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 reverberated 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,
