Day 64 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 13 (2298 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 13

Jackson Jones was the third in his family line to have that name, the first being his great grandfather, the second his grandfather and then him, his own father's father not saddling his own progeny with the inherited name.

Jackson's grandfather had suffered from comparisons to his own father, the first to carry the name and the one who was insistent on the carrying on of the family legacy for generation after generation. They clashed all the time, Jackson the Elder and Jackson the Younger each wanted the pride in their own selves to carry on. They were so very alike but where one wanted the other to carry the tradition, the other wanted to create his own and fought tooth and nail to distinguish himself. That friction between them carried over into the later years and coloured their lives long beyond any chance of redemption or acceptance of either one's point of view.

The side effect was that Jackson the first could see that his son, Jackson the second was a lost cause and so when the final act of rebellion of naming his first born grandson Seth he decided to throw his attention and wisdom a generation down and focused on the grandson. Seth ultimately grew up to disagree with his own father, just as he had disagreed with his before him, not one of them cognisant of the inherent irony of carrying on a tradition in stubbornness in refuting the previous generation of Jones.

This created a gap for the Grandfather to fill, to indoctrinate through gifts and time spent with his grandson to influence his values and his beliefs enough to have him siding with the tradition, the dynastic beliefs of Jackson Jones, the first. So Seth grew up trying to undo the work of his own father and redo the work of his grandfather, again without even a hint of understanding that the reality had them all carving the same path of rebellion in their own way.

Jackson was old and frail when his great grandson was born and a few weeks before he died, he was given the greatest gift that Seth could have given him, the name of the third Jones boy to hold that name Jackson Jones III. Seth and Jackson II argued for a number of years about it long after the great-grandfather Jackson Jones had passed away, even arguing in front of the young and impressionable Jackson Jones III who saw the disagreement as a personal attack on him and his great-grandfather who had been known to have left him a large endowment, a trust fund waiting his twenty first birthday.

He sided with neither his father nor his grandfather, instead looking to make his own mark and way in the world with the inheritance he was due. It was only a matter of time, it was his, he deserved it and he was the only one who merited the estate when it came around. His own father and Jackson II fought constantly with no thought to his will or desires, they stood in the way of progress and his development. Jackson Jones III knew that he would quickly leave the small minded bickering and petty squabbles behind him when he came into his own, when he was given the start he needed to get momentum, his birthright.

When he was fifteen years old his world view came to a shocking and sudden end as both his grandfather and father died in a car crash, undoubtedly still arguing even as they plunged off the road and down the steep hill to a fiery conflagration at the bottom of a ravine. He was left with a distraught mother and as an only child, no siblings to comfort him, nor divide his rightful inheritance.

That inheritance was long gone though. He met with the lawyers and found there was nothing but debt in his family's once deep coffers. His great grandfather's original will and trust had been set with his grandchildren and great grandchildren in mind, but it had not been iron clad and had not been for Jackson III alone, his father Seth had access to it and used it, borrowed heavily against it to fund business and deals for decades until his death.

The recession had hit hard enough that he was on a down swing when he drove off that cliff with his own father in the passenger seat, he had died at the wrong time in the cycle of profit and loss. Their fortunes had swung up and down as challenging and entrepreneurial interests tended to do, and they were mortgaged and secured for the lean times and were confident that the economy and their fortunes would rise again. Seth, Jackson II and their accountants and business managers knew this, counted on this and had faith in the future.

With their deaths though, the control of the business fell to Jackson's mother Carol, and she was too upset and too unwilling to enter the business headed world that she ceded effective control to her fifteen year old son, who had strong and confident opinions and knew what he wanted. He ignored all the advice and liquidated the assets and interests before the hemorrhaging bled his fortune dry. He was warned against it, he was given the big picture and told to be patient and by the time he was twenty one the value would be rising again, and by the time the next generation was old enough to help out, they would be on top again.

That was too far in the future for him, to be denied his birthright, to be held back from the future promised to him, it was too much to wait for and too long to wait. Estate taxes and penalties bit hard and soon what was left of the cash reserves were gone, and he owned land and property that he could not touch, tied up in debt, company foreclosures and bankruptcy. He reached his seventeenth birthday and what was once a solid future was now barely enough to feed the lifestyle to which he aspired. He wasted money on cars and an expensive lifestyle which was enormously satisfying to a sixteen year old boy with new found autonomy, but dissipating fast to the worldlier seventeen year old who found his future disappearing with his bank balance less than two years later.

He took what he had learned, about money, inheritance and merit to task and he built a reputation around himself and enhanced it with those trappings he knew he could not sustain. The name and the accessories that could only come with a family line of power and wealth gave him access to the people he needed to realise the revitalisation of just how important he was to the world. He found a family, one wealthier than his had been, by some margin but one or two generations removed from the work of building the dynasty and settled into passing it on as a legacy.

He could marry into it, he could insinuate his way into the same position he had within his own. The father absolutely loved him, the daughter Juliet who quickly became his fiancé, simply adored him and would do anything he asked. They poured money into his projects and shored up his hastily erected house of cards and kept him secure and part of the family, a lifetime of protection ahead of him. It wasn't enough, they were content to carry on the legacy and Jackson wanted his own, he had earned the right, he had the legacy that was due to him stolen away by selfish and inattentive parenting, and grand parenting. The generations above could not be trusted with the future of the ones below, and he could not and would not wait for them to fritter away what fortunes could be made and could be his. Would be his, there was no doubt in his mind.

His father in law to be was blissfully unaware of the potential risks he posed to his family and passed off any indiscretions as just that, the indiscretions of youth, and understandable considering the tragedy of his recent years. Juliette's mother was much more canny and could see that he was more and less than he was representing to them and she made her caution known to her daughter and husband only to be ignored as overly protective. She hired investigators, and they found what they all knew about the family and the tragedy of recent years. They also uncovered a truer picture of his lack of fortune and how he had been spending his money. She confronted him about it and drew a line in the sand for him. She put him in mind of her family and what she would do to protect it, but she made a fatal mistake, she gave him a chance to walk away and let it all go, or face the consequences of being exposed.

That was as far as he wanted her to go, now she stood between him and his rightful inheritance, his birthright was being savaged and threatened by a woman who had married into the family fortune she was trying to cut him off from. She had no right, no connection and no claim to what he did, she was nothing and she was trying to take everything.

He could have weathered that storm, Juliet and her father would have easily been swayed to his version of events, there was not any proof of anything except his tragic last few years and they were already hugely sympathetic to his cause and to his joining their ranks. Then when the time came it would all be his, they would have children and marriage and the law on his side and it would be too late. It would take decades to get there, and he had waited too long already. His mother-in-law to be was a nasty bitch who was just going to get in his way and had to be stopped. The father would be collateral damage and regrettable, but none the less necessary. Juliet would become like his mother, the Oedipal irony aside she would be immersed in grief and she would put Jackson in the same position as he had been in with his own inheritance, the level headed and strong one to whom all things came, in time and in full.

He had not intended to be so brutal when he killed the parents. Not really part of his original plan to exact any kind of contextual revenge scenario, but as he faced his future mother-in-law down and held her at gun point he felt all the rage and the contempt boil over and he took it out on her, forcefully and viciously. He tried to black it out later when the anger subsided and the bloodstained clothes and sheets brought the animalistic nature of his crime into a clear and sober view. He had not raped her out of any sexual desire or twisted sense of ownership and male domination, but out of revenge and right. She was violated and made to suffer for the way she had tried to do that to him, the way she had cheated and stolen from him, made him feel threatened and futile when it came to his future. He had taken that power back from her and in his rage he felt the need to express that in a suddenly visceral way that he could not rightly remember all of, but still did not fully regret until he saw how much evidence there was to erase of his presence.

He had planned on making it look like a robbery gone wrong, but she had been home alone and his temper and rage had taken control and made one hell of a mess before she died. He was still cleaning and stage setting when her husband came home and walked in on the bloody scene. He had no idea what was going on and stood there in shock as his future son-in-law came at him with a long knife, not unlike the one that he would eventually die by. He felt it go in, sliding all the way in him and he saw a smirk, half apologetic and half sarcastic on Jackson's face.

He had not come home alone and a friend of his saw the whole scene from the stairway and was taking video on his cell phone of the latter stages of the murder where Jackson let the body down and stabbed a few more times, more viciously once he had died, to complete the scene before turning and seeing the camera trained on him.

The friend bolted and got to his car and got away long before Jackson could catch up, and the police were on the phone with him before he got out of the driveway. He ran, to the basement and dragged up everything flammable he could to burn down the house, obliterate the evidence and if necessary cover his escape or die trying, die free.

Juliet found out everything about her parents death from the police and all about her fiances actions on the nightly news where the video had been heavily edited and leaked to the local press. There were three bodies in the charred wreckage of the house and with little to go on, phone calls from inside the house to Jackson trying to get him to give up and come quietly, it was assumed that it was him in the house fire, that he was the third body.

Until they saw Darwin s Game and then people started asking who the body in the fire was.