Shoot / Don't Shoot

There you go, Marliss, Joanna thought to herself, as she stood up to clear her place. Three out of four ain’t bad.

The morning lectures may have dragged, but the afternoon lab sessions flew by. They started with the most fundamental part of police work—paper—and the how and why of filling it out properly. Joanna didn’t expect to be fascinated, but she was—right up until time for the end-of-day session of heavy-duty physical training.

Once the PT class was over, Joanna could barely walk. There was no part of her that didn’t hurt. It was four-thirty when she finished her last painful lap on the running track and dragged her protesting body back to the gym.

The PT instructor, Brad Mason, was a disgust­ingly fit fifty-something. His skin was bronze and leatherlike. His lean frame carried not an ounce of extra subcutaneous fat. Brad stood waiting by the door to the gym with his arms folded casually across his chest, watching as the last of the trainees finished up on the field. Running laps was something Joanna hadn’t done since high school. She was among the last stragglers to limp into the gym,

“No pain, no gain,” Mason said with a grin as Joanna hobbled past.

Her first instinct was to deck him. Instead, Joanna straightened her shoulders. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll try to remember that.”

After lunch Joanna had told Leann she’d be happy to go to the candlelight vigil, but by the time it she finished showering and drying her hair, she was beginning to regret that decision. She was tired. Her body hurt. She had homework to do, including a new hundred-page reading assignment from Dave Thompson. But it was hard to pull herself together and turn to the task at hand when she was feeling so lost and lonely. She missed Jenny, and she missed being home. The partially com­pleted letter she had started writing to Jenny the night before remained in her notebook, incomplete and unmailed.

Joanna went to her room only long enough to change clothes; then she took her reading assignment and hurried back to the student lounge. Naturally, one of the guys from class was already on the phone, and there were three more people waiting in line behind him. After putting her name on the list, Joanna bought herself a caffeine-laden diet coke from the coin-operated vending machine and sat down to read and wait.

The reading assignment was in a book called The Interrogation Handbook. It should have been interesting material. Had Joanna been in a spot more conducive to concentration, she might have found it fascinating. As it was, people wandered in and out of the lounge, chatting and laughing along the way while collecting sodas or snacks or ice. Finally, Janna gave up all pretense of studying and simply sat and watched. She tried to sort out her various classmates. Some of them she already knew by name and jurisdiction. With most of them, though, she had to resort to checking the name tag before she could remember.

Eventually it was Joanna’s turn to use the phone. Jenny answered after only one ring.

“Hullo?”

At the sound of her daughter’s voice, Joanna felt her heart constrict. “Hi, Jenny,” she said. “How are things?”

“Okay.”

Joanna blinked at that. After two whole days, Jenny sounded distant and lethargic and not at all thrilled to hear her mother’s voice. “Are you all packed for tomorrow?” Joanna asked.

“I guess so,” Jenny answered woodenly. “Grandpa says we’re going to leave in the afternoon as soon as school is out.”

“Aren’t you going to ask how I’m doing?” Joanna asked.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m tired,” Joanna answered. “How about you? Are you all right? You sound upset.”