The Last Jeskey - Chapter 32

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 32

 

(Day 7 – Wednesday)

 

Pamela

 

“What she needs,” Natalie told me as she grabbed another fry and stuck it in her mouth.  “Is family!  Her real family.”

I shook my head.  “That would be great, but we both know who her real family is…or was.  And they’re the last people I’d wish for her to be around again.”

“I agree,” she said.  “But I wasn’t talking about Bo and his boys.”

“Then who?”

“Freaky’s mother and father were killed.  Murdered.  But does she have any other relatives on that side of her family?  What about her mother’s parents?  Does she have any aunts or uncles?  For that matter, how about her father’s side of the family?  Was there anyone else there?  From what little we heard, it was only Bo Jeskey that was the bad one.”

I stared at her, holding my coffee in my hand without taking a sip.  “I hate it when you think of the obvious.  Especially when it’s something I should have thought of myself!”

Natalie chuckled and stuck another fry in her mouth.  We were having lunch together.  It was the only time we had to discuss not just Freaky, but what we would do if they ever found any money for her.  Not to mention, according to Judge Reinhart, he wanted a third person to help manage that trust.

“Someone from Freaky’s family might be the best person to help manage the money,” I said.  “Not to mention, her family would be the perfect place for her to go…permanently!”

“Yes, it would,” Nat agreed.  “But there are a few problems that I think would prevent that.  Problems that maybe should mean we don’t let any of them know she’s alive.”

I was confused.  “Like what?”

“Like all the things she believes.  How would they handle someone who firmly believes she should be peeing in a hole out in the backyard somewhere?”

“I imagine they would find that strange.”

“Maybe more than a bit strange,” Nat replied.  “And then there’s the fact that when Brian was kidnapped, he was only four years old, and he had just turned four.  Pam, according to what we know now, she’s nineteen.  A grown woman!  They’d be expecting a child.”

“They’d have to get over that,” I told her.

“And don’t forget the most important problem of all,” Nat said.

“What?”

“She’s not a boy anymore.”

I thought about that.  As usual, Nat was right.  “You’re right,” I said.  “But there is one thing that we should do, no matter what.”

“What’s that?”

“Let those people know that their daughter’s murderer has been found.”

Natalie nodded.  “If it was my daughter, I’d want to know at least that much.  But wouldn’t that detective from Knoxville take care of that?  Maybe he’s done it already.”

Before I could reply, my cellphone rang, and I answered it without looking to see who was calling.  “Pam McGregor,” I answered.

“Mrs. McGregor.  This is Doctor Wilcox from the behavioral center.”

“Yes doctor.  What can I do for you?”

“I’m afraid a rather regrettable incident occurred yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Well, we hoped it would at least resolve itself a bit since then, but it’s not looking good.”

“What happened?”

“I’m afraid that one of our staff members had a bit of a…disagreement with Freaky, and wound up cutting her hair.”

I was shocked, not to mention angry.  “They did what?”

“As I said, it’s very regrettable.”

“How much of her hair did they cut?”  I noticed the change in Natalie’s face at hearing that.

“I’m afraid…all of it.  Right up to her neck.”

“That’s crazy!” I shouted into the phone.  “And you were hoping it would resolve itself?  That’s ridiculous!  How does cutting all her hair off resolve itself?  It doesn’t!”

“Can we sue them?” Natalie asked me.  I had to ignore the question for now.

“I’m afraid there’s been a slight further complication since then due to the incident,” Wilcox continued.  “However, it’s the kind of complication we see often and we’re very used to dealing with here.  So you don’t have to worry.”

“What kind of complication?” I demanded.

“Since then, I’m afraid she’s become completely unhinged.  In fact, she’s become quite violent.  And so far, she doesn’t seem to be interested in settling down.”

“Neither would I!” I told him.

“We’re having to keep her heavily sedated for now.  It’s more regrettable, because the psychologist I had working with her reported that he had a very good connection with her in each of their sessions.  He had real hope for her progress.  But I promise you, we’re working with her.  She’ll have no choice but to eventually accept what’s happened and move on.”

The light hit me completely just then.  “Move on?  Yeah.  Maybe that’s just what needs to happen.  Freaky needs to move on…as in out of there.  Doctor, I’m leaving this afternoon to come down there and remove her from that place, and I have no doubt that I’m going to be thinking of only one thing on the long drive down there, suing your institution!”  With that, I hung up.

Natalie stood up, forgetting the rest of her lunch.  “Let me call my husband and my boss.  I’m going with you, and we can figure out what we’re going to do with her while we drive.”

Ten minutes later we were in the car and on our way, complete with a county sheriff’s car following behind us.  Like before though, it would stop shadowing us after a certain point.

“Can we really sue them for that?” Natalie asked me.

“Maybe, maybe not.  But the truth is, it’s not worth the effort.  Even if we can sue them, what we’d get wouldn’t be enough to make it worthwhile, and that’s if we can even get it into court.”

“It’s a shame,” she said.  “Just doing it would make me feel better.”

“Me too,” I agreed.

“So what do we do with her?” she asked.  “I’m not sure my husband wants her back at our place.  Not to mention, Gary Jeskey is still out to kill not just Will, but me too.  And Freaky!” she added.  “He wants all three of us dead.  That would be like putting all the ducks in one barrel for him.”

“Yeah,” I said as I thought about that.  “That might not be the best idea.”

“I just got that sling off my arm,” Nat said.  “I don’t want another one.”

I said nothing to that, and we rode in silence for a while.  Too much of a while.  But then, I knew neither of us had any answers.  I knew we were both feeling that frustration of not knowing what to do by the time we arrived at the behavioral center.

We went in together through the doors and right up to the Admissions office.  There was a woman there who was expecting us and literally rushed to call Doctor Wilcox to let him know we were there.  Then, instead of waiting for the doctor to arrive, she herself led us to his office.  We didn’t need her to lead the way, we both had been there before.

Wilcox stood as we walked in.  “Please,” he said.  “Be seated.  Can I get you anything?  Coffee perhaps?”

“No!” I told him.  “Just Freaky.  Where is she?”

“Uh…in her room still,” he said.

A man rushed in behind us.  “Sorry,” he said.  “I was with another patient.”

“This is Doctor Knox,” Wilcox told us.  “He’s the psychologist I assigned to work with Freaky.  Knox, this is Mrs. McGregor and Mrs.…”

“Cobb!” Natalie supplied.  “My husband is the county sheriff where we live.”

“Right!” Wilcox said as Knox took another seat.

“As I said,” Wilcox said, “We sincerely regret the entire incident, and the person who did it has been suspended pending further investigation.”

“I don’t care,” I told him.  “Can we get Freaky now?  We’re taking her home.”

“Well…” Wilcox replied.

“Is there another problem you haven’t told me about yet?” I demanded.  “We’ve got a very long drive ahead of us.”

“No,” Wilcox replied.  “No problem at all.  It’s just that, I thought maybe it might be a good idea for you to listen to some of the findings that Doctor Knox here has from the sessions he’s had with Freaky.”

“Maybe that might be a good idea,” Natalie agreed.

I was going to protest, then thought better of it.  I turned to Knox.  “What did you want us to know?”

“There are some things about Freaky’s case that are very disturbing,” he said.

“That much we already knew,” I told him.

Obviously, Knox was ignoring me.  “She seems to be extremely attached to all of her uncles, as she calls them, despite some rather horrendous tortures they’ve put her though.  But the thing that struck me the most, was that despite how attached to them she seems to be, she appears to feel almost nothing about their deaths.  Almost as if she doesn’t care.  And yet, time and time again she tells me how grateful she is to all of them, and that without them, she’d be dead.  She really is grateful, yet she feels nothing at them being gone.”

“I hadn’t noticed that,” I confessed.

“Me either,” Natalie said.  “But I think he’s right.  Freaky didn’t seem to be emotional over them dying at all, and that includes most of them being murdered right in front of her.”

“Do you have a reason for that?” I asked Knox.

“I haven’t worked with her enough to get to the bottom of it yet.  It’s mostly just one of the observations I’ve made about her.  However, it’s possible that all the literal torture they’ve done to her over the years may have something to do with that.  I mean, have you seen the scars on her back?  Awful!”

“Scars?” Pamela asked.

“Yeah,” Natalie replied.  All that hair she has…or had…covered them up quite a bit, but I still couldn’t miss them when I gave her that shower.  But they didn’t seem to bother her at all, and she had bigger issues to deal with than just some scars.”

“The whippings that caused the scars,” Knox said, “but especially all the other horrendous tortures were nothing but barbaric!  Being hung upside down, being buried alive, hung by her hair, and the one that disturbs me the most, hanging her over a fire and roasting her like a pig until her entire body was burned and covered in blisters, that one just takes the cake.”

“They what?” I exclaimed.  I noticed Natalie coming out of her seat at that one too.

“I understand that her…uncles…all got rather drunk one day and one of them…Gary I believe, got the bright idea that they should tie her to a pole, stick an apple in her mouth, and hang her over a fire, roasting her like they do when they cook a pig.  According to Freaky, it was one of the most painful things she’s ever had to endure.  She’s grateful that it only happened once.”

Natalie walked away from her chair over towards the door, then turned around.  “That just beats everything!” she said.  “I once jokingly asked my husband if I could borrow his gun, so I could shoot Bo Jeskey, and that was after Roxie had already killed him and he was in the county morgue.  Now, I only want to do it again.”

“And I’ll be right there with you,” I agreed.

“But the point I wanted to make,” Knox continued, “is that all those tortures, and most of them went on for days, were actually a stroke of genius on the part of those men.”

“Genius!” I exclaimed.  “You mean sadistic…psychopathic…I don’t know what!”

“Undoubtably,” Knox agreed.  “But each of those punishments happened after Freaky broke one of their absurd rules.  And with each one, Freaky was forced to endure being told that she needed to be a good girl.  After being whipped each time and then tortured like they did, for days at a time, what do you think would be the biggest thing on Freaky’s mind from that point on?”

“Murdering those men!” Natalie exclaimed.

I ignored her comment and said, “Not wanting to do whatever she did again, and being more careful than ever to do and be whatever they wanted.  A good girl.”

“Exactly,” Knox replied.

“I just feel sick,” Natalie said as she sat down.

I put my hand on her arm.  “We all do.  Freaky may not be totally insane, but how is she as sane as she is?”

Natalie shook her head.  “Don’t forget, she’s a Jeskey.”

“I guess that could have something to do with it,” I agreed.  “Those Jeskey genes have got to be pretty tough.”  I saw Natalie nod her agreement.

“Doctor Wilcox told me about not just the kidnapping when she was so young,” Knox said, “but also the fact that Freaky used to be…Brian, a boy.  In my last session with her, I briefly brought that up, but as expected, she not only refused to believe it and told me I was lying about everything, she walked out on me.  And I’m afraid to say it was at that point where things began to go bad, and a little while later, our staff member cut her hair.”

“We’ve both noticed,” Natalie said, “that Freaky identifies entirely as a woman…or girl.  She doesn’t seem to have any notion at all of being male in any way at all.”

“And I believe she doesn’t even remember ever being a boy,” Knox told us.  “As far as I can see from the few sessions I’ve had with her, she believes herself to be a woman, and she always has been.  In fact, all those punishments all her life would have driven all thoughts of anything else out of her.”

“And I don’t know what to do about that,” I told him.  “Any suggestions?”

He shrugged.  “None that I can think of right now, except…”

“Yes?”

“Treat her like a woman.  She thinks she is.  From what I understand, so did you until you learned differently.”

“Which is,” I said, “the obvious answer.  Anything else?” I asked him.

“A few things,” he replied.  “One of which is probably not what Doctor Wilcox here would concur with.”

“Oh, I concur,” Wilcox said.  “It’s just that in her current state, I don’t know if it’s wise.”

“What?” I asked.  I saw Wilcox wave his hand toward Knox, indicating for him to tell us.

“It may be a good thing for Freaky if you remove her from here,” he said.

“That’s our intention,” I told him.  “I’m just waiting for someone to either bring her here or bring us to her.”

“No,” Knox said.  “This institution may be the wrong type of therapy for her.  The wrong place for her to get what she needs.”

“Where did you have in mind?  A bigger mental hospital?”

“No.  Not a mental facility at all.  I believe she needs a chance to actually see what’s out in the world around her.  Let her see the real difference between what she believes things should be, and what actually exists everywhere else.  And more than that, I believe she needs a teacher.”

“A teacher?” I asked.

“Yes.  Somone she trusts who can explain things to her and help her understand all those things that she doesn’t know.”

I sat and considered that.

“He’s right,” Natalie said to me.  “I think he’s exactly right about that, but once again, we’re up against the same old questions with her, where, and now who.”

I understood what she was saying.  Where were we going to put Freaky, and who was going to watch over her.  “True,” I said to Nat.  “But like it or not, I want her out of here.  Today!  I want to bring her home…somewhere, but not only do we have no place to put her, according to what your husband told us, Gary is gunning for her too.  He wants her dead, and he’s already tried to kill you, and your husband.  But despite that, I still want to get her out of here.  They cut her damn hair off for heaven’s sake, and sank her into…who knows what kind of depression.  Anger for sure, and I have no doubt I’d feel the same if someone did that to me.”

“We’re still keeping her sedated,” Wilcox told us, “to counter her anger.  As I said earlier, she gets quite violent when she’s not sedated.”

I saw Knox look at his watch.  “She’ll be due for another shot very soon, so the sedation will be starting to wear off now, but it’s going to be some time yet before it’s completely out of her system.”

“If you remove her from here,” Wilcox said, “we can’t be responsible for what she may do.”

I saw Natalie look over at me questioningly.  “We’ll have to take our chances,” I told them.

Wilcox nodded.  “Just so long as you know.”

“Even sedated as she is,” Knox said.  “She’s been sitting on the floor of her room, hugging all that cut hair and crying.  Except over and over again she keeps saying the same thing.  I want Shantel, I want Lisa.  I don’t know who they are, but perhaps one of them can be of help to her,” he suggested.

I looked over at Natalie.

“I think Freaky mentioned them at the shelter.” Natalie said.  “They were the friends she had developed in the short time she was there.  Unfortunately, the shelter didn’t want her any longer.”

I looked to Wilcox.  “Can we get her now?  As I said, we’ve got a long drive back to where we live.”

Wilcox nodded and got up.  “Right this way.”

We followed him through the hallway and up to a door where he punched in a code to unlock it.  Once through, it was obvious that we were now among the patients of the place.  He and Knox led us to a small room.  The door was open.  Freaky was inside, sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth while she hugged a mass of hair to her chest.  This was heavily sedated?  If so, then Freaky looked to be in worse shape than they had let on.  She looked strange without all that hair attached to her head.  And that’s despite the fact that she was holding it in her lap like she often did before they had cut it.  I noted the pink scrubs she was wearing, marking her as one of the female patients of the hospital.

“Freaky!” Natalie exclaimed the moment she laid eyes on her.  She rushed in and knelt down on the floor with her and hugged her.

“I want Shantel.  I want Lisa.” Freaky said.  Despite her destress, I thought she sounded drugged…which she was.

“You miss them?” Natalie asked.

“I want Shantel.  I want Lisa.”

Natalie looked back at me, then stood up and looked to Wilcox.  “She was wearing a dress when she came in.  Since those scrubs are for your patients, I’m guessing you’d rather she doesn’t take them with her.”

“No,” Wilcox confirmed.  “Our budget is only so big.  I’ll have that dress found right away.”  He hurried off, leaving us with only Knox.

“What do we do?” Natalie asked me softly.

“I don’t know?” I admitted, even though I was beginning to get the start of an idea.  A bad idea!  “I’m wondering if it would do her any good if we stop back at the shelter and see if Shantel and Lisa are still there.  They may not be.”

Natalie nodded.  “I was thinking the same thing.  Maybe just seeing her friends for a little while might help.”

“Maybe,” I said, still trying to work though that idea.

Wilcox came back with a staff woman dressed in green scrubs.  She had a dress in her hands.  “This is what she was wearing when she arrived,” the woman told us.  “Let me see if I can help get her dressed.  She hasn’t exactly been very cooperative lately.”

She moved in and got down to Freaky’s level.  I saw her talking softly to Freaky, trying to get her to agree to change into the dress.  Freaky just kept sitting and rocking and hugging her hair.  “I want Shantel.  I want Lisa.”

“Freaky!” I said loud enough to try to get her attention.  “Do you want to see Shantel and Lisa?  If so, put the dress on.”

Freaky’s head shot up to look at me.  “Shantel?  Lisa?”

“We’ll take you, but you’ve got to change first.”

I watched as Freaky forced herself to her feet, leaving the hair on the floor.  The moment she stood, she seemed unsteady on her feet, and I was afraid she would fall, but the staff woman grabbed her and held her until she was a bit steadier.  Despite Knox and Wilcox being there, she helped Freaky remove the scrubs she was wearing, and she pulled the dress over her head.  She zipped it up the back.

Freaky looked at me.  “Lisa?  Shantel?”

I nodded.  “Come on Freaky.  Let’s get you out of here.”

She started to walk out with us, but she suddenly stopped and turned.  I noticed her looking down at all that hair that had been cut from her head.  A lot of hair!  She started to move toward it to take it, but she stopped and turned…and walked out of the room.