by J. A. Jance
“So you do know something about guns.”
“A little,” she returned with a grim smile. “And you’re right. They are all blanks. I hope you don’t mind my checking for myself. My father always taught me that when it comes to loaded weapons, I shouldn’t take anybody else’s word for it.”
There was a rustle of appreciative chuckles from a few of Joanna’s fellow classmates. Dave Thompson was not amused. “What else did your daddy teaich you?” he asked.
“One or two things,” Joanna answered. “Now what do you want me to do with this pistol?”
“Put it back in the holster and strap on the belt.”
The belt—designed to be used on adult male bodies—was cumbersome and several sizes too large for Joanna’s slender waist. Even fastened in the smallest hole, the heavy belt slipped down until it rested on the curve of her hips rather than staying where it belonged. Convinced the low-slung gun shade her look like a comic parody of some old-time gunfighter, Joanna felt ridiculous. As she struggled with the awkward belt, she barely heard what Thompson was saying.
“You ever hear of a shoot/don’t shoot scenario?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re about to. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Once you get that belt on properly, I want you to spend a few minutes practicing removing the weapon from and returning it to the holster. No matter what you see on TV, cops don’t spend all their time walking around holding drawn sidearms in their hands. But when you need a gun, you’ve gotta be able to get it out in a hell of a hurry.”
Joanna attempted to do as she was told. By then the belt had slipped so far down her body, she was afraid it was going to fall off altogether. Each time she tried to draw the weapon, the belt jerked up right along with the gun. With the belt sliding loosely around her waist, she couldn’t get enough leverage to pull the gun free of the holster. It took several bumbling tries before she finally succeeded in freeing the gun from the leather.
“Very good,” Dave Thompson said at last. “Now, here’s the next step. I want you to stand right here beside this VCR. The tape I just loaded is one of about a hundred or so that we use here at the academy. In each one, the camera is the cop. The lens of the camera is situated at the cop’s eye level. You’ll be seeing the incident unfold through the cop’s eyes, through his point of view. You’ll see what he sees, hear what he hears.
“Each scenario is based on a real case,” he added. “You’ll have the same information available to you as the cop did in the real case. At some point in the film—some critical juncture in the action—you will have to decide whether or not to draw your weapon, whether or not to fire. It’s up to you. Ready?”
Joanna nodded. Aware that all eyes in the room were turned on her, she waited while Thompson checked to be sure the plug was in and then switched on the video.
For a moment the screen was covered with snow, then the room was filled with the sound of a mumbled police radio transmission. When the picture came on, Joanna was seeing the world through though the front windshield of a moving patrol car, one that was following another vehicle—a Ford Taurus—down a broad city street. Moments after the tape started, the lead vehicle, carrying two visible occupants, signaled for a right-hand turn and then pulled off onto a tree-lined residential side street. Seconds later the patrol car turned as well. After it followed the lead vehicle for a block or two, there was the brief squawk from a siren as the officer signaled for the other car to pull over.
In what seemed like slow motion, the door of the patrol car opened and the officer stepped out into the seemingly peaceful street. The camera, positioned at shoulder height, moved jerkily toward the topped car. In the background came a steady murmur of continuing radio transmissions. Standing just to the rear of the driver’s door, the camera bent down and peered inside. Two young men were seated in front.
“Step out of the car please,” the officer said, speaking over the sound of loud music blaring from the radio in the Taurus.
The driver hesitated for a moment, then moved to comply. As he did so, his passenger suddenly slammed open the rider’s door. He leaped from the car and went racing up the toy-littered sidewalk of a nearby home. For a moment, the point of view toyed beside the door of the stopped Taurus, but the scene on screen swung back and forth several times, darting between the passenger fleeing up the sidewalk and the driver who was already raising his hands in the air and leaning over the hood of his vehicle.
“How come you stopped us?” the driver whined. “We wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”
By then Joanna had lost track of everything but what was happening on the screen. A sudden knot tightened in her stomach as she was sucked into the scene’s unfolding drama. She felt the responding officer’s momentary but agonizing indecision. His hesitation was hers as well. Should he stay with the one suspect or go pounding up the sidewalk after the other one?
Joanna’s mind raced as she tried to sort things out. As the fleeing suspect ran toward the house she caught a glimpse of something in his right hand. Was it a stick or a tire iron? Or was it a gun? From the little she had seen, there was no way to know for sure, but if one suspect carried a gun, chances were the other one did, too.
The kid with his hands in the air couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. He wasn’t a total innocent. No doubt he’d been involved in previous run-ins with the law. He knew the drill. Without being ordered to do so, he had automatically raised his hands, spread his legs, and bent over the hood of the car. Most law-abiding folks don’t react quite that way when stopped for a routine traffic violation. They are far more likely to start rummaging shakily through glove compartments, searching frantically for elusive insurance papers and vehicle registrations.
As the camera’s focus switched once more from the driver back to the fleeing suspect, Joanna again glimpsed something in his hand. Again she couldn’t identify what it was, not for certain.
“Stop, police!” the invisible officer bellowed. “Drop it!”
The shouted order came too late. Even as the voice thundered out through speakers, the fleeing suspect vaulted up the steps, bounded across the porch, flung open the screen door, and shouldered his way into the house.
At once the camera started moving forward, jerking awkwardly up and down as the cop, too, raced up the sidewalk and onto the porch. Taking a hint from what was happening on-screen, Joanna began trying to wrest the Smith & Wesson out of the holster. Once again, the gun hung up on the balky leather while the belt and holster twisted loosely around her waist. Only after three separate tries did she manage to draw the weapon.
When she was once more able to glance back at the screen, the cop/camera had taken up a defensive position on the porch, crouching next to the wall of the house just to the right of the screen door. “Come out,” the cop yelled. “Come out with your hands up!”
Just then Joanna heard the sound of a woman’s voice
coming from inside the house. “Who are you?” the rising female voice demanded. “What are you doing in my house? What do you want? What…”
Suddenly the voice changed. Angry outrage aged in pitch and became a shriek of terror. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t please! No! Oh, no! Nooooooooo!”
“Come out,” the officer ordered again. “Now!”
By then Joanna had the gun firmly in hand. She read her feet into the proper stance and raised the revolver. The Smith & Wesson seemed far heavier than the brand-new Colt 2000 she owned personally, the one she was accustomed to using in daily target practice. Even holding the gun both hands, it wasn’t easy to keep her aim steady.
Suddenly the screen door crashed open. The first thing that appeared beyond the edge of the door was an arm holding the unmistakable silhouette of a drawn gun followed by the dark figure of the man who was carrying it.
As the suspect burst out through the open doorway, Joanna bit her lip. Aiming high enough for a chest shot, Joanna eased back on the trigger. At once the classroom reverbe
rated with the roar of the blank cartridge. Immediately the room filled with the smell of burned cordite, and the video screen went blank.
Holding the VCR’s remote control, smiling and nodding, Dave Thompson stood up and looked around the room. “The lady seems to know how to shoot,” he said. “But the question is, did she do the right thing?”
The guy in the front row was already waving hand in the air. “The officer never should have left the vehicle,” he announced triumphantly. “He should have stayed where he was and radioed for backup.”
That same sentiment was echoed in so many words by most of the rest of the class. While debate over Joanna’s handling of the incident swirled around her, she resumed her seat.
The main focus of the discussion was what the officer should have done to take better control the situation. “He for sure should have called for backup,” someone else offered. “What if the other guy was armed, too? While the officer was chasing the one guy, the other one could have turned on him as well.”
The consensus seemed to be that, in the heat of the moment, the officer may not have done everything in his power to avert a possible tragedy. The same held true for Joanna.
Finally Dave Thompson called a halt to any further discussion. “All right, boys and girls,” he said. “That’s enough. Now we’re going to see whether or not Officer Brady’s response was right or wrong.”
With a flick of the remote, the video came back to life. The man in the video image stepped out from behind the screen door. His right hand was fully extended, and the gun was now completely visible. He let the door slam shut behind him and then turned directly into the lens of the camera. As soon as he did so, there was a collective gasp from the entire room.
To her horror Joanna saw that he was holding something in his left hand, something else in addition to the gun in his right—a baby. A screaming, diaper-clad baby was clutched in the crook of his left elbow. As he moved toward the camera, the suspect held the frightened child chest high, using baby as a human shield.
A wave of goose bumps swept down Joanna’s body. Sickened, she realized she had deliberately aimed for the suspect’s chest when she fired off her round. Had this been a real incident—had that been a real bullet—it would have sliced through the child. The baby would have died.
From the front of the classroom Dave Thompson looked squarely at Joanna. A superior, knowing grin played around the corners of his mouth.
“I guess you lose, little lady,” he said, tapping the pointer in his right hand into the palm of left. “Better luck next time.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
That whole first day was spent on lectures. By the time class was out for the evening, Joanna was more than ready. On the way back to her room, Joanna stopped by the lounge long enough to buy a diet Coke from the vending machine and to make a few phone calls from the pay phone.
The soda was more rewarding than the phone calling was. No one was available to talk to her, not at home and not at the office, either. Both Frank Montoya and Dick Voland were out of the office, and the answering machine out at the High Lonesome clicked on after the fourth ring. Joanna hung up without leaving a message.
Back in her room, Joanna settled herself at the desk and tried to wade into the seventy-six pages of text Dave Thompson had assigned to be read prior to class the following day. It didn’t work. Chilling flashbacks from the shoot/don’t shoot scenario kept getting in the way of her concentration. Finally, exasperated, she tossed the book aside, picked up her notebook, and began scribbling a hasty letter:
Dear Jenny,
I’m supposed to be studying, but I can’t seem concentrate. Claustrophobia, I think. You do know what that is, don’t you? If not, ask Grandpa Brady to explain it.
The only windows in this place are right up almost at the ceiling. They’re called clerestory windows—the kind they have in church. They let light in, but they’re too high for someone inside to see out. It reminds me of a jail....
As soon as Joanna wrote the word “jail,” she remembered Jorge Grijalva. And his two children.
Turning away from the letter, Joanna paged back through her notebook beyond the day’s lecture notes until she found the page of notations she had written down based on the articles in Juanita Grijalva’s envelope. For several moments, she sat staring at the names that were written there. Then, making up her mind, she opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out the phone book. After all, since this was Peoria, a call to the Peoria Police Department ought to be a local call.
But when she dialed the number, Carol Strong wasn’t available, and Joanna didn’t have nerve enough to leave a message. Instead, she looked the other two businesses that were mentioned there. At the WE-DO-YU-DO Washateria, Anna‑Ray Melton wasn’t expected in until seven the following morning, and none of the white page listings for Melton gave the name Anna-Ray. Next, Anna tried asking for Butch Dixon at the Roundhouse Bar and Grill. Raucous country/western music wailed in the background.
‘Who do you want? Butch?” the person who answered the phone shouted into the receiver. “Sure, he’s here, but he’s busy. It’s Happy Hour, you know. Can I take a message?”
“No, thanks,” Joanna said. “I’ll call back later.”
She put the phone down. Then, while she was still looking at it, it rang, startling her. “Joanna?” a man’s voice said. “I’ll bet you’re cracking the books, aren’t you.”
“Not exactly. Who is this?”
“Leann Jessup,” she said. “Your tablemate in class. And unless I’m mistaken, we’re next-door neighbors here in the dorm, too. Do you have plans for dinner? Most of the guys are going out for Italian but I’m not wild about pasta. Or the men in the class, either, for that matter. How about you?”
The unexpected invitation of going off to dinner with Leann Jessup was tempting. Maybe Joanna should take the call as a hint and drop the whole idea of stopping by the Roundhouse. Maybe Joanna’s tentative plan of questioning Butch Dixon, the bartender there, was a fruitcake notion that ought to be dropped like a hot potato.
For only a moment Joanna considered inviting Leann to come along with her, but the words never made it out of her mouth. If she went to the bar, talked to Butch, and ended up making a botch of things, why bring along a relative stranger to witness her falling flat on her face?
“Sorry,” Joanna said. “I wish you had called ten minutes ago.”
Leann seemed to take the rejection in stride. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll figure out some alternative. See you tomorrow.”
Joanna put down the phone and pulled on jeans and a sweater. Armed with an address from the phone book and her notes, she headed for downtown Peoria and the Roundhouse Bar and Grill. Based on the name, she expected the address would take her somewhere close to the railroad track. Instead, Roundhouse derived from the shape of the building itself, which was, in fact, round. The railroad part had been grafted on as an afterthought in the form of an almost life-size train outlined in orange neon tubes along the outside of the building.
This must be the place, Joanna thought to herself, pulling into the potholed and vehicle-crowded parking lot. As she parked the Blazer, she could almost hear Eleanor Lathrop’s sniff of disapproval. Women in general and her daughter in particular weren’t supposed to visit bars to begin with. And they certainly weren’t supposed to venture those kinds of places alone. “A woman who goes into bars without an escort is asking for trouble,” Eleanor would have said.
So are women who run for the office of sheriff, Joanna thought with a rueful smile. Squaring her shoulders, she climbed out of the truck and headed for the entrance. Just inside the door, she paused to get her bearings, allowing her ears to adjust to thee noisy din and her eyes to become accustomed to the dim light.
The joint was divided almost evenly between dining area and bar. The smoke-filled bar was jammed nearly full while the restaurant was largely empty. In both sections, railroad memorabilia—from fading pictures and travel posters to cros
sing signs—decorated every inch of available wall space. A platform, dropped from the ceiling, ran around the outside of the room and supported the tracks for several running electric trains that hummed overhead at odd intervals. One wall was devoted to a big-screen television where a raucous group of sports-minded drinkers were jockeying for tables in advance of a Monday-night football game. Above the din of the pregame announcements, a blaring jukebox wailed out Roger Miller’s plaintive version of “Engine, Engine Nine.”
The semicircular bar in the dead center of the room was jammed with people. Seeing the crowd, Joanna’s heart fell. She had hoped that by now the Happy Hour crowd would have gone home and the Roundhouse would be reasonably quiet. A slow evening would give her a chance to talk to the bartender. Under these busy circumstances, that wouldn’t be easy.
With a sigh Joanna made for the single unoccupied stool she had spotted at the bar. If she sat there, she might manage to monopolize the bartender long enough for a word or two. He was a short, round-shouldered man with a shaved head, heavy black eyebrows, and a neatly trimmed, pencil-thin mustache. The name tag pinned to his shirt said BUTCH.
Butch Dixon appeared in front of Joanna almost before she finished hoisting herself onto the seat, shoving a wooden salad bowl overflowing with popcorn in her direction. “What’ll it be?” he asked.
“Diet Coke,” she said.
“Diet Pepsi okay?”
“Sure.”
He went several steps down the bar, filled two glasses with ice, and then added liquid using a push-button dispenser. When he returned, he s both glasses in front of Joanna. “That’ll be a buck,” he said.
Joanna dug in her purse for money. “I only asked for one,” she said.
Butch Dixon grinned. “Hey, don’t fight it, lady,” he said. “It’s Happy Hour and Ladies’ Night both. You get two drinks for the price of one. You new around here?”