Frederick Zackel - Dark Red And Deadly

Rafferty drove down the side road past the posted sign that read "KAPU. NO TRESPASSING."

The road made a half-turn, then swung right and began climbing again. At the Quint house Rafferty left his rental encircled by peacocks who were screaming horribly enough to curdle blood. Rafferty walked towards the Quint family home, then saw both pit bull terriers were dead, shotgunned.

Rafferty ran towards the farmhouse. He found Jeremiah Quint dead by the screen door. Still wearing yesterday's clothes, Jeremiah had been shot twice. Once in the small of his back, and then the back of his head has been blown off. A handgun was in the dirt beside him.

The side door had a shotgun hole, and the locks had been blown off.

The door had been kicked in.

"Audrey!" Rafferty called.

Desperately, Rafferty raced upstairs and into the master bedroom. Audrey Quint and her baby were dead in an upstairs closet, both shot with a single blast from a shotgun.

In the next room, the children’s room, Rafferty found Summertime, the retarded child, dead in his pajamas near his bedroom window.

Rafferty was filled with horror and anguish.

He fell back against the wall and let the pain flood him.

Then, hearing a door downstairs slam shut, Rafferty ran to the stairs and took them three at a time.

Rafferty met Jimmy Quint in the kitchen. Jimmy was weeping, bawling his anguish. Jimmy wore only cut-offs and tennis shoes. He held a hand gun limp in one hand.

Rafferty spoke with studied calm. "Jimmy, it's me, Terry Rafferty."

Jimmy shouted, "Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh, God!"

Jimmy jerked his hand at Rafferty, began firing his hand gun at Rafferty. Rafferty hit the floor, while Jimmy kept firing. The noises from the gun were drowned out by Jummy’s howls. Plaster exploded from the kitchen walls above and around Rafferty, and yet no bullets came near him.

Rafferty screamed, "Jimmy! Stop! Stop!"

But Jimmy Quint didn't know Rafferty was there. Rafferty threw himself sideways and backwards, started rolling, and hid behind the kitchen table. A bullet singed his scalp, and blood started down his forehead.

Rafferty cried, "Jimmy!"

Jimmy woke, realized he had shot at Rafftery, and was horrified with himself. He made a choking sound, then started howling like a ghoul. He ran from the kitchen. The screen door slammed behind him.

Rafferty raced outside after Jimmy and saw him disappearing into the woods behind the house. A great throbbing, rumbling noise of helicopters overhead began, while the airwash clouded his eyes.

The loudspeaker said, "Attention, this is the Sheriff's Department. Come outside with your hands on top of your heads. You are under arrest. Do not resist. Throw down your weapons and come outside. Attention, this is the Sheriff's Department. You are under arrest—"

Surprised and caught off-guard, Rafferty watched as the helicopters approached and descended, while their noise hammered the air. Meanwhile several jeep wagons painted in county Sheriff's colors raced up the drive and fishtailed through the dust and stopped in front of Rafferty, their sirens wailing and their bar lights flashing. A raiding party of a dozen men in army fatigues and carrying AR-16s hit the Quint house, fanned out commando style and went off looking for trouble.

Jack Draper aimed his AR-16 at Rafferty and flashed a billfold badge and photo ID. "Jack Draper, Special Agent, Drug Enforcement Agency! Freeze!

Rafferty looked as if he had been hit with a brick wall. "DEA? What are you doing here? This is a homicide."

Draper shoved Rafferty, grabbed his arms, jammed them up behind Rafferty's back, while twisting them backwards, then pushed Rafferty face first against the house.

Draper said, "Up against the wall, mother-fucker!"

Rafferty's face smacked the side of the house.

"Spread 'em!" Draper said.

Draper kicked Rafferty's heels apart, then frisked him crudely, vulgarly. Rafferty got pissed and took the AR-16 away from him. Draper lunged at him and knocked the gun from Rafferty's hands. Rafferty tried hand-chopping Draper's neck, but Draper defected Rafferty's chop. Draper tried throwing Rafferty against the wall, and Rafferty sidestepped and punched Draper's face. He tried throttling Rafferty, and Rafferty kicked his right kneecap, then used judo to get him off-balanced, then jammed his knuckles into his kidneys. Draper smacked Rafferty in the neck with the edge of his hand, and Rafferty kicked him in the soft spot behind the uninjured kneecap of his left leg. Draper forearmed Rafferty, then rammed Rafferty's head several times against the house. Then Rafferty jabbed a thumb in Draper's eye.

Behind them another helicopter landed, disgorging Sheriff Charles Hartman, who approached the battle with a bemused expression.

Rafferty grabbed the Special Agent's crotch, twisted sharply, then elbowed the soft flesh of Draper's neck, then smacked his other fist into Draper's testicles.

Sheriff Hartman made a gesture, and a half-dozen deputies pulled Draper and Rafferty apart.

Rafferty threatened Draper. "If you ever fuck with me again like that, I'll kill you!"

Draper coughed and choked. "Read him his rights and throw him in jail!"

Hartman grinned at Rafferty. "Professional street-fighter, eh?" He gestured at Rafferty's wounded forehead, and Rafferty touched it. His fingers came back bloody. His scalp had been creased by Jimmy's stray shot.

Sheriff Hartman examined the wound. "You'll live. But you won't enjoy it." He sobered. "You're being taken into custody for questioning.

Some deputies came running up from the Quint house.

The first deputy was nearly hyper-ventilating. "The whole family got slaughtered, Sheriff!"

The second deputy was as badly shaken. "It's a massacre, Sheriff. There's blood all over."

Hartman took command. "Get the lab team out here right now. I want that house sealed off. Call Doctor Deanna Wu, tell her she's needed. Also, call the county coroner's office and get the M.E. out here." He faced Rafferty. "We'll get to you. Don’t go away."

Later Sheriff Hartman and the lab chief Doctor Deanna Wu toured the scene of the crime, while dozens of lab technicians and deputies sketched, measured, diagrammed and photographed around them.

The two reached the screen door where the body of Jeremiah Quint was. Now there was only a splotch of blood to mark the spot.

Doctor Wu said, "One of them reloaded here. We found an unfired shell. As we figure it, he was reloading his weapon—there are ejection scratches on the casing—and he jammed the shell in back assward."

Hartman said, "Forensics can't match shotgun shells, Deanna."

"No, but we can match marks made in loading and extracting the shells, if you can locate the shotgun used here."

"A shotgun shell, and all you need is the shotgun it was jammed into?"

Doctor Wu nodded. "The dead man was shotgunned twice, struck in the back and again in the left side of his face. Also, there are machete marks on his face after he fell to the ground."

"Ambushed when he stepped outside?"

Doctor Wu corrected him. "He got one shot off with his handgun before they got him."

"Good for him."

"We think one of them was hit." Doctor Wu pointed to another blood stain in the dirt.

Hartman called for a deputy and told her, "Get on the horn to Dispatch, alert all medical units, emergency rooms, County General, be on the lookout for any gunshot victims."

Then Hartman and Doctor Wu toured the kitchen.

Hartrman pointed out the gunshot holes in the kitchen walls. "Any other room like this?"

"No."

Doctor Wu took Sheriff Hartman upstairs and through the master bedroom. "Two dead in this closet. First he blew a hole through the door, then he opened the door and fired the other barrel at extreme close range."