Chapter 4 #3
“Oh, I get you,” she stated. “Just because you think it’s okay to be a cranky old man and to tell everybody you’re not going to cooperate, that’s no reason to make Wilden—who went to a lot of effort to rescue you—just sit here and worry all night, which you know Wilden will do.”
Jackson stared at her, and then his shoulders sagged. “Yeah, of course he would. Fine,” Jackson grumbled, his tone less-than-friendly. “You … but nobody else.”
She smiled. “It will be somebody else if anything’s seriously worrisome,” she declared. “That’s the agreement. Otherwise I will do my best to confirm that everything is okay.”
“Fine, I can live with that.”
“First off, you haven’t had any food.”
Wilden interjected, “No, but I’m warming up some soup for him right now.”
She nodded, then immediately checked his blood sugar, which was low but not horrific. She stared at that and asked, “Did they give you any food?”
“No, they told me that I didn’t deserve any, that I was too old, and that I shouldn’t be eating groceries that other people needed.”
She shifted her gaze and stared at him for a long moment, dumbfounded. She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Wow, nice people.”
Wilden added, “Apparently they were tied up somehow with my father.”
She winced at him and pointed out, “That is not your fault.”
Jackson cackled. “I already told him that, but he ain’t listening to me either.”
She smiled at the two of them. “You two are some pair. Wilden’s not responsible for what his father did, and you’re not taking care of yourself,” she declared pointedly, shaking her head at Jackson. “The two of you need to get over that, and those two men must be stopped.”
“How did you know it was two men?” Jackson asked shrewdly, eyeing her with a narrow gaze.
She turned to him and laughed. “Because no way it would be less than that trying to get you corralled,” she stated, rolling her eyes. “You would have whooped and hollered your way into tomorrow if you thought somebody was doing you wrong.”
He gave her a pleased smile. “You’re right there, missy,” he stated.
“It was two of them, and I wouldn’t let them get away with nothing.
” He took a deep breath, as she clipped a blood pressure cuff on him.
“I had just put this guy out in the backyard,” he began, as he pointed to Sarge.
“He was quite cranky and miserable, and I didn’t know what was going on with him.
Now I know, but I wasn’t smart enough to read the signs.
So I had just put him out to give him some time to cool down from whatever was bothering him. ”
He shook his head. “And, just like that, I didn’t have a chance to do anything.
Next thing I knew, these guys were all over me, and they picked me up and tossed me into their vehicle, and I didn’t have no say, no how,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“It’s a sad day when that’s how you get treated at your own home in broad daylight. ”
“It wasn’t broad daylight though, was it?” she asked, studying him.
“Nah, it wasn’t, but I don’t know what time it was. So, if you’re asking, don’t bother because I won’t be telling you,” he grumbled, shaking his head.
She smiled. “I don’t think that’ll be much of an issue.” Then she frowned and added, “Yet maybe it is. I mean, the police will need to figure it out.”
“The police ain’t gonna figure nothing out,” Jackson muttered.
“And why is that?” she asked, turning to him.
“Because these guys have been causing trouble in town for a long time, and ain’t nobody done nothing about it yet. And, yeah, that includes Wilden’s father too.”
“And yet,” she noted, staring at Jackson, “his father was shot on the street in broad daylight.”
“Yeah, and I would have done it myself if I could have,” Jackson declared, followed by a glare, but then looked at Wilden. “Sorry, son.”
“No worries here,” Wilden replied. “My father was bad news, and I’m only just now realizing how much of a problem he was.”
“Yeah, when you get to be as sick in the head and as lazy as he was, there ain’t no saving him anymore,” Jackson pointed out. “But it still doesn’t make it right, and it’s still a lot of pain on all of you.”
Wilden nodded. “I’m mostly worried about Nan.”
“And you should be,” Jackson declared in a serious tone.
“John had a plan to get rid of her real fast, and then it would be easy street because they would sell her house, and he planned to live in somebody else’s place, some other senior he was chasing off of their own property,” he shared, with a snort. “But I don’t know who or what.”
“Did you see any other seniors when you were with them?”
He shook his head. “Nope, just those two, who the cops already know about, and they haven’t done jack shit. And those two talked about your father, but I never saw him. I already knew him, of course, and I knew he was bad news regardless, but I didn’t see him personally involved in this.”
“Too bad,” Wilden muttered.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve felt that way too, but what can you do? I mean, he’s dead anyway.” Then he glared over at Wilden. “Don’t lie to me. He’s really dead?”
“He is,” Wilden confirmed. “I told you already how I went to the crematorium today and made the arrangements.”
“That’s something at least,” Jackson muttered. “Those two knuckleheads didn’t hear about it, you know?”
“That he was dead? How is it they didn’t know?” Vivian asked, turning to Wilden.
“I don’t know how,” Wilden admitted, “and that is a question I want answered—unless they’d been so busy harassing other people or were out of town or something and came back because they expected to hear from John but didn’t.
Surely once back in this town, they would have picked up on the news just by the latest gossip.
” He shrugged. “I don’t know otherwise.”
She sighed as she looked over at the old man.
She checked his blood pressure again and his pulse.
She checked everything else that she could.
“I still don’t like that you won’t go to a hospital, but I can safely say that you’ll probably be fine.
I just want to confirm that you’ll be smart about this. ”
He stared at her and nodded. “I’ll be as smart as I can.”
She groaned and muttered, “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.” He cackled with laughter at that, and she had to smile at him. “I’m glad to see you’re in good spirits.”
“I have Sarge and get to live another day instead of freezing to death up in the bloody hills, which is what they intended.” He sighed and shrugged.
“And, yeah, you better call the damn police,” she muttered.
“But you know it’ll be useless.”
“I hope it’s not useless,” she snapped, eyeing him. “And, if they did know about these guys, at least it should make it easier to pick them up.”
“Yeah, but they’ll only want me to prove it was them.
It’s not as if we’ve got any proof that says I’m not off my rocker either,” he pointed out.
“And that’s what those idiots were going for.
They wanted me to sign power of attorney documents to give them access to my house and bank accounts and all the rest. If I didn’t do it, they would leave me out in the cold to die, and then they would forge the documents anyway. ”
She just stared at him, then turned to Wilden, and he swore. Vivian grimaced. “The good news is, you’re alive and well, and the other good news is, you know who did this. You don’t want anybody else to go through what you did, do you?”
“Hell no,” he snapped.
Vivian nodded. “So we should get the local authorities to do a full investigation on it.”
“Yeah,” he snapped, “should. But these two punks have been skirting the law around here for far too long, and now they’ve got this whole fear-thing going on, and nobody ever wants to take them to task for what they’ve been doing. So, I just can’t imagine the cops will do anything.”
She stared at him. “I hope you’re wrong.
… I want to believe in the law. I want the law to be clearly black-and-white.
I want to think that a happy ending is out there for all this, and I really don’t want to think that somebody like Wilden’s father”—she turned to look at him—“could have gotten away with this. Yet he probably would have, until somebody gunned him down. So, the real question is, who gunned him down, and is that somebody we still need to be watchful for? Or is it some victim, who has had enough of his abuse?”
“Whoever it was,” Jackson added, still under his heavy blankets, “we should be buying him a pint.”
Wilden smiled at him. “Yeah, I hear you there,” he muttered.
“Let me get that soup for you.” Wilden brought the soup back and had the old man sipping away at it, with Sarge and the other dogs lying around at their feet.
Wilden looked over at her. “Thank you for coming. I really didn’t know who else to call, but I figured that a second opinion would be good. ”
She gave him a beaming smile. “You already had a pretty good idea that he was all right.”
“Sure, but I don’t have any experience with diabetes, and God only knows what else he’s got going on.”
“Yeah, well, diabetes won’t kill me either,” the old man cackled. “I’m way too stubborn for that to take me down.”
She chuckled at hearing him say that. “I can’t imagine anything taking you down,” she admitted. “It’ll have to be your time to go or else.”
“Yeah, you’re right there,” he declared, “and I’m not really looking forward to anybody telling me otherwise.
I didn’t go through two wars to sit here and have some lame-ass punks take me down, looking for my money.
I worked hard for that little bit of money, and it ain’t near enough to do anything with but feed me and old Sarge here. ”
“I hear you,” Wilden confirmed, “and then you have all those people who think we’re being paid too much.”