The Last Jeskey - Chapter 14

 Hint: Pay attention to this one!

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 14

 

(Day 3 – Saturday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

I had gone to sleep last night with those damn Jeskeys on my mind, and I woke up in the morning the same way.  Dave had attacked one of my deputies and driven off.  Nobody knew where he had gone, even though we put the word out to the surrounding areas to be on the lookout for him.  Had he ever come home last night?  Had he gone back to the farm?  Despite it being the weekend, I would have to check on that this morning.

It was early and Nat was still asleep.  Worried about Dave and Gary Jeskey, I got out of bed and headed to the kitchen.  Five minutes later I had a mug of hot coffee in my hand.  My head was still wrapped around the Jeskey men.  I sat down with my coffee at the table and stared into the abyss.

Steve Jeskey was dead of course, but we had always had him pegged to be just as much of a psychopathic killer as his father Bo had been.  But just like his father, we never had any proof.  Never!

And then there had been Ben Jeskey.  Ben was different than all the rest.  Quieter.  But that didn’t mean he didn’t shy away from being willing to kill.  We had Ben pegged as having the most brains in the family.  Bo may have been in charge, but we were betting that it was Ben who was making all their business deals.  And trust me, we knew that none of those Jeskey boys had ever worked at a job a day in their lives, but every last one of them seemed to have plenty of money.

Dave was the next oldest, and now the oldest since Steven and Ben were dead.  I was guessing that made Dave the head of the family now.  A family of only two, him and his brother.  We always figured that Dave was the follower of the bunch.  Still mean as a rattlesnake, but more of a follower, inclined to just do whatever the others told him, even if it included killing…or anything else.

And then there was the youngest.  Gary.  The problem with Gary was that he wasn’t just mean, he was something of a prankster.  He liked causing trouble.  That fact alone had me worried about him.

Yeah, maybe Roxie had made a mistake when she killed the others.  She really should have killed Dave and Gary as well.  Would it matter?  Only time would tell.  And I was worried about that.

And then there was the other thing I had on my mind concerning the Jeskey boys.  Freak.  It was thanks to her that we had found all that stuff the Jeskey clan had hidden away.  False walls in a barn.  Who would have ever thought?  Evidently, they did.  And those places had been hard to spot too.  Drugs, stolen goods, and guns.  Lots of guns.  It had been the guns that surprised us the most.  We knew about…I mean suspected…the drugs, but gun running was another matter.

As much as I didn’t want to even consider such an idea, I supposed I had to be grateful for the help Freak had given us on that score.  Did that mean I owed her anything?  I wasn’t even going to consider such a dumb idea.

Natalie and I had talked quite a bit last night after I got home.  I told her all about what had gone down at the Jeskey farm with finding their hidden stashes in the barn.  I didn’t leave out that Dave and Gary Jeskey were both fugitives right now and we considered them both to be armed and dangerous.  Shit!  Just mention Jeskey to any law enforcement agent anywhere, and they automatically knew they were armed and dangerous.  With the Jeskeys, it was a given.

As she had told me she would, Natalie had done a lot of digging around, trying to find some kind of shelter where we could put Freak for a while.  She’d had a lot of trouble finding anything at all, but she finally got lucky two counties away.  A women’s shelter had a couple of spaces open, and after Nat had talked to them on the phone, and then driven all the way out there to further talk to them, they had agreed to take Freak in for a while.  Of course, it was only for a limited time, and only as long as they had the room.  And if someone else from their area needed the space, Freak would be out.  Still, it was a solution, if only temporary.

In telling me what she had told the people about Freak, Nat had used the word ‘slave’ a number of times.  As far as I could see, it was just as good a word for her as any.  In fact, it might have been the perfect word for her.  Even if, as Nat said, Freak didn’t realize she was a slave.  She probably didn’t even have any concept of what a slave actually was.

When we left things last night, Nat and I had both decided we would head up to that farm this morning.  She had to talk to Freak and let her know of the space available for her in that shelter, and I had to check to see if either Dave or Gary had bothered to go home.  Going there and finding their trucks there would be about the best thing I could think of.  How likely that was, remained to be seen.

Nat finally came out half-dressed.  She kissed me on the top of my head before pouring herself a cup of coffee.  “Are we still on for this morning?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I confirmed.

“Good!” she declared.  “I want that girl out of there.”

“Huh!” I grunted.  “The only problem is, I don’t think she’s gonna want to go.”

“How can she not?”

 I shook my head.  “Something tells me that convincing her isn’t going to be as easy as you think.”

“Will, my boss said we’ve got to get her out of there, no matter what.”

“You’re willing to go there and drag her out forcibly?”

“Yes!  If I have to.  Even my boss told me to drag her out if I need to.”

I considered that.  “Yeah.  I’d agree with that too.  Just remember that I don’t expect it’s going to be that easy.  If we do get her out, one way or another, are you prepared to drive her all the way down to that shelter by yourself?  We don’t know how much of a fight she might put up.”

“I’ll do what I have to,” she told me.

She sounded confident, but I knew she was worried about that situation.

“Let’s round her up first,” I said.  “Then we’ll stop at the station, and I’ll have Amanda ride down with you.  I’d feel a whole lot better about it if you had a deputy along for protection.”

She considered that, then came over and kissed me on the head again.  “Thanks Will.  Now get dressed or we’re never going to get this done!”

Damn woman!

Natalie drove to where she works, and I headed to the station.  The first thing I did was to check on any news about the Jeskeys.  Neither Gary nor Steve had been spotted yet.  Damn!  Something told me they were once again going to be difficult to find.

An hour later, Natalie called me and told me she was leaving for the Jeskey farm to get Freak.  I got into my car and headed that way too.  The plan was for us both to get there together.  When I got to the dirt road, I found Natalie’s car sitting in the middle of it, waiting for me.  I followed right behind her to the farm.  The road led us through the gate and toward the house.  I noticed four pickup trucks parked in front of the house instead of just the three that had belonged to Bo, Ben, and Steve.  One of our fugitives had come home!

I had just turned my engine off and had started to get out of my car when one of those pickup trucks suddenly moved, and it started moving fast!  I swore up and down as I got back in my car and got it started again.  I had noticed Dave driving that truck as it literally screamed past me throwing up dirt and dust all around it.  By the time I got my car moving and turned around, his truck was completely out of sight.  I floored the gas.  It wasn’t until I was out of the gate that I turned on my lights and siren.  It was only the dust cloud from the dirt road in the distance that showed me where he was.

Yeah, I was driving a squad car.  A car with a big engine and a suspension built for chasing other vehicles, but make no mistake, I knew that the truck Dave was driving had a big engine too, and it was probably loaded with all kinds of stuff to make chasing him a bit more difficult.  No matter though, I knew that in the end I could outrun him.  Unless he headed offroad.  Then I was going to be in trouble.  There was no way I could keep up with his truck if he cut cross-country.  Something told me he probably knew that too.

With my lights and siren screaming, I hit the paved road and was able to push even faster.  So did he.  No surprise.  I was catching up, but slowly.  When he got to the turn off, I expected him to fishtail all over the place.  He did some, but not nearly to the extent that I expected.  That was bad news for me, it meant he could drive.  Unfortunately, when he had made that turn, he had turned in a bad direction for me.  He wasn’t heading anywhere where I could get help from one of my deputies.  He was heading further out into the boonies.  Still, the chase was on.

Make no mistake, mile after mile we screamed down that road at speeds that boggled my mind.  He had that truck of his running at over a hundred miles an hour.  If some unlucky driver got even close to our side of the road, he’d be left dead and splattered all over the place, and I’d have to stop chasing Dave to handle the problem.  If Dave actually hit a small enough car with that big truck of his, Dave would probably survive it just fine and escape.  The other car, well, it would be gruesome.

But then Dave turned again, and I mentally did a lot of swearing.  He had turned off onto another dirt road, and I already knew that road led to areas where he could leave the roads behind completely.  I was going to lose him to the fields and woods, and there wasn’t anything I’d be able to do about it.  Still, I raced after him, catching up slowly.  Too slowly.  What the hell was I going to do if I ever got on his bumper?  At a hundred miles an hour, that was a death sentence for me too.  But catching him was my job.

I saw the big field up ahead and didn’t miss all the trees back behind it.  I also didn’t miss Dave turning off the dirt road to go directly into that field.  Shit!  I couldn’t follow.  But what happened next was something completely unexpected.  As Dave turned off to go across the field, he hit a bit of a culvert.  Normally, that probably wouldn’t have caused him any problem at all in that truck he was driving, but at a hundred miles an hour?  Dave’s truck went rolling sideways and kept tumbling and rolling for the longest time.  I hit the brakes and didn’t get my car stopped until I had reached the point where he had gone into the field.

That pickup had tumbled its way for what I could only call an enormous distance.  What was left of the truck was now a mangled mess, and it had finally rolled to a stop completely upside down.  I had no doubt I’d be looking at nothing but a dead body inside when I got there.

I got out of my car and didn’t run, I saw no need for that.  I walked my way cautiously out into the field.  Halfway there I drew my gun, just to be safe.  I held the gun ready to shoot as I cautiously approached the upside-down pickup.  I stayed way back at first, knowing that if Dave was somehow alive in there, most likely he’d have a gun, and he wouldn’t be afraid to use it.  What I saw though, showed me that Dave wasn’t going to be much of a danger to me at all.  I put my gun away and moved in closer for a better look.

The windshield of the truck was on the ground.  Inside, the steering wheel had broken away and Dave’s body was impaled on the column.  A closer look showed me something else.  Unbelievably, he was still alive.  He just wasn’t going to remain alive much longer, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

He must have heard me coming because his head moved slightly in my direction.  Just moving it that much had to be an effort for him.  “Sheriff,” he said.  “Damn you.”

What do you say to a man like that, who’s dying?  “Dave,” I replied.

I crawled my way under the truck as close as I could get and took a better look at the situation.  I needn’t have bothered.  I gave him, at most, another minute to live.

“You found the stuff in the barn,” he breathed more than said.

“Yup,” I replied.  “Came as quite a surprise.  Especially the guns.”

He tried to laugh and wound up with his body spasming painfully.  I thought he’d be dead there and then, but he kept breathing.  “You didn’t find it all though,” he said at that point.  “Ha!” he managed to laugh.  “You didn’t even find the half of it.  Especially our money!  And you’ll never find any of it.”

“Money?” I said.  The fact that there was some didn’t surprise me in the least.  It only made sense.

“Lots of it,” he bragged.  “Gary will get it all now, and you’ll never find him.”

“If we don’t catch him first,” I told him.

“That’ll never happen.  Gary’s too slippery.”

I said nothing to that.  I knew we’d get him eventually.  But Dave was dying, why ruin his only hopes.  Since he was dying, and seemed to be in a talkative mood, I decided to do some asking, just in case he might actually answer a question or two before he’d never be able to talk again.  “Dave, you guys have killed people, right?”

He grunted in pain, and I saw it affect his entire body.  “I guess you could say that,” he finally replied.

“Who?” I asked.

He managed to get out a small laugh.  “Wouldn’t you like to know.  Too many for me to remember, and even I don’t know how many Dad and Steve have done themselves.”

That wasn’t good news.  “Where do you put the bodies?” I asked.

“Where you’ll never find them.  And don’t bother asking.  I may be dying, but I’m not telling.”

Shit!  Still, he was being somewhat talkative.  I needed something else to ask, but that something else was the something that had been taking up way too much of my mind for the last few days.  “How about Freak,” I said.  “What’s her story?  Where’d she come from?”

I wasn’t sure if I’d get an answer or not out of him, especially since his body was suddenly wracked with a huge spasm that I could tell was nothing but pure pain.  But once his body settled down and he had a chance to gasp a few breaths, he managed to get talkative again.

“Freak,” he said.  “The freak.  We never did come up with an actual name for her.  We just referred to her as the freak, and for no better reason we just kept calling her that.”

“So you don’t know who she is?” I asked.

“I know most of it,” he said.

“Then where’d she come from?  We never had a clue there was anyone like her living out there with you.”

He nodded.  “You weren’t supposed to.  Dad wanted us to keep real quiet about her, so we did.”

“Why?” I asked.

His body had a bit of a minor spasm, but he doggedly stayed alive.  “I don’t know what it was all about, but Dad had some kind of big falling out with his father, my granddad.  And then we heard that when Granddad died, he left everything to Bo’s younger brother Clive.  I only met Uncle Clive a few times in my entire life, cause the two of them hated each other so much.  I can only guess that it had something to do with the reason Dad and his father didn’t get along, but I could be wrong about that.  Dad refused to talk about it at all.  Anyway, after Granddad died, Dad found out that Clive inherited everything from him, including all the land and all his money, and it was a lot of money.  Bo was hoping mad about it, so I guess he and Steve went off in search of his brother.  They found him and killed him.  But when they found him they discovered he had a wife and a small son too.  They killed the wife along with Clive, but Dad decided to take their son instead of killing him, kind of like as revenge for whatever was going on between Dad and his father, and Dad and his brother.”

“Wait a minute,” I said.  “A son, right?”

“Yeah.  He was just a real young kid.  I don’t know how old, but…young.  Three, four, five maybe, but not any older than that.”

“What happened to the boy if Bo took him?”

“He and Steve brought the kid back here to our farm with the intention of raising him.”

“Who was the kid?” I asked.  “Other than Clive’s son.  Did he have a name?”

His body got hit by another painful spasm for a moment, then he took a moment to breathe.  “It was a long time ago.  I’m not sure of his name anymore.  Brad or Brian, or something.  Who knows.”

“So where is he?” I asked.  “What became of him?”

He tried to laugh and wound up in major pain for a minute.  Then said, “Who do you think Freak is?”

“Wait a minute.  Are you trying to tell me that Freak, is a boy?”

“I told you, Dad took the kid instead of killing him, just to get some kind of weird revenge against his old man and brother.  And he couldn’t think of any better way to do that than to make that kid into something so embarrassing that his father and brother would probably put a bullet into the kid’s head if they knew.  In fact, Dad always regretted that neither of them would ever know what he did.  I have seen Dad when he was drunk, after Freak brought him something, then as soon as Freak left he would go off a bit and stare up at the sky and yell, Clive, see what I did to your son?  And I’m only gonna make it worse!”  He tried to laugh again and wound up with another major pain spasm.

“Vindictive,” I noted.  “So Bo turned the kid into Freak.”

“Yup.  Oh, not right away.  The boy hung around the house for about a month or two, then Dad took him to a woman he knew, and when they came back, the boy was wearing a dress.  All girl’s clothes.  From that point on we were never allowed to call him by his name, and we weren’t allowed to even refer to him as a boy in any way at all.  We were supposed to consider him a girl…period.”  He had a minor bout of pain then settled down.  “Seemed stupid at the time to all of us but Dad, but we all got used to it.  After a while, it was all just normal.”

His face winced up into some major pain, then it settled down and he breathed for a moment.  “Eventually, Dad even got some kind of girl hormone pills that he made the kid take every single day, and she’s still taking them.  They must have worked.”  He laughed again, but this time it didn’t hurt him as much.  “Have you seen her?  All girl!”  He laid there panting for breath for a few moments.

“Steve,” I said while he was struggling to breath.  “Freak’s…sexual area.  It’s all…modified.  What happened there?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Dad wanted to make sure the kid would never be anything but a girl, ever again, so he had it done.  The idea was to make sure that no matter what, Freak would never be able to have a kid.  His brother’s line of the family would be completely gone, leaving just us.  Dad also got a kick out of the fact that for the rest of her life Freak would never be able to enjoy sex with anyone.  Not normally anyway.  Huh!” he tried to laugh, then winced in major pain again.  “I’m pretty sure that didn’t work out as well as Dad intended.  I get the impression that sometimes Freak likes getting pounded up the ass.  Shit, we do it to her often enough, and she never even acts like she minds at all.”

His body started spasming again and I figured it was the end for him, but he calmed down after a few moments and gasped a couple more breaths.  Then he tried to laugh again.  “Now you got yourself some real trouble Sheriff.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Cause now that I won’t be around anymore, Gary is the only one left.  And what you may or may not realize yet, is that Gary is by far the worst of us.  He’s quieter and sneakier too.”  He struggled for a moment to breathe, then continued.  “It wasn’t me and Gary that was so close, it was me and Ben, and Gary and Steve were practically two peas in a pod.  Ben and me actually handled most of the business for the family, while most of the time Dad, Steve, and Gary handled the rough stuff.”

He laughed again and went into another brief spasm.  He gasped another breath, then said, “I know for a fact that Gary’s already planning on killing you and your entire family.  And before he’s done, he’s gonna kill Freak as well.”  Once again he tried to laugh, which only sent him into more death spasms.  “That’s what you get for messing up our business!”

I watched as he went through a few moments of total agony.  I had no doubt he was going to die right then and there, and there was nothing in the world that anyone could do to stop it.  But instead of dying, he calmed down a bit and managed to gasp a few more breaths of air.  I took a chance and asked one more question.  “Dave,” I said.  “If Bo did that to Freak, then who did the mutilation on him?”

He was about to try to answer, when he was wracked with more spasms of pain.  I figured there was no way I was going to get an answer, but as he was breathing his last breath, he breathed, “The witch.”

With that, I realized I was looking at a corpse.  Not just someone who was dying, but someone who was already dead.

Gary was coming after not just me, but my entire family, which meant Natalie.  I could accept the risk to myself, but not Nat.  She was going to need protection.

And what about Freak?  Nat had more reason than ever to get that girl…yeah, girl, away from that farm.  Whether Freak liked it or not.