The Academy Read online

  Tracy flagged down Jenny when she entered the restaurant.

  Jenny pulled out a bar stool and sat.

  “You hungry?” Tracy asked.

  The waitress approached. “I’m okay,” Jenny said.

  Tracy said, “Bring us both cheeseburgers and bring her an iced tea.”

  “Oh, that’s okay—,” Jenny started.

  “It’s on me,” Tracy said, suspecting Jenny was short on cash. She confirmed the order with the waitress, who departed.

  “Thanks for what you did,” Almond said. “I hope you didn’t get in trouble.”

  “Nolasco’s an ass. I suspect everyone knows it.”

  Almond laughed. “I still can’t believe you kicked him in the balls. I think every guy in the class grimaced and grabbed his crotch.”

  Tracy smiled. “I didn’t grow up with brothers, but I taught high-school-age boys for a few years. Nothing scares them more than the family jewels being put at risk. Don’t forget that.”

  Almond shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I could do what you did.”

  “You do what you have to do, what the circumstances require.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Something else?”

  Jenny sighed. She looked on the verge of tears. “Maybe this isn’t right for me. The physical part is just beyond me and I can’t shoot for crap.”

  “Why’d you apply?”

  “My dad’s been a cop in Klickitat County for thirty years. I have two older sisters who were into dolls and dance. I was kind of a tomboy, maybe the son he never had. He thinks it would be a good job for me. Job security. Good benefits.”

  “What about you?” Tracy said. “What do you think?”

  “Me?” Almond seemed to brighten. “I’ve wanted to take his place since the first time my mom brought me to his office. It’s small, just him and another deputy . . . and a woman who answers the phone. But everyone knows him. They respect him.”

  Tracy thought of her own father, a doctor, and how everyone in Cedar Grove had said hello to him anytime they went into town. The Presbyterian Church hadn’t been big enough to fit the crowd that came out for his funeral.

  “You grow up in a small town?” Tracy asked.

  “Centerville, population one hundred twenty—unless someone has died since I left.” Jenny laughed. “How about you?”

  “Cedar Grove. It’s up in the North Cascades. We’re a little bigger than one hundred twenty, but it’s a small town.”

  “Why are you here?” Almond asked.

  “It’s complicated.” Tracy left it at that. “Where’re you living?”

  “I’m in a motel. The Fleabag Inn.”

  “That bad?”

  Almond laughed. “Pretty bad.”

  “I got an apartment about two blocks from here. Plenty of room. All you need is a mattress.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “That’s why I offered.”

  Almond hemmed and hawed.

  “Listen, I grew up with a sister who spent more time in my room than her own,” Tracy said. “I’ve been talking to the walls. You’d help me to keep from going certifiable.”

  “Like you did on Nolasco?”

  They laughed.

  A few minutes later, the waitress brought their food and Almond’s iced tea. They both dug into the cheeseburgers. Fries overwhelmed their plates.

  “Oh my god, you don’t know how good this tastes.” Almond wiped mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth. “I’ve been eating tuna from a can and macaroni and cheese for weeks.” She sipped her iced tea. “What does your family think of you becoming a cop? I heard you were a chemistry teacher.”

  “I was,” Tracy said. “My father’s dead. My mother doesn’t really approve.”

  “What does your sister do?”

  “Sarah died about three years ago. Someone murdered her.”

  Almond put down her cheeseburger. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Tracy said. “So am I.” She sipped her beer and focused on the cheeseburger, silent for a moment. Then she said, “You don’t ever let a man put his hands on you if you don’t want him to.”

  Almond nodded, silent, perhaps sensing that the gravity of the conversation had changed.

  “I don’t care who he is,” Tracy continued. “Nobody touches you. If he does, you fight like hell. You do what you have to do.”

  “Okay,” Almond said.

  Tracy raised her glass. Almond put down her hamburger and raised hers. “What should we toast to?” she asked.

  “To kneeing assholes in the balls,” Tracy said. She drank, then lowered her glass. “Finish up so we have some daylight left to go get your things. We have an early morning.”

  “I thought roll call wasn’t until eight tomorrow?”

  “My workout group meets at six. You got a good pair of running shoes?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Tracy sensed the nerves of her fellow recruits who were filling the other twelve shooting stalls. Four stood to her left, eight to her right.

  Shooting was their final test. If they passed, they would make it to graduation. But there was always more at stake when it came to men and guns. Put a gun in a man’s hand—the weight of it, the raw power the weapon could unleash—and the testosterone began to boil. Someone had once told Tracy that guns and chain saws were like an extension of a man’s penis, which explained why men invariably chose size. The bigger the better. Tracy chose a Glock .40. She would have used one of her Colt revolvers, but department policy had changed a year earlier to require automatics. She’d been shooting her Colts since she was strong enough to manage the kick. At fifteen, her father had taken her to her first Single Action Shooting competition and she had been hooked. She loved to shoot. She loved to compete against other shooters even more. At eighteen, she had won the first of three consecutive Washington State shooting championships. Only Sarah, at seventeen, had ended Tracy’s streak.

  The Glock’s grip felt similar to her Colts’, with a straight-through trigger pull and the weight of the barrel distributed much like her pistols. It also had comparable recoil. Her father had told her that guns were like his patients. Each had its own peculiarities. The best doctors and shooters were the ones who learned to work with them. Tracy had worked hard to learn the Glock’s.

  This morning, something other than testosterone and ego was responsible for the large crowd standing behind the shooters’ stalls. The remainder of their classmates had not assembled just to provide support, though they’d grown close as a class, for sure. What her fellow recruits had come to see was whether Tracy could break the range record—a record that had stood for almost two decades—held by their least favorite instructor, Detective Johnny Nolasco.

  Despite what Tracy sensed to have been a stern reprimand following his groping, Nolasco remained an ass. He had been born an ass, and he’d likely been raised an ass. She wouldn’t go so far as to say Nolasco couldn’t help himself—that would be too easy an excuse. Nolasco liked being an ass, especially to women. It was no wonder he’d been divorced twice and now liked to be overheard saying things like, “No reason to buy the pussy when you can rent it.”

  Nolasco’s shooting target hung just inside the Academy entrance in a glass case once used to display the trophies and accomplishments of the former junior high school. His name and his score—“173 out of 180 - 96%”—were engraved on a plaque beside the target.

  A marine layer off the Puget Sound draped the shooting range in a thin gray shroud that had calmed the wind and kept the temperature mild. Perfect shooting weather. The targets would hang still and Tracy’s palms would be dry.

  After checking her weapon, Tracy stepped over to the stall two to her left. “You ready?”

  Jenny nodded, though Tracy sensed her nerves. Since moving in with Tracy and joining her study group and morning e
xercise group, Jenny’s scores had gone up in the classroom. Her stamina and strength had also improved. They’d also worked hard on her shooting technique. Jenny had gotten better but had yet to post a passing score, and that meant Jenny passing the Academy remained touch and go.

  “It’s just like we’ve practiced. Same target. Same distances. You focus only on the target. In between each distance drop your arms and roll your shoulders. Don’t keep your hands up. Let your arms fall to your sides. Deep breath before you start, slow exhale as you squeeze.”

  “I got this,” Jenny said.

  “Do you know what you’re going to say?” They’d discussed Jenny uttering a phrase just before shooting. It was a relaxation technique Tracy and others used in tournaments.

  Jenny glanced in the direction of their instructors who were huddled and talking, including Johnny Nolasco. “Here’s to breaking balls,” she said.

  Tracy laughed.

  “Hey, Professor?” Nolasco yelled loud enough to draw every recruit’s attention. “You testing today or chatting? You and Costco can discuss where you’re getting your nails done on your own time.”

  Tracy returned to her stall and holstered her Glock. She slipped on her yellow-tinted shooting glasses and ear protection. Stepping to the line, she took the interview position: legs bladed with the left leg in front and right in back, her body angled, and her hands held chest high to deflect a punch or kick. Three yards out hung her bad guy, a paper target angled at ninety degrees so she was looking at the edge. Beyond the target was the dirt-and-sand berm that would absorb the blow of the bullets passing through the paper or missing the target altogether.

  Sergeant George Decker, their academy shooting instructor, stepped onto the range. “You have been through the drill before. At the buzzer, your target will turn. You have three seconds to fire three shots. Two to the body. One to the head. After three seconds, your target will return to its current position. You will be graded on your accuracy. Points will be awarded for shots in the kill zone. You will reholster your weapon and wait until the target turns a second time. When it does, you will repeat the sequence of shots. After the second session, you will step back to the next distance. If your gun jams, you must clear it. Reloading is your responsibility.” Decker looked up and down the line. “Is the line ready?”

  Thirteen responded together. “Ready.”

  Decker turned to the range master—Nolasco, in this instance. “The line is ready,” he said and stepped off.

  Tracy took a breath and let the air slowly escape her lips. She tilted her head from side to side. Under her breath, she said, “Fill your hands, you son of a bitch,” in tribute to the best Western movie ever made.

  The buzzer sounded.

  She drew her Glock as the target turned, the discharge of thirteen guns resounding.

  As one of the spotters, George Decker’s job was to inspect three recruits’ targets between each shooting distance being tested, though there was just one target he was really interested in. After the first round, he marked Tracy Crosswhite’s bullet holes with chalk so the same hole would not be erroneously counted as a hit during a succeeding session. Then, on the left side of the target, he recorded the total score for her three shots. The target, like a dartboard, awarded higher points as the rings decreased in diameter to the bull’s-eye at the center. The maximum score was five points per shot. Decker put a fifteen below the fifteen he’d recorded after her first round at the three-yard distance.

  Stepping from the range, Decker sidled next to Johnny Nolasco, and they watched the line step back to the five-yard marker and assume their positions.

  “Jesus, she is fast,” Decker said. “She’s reholstering before the three seconds is up.”

  “Fast is one thing. Accurate is another,” Nolasco said.

  “She put four body shots in the center bull’s-eye and two dead in the forehead. I had to look twice to make sure I wasn’t counting the same shot.”

  “Anybody can hit the kill zone at three yards,” Nolasco said.

  They lowered their ear protection.

  The buzzer sounded.

  When the shooting ceased, they slid the earmuffs off. Decker walked onto the range to register the scores. Returning, he said. “Fifteen. Again.”

  Nolasco kept his focus on the range. “Let’s see how she does when those pretty little hands and shoulders start getting heavy and she has to shoot from greater distances.”

  “You’re not worried about your record, are you, Johnny?”

  Nolasco smirked. “Nobody’s touched that record in nearly two decades. She won’t either.”

  “So then it must be that thousand bucks you’re going to owe me?”

  “Fuck you. She and Almond haven’t passed yet.”

  They watched together as the line stepped back from five yards to seven, then to ten yards, repeating the process. The thirteen hanging targets began to look like Swiss cheese, all except the target hanging before the fifth stall from the left.

  “Told you,” Nolasco said when Decker stepped from the range after scoring the second round at ten yards. “I’m not seeing a lot of holes.”

  Decker smiled. “You’re not seeing a lot of holes because she’s damn near hitting the center every shot.”

  Nolasco glanced from Decker to Tracy Crosswhite’s target, disbelieving.

  “Fifteens across the board.” Decker said. “She’s still perfect.”

  Tracy stepped to the short barricade at fifteen yards. She was to drop to a knee and fire over the top. At twenty-five yards, the final distance, she would be required to fire from behind a standing barricade, three shots from the left side and three from the right.

  The smell of gunpowder permeated the range. Spent brass casings littered the ground. Tracy felt the heat of the Glock in her hand. She took a moment to look down two stalls. Jenny stood deep in concentration, eyes locked on her target. Tracy could only hope she’d remembered what they practiced.

  “Is the line ready?” Decker called out.

  “Ready.”

  At the sound of the buzzer, Tracy knelt and drew her weapon. She fired two shots to the body, took aim at the head, and felt the trigger lock on her.

  “Jam,” Nolasco said, taking a step forward. He lifted his ear protection. “Her gun jammed.”

  Decker watched as Crosswhite quickly cleared her weapon, though not in time to get off her third shot before the target had turned perpendicular again.

  Nolasco smiled. “Told you, Georgie-boy. Nobody’s touched that record. Many a man has tried, none have succeeded.”

  “Yes,” Decker said, “but she’s not a man, Johnny.”

  After the second round at twenty-five yards, Tracy reholstered her Glock and stepped back from the line, tired but relieved. Up and down the line, recruits removed their ear and eye protection and left their stalls to offer one another congratulations. Some looked happier than others, but there was nothing for any of them to do now but await their final scores. Tracy found Jenny, who gave Tracy a “we’ll see” shrug.

  “I felt good,” Jenny said. “I did my best.”

  Bob Manion stepped up to offer a hand as a crowd began to form around them. “You think you did it?” Manion asked.

  Tracy’s potential to beat Nolasco’s record had become a source of pride for their entire class. “I told you, scores don’t matter. Passing does.”

  “Yeah, bullshit,” Manion said.

  Tracy looked past her classmates to the spotters at the far end of the range. They were huddled over each target, tallying and re-tallying final scores. She saw them set one target to the side.

  “What do you think is taking so long?” Jenny asked.

  “I don’t know,” Manion said. “Looks like they’re debating something.”

  Decker held up the target he had set to the side. The other spotters, as well as Nolasco, stepped closer, studying it, pointing fingers and engaging in what appeared to be animated chatter.

  “That’s your target
,” Jenny said.

  Nolasco said, “How can you tell that’s a fresh hole and not a hole you already scored?”

  “Because you can see a portion of the chalk outline still there,” Decker said. “The second bullet shredded half the chalk mark.”

  “She would have had to put the bullet damn nearly in the exact same place.”

  “Not near it, Johnny, in the same place.”

  After consulting the other spotters, Decker tallied Tracy Crosswhite’s final score.

  Decker and the other spotters walked down the line handing back targets, telling the recruits their scores and congratulating them. Gunner Bob passed with a 156. “Eighty-six percent, Gunny,” Decker said. “Nice work.”

  Decker reached Jenny. Tracy felt a twinge of anxiety. “One thirty-two. Seventy-three percent. You raised your score nine percentage points. You passed, Costco.”

  Jenny smiled. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Tracy gave her a hug. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” Jenny said.

  “Yes, you could have,” Tracy said. “You just didn’t know it.”

  Decker stepped to Tracy, last to receive her target. His smile had a sad quality to it. “I’m not giving you your target,” he said, causing quick, questioning glances. “It’s going to hang in the entry at the Academy.”