Chapter 5 #4
“Yeah, give me your number. We can take a look for both,” Wilden offered, not sure where they would be.
However, it was daylight this time, so that would help.
He snapped the leash onto Sarge, who had calmed down and immediately headed to the front door, almost dragging Wilden with him.
Wilden chuckled, seeing his eagerness. “Apparently Sarge is more than ready to go.”
“Oh, I would think so,” Jackson agreed, with a smile.
They waved goodbye and quickly loaded Sarge into the vehicle along with the three other dogs, all having a grand old welcome in the back seat, as Wilden got in the front. “Now we need to get there before they decide that we’re taking too long,” he noted, with a chuckle.
“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” she murmured, as she glanced back at them.
They were all just so happy to be out. “That’s the thing.
These dogs just want to go. They want a chance to do something different, to get outside, and to be somewhere new.
” She rolled her eyes, watching them lovingly.
“This is the perfect scenario for them.”
It wasn’t too long of a drive, and Wilden pulled off and took the turn to take them up to the parking lot. “It really isn’t well-trod through this area, is it?” she noted.
“No,” he agreed, “not that I see. Yet the police should have been up here earlier today. They visited Jackson and talked with him, and they called me multiple times with questions. They appear to be doing everything they can and are perturbed to think that Jackson was picked on, although they understand what was happening. It’s particularly difficult to see it happening to somebody who can’t fight back. ”
“Which makes Jackson an easy target,” she pointed out, “just like me.”
He nodded. “And that’s part of the challenge. My father’s no longer here but would be a good suspect. However, they have no proof, other than Jackson’s word, of anybody else involved.”
“Right, of course they don’t,” she interjected, cutting him off, her tone bitter. “Yet John would have had his cronies, and, if the two of them who left Jackson out here have really left town, where does that leave the case?”
“It leaves the case open, hoping they return, hoping that somebody catches sight of them somewhere. In the meantime, they’re in the wind,” Wilden noted.
“The good news is, if they are smart, they won’t return.
However, we already know they are not intelligent criminals.
So we do have to worry about them coming back and causing more trouble. ”
“True,” she agreed. “I definitely see them as people who don’t want to face the music. However, if they think any money is to be made from their bullying, even a little bit”—she frowned and swore—“what are the chances of them coming and finding Jackson on payday?”
“It’s possible. That’s certainly what my father did to Nan and kept her with basically no food and no money to pay the bills. That was just one of the reasons I had to go to the bank and clear up the debts he had incurred for her,” Wilden shared, his tone grim.
“I thought you told Nan there was some good news in the banking,” she noted curiously. “Or was that to just curb her worrying?”
“There was some good news. Dad has money in his bank account, but the bank wasn’t quite so quick to hand it over to Nan, hence the lawyers.”
“If John still had money, after taking everything from your grandmother, you would think that transfer would be a slam dunk.”
“Sure, but I was there and not my grandmother, so, from their perspective, I was just trying to take her money, the same as Dad always did.”
“Oh, good Lord,” she muttered. “I mean, I can sort of understand that from their typical narrow point of view, but to even think that you’re the same as John is hugely insulting.”
He grinned openly. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. Believe me that they didn’t particularly want to do anything at all nor even deal with me over it,” he shared.
“Once my lawyer got involved, and the will was dealt with, it was another story. The fact that he even had a will surprised me, until I realized he had a fair bit of money in the bank.”
“How fair?” she asked.
“Lots more than I ever expected. I don’t know if any of his cronies around him realized that or if he was just stashing away money for a nest egg, keeping it for himself.
I haven’t touched it, other than to pay off Nan’s utility bills and her property taxes.
She was in danger of losing her house because of Dad, and yet he had plenty of money in the bank and could have paid them all. I don’t know what his deal was.”
He quickly parked, and, with a little bit of difficulty because the dogs were so excited, they managed to get everybody out of the vehicle and onto leashes.
The dogs didn’t seem to think they needed them, but Wilden wasn’t comfortable taking all four of them out into the forest without leashes.
Soon they headed up toward the waterfall again.
“Now are we going to the waterfall,” she asked, “or are we looking for his phone and keys?”
“Waterfall first. Then over to where I found him. I’ll try calling his phone, and maybe we can hear a ring. Although, by now, his phone may be dead. Yet, if we could find his phone, that would save Jackson a big expense to replace it. Keys can be replaced, so that’s secondary.”
“Not to rain on your parade but there’s a lot of underbrush. Did they just dump him here?”
“He was unconscious for a fair amount of time,” Wilden shared.
“You didn’t see the bruises on his body.
Once he finally got to talking to the police, Jackson fessed up that his kidnappers had taken more than a few potshots at him and had left quite a bit of bruising.
He added that he had been unconscious for part of it and delirious at other times.
So, he’s not exactly sure what all happened. ”
“What does he remember?”
“He remembers a truck, and he remembers a building, but he didn’t remember a whole lot other than that.
He was wide awake and struggling with the cold when we found him out here, so I don’t even know that he had a whole lot to say about the ordeal with any clarity at the time.
Yet, with lots of questioning from the police, he managed to explain a whole lot more.
So, it appears that he was taken to some building first. He doesn’t really remember a room, but there was a floor.
So, they basically just tossed him onto the floor because he couldn’t move anyway without his wheelchair.
So they had no need to put a guard on him or anything. ”
“Assholes,” she muttered.
“Yeah, they are definitely taking the cake, aren’t they?
” he said. “Anyway, Jackson overheard a bunch of conversations, how they were waiting for my father to show up. When he failed to show, they figured that maybe he’d run out on them, and that made them pretty mad.
And poor Jackson was the target they had handy to take it out on. ”
“Jesus. He’s hardly a target. He’s an old man, for crying out loud.”
“Yeah, the cops were not impressed with the whole thing. So, the good news is, Jackson survived and is safe now.”
“But these assholes are still out there running around,” she stated, her tone sharp.
“Unfortunately that’s the not-so-good news, but we have Jackson, and he’s okay.”
“But it did give him quite a scare and has made him face his own mortality,” she noted, exasperated and torn. “That’s why he came to see me because he’s worried about what will happen with Sarge because of what happened to him.”
“Right,” Wilden agreed, “and not everybody makes provisions for their pets, I suppose.”
“No, they don’t, and that’s just so sad,” she noted, “because I end up with a lot of them coming my way, and people don’t have any answers. A lot of relatives wind up with the animals, but it’s not what they want, so that’s not a good situation either.”
She looked around the woods, and a clear distress filled her expression.
“And I really do appreciate that Jackson was trying to find a solution that would work. So, I did say I would take Sarge, particularly after seeing his true nature. He’s a lovely dog, so I don’t have a problem adding him to my mix.
However, the best thing would be if Sarge had a nice long life with Jackson.
Yet I got the impression that Jackson didn’t think he would live all that long, and it was really bothering him. ”
“I think what we have is a classic case of somebody who recently saw his mortality a little too close for comfort and realized he hadn’t made arrangements for his best friend.
So this gave him a second chance to see that Sarge was taken care of.
” Wilden shrugged. “And I get that. I really do. Look at me. I’ve got Nan back now, and I don’t know how long any of us have, but she’s not in great shape, and I don’t want to think about her suffering.
Yet I wasn’t too bothered about it when I was young and stupid,” he admitted, with a sigh.
“I was thinking that it would all be okay because my father was there, but it wasn’t okay at all.
In fact, it was far worse for her because he was there.
Now she’s older, and I hope to stay long enough that she has quite a few good years, so that the memory of what her son was like and how he treated her will fade.
Then, when it’s time, she can pass away peacefully, knowing that I’m okay, and so is she. ”
“Wouldn’t that be lovely,” Vivian said, with a gentle smile in his direction. “And you’ll have a chance to spend a few years with Nan right now that you would have missed out on, and that’s a good thing too.”
“It is,” he agreed with a smile, glancing over at her.
“She’s a really good person, and I know she would say she doesn’t deserve forgiveness for what she did—which in her mind was not stopping him from kicking me out—but in a way it doesn’t really count when she was so happy to see him and so unaware of who he had become. ”
“We never really know who anybody is,” she noted. “We try hard to ignore the bad parts and stick to the good parts, but it’s not all that easy to do.”
They continued to walk, the afternoon sun high and strong. She glanced up at the sky. “It really is a gorgeous day, but you can surely feel that heat out here, can’t you?”
“Absolutely,” he confirmed. “That’s another reason they probably left Jackson out here. They thought the daytime heat would dehydrate him, and maybe the animals would come along and kill him, if the colder nighttime temps didn’t do him in.”
“I don’t know too many predators around here that would.”
“There aren’t many,” he conceded. “I just don’t think his kidnappers cared and figured that, if he survived, he survived, and, if he didn’t, well, too bad. It wasn’t on them.”
She shook her head. The dogs bounced along, happy, full of good spirits, enjoying a chance to get out, and she loved it. “These dogs are acting the way I feel, letting loose for a bit, with just a chance to enjoy being out here and not having to deal with anything.”
Up ahead was an odd crackle. She froze, but Wilden cautiously walked forward. He looked back at her, held a finger to his lips, and she just nodded and waited. Realizing that she was getting left behind because they were all heading in the direction of the noise, she bolted forward.
He reached out, caught her hand, and tugged her up close. He whispered against her hair, calming her down, “I think it’s okay, but we won’t let whatever it is out here terrify us. If they’re leaving, perfect, but, if they’re sticking around, then we want them to know that we’re here.”
She shook her head and stared at him, then whispered back, “And what if it’s two-legged?”
His gaze hardened. “Then he better bring it on,” he muttered, “because no way in hell am I letting anybody who would do that shit to a retired veteran in a wheelchair get away with it. So, if they’re dumb enough to show up here again, believe me that I’ll be more than happy to deal with them.”