The Last Jeskey - Chapter 34

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 34

 

(Day 7 – Wednesday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

Thanks to my wife, my shitty day had gone further to shit!  First Gary had tried to kill me again, then we searched the entire farm and found absolutely nothing, and now Natalie expected me to post a deputy to watch over not just Freaky, but two of her friends as well.  And worse, she and Pam McGregor were installing all three of them in the Jeskey house!  What was my idiot wife thinking?  Not only did I not have the manpower for that, but did she forget that Gary Jeskey was out there and wanted Freaky just as dead as he wanted Nat and me?  No, of course she didn’t forget that.  She expected me to provide the protection for them…at that house…where Gary lived and knew the territory better than anyone!

She was nuts!

But what do you say to your wife?  Especially when she ignores every logical argument you try to tell her.

I myself drove out to escort them home.  I left early and we met at a fast-food place out in the middle of the next county.  It was there that I met Shantel and Lisa.  They both seemed nice enough, but over burgers, I got the feeling that they both had some kind of history that maybe I, as the sheriff, should be aware of.  Right then though, I had more than enough on my plate to handle.  I simply didn’t want any more problems.

Watching Freaky in that burger joint was a bit of an eye-opening experience.  Nat reminded me that she hadn’t ever been away from the farm before.  She had never been in any kind of restaurant or even any kind of store.  She literally had no concept of either of those things.  Maybe Nat was right, Freaky needed someone to show her and teach her.  But why did my wife…and me…have to be in the middle of it?  Gary…and the Jeskeys.  That was why.  And if I didn’t find and arrest Gary Jeskey soon, I would no longer be in the middle of this mess, I’d be in the middle of a cemetery instead.

Freaky had certainly eaten hamburgers before.  In fact, she said she fixed them a lot for Bo and the boys.  But watching her eat one from that burger joint was somewhat fun.  First she was fascinated with the fact that it came wrapped in paper, then she had to take it apart and see all the fixings they had smothered it with, and when she took a bite of it, her entire face seemed to screw up with a strange look, because it didn’t taste anything like the burgers that she cooked.  Don’t get me started on her first taste of the soft drink she had…in a cup made of paper as well.

Since there were five of them in Pam’s car, Nat transferred to my car.  A while later, we pulled up in front of the Jeskey house at their farm.  The part I really didn’t like just then was that by that time it was dark.  I couldn’t see if Gary Jeskey was lying in wait for us anywhere.  “Stay in the car,” I told Nat.  “Let me look around first.”

I got out and went over to Pam’s car where they were all getting out of it.  “Stay in the car,” I told them.  “Let me check the house first.”

Freaky and her two friends looked confused, but Pam understood.  “Get back in for a minute,” she told them.  “It won’t be long.”

“Why?” Freaky asked.  “I’m home!”

“Just…be patient,” Pam told her.

I was glad to see Freaky getting back into the car, even if it was reluctantly.  As I saw it, only death awaited her inside.  Why didn’t she realize that?

I shined my flashlight around at as much as I could see from where the cars were parked.  I took it as a good sign that so far no bullets had come my way.  So far!  I went up onto the porch and pushed open the front door.  It wasn’t locked, but then I doubt that door had ever been locked.  I was tempted to examine the door a bit further to see if it even had a lock, but I didn’t.

My hand searched the wall as I went in and immediately found a light switch where I figured there should be one.  At least that much was right with the house, but how about everything else?  With the lights on, I carefully went from room to room, switching on the lights, and searching through the entire house, including the closets.  No sign of Gary.  No sign of anyone.  So where the hell was Gary staying now?  That worried me a lot.

I went back out to the cars and called the ladies in.  I noticed that Freaky came in fast and first.  She was anxious to get here.  As the other women came inside, Freaky went straight to the kitchen where she seemed to look around at her counters and everything there.  Then I saw her open a drawer and pull a small bottle out and open it.

“What’s that?” I asked as I headed toward her.

She seemed to ignore me as she dumped a pill out and stuck it in her mouth.  She was closing the bottle again by the time I got there and took the thing from her.  “My vitamins,” Freaky told me.  “I take them every day.  Bo tells me that they help keep me healthy.”

I noticed that the way she said it, she almost thought that Bo was still alive.  But then, Nat wanted to kill him again, even though he was already dead.  I took a look at the label on the vitamin bottle.  Estrogen.  There was a whole box of those little pill bottles in the drawer.  Some vitamins!  But I remembered Amanda telling me about them before.  I should have realized what they were.  Knowing more about who and what Freaky really was, I stuck the bottle of estrogen pills back into the drawer for her and closed it.  I was guessing that she was going to need those vitamins.  Probably for the rest of her life.

I saw Shantel and Lisa looking around.  They looked a bit disappointed.

“Yeah,” I heard Pamela say.  “It’s a bit of a dump.”

“A dump?” Shantel said.  “Hell, this ain’t nothin’!  You should see where I used to live.  This is great, except…”

“Except what?” Natalie asked.

“There ain’t no TV,” Shantel finished.

I saw Lisa looking quickly around again.  “There isn’t, is there.”

“I guess not,” Pamela replied.  “Sorry.”

“There’s three bedrooms though,” Natalie told them.  “And for now, I guess just move all the belongings you find out of the way.  We’ll figure out what to do with it all tomorrow.  And as for sheets on the beds, I guess for tonight you’ll just have to make do.”  She turned to Freaky.  “Freaky, do you have any extra sheets for the beds?”

Freaky looked confused.  “Extra sheets?  Why?”

“Never mind,” Natalie replied.  She turned back to Shantel and Lisa.  “We’ll have to look at that situation too.”

“That’s not something I’m overly worried about,” Lisa told her.

I got the impression that maybe Lisa had come from a very bad situation.  But then I remembered that she had been living in that women’s shelter, so yeah, no matter what, both Lisa and Shantel had probably come straight from hell.  But hey, now look where they were, right back in hell again.  Only they probably didn’t realize that.

I saw Natalie moving closer to Lisa and Shantel.  I just barely heard her say to them.  “I don’t know if you can do it or not, but one of the first things you may want to try to tackle with Freaky, is getting her to sleep in a bed.”

“Yeah,” Shantel said.  “That’s right.  She likes the floor.”

“We’ll work on it,” Lisa told Nat.

As I headed over to talk with Nat and Pam, I saw Lisa and Shantel start looking around at the big room that was the living room and kitchen combined.

“Nat.  Pam,” I said.  “Look.  I simply don’t have the manpower to keep someone posted here all the time.  Like it or not, the best I can do is have someone drive by every few hours.  And since we’ve got less of a night crew, what I’ll do is have someone park a cruiser here, and then leave.  I think just the sight of one of our cars here would probably be enough to make Gary think there’s a deputy staying in the house all the time.”

“Thanks Sheriff,” Pam said, before Natalie could protest my lack of support.  “We’re grateful for everything we can get.”

“What the hell?” Shantel exclaimed.

I turned and looked.  She had opened one of the two refrigerators.

“This whole thing is full of beer.  And nothing but beer!”

“Oh no!” Lisa shouted.  “Shantel!  Close that door and get away from it.  I won’t have you start drinking again!”

“But Leese!” Shantel said, still looking at all that beer.

“No buts!  Shut the door!”

As Shantel sadly closed that refrigerator door, Lisa turned to me.  “Is there any way we can get all that beer out of the house, and any other booze that’s around here too?  I won’t let her start drinking again.  I won’t!”

I nodded.  “Yeah.  Sure,” I replied.  I went over and opened the beer refrigerator for a better look.  I closed it and opened the other one.  That one looked awfully sparse inside as far as food went.  But there was no beer in it.  I opened the beer fridge again.  “Can someone give me a hand?  I’ll put it in my car.  And Nat, like it or not it’s going in our garage!”  It took some doing, but I didn’t laugh at the eye-roll that Nat gave me.

Once the beer finally got loaded, Nat turned to the three girls…women…girls.  They were all still fairly young.  “I’ll be back tomorrow sometime, and we’ll see what needs to be done,” she told them.  “I know you need food, but we’ll have to see about everything else.”

“I can’t be here,” Pam told them.  “I’ve got a lot of other things that I didn’t get done today because I had to bring you here.”

“We’ll manage,” Lisa told them.

I got the impression that Lisa was going to be taking charge of things.  That was fine with me.  I just hoped she was at least somewhat sensible.

Nat rode with Pam so she could get her car that was parked at Pam’s office.  I got in the car with the beer and followed both of them so they had some kind of protection in case Gary got any ideas.  I called the station and made arrangements to have a couple of deputies drive out to the Jeskey place and leave one of our cars behind.  I also left instructions for the few guys that would be on duty all night to drive out there once in a while to make sure everything looked okay.

Once Nat was in her car, I followed her home.  I spent quite a while emptying all that beer and stacking it out of the way in the garage.  Maybe the Jeskeys had a good idea.  A separate refrigerator just for the beer would be a good thing.  A real nice thing.  I contemplated buying one, then I remembered that there was an empty one no longer being used at the Jeskey place.  I could just grab that and install it here in my garage, and I already knew that all this beer would fit in it.  The perfect solution, and it wouldn’t cost me a dime.

Then I remembered Natalie and what she would probably have to say about it.  I knew without a doubt that there would never be a beer fridge in our house, anywhere!  Ever!  Another nice idea down the drain.

Shit!