Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [127]
Within an hour, the audio of that broadcast was the most downloaded file on the Internet, with billions of hits on thousands of websites. The genie was so far out of the bottle that it could never be put back. At first the White House claimed that General Stone had gone rogue, acting on his own to establish the nerve gas project at Casa del Diablo. The man was obviously deranged, the White House press secretary said over and over again. It didn’t matter that everyone had heard Stone saying the President had ordered those criminal actions. For a day, the media seemed to be on the verge of buying the story and trying to sell it to the rest of the country.
Then the President’s Chief of Staff had murdered a woman named Julia Hernandez and followed that up by taking his own life, leaving a long, detailed letter telling everything he knew about Casa del Diablo, which was plenty.
That left everything in the hands of the politicians in Congress, and the country held its breath, waiting to see if once, just once, those men and women would finally do the right thing.
In Home, people were too busy to pay all that much attention to what was going on in Washington.
There were multiple funerals, every day for a week.
Clint and Eloise Barrigan, Jimmy Clifton, Jerry Houston, Lester Simms, Betsy Carlyle, and Antonio Ruiz were all buried with full honors and hundreds of fellow law enforcement personnel from all over the country in attendance. Dave Sutherland, the city attorney, had been killed in the fighting, too. Alex hadn’t even known he was part of it until it was all over. Twenty-seven other citizens of Home, twenty-one men and six women, had met their deaths in the battle, too, and they were laid to rest in solemn ceremonies.
Brad Parker’s body was taken back to his home in California for burial. Alex didn’t know where Clayton Cochrum was buried and didn’t care. They could have cinched up his body in a garbage bag and left it at the curb, as far as she was concerned.
Lawrence “Fargo” Ford, although badly shot up, survived the battle and was in the hospital, as was Earl Trussell, who had been questioned by every law enforcement agency under the sun about his involvement with Casa del Diablo, which had been closed down and sealed by the FBI, pending a full investigation.
Rye Callahan, the leathery old rancher, had come through the ruckus without a scratch and gone to see what was left of his home.
There were so many government lawyers and personal injury attorneys in Home that the sidewalks were always crowded. It was a lawsuit boomtown. Alex wished they would just all go away. She craved normalcy.
But as one of the heroes of the Battle of Home, she knew she might not ever get that again.
“Don’t wear him out,” Dr. Boone advised her as he left her in Ford’s room at the Home Community Hospital. Ford could have been transferred out to a big-city hospital, but he had insisted on staying right where he was.
“I’ll try not to,” Alex said with a smile.
Ford grinned up at her from the hospital bed when they were alone. His leg was twice its normal size under the covers from all the bandages. He slapped it anyway and tried not to wince.
“Doc says I ought to be able to walk again. Probably not without a limp, though.”
“You’ll still be able to get around,” Alex said. “That’s what matters.”
“Yeah.” He looked at her uniform. “You’ve probably been pretty busy keeping the peace. I assume that’s why you haven’t come to see me until now.”
“The county sheriff has sent a bunch of deputies in to help out until I can recruit some more officers,” she said. “Anyway, I was here several times. You just didn’t know it because you were laying around taking it easy.”
“In a coma, you mean.”
“Well … yeah, if you want to get technical about it.”
Ford’s eyes narrowed. “Have you, uh, heard anything through the grapevine about whether there’ll be any charges against me?”
“You’re overestimating my connections, Fargo. I’m just a small-town police chief. Nobody