center, and after that,she had hopes of regaining the road
to normalcy.

She never made it to safety. It is less than 50 yards from the Greyhound Bus
Depot to the nearest bastion of safety, The Coach House Restaurant. Although
West First Avenue has most recently been noted for a series of drug raids
and weapons seizures, there were none of the police department SWAT team
watching when Alicia Granby made her ill-fated trip from the bus depot to
The Carriage House.

The only persons were standing, hiding inside one the many doorways like
wolves, waiting for their next meal to come walking down the sidewalk.
Seizing an unwatched moment, they grabbed Alicia from behind within feet of
the relative safety of the Coach House. They dragged her, against her will,
bludgeoning her with their fists and improvised clubs, into the basement of
a nearby apartment house where, over the next 15 hours, they repeatedly
raped, beat and tortured her.

In the words of those who later treated her at Sacred Heart Medical Center,
less than a day's time, they had "...reduced her will to live past the point
resistance and so rendered her into a vegetable state...".

There is no business open at the Greyhound Bus Terminal at one in the
morning. Most folks who live in Spokane wisely avoid West First Street, even
in broad daylight. At night, however, there is not even a slouching
rent-a-cop to oversee the safety of strangers in our midst. 

Neither the bosses of the Grey Dog Lines nor the citizens appear
sufficiently concerned over whether or not there are killers, rapists and
degenerative lunatics lurking in the shadows when the might buses stop
rolling. 

There is nothing but the night, the dust and the wolves to give the night a
pulse. Beware the heart of the night on West First Street, lest it capture
you, take you, and make you its own.