Home Invasion

by William W. Johnstone

  Alex’s heart sank. Something had happened, and she was sure it was something bad.

  She stood up and headed for the door, determined to go in there and find out what was going on. Before she could get there, Rosario Encinal strode out, looking beautiful and regal as she was surrounded by reporters. The federal attorney smiled and said, “Mr. Cochrum and I will be having a press conference shortly, and I’ll be glad to answer all your questions then.”

  Alex stared at Encinal as the woman swept past her. Had she said that she and Cochrum were going to be holding a press conference? That made no sense. They were on opposite sides.

  Unless they weren’t.

  As that thought went through Alex’s mind, she hurried into the courtroom. Dave Rutherford, Joe Gutierrez, and Everett Hobson were talking animatedly as they stood behind the defense table, and none of them looked happy. Pete McNamara still sat there, looking stunned and more dispirited than ever. The three attorneys for the gun manufacturer were gathering up their papers. They wore disgusted expressions on their faces. When they had finished packing up their briefcases, they stalked out.

  The conference between the three remaining lawyers broke up. Gutierrez sat down beside his client and put an arm around the old man’s shoulders. Whatever he was saying didn’t appear to do any good. Pete McNamara still looked beaten down to nothing.

  District Attorney Hobson and his assistant, Janet Garcia, hustled out of the courtroom as well, bent on some errand that seemed hopeless, judging by the expressions on their faces. Dave Rutherford turned, saw Alex, and motioned for her to come over. She went to the railing and rested her hands on it. The benches behind her had cleared of spectators, but there was still an angry commotion going on out in the hallway and the courthouse lobby.

  “Dave, what in the world happened?”

  Rutherford’s mouth quirked in a humorless smile. “Cochrum rested his case.”

  “Already? He didn’t even put Navarre on the stand?”

  “He didn’t need to.” Rutherford drew in a deep breath. “Before he rested, he announced that he’d filed papers to have the United States government dropped from the lawsuit. It seems that Navarre has reached a separate settlement with the feds.”

  “Wait a minute. A settlement? But that would mean …”

  Rutherford nodded. “Yes. The federal government is going to acknowledge that Emilio Navarre’s civil rights were violated when Pete McNamara shot him. I’m sure that Cochrum and Ms. Encinal will be announcing the terms shortly. I suspect a lot of money will change hands.”

  The implications of that mushroomed through Alex’s mind. Her hands tightened on the railing. “How can the state win a criminal case against Navarre when the federal government has already said that he’s right and Pete was wrong?”

  “It can’t,” Rutherford said as he shook his head. “The jury pool will be irrevocably tainted. Hell, the whole country will be tainted.”

  “What about this case? Surely what Cochrum has done is grounds for a mistrial.”

  “Yes, but don’t you see, Alex?” Rutherford’s face was bleak. “It doesn’t matter. If the case proceeds, the jury knows that the feds have already sided with Navarre. Maybe they’ll rule in favor of Mr. McNamara anyway. But if they do, Cochrum will just appeal, and a higher court will set the judgment aside. Even if it goes all the way to the Supreme Court, in the end Navarre will win. It’s over, Alex. No matter how much we try to stretch things out, it’s over.”

  She felt sick to her stomach, and she was dizzy enough that her grip on the railing was all that kept her from collapsing. She had devoted her adult life to enforcing the law—hell, that devotion had cost her her marriage—and now the legal system had just declared that it was all right to break into somebody’s home and murder the occupants, and if anybody dared to fight back, they were in the wrong, not the criminals who had broken in to start with.

  “This is crazy, Dave. Just crazy. “ She looked at the forlorn figure of Pete McNamara. “Will Pete wind up going to jail?”

  “I seriously doubt it, although Everett may have to charge him, just for appearance’s sake. But they can work out some sort of plea deal so that Mr. McNamara won’t have to spend any time behind bars.”

  “But he’ll be a convicted felon, just for defending his home. This is going to kill him, Dave.”

  Rutherford shrugged. “I hope not, but there’s nothing we can do. Cochrum outfoxed us, plain and simple.” His face hardened. “I think he’s had the deal worked out with that bitch all along. And she’s just acting for her bosses in Washington. That’s where the real stench comes from. Somebody high up has been planning all along for Navarre to win.”

  “How high?”

  A hollow laugh came from the lawyer. “Who made a call for a lot stricter gun laws a major part of his campaign?”

  The same thought had occurred to Alex. “You really think the President would side with a Mexican murderer over a citizen of his own country?”

  “If it helps him remake the U.S. into what he and his cronies think the country should be, then what do you believe, Alex?”

  She knew the answer to that. She hated to think it, but she knew.

  “There’s something else we have to consider, Dave. This isn’t going to go over well with folks in Home. There’s liable to be trouble. People are going to be mad, and they may take to the streets to express it.”

  “The sheriff’s department will have to keep order, along with the officers you left back there.”

  “I need to go—”

  Rutherford shook his head. “You can’t. The judge called an hour’s recess when all hell broke loose, but the trial will resume when that’s over. You’re still a witness.”

  “You’re going to play out the string, even after what happened?”

  “What else can we do?” he asked with a faint smile. “If we quit now, there’s no chance the jury won’t find in favor of Navarre.”

  “I thought you said it didn’t matter.”

  “In the long run, it doesn’t. But… well… some windmills just have to be tilted at, don’t they?”

  “The Solicitor General is on the phone, sir.”

  He scooped it up and barked, “Talk to me, Ted. Did it go as planned?” A big smile, the smile that the media loved, spread across his face. “Excellent! Be sure and tell Ms. Encinal how pleased I am with the way she carried out her part. And of course you’ll be prepared for further proceedings if necessary? … Good”

  The smile disappeared as he hung up the phone. A chief executive had to be able to multitask, so there were other things on his mind today.

  “Any word on Trussell, Geoff?”

  “No, sir. He still appears to have dropped off the face of the earth”

  “What about those two rogue CIA agents? They’re still missing, too, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, sir”

  “Well, then, Geoff”—the mild, conciliatory tone became a bellow of anger—"did it ever occur to you that they’ve probably got Trussell and are lying low with him somewhere?”

  “Of course the possibility occurred to me, sir.” The Chief of Staff’s jaw was tight with suppressed anger. “But it’s more likely that all three of them are dead. We’ve had a massive search operation going on now for two months, and I believe it would have turned up some trace of them if they were still alive.”

  “You’d better hope they’re dead. Things are coming to a head now at Casa del Diablo. They promise me that the first shipment will be ready in less than a month. We can’t have word leak out now.”

  “No, sir.” The Chief of Staff hesitated. “Should you issue a statement on the Navarre settlement?”

  “Not just yet. We’ll wait a little longer. Let those ignorant rednecks stew a while longer. It has to look like the action we’ll be taking is justified”

  “It will be, sir. Knowing those people in Texas, I think you can count on that”

  The arrogant son of a bitch wasn’t near as smart as he t
hought he was, the Chief of Staff told himself as he let himself into his town house near Dupont Circle that evening. He thought that the country loved him so much he could do anything he wanted and get away with it. He never stopped to realize how much work those around him put in to make the country love him and accept his actions, no matter how outrageous and unconstitutional they were.

  Thank goodness three of the Supreme Court justices had dropped dead during the previous administration, changing the balance of power on the court so that it went along with whatever the occupant of the White House wanted. The Chief of Staff, long a Washington insider, had wondered on occasion if the previous President might have had something to do with those deaths, even though officially they were from natural causes. He knew that woman, knew the lengths she would go to in order to get what she wanted. After all, it was common knowledge that she’d had at least one man killed, back before she took office.

  Ultimately, though, she didn’t have the metaphorical balls to finish the job of taking the country in the direction it needed to go. The conventional wisdom was that when her second term neared its end, she would declare some sort of national emergency and suspend the Constitution, thereby postponing the election and keeping herself in office. That hadn’t happened, though. She had gone quietly, even meekly, surprising everybody who knew her.

  The Chief of Staff supposed the death of the previous President’s husband probably had something to do with that. He should have known that he was too old to keep up with that many mistresses. His heart had given out while he was on top of one of them, pumping away. The public didn’t know that, but the former President and a limited number of insiders did.

  One thing you could say about the guy in the Oval Office now: He had the balls to do whatever was needed. The project at Casa del Diablo was proof enough of that.

  “Darling, is that you?”

  The woman’s voice from the bedroom made a smile break out on the Chief of Staff’s face. One mistress was enough … if she was the right mistress. Julia Hernandez was brilliant at what she did. She would have drinks waiting for him, and she would be waiting for him as well, naked in his bed. By the time she was through with him, she would have made all the day’s stress go away. He was usually so relaxed that he had to take a nap before they went out for dinner.

  She was good at her day job, too, one of the assistant social secretaries in the White House. He got to see her every day, but of course, everything between them was prim and proper as long as they were at the most famous building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Grinning, he went into the bedroom and said, “Yes, it’s me. Are you ready for me, darling?”

  “Always,” she said from the bed.

  Yep. Naked. Just like he liked.

  He must have been tired. The drugs worked even faster than usual, putting him in that twilight state between waking and sleeping where he was just conscious enough to answer every question she asked him, but too groggy to do anything but tell the truth. He’d babbled on about everything the President was planning, and when he woke up, he wouldn’t remember a bit of it except that they had made love.

  Nude, Julia padded across the thick carpet of the bedroom and picked up her phone from the dresser. She started entering a text message. To anyone else who read it, the message would look even more like gibberish than the text messages sent by teenagers. When it arrived in Mexico, though, it would be decoded and brought to Enrique Reynosa y Montoya, the head of Rey del Sol.

  The idiot now snoring away in the bed had been especially informative this evening. Julia smiled as she pressed the button on the phone that sent the message on its way.

  She knew Señor Reynosa would be very interested to hear about what was going on in West Texas, at the place called Casa del Diablo….

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER 19

  Just as Alex had predicted, the citizens of Home weren’t happy when they heard about what had happened in the courtroom at the county seat. By the time she got back that evening and went to the police department, the sidewalks downtown were full of people, most of them milling around or gathered into tight, angry groups. The feeling of tension in the air was palpable as Alex got out of her car and went into the building.

  She had never experienced an actual riot … but it felt like that’s what was brewing in Home this evening.

  Jimmy Clifton looked up from behind the counter where the dispatcher’s station was located. “Chief, am I… glad to see you,” he said. He had a slight slowness of speech. That and a hesitant gait were the only outward signs of his Down Syndrome. “People are sure … mad about Pete.”

  “I don’t blame them, Jimmy,” Alex said. “He’s gotten a really raw deal all the way around. But folks ought to be in their houses, not out stirring up more trouble.”

  “That’s what… Jerry and Betsy told ’em. And the … sheriff’s deputies, too. But it’s not against … the law for people to be … on the street.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” Alex muttered. The way that bunch in Washington tried to suppress dissent, there was no telling what might happen by the time another so-called liberal administration was over. That bunch preached tolerance while practicing some of the worst intolerance Alex had ever seen.

  “What do you … want me to do, Chief? I can stay here on … duty for as long as you need me.”

  She smiled. “I know you can, Jimmy, and I appreciate that. But you take off when Eloise comes in to relieve you the way she always does. You’d better go home and look after your folks.”

  Jimmy lived a few blocks away with his elderly parents. Alex didn’t want him on the street this evening, not with the trouble that might be building up. She knew that by telling him to take care of his parents, he would listen to her.

  “Jack called a little … while ago,” Jimmy added. “He wanted to know if … you were here yet.”

  “I’ll call him back,” Alex promised as she started into her office. She had a spare uniform here at the station. She wanted to get out of the dress she had worn to court so she could move around better if she had to.

  She wanted to strap on her gun, too. She hadn’t taken it to the county seat with her, knowing that she wouldn’t be allowed to bring it into the courtroom with her.

  As much as she loved and respected the citizens of her town and would never use a weapon against them except as an absolutely last resort, she knew that some of them would be more likely to listen to her if she was armed.

  When she came out of her office wearing the brown slacks and tan short-sleeved shirt, with the 9mm automatic in the holster strapped to her belt, she found J. P. Delgado and Clint Barrigan waiting for her, along with the two reserve officers, Lester Simms and Antonio Ruiz, the mayor’s cousin.

  “We figured you’d need all hands on deck tonight, Chief,” Delgado said.

  “Well, the nearest ocean is several hundred miles away,” Alex said with a smile, “but I appreciate the sentiment. And I’m really glad to see all of you.”

  Lester asked, “Is what they’re saying true, Chief? The federal government is really siding with that … that monster who killed Inez McNamara?”

  “They reached a settlement with him, yes, and Navarre dropped them from the lawsuit.”

  “But that’s the same thing as saying they think he was in the right and Pete was in the wrong!”

  Alex nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Have you seen the latest news conference?” Delgado asked tightly.

  “The one with Navarre’s lawyer and that federal attorney?” Alex shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll bet it’s all over the TV.”

  “That woman said Pete violated Navarre’s civil rights by shooting him,” Delgado said. “She claims the evidence at the trial proved it wasn’t self-defense. The government’s going to pay Navarre five million dollars, and if the state doesn’t press charges against Pete, the federal government is.”

  The craziness just kept on getting crazier, Alex thought with a sigh.
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  “As ridiculous as it is, none of that is our concern,” she said. “Our job is to keep the peace on the streets of Home … and that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “You know the people of this town, Chief,” Clint said. “They’re law-abiding folks. But they’re starting to figure that they’ve been pushed far enough.”

  Alex nodded. “I know, and I can’t say as I blame them. But I’m still not going to stand by and let anybody start any trouble.” She paused. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. They can blow off steam all they want, but there’s nobody for them to really direct their anger at. That federal attorney and Navarre and his lawyer are all over in the county seat.”

  “The news media is here,” Delgado pointed out. “That’s pretty much the fourth branch of government these days.”

  Alex knew that was true. The media excused everything the President and the liberal-controlled Congress did, while downplaying every gaffe by the Vice-President and exaggerating beyond all sense of proportion anything a conversative politician said or did that they didn’t like. And people on both coasts sat there every day and night and lapped up the distortions and outright lies like cream, while the rest of the country could only shake their heads in dismay and think, That’s just not true.

  “You’re right,” she told Delgado. “All it’ll take is some reporter shoving a microphone and a camera in somebody’s face and smirking while they pretend to ask a question and really make a political speech instead. People are liable to blow up if that happens. So let’s get out there and make sure it doesn’t. If folks see us on the street, they’ll be a lot more likely to behave.”