The Last Jeskey - Chapter 16

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 16

 

(Day 3 – Saturday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

After spending a major part of the day dealing with Dave Jeskey, I finally had a chance to get to one of the primary things that had been on my list, going out to talk with Wendel Cramp, the guy who owned the junkyard and had supposedly seen Bo Jeskey kill Tommy Simmons.  I was about halfway out there when my phone rang.  “Hello,” I said, praying it wouldn’t be another something to keep me from doing what still needed to be done.

“Hey Will,” Natalie’s voice came back.

“Hi Honey,” I replied happily.  “Everything go okay with dropping Freak off?”

“It took Amanda and me both to get her out of that house, but we just dropped her off and we’re heading home now.”

“Good,” I replied.  “Have a good trip.”

“We will,” she replied.  “Did you ever catch Dave Jeskey?”

“Yeah.  But not until he turned off the road, hit a ditch, rolled his truck a few dozen times, and died as result.  I did manage to talk to him a bit before he actually died though.  And mostly the only thing he was willing to talk about was Freak.”

“Freak?  What did he tell you?”

“Not nearly enough,” I replied.  “Except that the only reason she seems to be alive was so that Bo Jeskey could turn her into some kind of living example of something too shameful to believe.”

“Will,” Nat said.  “You know that because of my job I’ve seen some women who’ve been living in the worst conditions possible and who’ve gone through some pretty horrific things.  Things even worse than Freaky seems to have been through.  But there’s just something about Freaky’s situation that really gets to me.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I know what you mean.  One new thing I can tell you though is that Dave let me know that Freak is actually related to all of them.  Something happened between Bo and his brother Clive, and Bo went out and murdered both his brother and his wife.  Then he took their kid home with him for the purpose of some kind of warped retribution against his brother.  There’s a problem there though that I’m not going to go into over the phone.”

“What kind of problem?” she asked.

“One that most likely we’re not going to be able to do anything about.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s a bit too unbelievable to be true.”

I heard her sigh.  “Like everything else in her life.”

“I guess that’s true,” I agreed.  “But now that Dave is dead, Freak and Gary may be the only two Jeskeys left on planet earth.”

“The only two?” she asked.

“I don’t really know,” I conceded.  “But it’s very possible.”

“Will.  A thought just occurred to me.  If it’s just Freak and Gary left, is there any possibility that Freaky might be able to lay claim to any money that Bo and his boys might have had?”

“Not a clue,” I admitted.  “But now that you mention it, when we searched that farm, the one thing we didn’t find was money.  And I’m pretty sure there’s got to be some somewhere since they were running not just drugs, but guns too.  And despite the fact that none of those men ever worked at a job in their lives, they all seemed to have plenty of money for their needs.  Hell, that truck of Dave’s that I chased this morning had to cost a good bit.”

“Is there any way we can check to see if she’s entitled to anything they have?”

“We haven’t even found any money yet,” I reminded her.

“But just in case.”

“Uh, I really don’t know.”  An idea struck me.  “Tell you what.  Roxie asked for a public defender, which around here means either Pam or Les McGregor.  I can mention it to whichever of them shows up to talk to Roxie, which should have already happened since I’ve been tied up with Dave Jeskey all day.  Either way, I’ll get in touch with them about it.”

“That might be good,” Nat replied.  “Will, when you check with them, maybe they might have an idea for a better solution as to what we can do with her too.  We were lucky to get her into that shelter, but I already know they’re not going to keep her very long.”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “I think that’s usually the case with those places, especially since they’re not in our county.  Tell you what, I’ll call the McGregors now and pass the word for you.”

“Great Will.  Thanks.”

I ended the call and pushed the buttons to call back to the station.  I instructed my chief deputy, Russ, to contact the McGregors and have one of them give me a call.  Another thought came to mind before I hung up on him.  “Russ,” I said.  “I also need you to put the word out to all the law enforcement agencies in the state to see if any of them have a possible murder case for a Clive Jeskey and his wife.  Or at least see if any of them have ever heard of him.  According to Dave Jeskey, Bo killed him and his wife.  Knowing Bo though, I’m betting this could be a missing person’s case instead of murder.  And Russ, it would be a pretty old case if it exists.  Let’s at least see if anyone has ever even heard of Clive Jeskey.”

“Who’s Clive?” Russ asked.  “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Me either,” I told him.  “Evidently, he was Bo’s brother.”

“On it,” Russ told me.

The junkyard came into sight.  It was time to get back into my overdue business so we could put the murder of Bo Jeskey and his sons to rest.  Not to mention, we might have another murder case on our hands, Roxie’s brother Tommy.  If there was an ancient case concerning Bo’s brother Clive, I wasn’t sure who’s jurisdiction that would fall into, but hopefully it wouldn’t be mine.

Wendel Cramps wasn’t exactly the brightest lightbulb in the bunch, but we had never had any problem from him.  He was actually a rather soft-spoken fellow who mostly kept to himself.  The only reason I knew him as well as I did was because we often had to have vehicles towed out to his junkyard.  I found Wendel in his small, junk-filled office.

“Sheriff!” he greeted me pleasantly.  “What can I do for you?”

“Hi Wendel,” I said.  “I need to talk to you about something Roxie Simmons told me.”

“That would be what I seen when Bo Jeskey killed her brother Tom,” he replied.

“You saw that?” I said, looking for confirmation.

“Sure did,” he replied.  “And now that I hear Bo and those two boys of his are dead, I don’t mind talkin’ to you about it so much.  Mind though, I’m still more than a might worried about his other two boys, Dave and Gary.”

“Well, Dave is dead now too,” I told him, “so you can cross him off your list.  And I’m hoping to have Gary in custody very soon, so you can stop worrying about him too.”

“Then what do you want to know?  Like I said, I seen it happen.  Scared the shit out of me, but I seen it all.”

“What exactly did you see Wendal?” I asked.

“I was out grabbin’ a part from an old nineteen-ninety-eight Ford truck I had parked out by my back fence,” he told me.  “Mind you, I was underneath the thing at the time, but that don’t mean I couldn’t see everything just perfectly fine.”

“Got it,” I replied.  “You were hidden out of sight…legitimately.  You had a reason to be out there in the first place.”

“Yup!” he said.  “Anyway, I saw this red pickup come drivin’ out right behind my fence.  Now what the hell would someone be doing back there?  Especially when he stopped and parked not far from me.  I was about to crawl out from under that truck to find out, when I saw two more pickups come drivin’ up too.  When the other two trucks arrived, I saw Tom Simmons get out of the red one, and Bo and two of his boys, Steve and Ben got out of the other two trucks.”  He shook his head.  “Sorry, but I couldn’t hear a thing of what they were sayin’.  I could see them real well, but they was too far away from me to really hear.  Anyway, I kept a good eye on them all ‘cause as I saw it, they had no business bein’ back there to begin with.”

“Okay.  What happened?” I asked.

“Well, all of a sudden, Bo reaches behind his back and pulls out a gun and shoots Tom dead.  Then he leaned over and spits on him.  He talked to his two boys for a moment, then headed back to his truck.  Ben walked up to Tom’s body, pulled out a gun, and shot him too, even though he was already dead.  And then Steve did the same.  The two boys picked up the body and threw it in the back of Tom’s pickup.  Ben drove it off and Steve drove his own truck.  That’s all I saw Sheriff, but I can tell you, it scared me to death.”

“And you didn’t feel like you could let us at the sheriff’s department know?”

“Sheriff!  That was Bo Jeskey and his boys we’re talkin’ about.  You got to know what kind of trouble I’d be in if’n they ever got word that I had told you what I seen.  And those guys got ears everywhere.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “More than likely, you’re right.  I guess you’ve got no idea where they took Tom Simmon’s truck.”

He shook his head.  “Not a clue.  Just that Ben drove it off somewhere.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So like it or not, we’ve got another dead body out there somewhere that we need to find, but at least we know for sure who did it.”

“Hell yeah Sheriff,” he replied.

“Wendel,” I said.  “The next time you see someone getting murdered, don’t worry about them finding out and getting retribution against you for it.  Just call us.  We’ll handle it.”

“Sheriff,” he said.  “You just told me Dave Jeskey is dead now too, but that still leaves Gary.  Do you have any idea how much trouble that one is?  Trust me, the others may be dead, but I’m still worried.  Gary is a bad one.  Real bad.”

“So I’ve heard.  Take care Wendel.”

I left him and went back to my truck.  What the hell did the Jeskeys do with the dead body, not to mention Tom’s pickup?  Not to mention, what did they do with all the dead bodies we suspected might be out there?  No proof.  This time we had an eyewitness to a murder, but once again, no body to pin that murder to.  Without that body it was all hearsay.  Proof and the Jeskeys just didn’t seem to go together.

I was practically back to the sheriff’s station when my phone rang again.  I didn’t recognize the number.  “Hello?” I said once I had connected the call.

“Sheriff?  It’s Pam McGregor.”

“Pam!” I said, recognizing the lawyer’s voice.  “Thanks for getting back to me.”

“What do you need?” she asked.  “Did you arrest anyone else for us to defend?”

“Not exactly,” I told her.  “Sorry, but you missed out on Dave Jeskey.  Seems he enjoyed rolling his truck a bit too much instead of stopping so we could chat, and he died as result.”

“Sorry,” she said.  “I can’t defend someone who’s dead.  But I’m guessing you didn’t call about him.”

“Nope.  But as it turns out, I am calling about someone related to him.”

“We’re already defending Roxie Simmons, and she let us know that Bo, Ben, and Steve are dead, and you just told us that now Dave is dead too.  That just leaves Gary.  Did you catch him?”

“Nope.  Not yet.  But we hope to soon.  Believe it or not, I’m calling about yet another Jeskey.  One we didn’t know about.  A girl.”

“One of those Jeskeys had a daughter?  I didn’t know.”

“She’s not actually Bo’s or one of his boy’s offspring.  But Bo…sort of…raised her as his.”

“What’s sort of mean?”

“Pam, it’s too much of a story for over the phone and a lot of it is a bit too unbelievable to believe.  My wife, Natalie, just dropped the girl off down at a shelter for women a few counties away from here, so she’s away from their farm, but it’s only temporary.  But Nat had this idea that maybe, since she and Gary may be the last Jeskeys on earth, that maybe some of the money that the dead ones had might be able to go to her.  The only problem is, we don’t know about any money yet, or even what would happen to it if we found it.  And if we do find some, I’m sure the state would want some, if not all of it.”

“No doubt,” Pam agreed.  “Sheriff, since your wife is one of the few social workers this county has, I’ve worked with her more than a few times.  Let me call her and see if I can get any more details.  One thing I can tell you though, is that more than likely I’m going to want to have a meeting to get all the details about her before I even decide if I’m taking her case or not, and that’s if there even is a case.”

“That’s fine,” I told her.  “Work it out with Nat.  If you need me, I’ll try to be there.”

“Good enough Sheriff,” she said.  “I’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks Pam,” I told her before ending the call.  It would be nice if I could finally get Freak off my mind and out of my way.  I had a job to do, and she didn’t need to be such a major part of it.  Finding Gary Jeskey, that was now the most major thing at the top of my to-do list.

After talking with Dave Jeskey earlier today, I had another item on my ever-growing list of things to do too.  Something I never figured I’d ever have to do.  Talk to a witch!