Deadline(151)
Behind the broken glass, D. Wayne Sharf was peering out at them, and Virgil shouted, “You’re under arrest. Open the fuckin’ door.”
“Fuck you,” Sharf shouted back. He turned toward the driver and looked like he might try to crawl over him, but Virgil reached through the shattered window and got him by the shirt collar and dragged him all the way back to the window and shouted, “Open the fuckin’ door or I’ll drag you right through the broken glass.”
Sharf twisted and turned and couldn’t get free, then cut himself on the window, and on the next pass, got blood on his hand and finally screamed, “Okay. Okay.”
Virgil heard a woman shouting, “That’s Virgil, that’s Virgil,” and the truck was rocking as the attackers crawled over it, breaking every piece of glass they could find, breaking out headlights and taillights and knocking off mirrors, while others began unloading the dog crates and freeing the dogs.
There were a half-dozen dog brawls going on around the pasture, the dogs howling and barking with excitement, gathering in crowds to prance across the alfalfa, and stopping to mark various lumps and humps and truck tires.
Then D. Wayne popped the door locks and Virgil had him out of the truck and on the ground, and he rolled the other man on his back, dragged him fifteen or twenty feet to a perimeter fence post, and cuffed him and said, “You’re in a whole lot of trouble. Don’t make it worse by breaking out of these cuffs and trying to run.”
“I didn’t do anything,” D. Wayne whined. The woman with the aluminum bat ran up and asked, “You got him?”
“Yeah, this is the guy who stole all the dogs in Trippton. He’s going to try to get out of these cuffs. I’ve got to try to stop this mess.” Virgil waved at the field, where two pickups now lay on their sides, and a bunch of large men were standing in a circle, facing a crowd of attackers, and one of the men appeared to be holding a shotgun. Virgil said to the woman, “So if he tries to escape, use the bat and break his legs. Not his head, just his legs. Okay?”
“I can do that,” she said. She waved the bat at D. Wayne, who shrank back into the fence.
Virgil started running down toward the man with the gun, just about the time the man pointed the shotgun up in the air and fired a shot. BOOM! Twelve-gauge.
In the sudden silence after the gunshot, Virgil was shouting, “Stop! Stop! Everybody stop!”
One of the women in the crowd shouted, “That’s one! Two more shots and we put ropes around your necks. Somebody get the ropes.”
One of the men in the circle broke out, running across the pasture, and nobody chased him, but the crowd pressed the circle tighter, and the two TV cameramen, who turned out to be camerawomen, were riding on the shoulders of two men, getting the cameras up in the air, and then Virgil got there, shouting, “State police. State police. Put the gun down, put the gun down.”
The man with the gun, who had the muzzle still pointing in the air, shouted back, “They’re gonna lynch us—”
Virgil shouted, “No, no, no . . . Move that way.” He pointed toward the far end of the field, and then, “Everybody else, everybody else, go that way.” He pointed the other way. “Take care of the dogs, take care of the dogs, the dogs are freaking out.”
Most of the dogs seemed pretty happy: there were now dozens of them, even hundreds, of every color and size, racing around the field, in celebration.
That got the dog rescuers looking away from the circle, and the two groups pulled apart, and when the circle of men, including the guy with the shotgun, were moving down the field, Virgil shouted to them, “Listen! Listen! We don’t want anybody to get killed. You’ve all got insurance on your trucks, you can get them fixed, these people . . . just let them go.”