“Ten miles uphill will do that to you,” Kate answered.
“Aren’t you sore?”
“Beyond sore,” Kate said. “More like into rigor mortis. I hate that woman.”
“That should be her nickname,” Cindy said. “Rigor Mortis. We’d all like to see her dead!”
The young women laughed. Kate pushed wisps of blond hair off her face. “Man, what I wouldn’t give to do target practice on Rigor!”
Angelica said, “You’d have to wait in line-behind me.”
Rigor had lit into Angelica earlier in the morning. Just tore her apart for no apparent reason. Cindy thought Angelica had handled it extremely well, had brushed it off and moved on. But apparently she was still brooding.
It was biting cold. Cindy rubbed her hands, looked at the complex stretched out below. Built for competition as well as target practice, Bootles had several types of outdoor courts, all of them ending in tall steel-plated backstops and ground baffles to catch stray bullets. In the center was a glassed-in tower where a range officer was giving instructions over a PA system to a group of rifle shooters. For protection, the outdoor ranges were walled in by twenty-foot sandbag berms. Beyond them were miles of knolls filled with chaparral and California scrub oak. The indoor-range building sat at the foot of the parking lot.
“Where are all the others?” Kate asked.
“I brought us through a shortcut,” Cindy explained. “My dad lives about twenty miles from here, so I know a couple of tricks.
They’ll be here soon. Maybe we can even earn a few brownie points for being the first ones here.”
“Rigor’ll probably just accuse us of trying to show her up,” Kate said. “God, I detest her.”
“Everybody does,” Cindy said. “ Baldwin ’s ready to-” “Man, he don’t hate her as much as Holstetter does,” Angelica interrupted. “She rides Holstetter any harder, she’s gonna need reins and a bit!”
Standing erect, Cindy didn’t dare sit or lean against the wall, even though Rigor was seated, drinking coffee. Couldn’t appear weak, even if her feet were killing her. At least it was warm here in the commissary-stifling, as a matter of fact. So much so that someone had opened the window for circulation.
First the morning run, then the hours of calisthenics, then the ten-mile uphill jog, and now two hours of target practice. Cindy was cranky and hungry, looking at the food in the vending machines but not buying. She and Kate had agreed not to eat, wanting to show Rigor they had iron stamina. And so the two of them stood with about a half-dozen other cadets, waiting for an empty slot, listening to a female range officer instruct the pistol shooters in the glassed-in lanes below.
A strong icy draft whooshed through the open window, chilling Cindy’s hands but keeping her awake, clear-thinking. Her eyes focused on the range, studying the trainees who were shooting. Angelica was in Booth 8, her body taut with concentration. At the given signal, she let go with a volley, missing most of center target. At that point Angelica was clearly frustrated. After she had disengaged her weapon, she shoved it into her harness, yanked out her earplugs, and stomped out of the booth and out of sight.
Rigor made a tsk-tsk sound and instructed Cadet Jackson to take Angelica’s place. To Cindy and Kate, Rigor said, “Girl not only has an impulse problem, she can’t shoot her way out of a paper bag.”
Cadet Jackson entered the booth vacated by Angelica. Cindy sighed inwardly, stuck with Rigor for at least another ten minutes.
Rigor suddenly pointed to a couple of empty chairs. “Why don’t you two have a seat? This isn’t boot camp.”
Cindy hesitated, then parked herself, hoping her relief wasn’t too obvious.
“You both come from cop homes,” Rigor commented. “I don’t know your father, MacKenny, but I know yours, Decker.”
Cindy said, “Yes, he’s been around the LAPD for a while.”
“Earned quite a name for himself.”
“He’s a hard worker.”
“Probably never home when you were growing up-right?”
“He was home when it was important to be home,” Cindy said calmly.
“Apparently not. Your parents are divorced, aren’t they?”
Anger swelled inside her. Intellectually, Cindy knew Rigor was testing her, trying to crack her. “Yes, they are divorced,” she said, hoping her voice wasn’t too tight.
“Must have been problems at home.”
“I was young when they divorced, Sergeant. I try my best not to dwell on the past. It’s counterproductive.”
Rigor nodded. “Got all the answers, don’t you?”
Cindy tried a small smile. “Wish I did.”
Rigor stood, went over to the coffee machine, and dropped some coins into the slot. “How do you take your coffee?”
Cindy started to rise. “I’ll get it, Sergeant-”
“Just answer the question, Cadet Decker.”
“Black,” Cindy said. “For both of us.”
Kate smiled appreciatively.
“Only got two quarters left,” Rigor answered. “You two can share.” She reached into the coffee slot and took out the steaming paper cup. She turned around, then suddenly jerked backward as if blown by a huge gust of wind. Black jets of coffee flew upward as Rigor’s head cracked against the cement floor, blood spurting from her temples.
Kate screamed. Cindy raced over and pressed her palms to Rigor’s head in an attempt to stanch the blood. Moments later, several other classmates were at her side. “Get help!” she shrieked to Kate. “Call nine-one-one.”
Kate tore out of the room.
An eternity passed. Even as Cindy waited, she knew it was bad. Her fingers could feel a dying pulse, slower and slower, weaker and weaker, until there was no pulse at all.
By the twentieth time Cindy had to tell it, the story took shape. It went something like this.
Rigor was standing at the machine, getting them coffee-no, she had gotten the coffee. She turned to face them-them being Kate and her. Then she suddenly jerked backward and fell to the floor. They both heard this awful crack as her head hit the cement. Blood was spewing from her head.
Where did the bullet come from?
Out of nowhere.
Bullets don’t come from out of nowhere, Ms. Decker.
Rational thought dictated that it had to have come from the open window. It couldn’t have penetrated the walls because they were concrete, and no bullet holes were found. The door to the hallway had been closed, so it couldn’t have come from there. It didn’t come from inside the commissary, because the only people there had been Sergeant Rigor, Kate MacKenny, and herself.
Remember seeing anyone out the window?
No. Not a face, not even a fleeing figure.
The inquiries lasted past dinnertime-for Cindy and Kate, for everyone in the commissary, for everyone in Rigor’s class, everyone at the range. And when the police were finally finished there, Rigor’s superiors took her cadets back to the academy for more questioning.
Suspicion hung heavily over the group like a cloud. Woe to anyone who wasn’t in public view when the shooting occurred. Luckily for Cindy, she had Kate and the others to back her up. And vice versa. But there were a few cadets who had been off by themselves- Baldwin, Holstetter, Angelica.
Academy officials took away their guns for testing. They grilled everyone over and over, usually starting with Cindy. She’d been there, been the first to do something. No matter how often she went over what’d happened, they looked at her as if she’d done something wrong!
Did you move the body, Ms. Decker?
No. The only thing she did was apply pressure to the wound, trying to stop the bleeding.
Are you sure?
Of course she was sure! Why didn’t they believe her? She was getting firsthand interrogation experience, she realized-but from the wrong side.
The hours passed, and the story became rote, her words mechanical, devoid of the emotion they had held in the beginning.