My Funny Farm - Chapter 24 – The Full Diaper Bag – Part 1 of 2

 

My Funny Farm

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 24 – The Full Diaper Bag – Part 1 of 2

 

Detective Kinsley walked into work early the next morning.  She had spent part of last night on the phone talking with each of the members of Craig Bryson’s family.  She had also called her sister and warned her about what she had done.  Now it was time to deal with the mess she knew had to exist.

Before leaving work last night, she had made requests for two search warrants to be issued.  She wanted to search the homes of every one of the family members, but there were only two she felt she could fully justify.  The first was Craig Bryson’s home, particularly the private bedrooms of the occupants, and the second was the apartment that Nichole and her husband Michael lived in.  She didn’t know yet how far the conspiracy extended, but she was going to find out.  The only person she seriously doubted was involved was James, and still, even him she couldn’t rule out…yet.  For now, he remained on her suspect list.

The first thing she did was to make copies of the recordings involving Nichole and send them to two of her staff people to work with.  That much done, she got up from her desk to seek out another person in the department, someone more knowledgeable about financial affairs than she was.

 

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I didn’t sleep well at all that night.  Not only because they had ripped me out of my home and put me back into this…place, but also because I had no idea in the world why this had suddenly come about.  I had just been getting used to the baby idea, and had started to enjoy it.  Now look, no more toys.  At least, not the kind I wanted to play with.  But that was all secondary to the primary reason I had trouble sleeping.  No pacifier!  The police had purposely left that behind when they “arrested” me last night.  Funny thing though, I woke up this morning with my thumb in my mouth instead.  Suck…relax…suck…relax.  It was all I had.

Since the diaper they had put on me wasn’t one of my super thick night diapers, it was pretty much soaked.  I wondered how long it would take before I could get another one.  But even then, I doubted it would be as good as the one I was wearing now.

It seemed like a long time before someone knocked on my door and one of the staff members checked on me, but then I was now used to waking up fairly early.  And that was another thing I missed, my morning bottle.  Suck my thumb…relax…suck my thumb.

I was still in my room, wondering what to do with myself, when my usual doctor came in to see me.  Just looking at him had me more convinced than ever that he was still in high school.  He had to be!

“Mr. Bryson,” he said.  “Welcome back.”

“I don’t want to be here,” I told him.  “I want to go home.”

He shook his head.  “I’m sorry, but you can’t leave.  In fact, the reason I’m here is to let you know that the police left strict instructions for you when they dropped you off last night.”

“Instructions?”

“Yes.  For one, we…the doctors like me…are not allowed to work with you at all.  Not yet anyway.  Not until they say we can.”

“But you’re here now,” I noticed.

“Yes, but only to let you know just the few things that we’ve been told.”

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Yes,” he replied.  “Your family, all of them, are also banned from seeing you until further notice.”

I was startled at that one.  “All of them?”

“That’s the word I got.”

“So if they can’t see me, and you can’t even talk to me, then what am I doing here?”

He shrugged.  “To be honest, I don’t know.  Other than discussing your condition, is there anything I can do for you?”

“My condition?  How about the condition of my diaper?” I asked.  “Any chance of getting a fresh one?”

“Your diaper?” he asked.  “When did this come about?”

“I thought you couldn’t discuss my case with me.”

He sighed.  “True.  I’ll…talk to the staff for you.”

“Thanks!”  Something told me I’d be lucky to not be leaking all over the place before they got me a new diaper to wear.  And even though I wasn’t supposed to have to worry about leaky diapers, something told me that might be one of my new major concerns.

 

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It was midmorning by the time the search warrants came through.  Detective Kinsley decided to tackle the scene of the crime first, the home of Craig Bryson.  A quick phone call told her that both Emily and Caitlin had stayed home that day, but Bill was at work.  Kinsley had just wanted to know if she needed to worry about breaking down the door to get in or not.  With four uniformed policemen in tow, she headed for Craig Bryson’s house.

When they got there, they didn’t even get a chance to knock before the door was opened by both Emily and Caitlin.  The two of them seemed surprised to see so many uniforms with her again.  “Come in,” Emily told her.  “You said you wanted to talk to us today.”

“Not right now,” Kinsley told her.  “That’s for later.”  She handed over the search warrant.  “That’s a warrant authorizing us to search this entire house.”

“Search it?” Caitlin exclaimed.  “What for?”

“We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

“But what about why you pulled Gramps out of here last night?” Caitlin demanded.

“Kinsley shook her head.  “That discussion is for another time.  Now please stay out of our way.  I suggest you either stay in the living room until we finish…or outside.  Your choice.”  She turned to the uniformed men and pointed towards one of them.  “Stay with them.”  To the rest she said, “Let’s go.”

Ten minutes after they arrived, Bill showed up with another man.  “What’s going on here?” Bill demanded the moment he got inside and found a uniformed officer watching over his wife and Emily in the living room.

“Sir,” the uniformed officer said.  “We’re in the process of exercising a search warrant on this home right now.  I need you to either stay right here in this room, or leave the house.”

“I take it you have a warrant?” the second man asked.

“I’ve got it here,” Emily told him as she held it up.

“Let me see,” he said.  He took the warrant from her and looked it over before turning to Bill.  “We’ll have to enter our protests over this later.”

“Have they spoken to you yet?” Bill asked his wife.

“Not yet,” Caitlin told him.  “We thought that’s why the detective was coming, but when she arrived she said she wasn’t interested in talking yet.”

“Then when?”

“How should I know?” Caitlin replied.

Upstairs, Detective Kinsley was searching the one room she was the most interested in, Caitlin and Bill’s bedroom.  She literally looked very carefully through everything, but she found nothing at all.  Not one shred of evidence that even might point towards the conspiracy that she was convinced was going on.  Along with the other policemen, they searched everywhere in the house, but just like that one bedroom, they found nothing incriminating.  She was forced to give up.  The house hadn’t panned out at all.

She went downstairs and headed for the front door.  “We’re done!” she called to the house’s occupants.

“We’ll be filing a formal protest as soon as possible!” a man she had never seen before called back.

“File away!” she told the man.  “By the way, who are you?”

“Henry Bartlett,” the man replied.

“My lawyer!” Bill explained, as if he expected her to be impressed.  “Now when are you going to sit down and tell us what’s going on?”

“When I’m ready, and not before!” Kinsley told him.

“We’ll be filing a protest about that too,” Bartlett told her.

“Like I said,” Kinsley replied.  “File away.”

“Come on,” she told the uniformed men with her.  “We’re done here.”

“When can I meet with my other client, Mr. Bryson!” Bartlett demanded.  “We’ve got urgent business to attend with him.”

Kinsley shook her head.  “Yeah, I’ll bet you do.  But right now, I’ve got him locked down where he belongs, and I’ve fixed it so that nobody, not even his doctors can talk with him.  So your business, as you call it, is going to have to wait!”

“How long?”

“Until I decide otherwise!  Come on,” she said again to the men with her.  “Let’s go.”

 

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“Shit!”  I had to change my own damn diaper.  I had to clean myself up.  I had to do everything for myself…just like I used to.  Well, I didn’t used to have to change my diapers, but for some unknown reason, I couldn’t seem to control myself anymore.  I went pee-pee with absolutely no warning at all.  Not that I really minded that much.  In fact, I rather enjoyed it.  I liked the feel of the wet diapers too.  I just knew from experience that the thin cheap diaper they gave me to change into wasn’t going to last me very long, and I’d be doing this all over again very soon.  Yeah, those nice thick diapers were a lot more convenient as far as that goes.

As I wandered around with nothing to do, I took note of the other inmates.  Most of them were exactly the same ones who had been there before.  I guessed they were more permanent residents than I had thought.  A few of them came over to speak with me, and it was obvious that none of them even realized I had been gone for a few weeks.  What was wrong with them?  Oh yeah, they were nuts!

 

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Both Michael and Nichole were home when Kinsley served the search warrant on their apartment.  The place was small enough that the uniforms sent them outside so all the police could help with the search.

For a while, Kinsley was afraid they wouldn’t find anything useful there either, but there was a small desk in their bedroom, and in one of the drawers, on top of all the other papers, was something she looked at in disbelief.  Proof!  Damning proof!  Absolute proof.  At least as far as something illegal going on was concerned.  The only problem was, no matter how much further she searched, she could find nothing at all to tell her exactly who might be involved in the conspiracy…if it could really be called a conspiracy.  But that one bit of proof was really all the evidence she needed…for now.  She grabbed the papers, carefully putting them into an evidence bag.  She didn’t have an evidence bag big enough for the big shopping bag she found right next to the desk.  She simply had one of the policemen with her put it into the car.

When she left, the uniformed policemen handcuffed Nichole and brought her with them.  As far as Detective Kinsley was concerned, it was time she started living in a cell.  Her biggest question there was to wonder if she should have arrested Michael as well, but she had no proof at all yet that Michael was involved.

 

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James walked nervously into the police station.  He didn’t know why he was nervous, but he put it down to just the fact that he was in a police station.  Once there, he was sent to a small interview room to wait for Detective Kinsley.  He had to wait nearly ten minutes before she finally breezed into the small room.

“James,” Kinsley greeted the man waiting for her.  She took a seat opposite him and set her laptop computer and a file folder down on the table.

“I take it that you found something from that picture we hung on Dad’s wall?” James asked.

“You might say that,” Kinsley told him.

“So he was right.  There was something going on.”

“Most definitely!”

“Damn!” he cursed.  “And I blew him off!  I told him it was all in his head.”

“Oh no,” Mr. Bryson.  It wasn’t in his head at all…although in another way, it really was all in his head.”

James was startled.  “What does that mean?”

“It means that something really was going on, and it was worse than I thought.  But the big question right now is, exactly who in the family is involved?”

“Who?”

“Yes.  And that includes you.”

“Me?  I’m not involved in anything!”

“I certainly hope not, because you’re the one who raised the alarms with us to begin with.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not involved.”

“And how do I convince you that I’m not?” James asked.

“Well,” she replied.  “To begin with, let’s go through a few of the videos that were captured by that picture frame.  And just so you know, I had one of my people sew a highlights version together and raise the volume in places, just to save some time.”

James considered that.  “Okay,” he agreed.  “Let’s see.”

Kinsley opened her laptop and set it where they both could watch the videos.  She started it playing.  It only took a moment before James came out of his seat.  “What the hell is going on?” he demanded as his eyes remained glued to the screen.  What did she do to him?”

Kinsley had absolutely no doubt that James was innocent in all this.  In fact, just the fact that they wanted to take control of the money away from him had told her that much, but now his reaction was further proof…as far as she was concerned.

 

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Ashley sat in one of the interview rooms for quite a while before Detective Kinsley finally arrived.  “What’s going on?” she asked before the detective even had a chance to sit down.

“What’s going on is something far more criminal than I originally thought,” Kinsley replied.  “And our purpose right now is to find out just what your involvement in any of it is.”

“Something criminal?” Ashley asked.  “I’m not involved in anything like that at all…as far as I know.”

“That’s what we’re going to discuss right now,” Kinsley told her.  “Let me start with some of the evidence, and then let’s see what you think about it.”

“Evidence?”

Kinsley set her laptop up and began the first video.  The shocked look on Ashley’s face as the video showed her father falling limp to the floor told her everything.

“Daddy!” Ashley screamed at the computer screen.  “Is he dead?”

“No,” Kinsley told her.

“He looks dead.  He’s not moving!”

“I thought the same thing when I first saw it,” Kinsley admitted.

 

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Emily screamed loud and shrilly as the video started and showed her grandfather falling to the floor like he was dead.  And when she saw the part where Nichole used the electric shock device to hurt him so much, she screamed again.  “I’ll kill her!” she yelled.  “I’m gonna kill her.  Oh Gramps.  What did she do to you?”

Kinsley had no doubt at all that Emily was not part of the conspiracy, but she showed her a bit more of the videos just to be sure.  After a few she finally said, “Emily, I’m crossing you off my list of suspects…for now!  But that doesn’t mean I won’t be coming back to talk to you more about this later.  Understand?”

Emily nodded and wiped her crying eyes with her hand.

Kinsley started to get up to leave when Emily suddenly asked.  “How about Jared?”

“Jared?” Kinsley asked.

“My boyfriend.”

“Oh yes.  He was in that meeting with your family when all this started.  Where is he?”

“We kind of…split up.  I couldn’t take some of the things he was doing anymore…but…we still date.  Is he involved?  He liked saying some really mean things to him.”

“I don’t know yet,” Kinsley admitted.  “I had forgotten about him.  But I won’t ignore him anymore.”

 

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Detective Kinsley walked into the interview room where Caitlin was waiting.  This was one of the big ones she wanted to cross off her list.  If anyone else was involved, Caitlin was a prime candidate.  She knew she was keeping Caitlin’s husband Bill, and his lawyer, waiting in another room, but they could wait, especially since Bill had been such a pain in the ass by calling the lawyer in the first place.

She hadn’t talked to Bill yet, but she was convinced that he had to be involved since he would be the one who could literally get at Craig Bryson’s money.  The only question now was if Caitlin, his wife and partner, was also involved.  It only made sense that she was.

But then there was the other evidence that she had seen.  In all the videos of Caitlin that she had watched, Caitlin had shown the most loving care possible to Craig…with the one exception of painting his fingernails before taking him out in public.  But that was the one and only thing she had seen.  It was time now to let her face the evidence.

A minute later, Caitlin’s screams had nothing at all to do with worry about herself, and everything to do with her concern for her grandfather.  In minutes, there were real tears streaming down her face as she watched blatant abuse after blatant abuse being perpetrated on her grandfather.

But now came the real test.  The one thing that she hadn’t done with any of them except James.  She played the videos that the sound had been increased on so that Caitlin could easily hear all the hypnotic commands that Nichole had placed into his head.  But even there, after playing the first few, she skipped ahead to one of the last ones.  “I wanted you to hear this one particularly,” she told the crying woman.

“What more can there be?” Caitlin asked, still crying.

Kinsly hit the button and let Caitlin hear Nichole telling Craig that he would always think of his son James as a young boy, too young to take care of his financial affairs, and that he would want Bill to handle it all instead.”

Caitlin sat there with her jaw open.  “But Gramps told us last night at the dinner table that he wanted to make that change, and I was so happy because it was something that Bill had been harping about since Gramps first tried to commit suicide.”

“You were happy?” Kinsley asked.

“Yes!”  She shook her head.  “Bill and I haven’t exactly been seeing eye to eye on a few things lately.  In fact, things have been pretty rough between us.  But I thought that if Gramps would turn over his money matters to him that it would make Bill a lot happier, and hopefully, all of our problems would go away.”

“So Bill managing your grandfather’s money would have solved all your problems,” Kinsley stated.  How?”

“I don’t know.  Just that it would be one thing he’d be a lot happier about.”

“You didn’t mention getting any money out of it.  Wouldn’t that have helped things for you?”

“Why would we get Gramps’ money?  Bill works and so do I, and we live at home.  We’re actually fine as far as money goes.  Bill just doesn’t think so.  He thinks we need a lot more.”

“Was making your husband happy why you tried extra hard to show so much loving care for your grandfather?”

“What?  Making Bill happy?  No.  I just…I love him.  I love Gramps to death.  And…I really enjoyed doing all that with him…I mean, taking care of him like that.  I loved doing it.  It wasn’t for money.”

Kinsley wasn’t sure yet, but she didn’t get the feeling that Caitlin was involved.  For now though, Caitlin was going to stay on her suspect list.

 

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