Chapter 3

Bang, bang, bang, bang. “Get the fuck out of there and come home with us, Melinda. We’re going to blast our way in and kill whoever convinced you to come here if you don’t come out. Now get out here, you scaggy bitch.”

The pounding on the door continued and I pulled my Mossberg 500 from the hall closet and stuffed five magnum buckshot rounds into the magazine. I jacked a round in and put in another shell.

I said to Mel who was shaking, “Get the girls on the floor so that there’s less chance that a bullet can get them.”

Mel said, “Let me go to them. They’ll leave you alone if I go now. Please don’t let anything happen to you or the girls.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you either. I called the Sheriff and they should be here any minute. I’ll shoot if they break the door. The law will hopefully get here soon.”

Mel had just left the front room when ‘Boom’ and the door knob disappeared. I guess this is buckshot against buckshot. I waited and watched. I figure was standing outside a window, so I blasted whoever it was. There was some yelling and then I heard, “That son of a bitch shot Danny. Rush that cocksucker and kill him.”

A voice was hollering for the men to put down their guns at that very second. Wherever that voice came from caused the men outside to turn and begin firing their guns. The return fire was intense, but didn’t last long.

A Sheriff’s car came roaring up to the front yard and slid to a stop. There were four Air Force Military Police standing holding rifles. Eight dead men were spread out on my porch. The Sheriff’s Deputy decided he needed some backup and a supervisor, so he stood in the door of his car and radioed for help.

I put my shotgun against the door and went back to make sure the girls were okay. My two were still sleeping and Mel was petting each of them. She whispered, “The noise didn’t even faze them. I’m glad you’re alright. Are they all dead?”

I walked her out of the room and told her to put a shirt and jeans on. I stopped in my room and put my pants on, along with a T-shirt and my sneakers.

I went outside to tell the men there why these men were here. One of the Military Policemen said, “I was up near here when they came and heard it all. Their sister ran away from them and they were here to take her back.”

A voice over by a van hollered, “There are two dead girls in this van. This is crazy. Where are these characters from?”

Mel stepped out, stood next to me, and told the man who asked where they were from, “Glades County.”

The Sheriff’s Supervisor arrived and began organizing six Deputies. He called a CSI team and the Coroner. The man looked at Mel and asked, “Do you know these people?”

Mel pointed at one man who shad a ball cap on and was still holding a 1911.45 caliber pistol. She said, “That’s my father. These other men are my brothers. Let me look at the girls in the van to see if I know them.”

The Supervisor took Mel to the van and let her look at the two bodies through the side door. Mel turned and threw up before crying. She came back to me and said, “They killed mother and Jeremy’s fiancée. Why would they do that?”

She turned to the Supervisor and told him, “You need to call the Sheriff down there and have them go out to check the house. The boys were keeping a couple of girls for their pleasure. You need some of those dogs that find bodies. I know they got rid of people fairly often.”

Mel came back and said that she was going to wash her mouth out with something.

The Supervisor asked me, “What is this woman to you, and why is she here?”

“You might remember from a couple years ago when a woman was killed when a tractor-trailer went across the highway and hit about five cars. Darla was my wife. My daughter and her husband crashed a small plane out west a short while later, leaving two little girls. The preacher from our church is on the rescue list to help people, and he had this girl at his house. He proposed on Sunday I give her a job taking care of the house and kids so that she would have a place for food and shelter. I’ve just begun learning how horrible these men have been to her. You might want to have the FDLE do the investigating down there from what I’ve learned.”

I suddenly had a terrible thought. I asked the Supervisor to use his cell phone to call the preacher. Their phone rang and rang, and didn’t even go to their answering machine. I gave the Supervisor the preacher’s address and begged him to have a Deputy go by and check on the couple. The man immediately was on the radio and waved me over to him. “We have a unit near there and he should arrive any second.”

We heard the Deputy call for backup as the front door to the house had been broken in. I had this sick feeling in my stomach as I waited to hear something. The Deputy radioed, “I found them. They are both alive, but the man is beat up bad. The woman has some burn marks from a cigarette. They are both tied up and I’m cutting them loose now. I flashed for an ambulance. They’ll be okay.”

I was standing near the carnage, “Let me at one of those son of a bitches up so I can kill him. How to you hurt a sweet gentle couple like that?”

Mel could see that I was upset and ran to my side. She put an arm around my waist and tried to comfort me.

The Sheriff’s Supervisor was trying to maintain control of this expanding situation and asked, “Did you shoot?”

I looked at him as if he had three heads with a single eye in each. “Damn right, I shot. I only had opportunity to shoot one of those motha ... guys and I had to blow out a window to do that.”

He asked “What did you use to shoot?”

I put my hand around the side of the doorway and pulled the Mossberg 500 out, jacked the shells out of it, and handed it to the Supervisor. He handed it to a Deputy and told him to tag it. I showed him what man I had shot. It was easy to identify him as the corpse was covered in glass and there wasn’t much of his chin and neck left.

There was an Air Force Captain standing off to the side with his men. The Supervisor asked, “What is the Air Force doing here? Are you a special field for them?”

I looked at the Air Force officer, not knowing how much to offer. I said, “It’s a matter of National Security. For additional information you should call the base in the morning. Maybe the Captain can give us the proper telephone number to call.”

The CSI team was being cautious as to how they talked to the Air Force. The Coroner was tagging each dead man. A flatbed was now pulling the van up on the bed since the bodies of the two women had been removed.

Two cars pulled up to the rear of all the traffic blocking everyone. Four men came from each car and had lanyards around their neck displaying FBI badges. This elicited groans from all the law enforcement officers present. I was used to the FBI and had the lead man give me his ID so that I could call in to confirm his identity. He checked out, so I said, “Okay, Guys, you figure out who’s on first. I’m going to bed. Don’t make any more noise than you have to because I do need my sleep. Shut off all those damned flashing lights so that my granddaughters don’t wake up and get scared.” I looked at the Air Force Captain and said, “Settle this place down, and get this place straightened out so that we can be in business in the morning. You’re in charge.”