Shoot / Don't Shoot

intentions, there was nothing she could do.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Please! Don’t do it.”

But without a backward glance, Larry Dysart threw himself under the iron wheels of the moving train. He disappeared from sight while behind him a single severed foot and shoe flew high in the air. Spewing blood, it landed in the dirt thirty feet from the tracks.

Joanna stopped and stared in utter horror and disbelief at the place where he had disappeared. The train rumbled on and on, not even slowing. By then the lead engine had almost reached the next crossing. Totally unaware of the terrible carnage behind him, the engineer sounded his whistle.

To Joanna’s ear, that terrible screech sounded like the gates of hell swinging open to swallow her alive. She dropped to her knees. “Please, God,” she prayed. “Don’t let him be dead.”

But of course, he was.

Moments later, before the last car clattered by,

Joanna felt a steadying hand on her shoulder. “A , you all right?” Carol Strong asked.

Joanna nodded. “But . . “

“I know,” Carol said. “I saw it happen. Let me have your weapon. You’ll get it back after the investigation.”

Without a word Joanna handed over the Colt, Carol helped her up. “Stay here,” she ordered. Joanna nodded numbly and made no effort to follow when Carol walked away.

Standing there alone, Joanna dusted off the knees of her pants. She didn’t look at the track. Whatever was left of Larry Dysart, she didn’t need to see it. Behind her, she heard sirens as emergency vehicles left the hotel and screamed across the intersection to reach the northbound lanes of Grand Avenue. They pulled up on the shoulder, lights flashing, feet thumping on the dirt as a group of uniformed of­ficers followed by an intent aid crew jogged down the embankment. They came to an abrupt stop when they reached the spot by the fence where Joanna was standing.

While the emergency crew milled around her, Joanna was only vaguely aware of them. Larry Dy­sart was dead. By his own hand. Crushed to pieces beneath the iron wheels of an onrushing train.

All Joanna Brady could hear right then, in both her head and her heart, was his voice—his chilling, humorless voice—saying the awful words over and over, repeating them again and again like a horrific: broken record.

“If anything happens to me, the girls will die . . . the girls will die . . . the girls will die.”

A uniformed man appeared at Joanna’s side.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She neither heard nor comprehended the questi­on until the second time he asked. Only then did she realize that he was a medic worried about her condition.

“I’m fine,” she said, brushing him aside. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not,” Carol said, coming back to Joanna. “Come on. I’ll get you a ride back to the hotel. We’ll have officers there for the next sev­eral hours taking statements, yours included. And

“What are you going to do?” Joanna asked.

“As soon as I get you back to