The Last Jeskey - Chapter 10

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 10

 

(Day 2 – Friday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

“What are we going to do with her?”  They were the first words my wife spoke when we had woken up that morning.

“Don’t know yet,” I replied.  It was something that had been haunting me as well.  “She’s not under arrest.  We’ve got no reason to hold her.”

“But we can’t send her back home!” she insisted.  “Not if they’ve been treating her like that, not to mention raping her left and right.”

“No,” I agreed.  “She can’t go home.  Not to stay anyway.  It certainly wouldn’t be safe.”

“Can we arrest Dave and Gary on slavery charges?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.  “Was it Bo who was really behind it all, or did his boys have anything to do with it too?  Like with everything else with that bunch, we’ve got no real evidence.  I’m planning on talking to the D.A. about the case this morning.  Let’s see what he says.”

“There’s got to be something we can arrest those other two Jeskeys for,” she pressed.

“Probably,” I replied.  “After the D.A., I have no doubt I’ll be applying for a search warrant.  From what we heard from her last night, we need to find where they’re hiding their drugs and those guns.”

“And anything else you can dig up as well.”

“If we can find anything at all,” I agreed.

“Just don’t take her home!” she argued.

“I may not have a choice,” I told her.  “Besides, I’m hoping she can point out those hiding places the Jeskeys have.  That would be a major victory for us.  But as to what happens to Freak, it may all depend on what evidence we actually find out there.  In the past, we’ve never found anything at all when it comes to that family.  We suspect they’re behind a major portion of all the bad stuff that’s happened in this county.  We’ve just never once gotten any decent evidence for any of it.  Bo and his boys have always been masters of hiding what they’ve done.”

“Like they’ve been hiding that girl.”

“Yeah.  Pretty much.”

The surprise came when Nat and Freak were finally ready to leave.  Freak looked so different wearing Nat’s skirt and top.  It was just those boots of hers that floored me.  And then Nat came over and dropped the bomb about all her clothes having blood on them.  It was another matter to put before the D.A. and another reason I was sure the judge would have no problem granting us the search warrant.

With Freak looking like a completely different person than yesterday, I put her in the back of my squad car and drove her back to the station.  You should have seen the reaction she got from literally everyone.  The two biggest things I heard talked about though were why was she wearing those dumb boots, and the fact that her hair was dragging on the ground behind her.  But overall, the general reaction was amazement.  Yeah, despite the crummy boots she was wearing, she looked like an entirely different person.  She smelled a whole lot better too.  Trust me!

I left her in the care of everyone in the squad room, got back in my car and headed over to have a little chat with the D.A.

D.A. Dale Murphy was one of those no-nonsense kind of guys.  It wasn’t that I particularly liked him.  It was more like I simply didn’t mind him.  He did his job.  Sometimes he made decisions I didn’t like, more often he sided with me.  That was good enough.

He sat patiently behind his desk while I laid out the facts about Roxie shooting Bo, Steve, and Ben.  And then I started telling Murphy about how accommodating Roxie had been afterwards, and I didn’t forget to include the little talk she had agreed to have with Freak.  Just saying the name Freak seemed to send Dale’s head into an almost imperceptible spin, but it was enough that I noticed it.

“Freak?,” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.  “Besides the murders, the biggest surprise of the day.”

“You make it sound like this is a person.”

“Without a doubt.  The question though is what kind of person is she?”

“What’s her name?” he asked.

“As far as we can tell, Freak.  Just…Freak.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Nope, and just getting that much information on her was almost impossible.  Roxie told us a little about her, what little she knows that is.”

“So what’s her problem that you had to arrest her?”

“I didn’t arrest her, we just hauled her out of that house and my wife decided to take her home with us last night to clean her up a bit.  She was…the filthiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life.  Not to mention, she has the longest hair of anyone I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He shrugged.  “Some women aren’t exactly a bundle of joy to be around.”

“Not like this, they’re not.”

“So the only name you found for her is Freak, and you haven’t been able to dig up anything different.”

“Not yet,” I told him.  “And according to what we got out of her last night, it’s Freak, and it’s always been Freak, and she doesn’t remember anything else.”

“Or not remembering is simply more convenient,” he pointed out.  “Can we get a DNA sample and have it tested?”

“Are you willing to foot the bill?” I asked.  “But before you answer, we may very well need it, for a number of reasons.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, according to my wife, she believes rather strongly that Freak has been living as a slave.  A real live slave to those Jeskey boys.  And let me tell you, everything we heard from her yesterday and last night was absolutely hair-raising.  Natalie wants me to ask you if we can arrest Dave and Gary on slavery charges.  To tell the truth though, slavery may be the least of the charges we can level at them.”

“Charges for the remaining Jeskeys?” he asked, his head perking up.  “Like what?”

“How about incest for a start.  Incest and pimping.”

“Incest!” he exclaimed.  “Really!”

“More than really,” I replied.  “In fact, pretty much absolutely!  For as long as she can remember, and Dean, she ain’t but nineteen or twenty.  Her age has been a bit hard to tell though because she was so filthy.”

“Did you ask her age?”

“Not yet.  We just found her yesterday, and most of that time she was pretty adamant about not opening her mouth at all.  Like I said, fortunately, Roxie helped us with that.  A lot!”

“So you said,” he replied.  “I’ll take it under advisement.  Look,” he said.  “We’re talking about the Jeskeys here.  We’ve never had one shred of evidence against them other than for things so minor we probably shouldn’t have even bothered serving them with it, but we’ve always known…sorry, suspected…that they were doing a lot more than just robbing candy stores.”

“They’ve been pretty darn good about hiding the evidence,” I pointed out.  “Like I said earlier, from what Roxie told me, I’m guessing they’ve got some kind of burial or disposal site for all their bodies.  We just need to find it.”

“Don’t I wish!” he agreed.

“We may have a few other angles on the Jeskeys now too,” I told him.

“Oh?”

“Freak mentioned during dinner last night that the guys talked a lot about not just drugs, but guns too.  We had no idea they were running guns.  But Freak mentioned automatics, and AKs, which I’m taking means AK-47s.  So those guns, along with the drugs, have to be stashed somewhere.”

“Yeah, but where?” he said.

“That’s always been the problem,” I conceded.  “A big problem.  But this morning my wife told me something else that she found out from Freak.  According to her, all of Freak’s clothes have blood stains on them.  And none of that blood belongs to her.”

It looked like he couldn’t understand that.  “How can that be?”

“The simplest answer?” I said.  “All her clothes are coming from their victims.  We may have DNA evidence for a few more murders there.  Hopefully.”

He considered that.  “Get her DNA,” he agreed.  “If nothing else, we better have it to eliminate any of that blood as being hers.  And Will, if you can find anything solid to arrest Dave and Gary Jeskey on, do it!”

“That was my plan,” I agreed.  “My biggest hangup right now is…what the hell do we do with Freak?  Neither my wife nor I have the slightest clue, especially if I don’t find enough evidence to arrest Dave and Gary.  But even if I do, that girl is so out of touch with reality that something needs to be done.  Despite that though, she really just wants to go home, where she understands her life.”

Dean considered that for a moment.  “Don’t ask me what we need to do with her.  It’s not my department.  As I see it, if we can’t legally hold her on anything, she can go where she wants.  Including home, back where she came from.”

That wasn’t an answer I wanted.