Scattergun: A Reckoning in Two Acts

By Joseph Hefferon

Scattergun—A Reckoning in Two Acts.
A young man with a fractured mind is wandering the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, moving in random flashes from Amarillo north into Kansas on his drift west toward the Rocky Mountains, taking lives without reason or remorse.
A Texas lawman hunts the killer, relying on his kinetic sensory insight, an exceptional capacity that pulls him into crime scenes, seeing the killer through the chromatic lens of the victim.
Scattergun is not spectacle of blood and gore; it is a tableau of the dark side, in a land that bears no promise of living. Set during the Second World War in the rural west, this short work is a depiction of the indifference our species can have to the brutal constituents of the human condition.
Scattergun will drag you along the rough-hewn edge of violence, where only an uncommon paladin can capture an unpredictable killer.
Short Fiction - 15,000 words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Hefferon
• Release date: Oct 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311711717

Joseph Hefferon

A former police captain with a penchant for dark humor. I have a keen interest in what really motivates people and the secret lives behind the facades.

Book preview

Scattergun

A Reckoning in Two Acts

by Joseph Hefferon

Published by Joseph Hefferon at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Joseph Hefferon

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase another copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or they are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

For Helen

Contents

Act I

Act II - The Hunt

Acknowledgements

About Joe

Act I

He left the dead man's trailer with twenty dollars in his dungarees and a feeling that neared elation in his chest, set off into the southern wedge of the downtown district and ate a salty ham steak, four eggs, grits, cornbread and three cups of coffee with a load of sugar in each one. He left no tip at the table but was shortchanged at the cash register and didn't notice. The owner gave the dollar to the waitress who said that young man hadn't bathed in weeks and it's a smell she won't clear from her head until two cigarettes and she'd be on a break out back.

He bought two packs of Chesterfields and a bottle of soda and a used navy coat he carried on his arm and set to hitching his way north through Oklahoma and he was across the Texas line before anyone found the man in the trailer but the flies had begun to hatch their maggots. First night out the moon settled in the east, bearded by a scooped line of fir and a whip snap of frigid air had torn through a long slice of the Midwest, lasting only a full night but enough to make him don that jacket and curse the wind. Rides are scarce after dark.

It was in the afternoon of the third day beyond the state line of Kansas and nearly a week after he left the trailer when he arrived at a road sign and a conclusion that he needed to obtain his own means of transportation. His feet, his legs and his shoulders from switching sides to carry his bundle, were all fed up with walking and sore from the hard miles underfoot and twisting to thumb a passing vehicle, twice letting one pass him by without turning because he had been lost in his head, struggling with a mystery of his own concoction and forgetting to listen for cars or trucks coming up behind him. The sign, 'Leaving Pratt', is what the trucker said aloud as he passed it and the young man who had thumbed that ride believed him though he didn't make a hard look at the sign, there being no immediate reason to doubt him.

Where'd you say you was heading again? The driver asked him as an observance to mandatory conversation because he had no plans to go any place but where he intended and this young man and his small bundle, an ill-conceived bedroll of an untraveled man, could come along, or get out anywhere he liked.

I said I was headin' west.

Well that we are but that's just the way we're driving not where to.

You know where you're goin' don't you?

Well I hope so. I won't get paid unless I deliver this load on time.

Then keep headin' that way and if it turns out to be the same place I'll help you unload it.

What if it isn't the same place?

Just drive. My feet hurt more than my mouth but that don't mean I feel like wearin' that out too.

The driver didn't speak another word except a point about the war the hitchhiker didn't understand and didn't acknowledge. He responded with a comment about the weather because a man walking alone on the plains has a burdensome need to be aware of such things and that's when the driver decided he'd not speak again on this leg of the trip because the kind of man who doesn't want to speak about the war is a man he won't waste any hospitality on.

They were headed