The reporters were taking over the town like a hoard of zombies. They clogged up the streets with their news vans, took all the available stools at the diner, and generally made asses of themselves as they chased residents down the sidewalks demanding answers to their questions. The high school had to set up a line of sawhorses in front of the building to keep the no-good, nosy snoopers away from the faculty and students.

Bootleggers weren’t happy. I could feel the rebellion building like the Jaws theme song. Ugliness was inevitable.

My father called two of our summertime deputies back into service to manage the mess. Now our budget was shot to hell. Forget repaving the parking lot, we had fat payroll expenses to deal with.

Detective Connelly seemed to not give two shits that Bootleg was on the verge of a mutiny. He was still residing in the police station’s musty conference room like a spider in a web.

We generally used the space as a lunch room when we did potlucks or for the monthly staff meetings that also involved food. There weren’t a lot of open investigations that required us to gather ‘round that table. But it was the principle of the matter. He could have taken an empty desk, but Connelly preferred to be separate from it all.

The river of citizens lining up to recount their exact whereabouts and recollections of the night Callie Kendall disappeared had trickled to a stop after a day or two of him acting like a low-down snake in the grass to every single person who walked in the door.

Connelly made it clear he didn’t have time for small-town gossip and he made no bones about being quite the dick about it.

And after more than a few veiled “someone’s gonna have to talk to him about how we do things around here” mutters around the station, I realized it was gonna have to be me. My dad, while a lovely, fair, and just human being, couldn’t communicate worth dog crap. His conversations with my mother consisted entirely of “uh-huhs” and “yes, dears”. And that was over where they’d go to dinner. Throw in a topic with some conflict, and my dad clammed up like an inanimate object.

It was after one particularly annoying incident in which a blogger from WV Tattle Tales jumped in line in front of Bernie O’Dell at Yee Haw Yarn and Coffee and snagged the last fresh cup of coffee that did it, resulting in a shoving match that I had to break up. I lost my own damn coffee in the melee. Someone needed to do something, and I was going to be that someone. These visitors needed to be reminded of their place. They were visitors here and should be behaving respectfully, not mowing down townspeople like a stampede of gassy, entitled bison.

I knocked briskly on the open conference door. Connelly didn’t bother looking up from the screen of his laptop that he was frowning fiercely at.

I waited, schooling my face into blank professionalism. It was a power play, I thought, as the seconds ticked by. But everything the man did was, and I was willing to play if it meant my town could shake these idiots loose. He was probably scrolling Facebook like a jerk.

“What is it, deputy?” he asked, finally looking up.

“The press is causing disturbances around town,” I reported. “How would you like us to handle it?”

He stared at me for a long minute. “Comes with the territory. I’m sure you and your neighbors will adapt.”

I wondered if his wife had ever pepper sprayed him for his holier-than-thou attitude. I could imagine him sitting down to a home-cooked meal and instructing his wife on how she could do her job better. Then BAM! Face full of pepper spray.

“We’re familiar with media attention, sir. We lived through plenty of it after the disappearance,” I reminded him.

He grunted, still studying me with those watery blue eyes. If he thought the stern silent treatment would scare me, he had another thing coming. I’d made it my personal mission in life to never let the cracks show. Connelly would have to up his game big time to get a rise out of me.

“If you’re so well-versed in dealing with media attention, then I’m sure you can find an appropriate way to handle the situation,” he said.

Subtext: You annoy me with your pissant questions.

“After the disappearance, the sheriff’s department enacted a few town ordinances to protect citizens’ privacy,” I said, soldiering on. “Are you comfortable with us enforcing those ordinances?”

“It’s never a good idea to piss off the media, deputy,” he told me.

“Sir, some of them are toeing the harassment line pretty aggressively. Trespassing on private property, blocking traffic, surrounding vehicles.” I remembered Bowie’s white-hot anger the other morning being cornered in his own driveway. Even though I was still good and pissed off at him, he deserved some level of police protection. “It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a safety issue. They’re harassing innocent people.”

Apparently, it was the wrong thing to say.

“How innocent can they be if their father’s a murderer? What are the odds that one of them didn’t know something?” Connelly drawled.

I blinked. “Excuse me, sir?”

The accusation was made. The lines drawn. Now he was moving on. “Deputy, I suggest you and your kin,” his eyes skated to the glass window where my father was talking football with Bex, “treat visitors with the utmost respect lest they decide to paint you as a gun-toting, uneducated redneck.”

“Hillbilly, sir,” I corrected.

“Excuse me?” His eyes iced over.

“‘Round here we prefer the term hillbilly.”

His thin lips twisted in what might have been a smile. “Hillbillies then.”

“We’ll do our best to be respectful,” I told him. Yeah, right. Bootleg Springs had a hive mind, and if their police department wasn’t stepping up to protect them, they’d take matters into their own hands. It was gonna be a real mess.

I turned to leave and then paused in the doorway. Something had been bothering me since that press release. “You sure are organized, sir.”

He looked up from his laptop again.

“We no sooner got the call that someone had leaked the DNA results and you had a whole press conference organized.”

“If you want to accuse me of something, deputy, man up and say it.”

It was my turn to give him that long, cool stare. “No, sir.”

There was a simmering pissed-offness cooking away under his cool surface. “Maybe you’re not used to how investigations work,” he suggested grimly. “But right now the more attention on this case, the more information we’ll dig up. People can’t hide in the spotlight. Someone somewhere is gonna remember something that your daddy missed the first time around.”

I kept my face cool and neutral.

I’d known it in my gut. Connelly had been the leak. And then he’d gone and lectured us on keepin’ our gums from flappin’.

I turned to leave.

“One more thing, deputy. You might want to decide where your loyalty lies. With this department or somewhere else.” He turned his laptop around so I could see the screen.

It was an article with a picture of me glaring down the loafer-wearing moron in Bowie’s driveway.

Well, hell. It looked like things were about to get real messy.