Page 13 of The Woman on the Jury

My heart seized, mind immediately worried he wasn’t asleep, but that he’d maybe had a heart attack or something when I wasn’t around to keep an eye on him.

“Pop-Pop?” I called, rushing back toward his chair that he frequented.

Nothing.

“Pop?” I called louder, tears starting to fill my eyes, unable to stop imagining him on the ground somewhere, holding his heart. “Poppy?” I called, voice catching as I stared at the massive front counter with its antique cash register.

Sucking in a breath that burned, I moved around the counter.

It was worse than my fears manifested.

Yes, he was on the ground.

And, yes, he was unconscious.

But not from his heart.

From someone beating the ever-loving shit out of him.

“Pop-Pop,” I cried, dropping down next to him, staring at his chest to make sure it was still rising and falling as I fumbled for my cell phone, calling the police as I reached out, wanting to touch him, to comfort him, but not wanting to touch him anywhere that might hurt.

The bruises and blood had my heart flipping over in my chest as I sat there, listening for the sirens.

“Miss… miss, you have to get out of the way,” one of the paramedics urged a few moments later when they showed up.

I moved out from behind the desk on numb legs, my body shaking as I begged whatever higher power there might be in the universe to make my grandfather pull through.

“Could this have been a robbery?” the officer at my side asked, making me look over at him, slow blinking for a second before his words sank in.

“Oh, ah, I don’t… I wasn’t…” I said, shaking my head.

“Does anything seem missing?” he pressed, likely accustomed to people in crisis situations, so he seemed unbothered by my brain fog.

Taking a deep breath, I turned, glancing around at everything close to the register.

“Nothing here,” I said, noticing the arranged table of figurines, and the shelf full of fine China.

“Everything in here is worth something, though, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, nodding. Some much more than others. But nothing looked disturbed from where I was standing.

“Is there a security system?” he asked.

“What? Oh, yeah. Yes,” I said with a nod, waving toward the cameras at the front of the store.

Were they those old-school ones that stuck out like a sore thumb? Sure. Would the images likely be grainy? Yes. Had I been begging my grandfather to let me replace them for months? Also yes. But, so far, no luck.

I had been wondering if he would even notice if I stuck up some of the newer, dome-like ones. His vision wasn’t what it used to be anyway.

“Can you give me access to them?” he asked.

I agreed, leading him to the back storage room where the computer was set up. No password, because my grandfather could never remember one.

“No,” I said, staring at the screen. “No,” I whimpered, seeing nothing but static on the camera feed.

“Think they were tampered with?” he asked.

“I think he just… didn’t set them up right,” I said. They could have been like this for years, forever, and he wouldn’t have been any the wiser.

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