In the Still of the Night Read Free Page B

nine days before Christmas. Ronda lived over on what Washingtonians call"the coast," and the rest of her family lived three hundred miles away in Spokane. Barbara was looking forward to a five-day visit from Ronda, as were her grandmother and brother. It wouldn't exactly be a Norman Rockwell Christmas, although Spokane could count on snow. It was far colder in Eastern Washington than it was in Seattle.
    Ronda's visit wasn't really to celebrate the holiday; she was going home to those who loved her for comfort and advice. Her second marriage was ending, and although she had no trouble finding a job, none of them was what she had wanted for most of her life. A few years earlier, after eight years as a Washington state trooper, she had resigned from the force. In her mind, she had had no choice, but she grieved for the career she loved more than any other.
    Twenty-some years ago, there were only about thirty-five female Washington state troopers; today there are 1,200 sworn officers in the state patrol and 5 percent of them are women, about sixty of them. That didn't matter to Ronda; she always assumed that she would be one of the small percentage of women who made it.
    And she was right. With her grades in high school and community college close to a 4.0 GPA, she was a shoo-in. Well, not quite. The state patrol winnowed out applicants scrupulously. Candidates had to be nineteen and a half years old, with 20/25 vision and their weight proportionate to their height. Ronda met all those requirements, too.
    They could not have felony convictions or misdemeanor convictions involving theft, crimes of violence, assault on a family member, larceny, moral turpitude, controlled substances, or hit-and-run accidents.
    Any prior conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs had to be at least seven years in the past. When they met all those standards, the few applicants whoemerged were required to pass a fitness and agility test. Perhaps more important, they would be subjected to a background investigation, and then had to successfully pass a polygraph examination.
    Ronda sailed through; her record was pristine. Having chosen her career when she was in grade school, she'd been careful to live the kind of life that the state patrol wanted to find when they did background checks on prospective new hires.
    Ronda was welcomed as the youngest female cadet ever hired. She was twenty, and her life was turning out just as she hoped it would.
    Cadets must go through eight months of grueling training before they can hope to become road-worthy troopers. Their "boot camp" in Shelton, Washington, is similar to Army and Marine Corps training. They are often wakened in the wee hours of the morning, grabbed out of their cots by the ankles, and held upside down. They are ordered to do push-ups in the mud and cold rain long before the sun comes up, and to jog in the dark.
    The WSP cadets are always at the bottom of the totem pole. As they toughen up, they derisively call the Criminal Justice Training Center law enforcement students from other departments "Club Med members." Part of Washington state's training for young police officers involves traveling from the Burien training academy and spending time at the state patrol's Shelton academy to focus on driving skills.
    "They weren't nearly as military as we were," a ten-year female veteran of the state patrol recalls. "And they were nowhere near as disciplined as our group of cadets. We kind of resented them because whenever there were visiting students, we had to 'step back' and let them eat first. Lots of times, we were the last to eat."
    About a third of Washington State Patrol cadets failed to finish the eight-month training program. They washed out for a variety of reasons: some for ethical standards that didn't meet the Patrol's level, some because they couldn't grasp the defense tactics that they had to learn before they could go out on dark roads in one-man cars and face who knows