3:30 p.m.
In the bowels of the City County Building, where jail inmates make their full-time residence, there's a large room lit primarily by the bluish glow of computer terminals. It's the 911 emergency center, the nerve center of all Knox County law enforcement, a place where conversation runs along the lines of, "Did 162 go 10-8?" Banks of operators handle incoming calls about anything from shootings to broken-down cars, then pass them on to the appropriate agencies. Jeff Day, a dispatcher for the Knoxville Police Department, estimates that 65-70 percent of all calls come to KPD. His computers show him the location of each call, its current status, and the location of every patrol unit in the city. It's not too stressful, he insists—except when everything happens at once.

4:40 a.m.
Is it damn early or damn late? Eddie Carmichael winds down another day of work by reading the morning paper at Freedom Bonding on North Central Avenue. The loquacious Carmichael works 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., offering the accused a reprieve at any hour of the night (or morning).

9:30 a.m.
"You know what they're doing over there, don't you?" asks officer Tom Mayes, referring to the drug dealers hanging out at 5 Points, the notorious intersection in East Knoxville. Mayes (pictured in the mirror) and Officer Bryon Davis keep watch just down the block in a pot-holed, empty parking lot. But this patch of Knoxville isn't entirely bleak. A block away, mechanics at a garage joke with customers and work on cars, a worker catches a smoke on a loading dock and buses roll by on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.

9:55 p.m.
Andrew Miller and Lisa Elliott work the evening shift at Java in Homberg Place, which sees a lot of spill-over from the Terrace Theatre. "Don't write that we're grouchy," Elliott says. And, to be honest, they're not. They work with a fluid ease that conveys the essence of Friday night.

6:30 a.m.
Regulars Ronald and Thelma Foster finish up their breakfast at Pete's Coffee Shop on Union Street. For the three customers in the shop, it is a quiet time to enjoy breakfast. But the three workers here are already preparing for the morning and lunch rushes. Pete's is one of a handful of downtown coffee shops (Harold's is another), which are the first to come to life in the city's business center.

10:30 a.m.
Morning doesn't come at the same time for everyone. For your average college student, this is early. It is a time to gulp down a cup of thick, strong coffee, rub a hand through your hair, pull on some clothes and hurry to class. Groggy David Jolly, a biology major at UT, greets the morning from his porch at 15th Street and Forest Avenue in the Fort.