“Yeah, I am. So that’s why I told them I wasn’t going to step down, not for you, not for anyone.”
Jericho grinned at her. “Good for you.”
“What did they say?” Hockley asked.
“They’re going to think it over. Which probably means they’ve got the petitions already drawn up and they just need time to get the signatures.”
“So what do we do?” Jericho had been sitting still too long; it was time for action. “Do you start campaigning now? Should we dig up some scandal on Jackson? I bet there’s something—anyone that slimy will definitely have left a trail.”
“No,” Kay said firmly. “We just do our jobs to the best of our ability. We keep an eye on the feds—sorry, the FBI, not all feds—and make sure they aren’t taking unnecessary risks with our citizens. We up our patrols, make sure we’re seen in the community, make sure people aren’t freaking out. We activate all our channels of communication and figure out what people are thinking, what they’re noticing. And, Jay, if we find anything useful, we report it to the FBI.”
He smiled blandly at her. Not agreement, but not disagreement, either. She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t speak. She’d wait until the time came, and make her fight then. Nice that they understood each other.
“Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll go and see what people have to say.” He stood up, found his keys, then turned to face Kayla and Hockley. “And if anyone asks—is the official department terminology for Jackson ‘shit-sack,’ or are we going with ‘little fucker’ instead?”
“Don’t cause trouble, Jericho,” Kayla warned. “And since the lab has your Glock, sign out a sidearm from Garron before you leave the building.”
“That’s a mixed message, isn’t it?”
“Just because someone isn’t causing trouble, it doesn’t mean trouble won’t find them.” She frowned. “Especially in your case. So if you’re in uniform, you’re armed. Clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said obediently as he shut the door. Strange to leave the two of them in his office, but they could probably use a hideout.
He headed off to find Garron, then out into the town. Not looking for trouble, no. But he sure wouldn’t mind if some of it found him.
Jericho heard about a hundred variations on “this doesn’t seem like something Sam Tennant’s boys would do” over the next few hours, and he couldn’t disagree with a single one. Well, he wasn’t willing to go as far as Mrs. Spooner at the post office, who said Sam was too gentle to even swat a fly, but the rest of the town seemed more realistic. Sam talked tough, but he wasn’t the sort to declare war.
The town also seemed genuinely concerned over the rhetoric flaring up on the internet. The news channels had sent crews, and when Jericho arrived, Lincoln at the motel was scrambling; it was tourist season and most of his rooms were already full of feds, so he was calling neighboring towns, the closest a good half-hour drive, and seeing what they could offer. Knowing Lincoln, he was expecting some sort of finder’s fee for his services.
“How long you planning to stay for?” Jericho asked a man in an MSNBC jacket as the news crews waited for Lincoln to give them instructions.
“Not sure,” the man replied. “We’ve already got enough footage of the scene from yesterday; we didn’t get here in time for anything but the cleanup, though. We covered the FBI news conference this morning, but they weren’t saying too much. Right now, we’re supposed to wait a few days and see if anything happens. If people start coming in from out of state like they’re saying on the internet, there could be quite a show.”
A show, Jericho mused as he headed back to his cruiser. A backwater town that had already dealt with a police corruption scandal, the potential of a biker war, and a serial killer, and now it was facing out-of-state militia violence, and the media thought it would be a show.
He checked in at the hardware store and found Mr. Appleby at the center of a crowd of concerned citizens. Most of them were older men, born and raised in Mosely. They’d probably known Sam Tennant since his BB gun days. Jericho took off his hat and nodded respectfully, and a few of the men nodded back.
“Will’s taking some time off,” Mr. Appleby said. He made it sound like a casual thing, but how could it be? Will had been traumatized by his mistaken arrest, his time in jail and by the violence he’d witnessed before he got there—none of that pain would be resolved by a little vacation.
And Jericho had been responsible for at least some of it. But there was no point in talking about things that couldn’t be changed, so he just said, “Let me know if I can be any help with that.”
“What about Sam Tennant and his boys?” one of the other men demanded.
Jericho turned to look at him. “Mr. Pauls?” It was a guess, but with a nose that blended into his forehead like that, a pretty safe one. The Pauls were well-known for their particular brand of ugly. And the man’s glare softened a little, so Jericho figured he’d gotten it right. It never hurt to remind people that Jericho knew them, knew their families and their ways of life. He might have been away for a while, but he wasn’t a stranger. “I’m hoping to hear from you all about Sam,” he said, addressing most of the crowd. “I’m trying to understand what the hell went wrong yesterday, and what we can do to fix it without anyone else getting hurt.”
“None of that yesterday was Sam’s fault,” Mr. Pauls said, his jaw jutting out like he was still ready for a fight. “It’s all these outsiders, flying in from Washington DC or wherever and thinking they can tell us how to live our lives!”
The group fell silent, staring at Jericho expectantly. They wanted to see where his loyalties were, and his answer would probably determine the level of cooperation he could expect not only from them but from their networks of family and friends. In a small town, every damn word sent ripples out into the community.
So he kept his body relaxed and friendly as he said, “I’m wondering if you’re right about the outsiders. Not the feds, maybe—I was on-site yesterday, and the way that was laid out? The feds got ambushed, for sure. If they’d been looking to start something they would have been a hell of a lot better armed, and there would have been a larger team. But it wasn’t Sam or his boys doing the ambushing. We’ve got names for most of the guys who got arrested or killed, and they’re not locals. But what I’m trying to figure out is what the hell they were doing here.” And are more of them likely to show up? “You guys heard anything about any of that?”
He scanned the crowd. “Boxie, you still delivering propane? They got a furnace out at Sam’s, or they just burning wood?”
There was a pause as the man decided whether to answer. Or just a pause because this was Boxie Bocksteader, and he didn’t do, think, or say anything quickly. Finally he rumbled, “Wood furnace. Big old one in the back of the main house. Takes six-foot logs.”
That was more than Jericho needed to know about the home heating choices of the Tennant clan, but it was interesting that Boxie knew it. “You spent much time out there lately? Helping them get wood in for the winter?”
“So what if he has?” Mr. Pauls demanded. “Is that a crime, now?”
