The Last Jeskey - Chapter 28

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 28

 

(Day 6 – Tuesday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

“Sheriff,” Russ said as he walked into my office with a stack of papers.

“What now?” I asked, frustrated to have yet another problem grace my desk.

“The DNA results are back on all of Freaky’s clothes.”

“Already?”

“Already,” he confirmed.  “Someone must have put a rush on it and actually managed to get them to move.”

“More likely someone saw the name Jeskey and realized it was going to be important,” I replied as Russ handed me the stack of papers.  “Thanks,” I told him.  “I take it you looked through it already?”

“Of course!” he said as if he was offended that I should even ask.

“If you try running against me for sheriff, I’ll shoot you!” I told him.

He laughed and walked out.

I looked through the top paper.  “Shit!”  I looked through the next one.  “Shit!”  I did the same with all of them, one at a time.  “Shit, shit, shit!”  Not all the blood stains had come back with DNA matches to people in the system.  There were two that didn’t, but all the rest had names of different missing women.  The DNA of the two where they couldn’t match them to anyone were for different women as well.  And of course, none of it matched Freaky’s DNA.

“Shit!”

Were they murders?  Or just some random blood stains despite the bullet and knife holes in the clothes?  No body, no murder.  Except I didn’t believe that for a second.  Every one of those pieces of clothing we had taken from Freaky were from different women who had been murdered.  I honestly believed that.  No proof!  Of course there was no proof.  This was the Jeskeys.

One thing that didn’t surprise me though is that the DNA lab one hundred percent concluded that Freaky was a family relation to Bo and his sons.  Most likely Bo Jeskey was her uncle.  Of course he was.  And then there was the other tiny little checkbox on Freaky’s DNA paperwork.  Male!

“Shit!”

Which all brought me back to the question of the week.  Where the hell was Gary Jeskey?  Did he go home to that farm of theirs now that we hadn’t been out there in a few days?  Something told me I better check on that.  Soon!  Like today!

Which reminded me of yet another thing I still needed to arrange to be done out there.  The Jeskeys may have owned a farm, even though they never actually farmed that land, but most of their land was woods.  I needed to organize some way to search those woods.  We still had all that missing money to account for, along with one big safe.  And…would those men have been dumb enough to stick all those missing dead bodies on their own land?  Yeah.  Dumb enough, and smart enough.

How the hell was I gonna search a bunch of wooded land that was known to be a bear paradise?

I picked up my phone.  “Russ!  Get the hell in here.”

Russ and I discussed the matter and even though we shouldn’t, we both felt that because of the difficulty of the situation we would only leave one deputy back at the station and we’d call in the nighttime woman who answered our phone when we’re not here.  With that decided, I sent Russ off to do the paperwork for the search warrant so we could actually, legally, search that farm.  All of it, especially all those woods.

Which left me the other tiny detail to arrange so we could have all the manpower we could get.  Natalie.  I had one of my deputies following her all over creation in hopes of keeping her from getting shot – again.  Now that she had a bullet hole in her arm, I noticed that Nat wasn’t quite so against having a deputy follow her around everywhere.  She had complained about the deputy before she got shot, but now, afterwards, would she complain about not having him for the few hours I was going to need him for some actual deputy stuff?  Something told me that might just be the case.

I picked up the phone and called.  “Hey Nat,” I said, nice as can be.  “How’s it going today?”  I listened as she told me one or two things I couldn’t have cared less about.  “That’s great Honey,” I told her, as if I had been actually listening.  “Listen, Nat,” I said.  “We’ve got to go out and search that Jeskey farm again, including the woods this time, and I hate to say it, but I’m going to need that deputy I assigned to you for a little while.  I promise though, he’ll be back just as soon as we finish at the farm.”

She didn’t answer right away.  Uh-oh.  Then she said, “Yeah, fine Will.  I just appreciate the effort you’re taking by assigning someone to watch my back.”  Whew!  Safe!

“Like I said,” I told her.  “I’ll have someone back to you just as soon as I can.”

“Thanks,” she said.  “I appreciate it.  Anything new on Freaky’s case?” she asked me.

“Uh…one or two things,” I told her.  “We got the DNA results back already on all her clothes we took out of there.”

“And?”

And every last damn piece of bloodstained clothing showed a different woman, and that included two of them that we couldn’t find a match for.”

“So?”

Was she kidding?  “So we could have more dead bodies out there somewhere, just like all the others we can’t find.  And they’re all women!”

“Was any of that blood Freaky’s?” she asked.

“None of it!  The results did show that Bo Jeskey is definitely Freaky’s uncle though, and I noticed one other tiny thing in the paperwork as well.”

“What?”

“I think it’s pretty much confirmed that Freaky used to be Brian.  The DNA said male.”

She didn’t say anything about that for a moment.  I was about to say goodbye when she said, “Will, now that the DNA results confirmed that it’s Freaky, and that Freaky used to be Brian, will you call the behavioral center where she is and relate those results to them?  I think they might want someone to warn them that Freaky is…or used to be…a boy, even though she identifies one hundred percent as a woman, and pretty much has all her life.”

“Why me?  I didn’t take her out there.  In fact, Pam McGregor is the one who wants to ride shotgun on her life.  Why can’t she do it?”

“Maybe that would be the best idea,” Natalie agreed.  “Can you call her and discuss it with her?”

As if I didn’t have enough to do today.  “Sure,” I said.  “Just give me a month.”

“Will!”

“Yes, alright,” I told her.  “I’ll call her as soon as I get a chance.”

“Thanks Will.  Good hunting.”  With that, she hung up.

Good hunting.  Damn.  I was arranging to go into bear territory, and shooting those things was a crime!  Good hunting!

Half an hour later, I left the station and headed over to the courthouse to pick up the warrant.  When I got inside though, I found the judge was busy…with Pam McGregor.  I was in a bit of a rush though so I kind of forced my way in.  “Judge,” I said.  “I hate to interrupt, but is that warrant ready?  We’ve got a lot of ground to search.”

He picked up a paper on his desk and tossed it closer to me.  I went in to grab it.

“Anything new about Freaky?” Pam asked me.

“Uh…I just told Natalie that we got the DNA results back from all those clothes of hers that we had tested.  Every piece showed DNA from a different woman, which means that it’s possible that we could have even more dead bodies out there that haven’t been found yet.”

“How about Freaky’s blood, any matches for that?”

“Nat asked me the same thing.  The answer is no.  I let Nat know though that Bo Jeskey is definitely Freaky’s uncle, and that…  And here’s the part that gets me the most, Freaky’s DNA showed that she’s definitely male.  Which I guess means that Freaky used to be Brian.  And Pam, Nat wanted me to tell you about that and see if you wanted to let that behavioral center know about it for…some reason or another.”

Pam seemed to consider that.

“I would say yes,” Judge Reinhart said.

“Yes, I agree,” Pam said too.  “Thanks Sheriff.  I’ll call them as soon as I get back to the office.”

“Will,” the judge said.  “Just so you know, I just signed the paperwork to officially make Pam here Freaky’s advocate.  But in doing so, I insisted on a small change.  One she’s not too happy about.”

“Oh?” I said, not really interested.

“That girl,” the judge continued, “and notice I said girl, despite what her DNA says about her.  From what I’ve been told, by both Pam here and your wife…”

“Natalie?”

“Yes.  We just talked to her.”

“Okay,” I said, now wondering why he needed Nat’s opinion on anything.

“According to Pam and Natalie, Freaky identifies entirely as a woman.  She has all her life.  She wouldn’t even begin to know how to behave as a male of any kind.  Not to mention, from what I’ve been told, her entire body appears to be all female.  In every way practical, she’s a woman.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I got that.  I’ve seen her.”

“Good!  Anyway, the point of this is that it’s entirely possible that that girl has been raised in almost complete isolation.  From what I hear she doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what reality is.  Thanks to Bo Jeskey, she’s been deprived of her family, her birthright, her sex, her chance at any kind of a life, and any joy and love that she should have been emersed in since her birth.”

I hated it when Reinhart got long winded, but he was famous for that.  I always chalked it up to this being a backwoods community and him wanting to be seen as the biggest bigshot in the area.

“I don’t want to take any chance,” the judge continued, “of anyone else trying to take any more from her than they should.  Now it’s not that I don’t trust Pam here, I do.  In fact, she’s to have full control of everything to do with her with the exception of one thing.  Money!”

He had shocked me.  “Money?  What money?  We haven’t found their stash of money yet.  Although, I’m hoping we will today…just as soon as I can get out to that farm and start looking for it.”

“Will,” the judge said.  “There’s a chance that Freaky could be due a pile of money from her father’s side of the family.”

“Pile?”

“Bank accounts, and more importantly, the sale of all that land that they owned, which was a lot.”

“So Freaky is rich?” I asked.

“Maybe, maybe not.  It’s just as possible she won’t get a single dime, although I’m betting we’ll come up with something.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Where do I come into this?”

“You don’t!  Purposely.  I won’t let you.”

“Uh…me?  For what?”

“Pam isn’t happy about this, but because of the amount of money that could be involved, I want three people to oversee those funds and be the trustees, not just Pam here.”

“Okay,” I said.  “And  what does, or rather doesn’t that have to do with me?”

“Not you, I’ve talked to Natalie.  She’ll be the second person on that list.  I just wanted you to know since she’s your wife.”

I could see that.  “Okay, thanks for the head’s up.”  At least it wouldn’t involve more work for me.  Nat could play with Freaky’s money all she wanted for all I cared.

“I just need to come up with a third person now.  And I want someone who isn’t related to your wife or Pam.”

I hadn’t wanted the responsibility anyway.  “How about you?” I suggested.

He shook his head.  “It’s best if I don’t.  My job is to mediate disputes.  Being part of that could be a conflict of interest.”

“Sorry,” I said.  “I’ve got no suggestions.”

He nodded.  “Yeah.  I was afraid of that.  Good luck finding anything at that farm today.”

“Thanks,” I said as I saluted him and Pam both with that warrant.  I needed to get out of there and get busy with more important things.  Darn Freaky was taking up way too much of my time!