The Range Instructor

"The man at the store said this would be a good choice for me because it's powerful enough to stop any man. The only problem is, I can't get it to open up. I don't think I'm strong enough."

She was about forty or so I figured, and with her small frame it probably was a struggle to rack the slide on the 9mm semi-auto. I knew the make and model. It was a Kahr PM-9. It was a great pistol, and loaded with the right ammunition, would have stopped any attacker in his tracks with one shot. It was a pistol specifically designed to do just that while being small enough to easily conceal and light enough not to be a problem carrying it in her purse.

The engineering it took to make it do both meant the recoil spring was pretty strong, a lot stronger than the full size 9mm Sig I carry on duty. It didn't surprise me that she was having trouble. She tried again, this time forgetting to keep the muzzle down range, and I quickly stopped her.

"Ma'am, you have to keep the muzzle down-range, always. That's the only safe way to do it, and the only way I'll allow on this range."

She looked sad.

"I guess I spent all that money for nothing then."

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I'm Ted Samuels, a thirty-year veteran street cop and a part time firearms instructor at one of the local pistol ranges. I took the instructor's job as a volunteer because of people like Sandy, the woman standing in front of me right then. While I don't think most people really need to go around armed, there are a lot who want to.

Then there are the few people who really do need to be armed. As the saying goes, "when a crime takes place, the police are only ten minutes away", and that's usually true. Many times though, that ten minutes is about nine minutes and fifty seconds too long. I've investigated a multitude of crime scenes where the victim could have probably defended themselves if they'd been armed and knew what they were doing. By being a firearms instructor, I could at least teach the people who were interested how to safely and effectively use firearms.

I looked at Sandy and smiled.

"I'm sure they'll give you your money back. If they don't want to, just give me a call, OK? I can probably straighten things out."

I wrote my personal cell phone number on the back of one of the cards with my badge number and office phone.

"Just call this number, any time. It's my cell, and I'll get the call."

Sandy took my card, but her face looked troubled.

"But if I take it back, I won't have anything, and I need something. I really do."

Sandy seemed sincere, so I offered her another suggestion.

"Maybe, to start at least, you'd be better off with a revolver. They're pretty simple to use, and they can have just as much stopping power."

"The man at the store said I'd need all the shots I could get. How many does a revolver have?"

"Usually five, sometimes six depending on the caliber."

"Is five enough? I mean, the man said I should always shoot three times. Five would only leave me two in case I miss."

For the umpteenth time, I silently cursed most of the sales clerks in the big box sporting goods stores. Their information comes from manufacturer's blurbs, or worse, from the Internet forums that deal with self-defense. Most have never been in a situation where they had to put that knowledge to use. Some have never fired a firearm in their lives. To people like Sandy, they're all experts.

"Sandy, I can tell you this much from my personal experience. Almost any bullet hitting almost anywhere will make anybody stop what they're doing long enough for you to run away. It hurts like hell, even something as small as a.22. You don't need a big caliber with special self-defense rounds and a lot of capacity. What you need is something you can be accurate with on that first shot."

Sandy smiled.

"I wish you'd been at the store with me. You could have told the clerk that. I take it you've been shot before?"

"Yes, once, by a young punk with a little.25 pistol. It hit me in the shoulder, just outside my vest. It stopped me cold for a few seconds, and I didn't feel much like chasing him down once I could stand up again."

"So, he got away?"

"No, my partner put him down before he could shoot both of us."

Sandy smiled at me again. I was starting to like that smile a lot.

"So, what would you recommend I get instead of this thing?"

The range has a few firearms for rent. I walked over to the safe, unlocked it, and picked up a.38 revolver with an enclosed hammer.

"Something like this is what I'd have you start out with."

"Can I shoot it?"

"Sure, after I show you how."

We spent half an hour during which I showed Sandy safe handling procedures and how to aim. Then, I got a box of cartridges from the safe and showed her how to load and close the cylinder.

Her first shot went wide of the target even though the target was only nine feet away, but I saw why. The revolver was a double-action, so she had to pull the trigger hard enough to cock the hammer as well as fire. We'd been over that when we dry-fired, but now she was jerking, and the jerking had pulled her point of aim down and to the left just as the hammer fell.

"Sandy, you're jerking the trigger and that's pulling your shots to the left. Just squeeze evenly, like we practiced."

Her next shot hit the target. Sandy turned to me and grinned.

"Like that?"

"Yes, like that. Now, let me see the other three rounds hit the target too."

After a box of fifty rounds, Sandy was doing very well. She wasn't putting every round in the center of the target, but she was still hitting it every time. After the last round, Sandy opened the cylinder and ejected the empties onto the shooting bench, then turned and handed me the revolver.

"I like this one. I'm going to go see if they'll trade with me at the store."

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The next week, Sandy came back to the range carrying a different handgun case. She grinned when she opened it. It was a Smith & Wesson 640.

"They were pretty nice at the store, especially after I told them you said I should get something different. I got this one instead."

It was a revolver similar to the one I'd let her use, except this one was all stainless steel and there was some mechanical engraving on the cylinder and frame. As I examined it, Cindy put on her safety glasses and earmuffs, and then took a box of.38 Special cartridges from the same case.

She did everything correctly as she loaded the revolver and then laid it on the bench waiting for my call of "is there anybody down range", followed by "ready on the left, ready on the right, commence firing."

Sandy put two boxes of fifty rounds through the revolver that afternoon, and as she shot, her target quickly became just one ragged hole. It was a little off center, but she was grouping them better than most new shooters. After putting the revolver back in the case and policing up her empties, Sandy motioned for me to follow her outside.

"I just wanted to thank you for showing me what I needed and how to use it. I feel safer now."

I wasn't sure what had made her feel unsafe, but I hadn't asked because it wasn't any of my business. My business with people begins once they're involved in a crime or an accident somehow, or like in Sandy's case, when they need help with something.

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The next few weeks were about like all my weeks. My shift starts at three and theoretically ends at eleven unless I get involved with something. Then, my shift ends when that something has all the loose ends tied up. It doesn't happen that way very often. It did happen that night.

My partner and I were on our way back from a smash and grab robbery investigation when the radio call said "shots fired" and the address. We were only a couple blocks away, so my partner flipped on the lights and siren as I turned around in the middle of the street. As I slalomed around the cars that wouldn't pull over like they were supposed to, the 911 dispatcher gave us some more details.

A neighbor had heard the shots and called 911. He didn't know what had happened because he'd locked all his doors and stayed inside, but he said there was a strange car in his neighbor's driveway.

About six minutes after the first call, I pulled the squad car up at the curb. We got out and I locked the doors before we started inching our way up to the front door. Things like this can go to hell in a hurry, so we were taking advantage of the two trees and the bushes in the front yard. Once we were within a few steps of the front door, Jim took the right side and I took the left.

I knocked on the door and yelled "Police. Open the door and put your hands up."

Nothing happened for almost a full minute. Then the door slowly swung open and I saw Sandy standing there with her hands in the air and shaking like a leaf in a high wind.

She didn't say anything when we walked into the room, but she didn't need to. There, about eight feet from the door was a man lying on his face. In his hand was a big, wicked looking bowie knife. That and the pool of blood spreading on both sides of his chest pretty much told me what had happened. I checked his neck for a pulse, but I wasn't surprised when I didn't find one. I turned to Jim.

"You wanna go call for a tech team? This guy's beyond anything the EMT's could do for him. I'll stay here with the woman."

Once Jim had left, I turned back to Sandy.

"Sandy, you can put your hands down now. Where's your revolver?"

Sandy pointed to the couch.

"Over there. I dropped it as soon as I...as soon as he stopped coming at me."

"OK. You just stay where you are until Jim gets back and don't touch anything. Since I know you, I can't do the investigation. You'll probably have to go down to the station to answer Jim's questions and do some other stuff. That means Jim will put you in handcuffs. He has to do it that way because we don't yet know what happened. You understand that, don't you?"

Sandy nodded, and wiped the tears from her eyes.

"I knew he'd come back. I just knew it. That's why -"

I stopped her then.

"Sandy, save everything you're going to say for Jim. I don't want to hear another word. If you tell me something and tell Jim something that sounds different, it'll only make him question everything else you tell him."

Jim came back inside a couple minutes later and I explained that I knew Sandy from the range and he'd have to do this by himself. I tossed him the keys to the squad car and said I'd wait for the techs and meet him back at the station once they were done. Sandy didn't resist when he put the handcuffs on her. Jim walked her out the door and to the squad car. They drove off about the same time the SUV the techs use pulled into the drive.

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The techs were thorough as they always are. Sandy's revolver went into an evidence bag. The guy's knife went into another. One of them fished the guy's wallet from his back pocket, looked at the contents, and then handed it to me. I refused to take it, but asked the tech if he could give me the name and number off the guy's license. Just running a routine license check wouldn't prejudice the case, and it would help wind things up faster.

He was William Forrest and the address was the same as the house where we'd found him. That meant he'd lived in the house at some point, but didn't tie him to Sandy. He might have just moved and never changed his address. I walked outside and wrote down the VIN and license numbers on the late model sedan in the driveway. Then, I used the radio in the tech's SUV to run both the driver's license and the car VIN and license numbers through our database.

William Forest wasn't a career criminal, but he wasn't a saint either. He had a couple speeding tickets on the DMV database, but that wasn't what caught my interest. What did were the domestic disputes, three of them in all, that our guys had investigated over the past couple of years. The last one was a year before, and there was a notation on the record that his then wife, one Sandra Forrest, had obtained a restraining order barring him from approaching closer than a hundred feet to her or her property.

The county court records yielded a divorce decree a month after the restraining order. The record didn't have any details, but it wasn't difficult to put the domestic disputes, divorce, and restraining order into the story of what happened that night. I went back inside to see how the techs were doing.

They'd rolled him over and it didn't take a crime scene tech to know what killed him. There was a hole in the center of his chest about the size of my little finger.

I asked the lead tech how they were doing. He stripped off his gloves before answering me.

"We're about done. There's nothing here except this stiff, a hell of a big knife, and the woman's revolver. I'm gonna call for the EMT's to pick him up and haul him to the morgue. After we get a few more pictures, we'll wrap up and head back to the shop. I think you need a ride, don't you?"

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I got back to the station about an hour later and went looking for Sandy. I found her sitting in one of the interrogation rooms with Jim and Delia, one of our policewomen. I didn't go in, of course, but at least I knew where she was. I went back to my desk and ran the guy's driver's license and car license again, and this time, I printed the results so Jim would have them.

He came out of the interrogation room a few minutes later.

"She's pretty shaken up, so I don't think she's lying to me. She claims the dead guy is her ex-husband and that he's been stalking her since their divorce - following her home from work, when she went shopping, that sort of thing. She says she got a restraining order to keep him away, but it didn't stop him from harassing her. He did stop following her but he started calling her at night. Most of his calls were begging her to take him back, but the last one was one of those "if I can't have you, nobody can" things.

"He came by her house tonight and apparently still had a key to the front door. You'd think people who get divorced would change the locks, but I guess she didn't.

"Anyway, he walked in waving that big ass knife and told her he'd make sure nobody would want her when he was done. He started toward her and she let him have one in the chest from the.38 she had with her. She says it was just one, and that he went down really fast and didn't get up. I guess the coroner will have to tell us if that's true or not."

I handed Jim the reports I'd printed.

"It's true, the part about one shot anyway. I saw him when the techs turned him over. One hole about in the center of his chest. He'd have gone down like a sack of potatoes. As for the rest, his record pretty much says what you just told me. What'cha gonna do with her?"

"I'm gonna hold her until the coroner tells me it was her gun that killed the guy and the techs tell me there weren't any other prints on the knife. She wouldn't be the first woman to off her ex and then say he was trying to kill her. I doubt that's the case here, but I need to be sure. I want to talk to some of the people where the guy worked and lived too. After that, I'll tell the DA what I think and let him decide. Why? What do you care."

I held up my hands, palm outward.

"Whoa, Jim. You're doing exactly what I'd do in the same situation. It's because I know her that I'm interested. I taught her how to shoot that revolver, so I'm maybe a little responsible."

Jim smiled wryly at me.

"What I think is if you hadn't taught her to shoot that well, we might have dead woman in the morgue tonight instead of a dead guy. She told me at first he said he was just gonna cut up her face so she'd be ugly, but then he said he might as well kill her just to be sure."

I went home then. There was no point in me being there when they took Sandy off to holding, and it might have made it harder on her. It wasn't easy going to sleep.

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By six the next evening, Jim had interviewed three people the guy worked with, and had also talked with the super in the apartment where the guy lived. They all said William, or Bill as they knew him, was an OK guy except for his temper. Apparently it didn't take much to trip Bill's trigger, and once it was tripped he held a grudge for a long time.

The super had said one of his tenants had to move out because Bill had complained about loud music. The tenant had tried to comply, but if Bill could hear it at all, it was still too loud. He'd taken to pounding on their door once they were asleep so as he'd told the super, "they could get a taste of their own medicine".

When Jim got back, the coroner's and tech's reports were on his desk. He let me read them.

The cause of death was one gunshot from a.38 caliber bullet. The bullet had penetrated his heart and then bounced around a little, taking out his left lung as well.

The techs had matched the dead guy's prints to the prints on the knife, and hadn't found any others. They'd also matched the prints on Sandy's revolver to her with no others. They'd had trouble with the bullet fragment the coroner had given them, but were able to get about a seventy five percent match to bullets fired from Sandy's revolver.

Jim gathered up all his reports and headed to the DA's office. He came back an hour later.

"I called it self defense, and the DA agreed. I can release her now. Since you know her, would you like to come along?"

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She wasn't the same Sandy I'd seen on the range those days. Her makeup was long gone, and the orange jumpsuit looked big enough to fit me. Her eyes were red, and she was still jumpy. When she saw me, she did smile though.

Jim went through the routine of getting her clothes, the revolver, and her other personal effects from the cage, and we waited outside the ladies room while she changed. When she came out, she looked more like the Sandy I knew, but there was something about her face that wasn't right. I knew what it was, because I'd had the same face the first time I had to shoot a perp before he shot me.

Jim told Sandy she was free to go, and then left us alone. I asked Sandy what she was going to do now.

"I don't know. I'm not going home, not until I can get somebody to clean up that mess, and I'm not sure if I can go back even then. I guess I'll go to a motel somewhere."

I dropped her off at a local motel on my way to lunch a little after seven, and then went back to work. I didn't hear anything, so I assumed she was coping. I was wrong.

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I was sound asleep when my cell phone rang and kept ringing. When I picked it up, the time was a little after three in the morning. I didn't recognize the number on the screen. I slipped the answer bar to the side.

"Officer Samuels".

"Is this the same Officer Samuels who teaches at the pistol range?"

"Yes, that's me."

"This is Sandy. Can we talk?"

By that time, I was wide awake.

"Sure we can. What's on your mind?"

"No, I mean can we go somewhere and talk?"

I picked her up half an hour later and drove to an all-night pancake house. Sandy just wanted coffee, so I ordered two. After the waitress set the cups down, I asked Sandy what the problem was.

"I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see Bill and then I see me pointing my gun at him. I pull the trigger and he falls down. Then I sit up and think about what I've done."

I gently squeezed Sandy's hand.

"I could have warned you, but I didn't know if you'd listen or not. Most people wouldn't have. What you're feeling is the same thing I felt with my first, and then again with the second. What you did is something most people can't even imagine doing, and it's going to be with you for a very long time."

Sandy sighed.

"So, I'll never be able to sleep again? If I'd known that, I might have just let Bill do what he wanted to do."

I squeezed her hand.