Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [57]
She had her own pistol leveled at him. If he swung around and pointed the shotgun at her, she would shoot him. No doubt about it.
Instead, he looked back over his shoulder at her and grinned. “Oh, hey, Chief! These suckers can’t broadcast their bullshit without any antennas, can they?”
She recognized Billy Squires. He had gotten in the occasional drunken brawl in the past, but had never caused any real trouble until now. He sounded like he’d been drinking this evening.
“Billy, put that gun down,” Alex ordered. “You can’t go around shooting up TV trucks. You know better than that.”
From somewhere behind her, she heard the blonde’s voice. “I should have known whoever it was shooting would be a friend of yours, Chief. You’re always quick to excuse violence when it’s being done by your cronies, aren’t you?”
Alex ignored the taunt. She just wanted Billy to put the gun down so she could take him into custody and put an end to this debacle that was probably being broadcast live all over the country.
Billy looked sort of hurt, like a little kid who’d been reprimanded when he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. “Aw, Chief,” he said, “you shouldn’t take up for these people. They come in here and they spread all those lies about us, and they don’t give a damn about poor Pete.” Billy wasn’t grinning now. He sniffled a little. “Pete was a good guy. He coached my Little League team ten years ago. What happened to him was wrong.”
Alex couldn’t argue with that. “I know,” she said, “but shooting those satellite dishes isn’t going to change anything. You know that, Billy.”
By now people who had been praying along with the pastor had flocked down from the stands to see what was going on. Alex could sense hundreds, maybe even thousands of eyes on her. Millions if you counted the ones watching on TV.
Billy sighed and lowered the shotgun. He started to turn toward Alex.
“All right, Chief,” he said. “If that’s the way you want—”
The blonde screamed. “That redneck madman’s going to kill us all!” she cried.
People on the outskirts of the crowd couldn’t see what was going on. The reporter’s panicked screech sent them stampeding for cover. As panic always did, it spread rapidly, and within a heartbeat, the area under the stands was a seething mass of frightened people.
Alex ran toward Billy, grabbed the shotgun out of his hands, and kicked his legs out from under him. “Stay down!” she told him as he fell to the ground.
Alex turned toward the chaos and shouted, “Stop it! Settle down! Nobody’s in danger!”
Most of the people didn’t hear her. The ones who did ignored her.
Alex saw the blond reporter giving her a sly, triumphant smile. The blonde hadn’t panicked at all. The whole thing had been an act, calculated to set off something that they could propagandize as yet another redneck riot.
She had been successful, too. Things were out of control, and Alex didn’t have enough people on hand to settle them down. All she could do was let it play out and hope that nobody was hurt too badly in the stampede.
From the ground at her feet, Billy Squires said sheepishly, “I screwed up, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, Billy, you did,” Alex said without looking down at him. “Big time.”
It was a little surprising how quickly the crowd dispersed. Since people had walked to the stadium, they were able to walk away, so there wasn’t the usual Friday night post-game traffic jam as folks tried to get their cars out of the parking lot.
Despite the best efforts of Alex and her officers, there were several shouting matches between townspeople and news crews. Fists were clenched, but no punches were thrown, at least not as far as Alex knew. She thought they had gotten off lucky.
That wasn’t the way it sounded by the time she got back to the police station with Billy Squires in handcuffs. As Alex came in, Eloise pointed to the TV set mounted on the wall. A cable news talking head was saying, “—another outbreak of violence in Home, Texas, tonight, scene of massive anti-immigrant protests in recent days and also the place where a man was shot to death