The Last Jeskey - Chapter 48

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 48

 

(Day 13 – Tuesday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

“You look like hell!” my wife said as I walked back into her hospital room the next morning.

“Gee thanks!” I said as I plopped my weary body down in the chair.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I no sooner got home last night,” I said, “when my damn phone rang.  To make a long story short, Freaky killed Gary last night.  Shantel hit him over the head with her guitar and Freaky grabbed his gun and shot him in the face.  And to make matters that much worse, I’ve got another dead deputy.  Gary shot him before he broke into the house.  I’ve been up all night with this mess.  I haven’t even been to bed yet.”

“How are those women doing?” Nat asked.

“I think Lisa and Shantel are more than a bit rattled by what happened.  Scared too.”

“I don’t blame them,” Natalie said.  “I would be too.  And Freaky?”

“As far as I can tell, shooting Gary in the head didn’t affect her much at all.”

“You know,” Natalie said, “that psychologist we talked to at that behavioral center said he was struck by how little Freaky seemed to care that Bo, Ben, and Steve had been shot and killed right in front of her.  And that was beside the fact that Freaky always seemed to defend them all anytime anyone tried to criticize what they’d done to her.  She told everyone over and over that she was so grateful to them because without them she wouldn’t be alive.  Maybe there was more hatred in her than we thought.”

“Could be,” I agreed.  “Who knows.  For now, she seems to be dealing with what she did just fine.”

“You didn’t arrest her did you?  I would think it was self-defense.”

“No.  It was clearly a case where Gary had gone in with the intention of killing her, and I’m sure the other two as well.  I’ve been so busy since then that I haven’t even called the D.A. yet to let him know what happened.”

“You might want to do that soon,” Natalie suggested.

“Yeah.  I’ll get to it, along with a thousand other things.  He can wait a few minutes.”

“Who was the deputy that died?” she asked.

“Paul Shultz.”

“I don’t think I know him.”

“He’s young.  Very young.  In fact, I’m pretty sure he still lived with his parents.”

“So at least he doesn’t have a wife and kids,” she noted.

“No.  At least there’s that.  Not like Simpson.  He had a wife and a young boy.”

“I heard,” she said.  “When’s the funeral?”

“I don’t know.  I haven’t had a chance to do anything with any of it yet.  And now I have to tell Paul’s family that he’s gone.  Before this happened, I’ve been trying to spend as much time as I can right here with you.”

“Thanks,” she said.  “I appreciate it.”

“Since you’ve been in here,” I said, “I think it’s the most time we’ve spent together in a long time.  I like it.  Not that you’re hurt.  I just like getting to spend a bit of time with you.”

She held out her arms and I moved in for a hug and kiss.  When she pulled away she slapped at my chest.  “Will Cobb,” she chastised.  “There’s a family out there wondering why their son hasn’t come home from work yet.  Don’t you think they deserve to know sooner rather than later?”

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “I guess sitting in a chair with you for the rest of the day is going to be out for now.”

“Will, I’m fine.  I’m getting better.  I’ll be out of here in a few days.  You’ve got a job to do, so go to work.  And give my condolences to the family.”

“Yeah.  Sure,” I told her.  I leaned in and kissed her again.  “See you later.”

“Go to work!”

Back in my car, I called the station and got the address for where Paul Shultz lived with his family.  As I headed there, I couldn’t help but think that I had just gone through this for Simpson.  But with Simpson, Russ had already done the notification deed.  This time I was going to have to do the dirty work myself.  But that’s what they paid me the big bucks for.  And I wished they really did pay me some big bucks.  Lately, things had been more than my little salary was worth.

The Shultz house was in one of those decent residential areas where we rarely needed to send a deputy out at all.  That wasn’t the case today though since I was there.  I parked in front of the house and was heading across the front lawn when one of the deputy cars pulled up and parked behind my car.  I waited where I was and saw Amanda get out.  “What are you doing here?” I asked as she walked up to me.”

“Russ assigned me to arrange the funerals for both Simpson and now Paul.  Since you’re here now, I take it nobody has told them yet that he’s dead?”

“Not that anyone told me,” I said.  “Stay here or come with me, the choice is yours.  It’s gotta be done though.”

She followed me to the front door where I knocked.  “Sheriff,” she said as we waited.  “You know you look like hell.”

“Thanks,” I told her.  “You’re the second one who’s told me that in the last hour alone.”

The door was opened by an older man.  He let us inside, and everything went downhill from there.  When the crying had mostly subsided, Mr. Shultz asked, “How did it happen?”

“He was shot in the line of duty,” I told him.  “More than that, I’m afraid I can’t say.  The investigation has just started.”

He nodded then said, “Paul called us last night and said he’d be spending most of the night out at the Jeskey place guarding some women in case Gary Jeskey showed up.  I’ve heard time and time again that the Jeskey bunch are all big trouble.  So was it Gary who shot him?”

It sounded to me like Paul had said a bit more than he should have, but really, there was no big secret as to what Paul was doing out there.  “When we arrived last night, we found Gary’s pickup parked in the middle of the road leading to the Jeskey farm.  It looks like he parked it there then cut through the woods and fields and snuck up behind your son.”

“And shot him.”

I nodded.  “Unfortunately.”

“Do you think there’s any chance of finding Gary?” he asked.  “According to Paul, you’ve been after him for some time now.”

“We found him, in a manner of speaking,” I admitted.  “Rest assured, your son’s murderer is dead.”

“Did you shoot him?”

“Me?  No.  It wasn’t me.  Someone else.”

“At least you got him.  Paul would have been proud to know that one of his friends avenged his death.”

“Yeah.  There is that,” I said, even though that hadn’t been the case at all.  He didn’t need to know that though.

As Amanda and I were walking back to our cars I said, “I need to talk to those women out at that farm again, especially Freaky.  Want to come?”

“Sure,” Amanda agreed.

“We’ll stop at the station then and drop off your car, you can ride with me.”

“No sheriff.  We’ll drop your car at the station, and you can ride with me.  You’re the one who looks like hell.”

“Point taken,” I agreed.  “You’re not another one who’s going to be after my job are you?  Cause if you are, that’s fine.  You and Russ can duke it out together.”

“No Sheriff,” Amanda said with a slight grin on her face.  And Russ isn’t after your job.  He’d never get it, and he knows it.  You’ve been around too long and there’s too many people who like you.”

“Thanks,” I told her.

“Russ is looking for a sheriff position somewhere else.”

“Nice of him to tell me,” I noted.

“I want his job.”

I looked at her.  Yeah, she could definitely fill the bill.  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I told her.  “If Russ ever finds a job somewhere else.”

It wasn’t long before I was sitting in her car and letting her drive.  I closed my eyes for the brief bit of rest it might bring me.

“What do you need to talk to the women about now?” Amanda asked.

So much for the chance to close my eyes a bit.  “Follow up to get each of their stories on what happened last night.  You can take one or two and I’ll do the others.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to wait a day or so?” she asked.  “I’m guessing you haven’t been to bed, and I doubt they got much sleep either.”

“Normally you’d be right,” I told her.  “But everything that happened is pretty clear already.  We just need the paperwork to show we did our jobs.  Besides, there’s another reason I need to talk to Freaky.  An important one that I haven’t gotten to, and I should have.”

“What’s that?”

“The first time Freaky showed us those hiding places in the barn we were a bit too overwhelmed by it all for me to get a chance to talk to her later.  Then she showed us another hiding place in the house, and later that big one under the pump.  Both times we were overwhelmed by the amount of money in them.  Both times I never had the chance to sit down and talk to her afterwards about the most important thing.”

‘What’s that?” she asked.

“Are there anymore.”

Amanda was mercifully quiet for a while and I chanced closing my eyes again, but all I could think about was Freaky and the fact that she had shot Gary.  With Gary dead now, that left Freaky as the sole remaining Jeskey…as far as we knew.  The Jeskey clan had always been big trouble.  Huge trouble!  I was guessing it was something in their genes.  The psychopath gene.

Since Freaky was a Jeskey too, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had inherited that gene as well.  I remembered that so far, Freaky wasn’t acting overly worried or remorseful about shooting Gary.  And Natalie had told me earlier that even though Freaky was forever grateful to Bo and his boys for the fact that she was alive, she hadn’t shown any kind of remorse or sorrow that they were gone.  Did that mean that she was another psychopath like the rest of them?  I could only hope not.  I was guessing though that time would tell.  But then all those Jeskeys had always been really good at hiding what they had done.  If Freaky was that way, there was a good chance nobody would ever know.

As we approached the farm, I noticed that someone had taken the time to move Gary’s truck out of the middle of the road.  I saw it parked next to all the other Jeskey pickup trucks in front of the house.  I briefly wondered what was going to become of them all.  I put that thought out of my mind.  Not my business, and I didn’t really care.  As I got out of Amanda’s car, I noticed that the false water pump bunker was still open.  Nobody had bothered to close that up yet.  It needed to be closed and locked for a while, but just then I didn’t care about that either.

We went up onto the porch and knocked.  The door was opened soon after by Shantel.  “Sheriff,” she said.  “Come on in.”

Amanda and I went inside.  “Anybody get any sleep last night?” I asked.

“Not much,” Lisa said from her seat at the table where she was sitting with Freaky.

I walked over to see what they were doing.  “What’s up?” I asked as I leaned over the table and saw a piece of paper with a few numbers written on it.

“We’re learning a tiny bit of math,” Lisa told me.  “Freaky, show him.”

Freaky didn’t exactly look happy.  “I hate math, and I hate numbers!” she said rather vehemently.  “This is supposed to be men’s business.”

“Freaky…  What did we say about all that?”

Freaky closed her eyes.  “It’s women’s business too.”

“Now show the sheriff please what you just learned.”

Freaky sighed and spread her fingers out.  If I count this finger, plus this finger,” she said as she pointed to her fingers, then that’s two fingers.  And if I add those two fingers to the other three, then that’s five fingers.  My whole hand.”

“We’re just starting,” Lisa explained.  “She doesn’t know any numbers past number five yet, but we can still do a bit of adding with just that much.”

It seemed overly stupid to me, but I didn’t really care.  “We need to talk to each of you about last night and get your individual stories about it.  It’s just routine, so don’t worry.  This was a crime of self-defense.  None of you have any reason to worry about anything at all.”

“Worry?  I ain’t worried about anything,” Shantel said.  “I broke my guitar over that bastard’s head, and I’d do it again every time!”

I nodded.  “Amanda, why don’t you take Shantel first.  I’ll talk to Freaky.”

“Can I get out of doing all this number stuff?” Freaky asked me.

“For now,” I told her.  “Let’s go out to the porch to sit where we can talk alone.”

The two of us went outside and sat in some of the wooden Adirondack chairs that graced most of the front porch.  “Freaky,” I said.  “I know you told us most of what happened already, but I need to go over everything again…for our records.  Do you understand?”

All I got out of her was a shrug as if she didn’t care.

“Now what exactly happened last night?” I asked.

We were sitting listening to Shantel sing,” she said.  “Oh, it’s probably nothing, but while she was singing, we heard this little bang, but none of us knew what it was.  Shantel didn’t even stop singing so we didn’t worry about it.  Then all of a sudden, Gary rushed into the house and pointed a gun at us.  Gary pointed the gun right at me, right close to my face and started talking about getting revenge against me and then roasting me over a fire again so he could eat me.  I just knew that Gary really wanted to not just hurt me bad, he wanted to kill me too.  All the way this time.  And then there was this big crash when Shantel hit him with her guitar and broke it into lots of pieces.  Gary fell down and seemed to be sleeping.  Shantel used some of her guitar strings to tie him up.  When Gary woke up, he was shouting about revenge and stuff, and killing me and…I shot him.”

I had forgotten about Gary being tied with the steel guitar strings.  That fact would do more than muddy the waters.  If he was tied well enough, there was no real need to kill him.  Freaky could go to jail for that.  Damn!  Was that another sign of those Jeskey psychopath genes coming out?  I decided not to press that issue…for now.

“Thanks Freaky,” I said.  “There’s just one other thing that I needed to ask you about.”

“What?” she asked.

“You showed us those hiding places in the barn, and then later you showed us the hiding place under the old water pump.  I need to know, are there any more hiding places that you know of?”

I watched as she seemed to consider that and think about it.  Then she said, “Maybe.  But I’m really not sure.  I’ve never actually seen where it is.”

“But do you think you can find it?”

“Maybe,” she said again.  “I don’t even know if there’s anything there.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because it’s where they always punish me.  Since I’m in the ground and I can’t turn my head that far, I can’t see what they’re doing behind me.”

“Behind you?”

“Yeah.  Once in a while, after they bury me, I can hear them doing something behind me for a while.  But I have no idea what.”

“And where is this place?” I asked.

“In the woods.”

“Where in the woods?”

“I told you.  Where they punish me.”

“And where is that?”

She shrugged.  “Deep in the woods.  That’s all I know.”

“If we take you there, do you think you can find it?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Do you think you can at least try?”

“No!” she said firmly.  “I never go into the woods.  Bad things always happen to me there.”

“Bad things?  Like what?”

“The only time I ever go into the woods is when they take me and punish me.  Bad things!”

“Yeah.  I can see that.  But Freaky, they’re all dead now.  They can’t hurt you.  And we’ll be with you every step of the way.  You’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“There’s still the bears,” she said.  “Lots of bears.  Especially there.”

“Okay,” I said.  “We’ll bring some guns, just in case.  Will that do?”

“Maybe!” she replied.

“How long a walk is it?” I asked, trying to get some idea about it.

“We never walked.  They always stuck me in the back of one of their trucks and drove me there.”

“It’s that far?”

She shrugged again and I was guessing she didn’t really know.  Could she even find it?  I figured it was worth a look anyway.  And if she couldn’t find it, at least we’d have a general area as to where to start another search.

When I went inside, Amanda had already finished with Shantel and was just finishing up with Lisa.  When they were done, I told Amanda, “We’re going for a bit of a ride.”

“Where to?” Amanda asked.

“The woods.  Freaky is going to show us her punishment spot.”

“That might be a good idea,” Lisa said.  “She needs to see it and come to grips with the fact that she’s never going to get punished there again.  I think that will help her a lot.”

That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I couldn’t argue with it.

“Yeah,” Shantel agreed.  “And because of that, we all need to see it so’s we can talk to Freaky about it later when she needs.”

It sounded like Freaky was having issues that I didn’t know about.  I ignored that possibility though.  I had other more important things to think about.  “Okay,” I said.  “But please stay out of the way.”

“Not a problem,” Lisa told me.

All three women stuffed themselves in the backseat of Amanda’s car and we took off.  Freaky pointed us to a different road leading into the woods than the one I had followed.  I couldn’t help but notice that the woods were dark and thick, with areas that were blocked with vegetation and other areas between the trees that were fairly open.

“I think it’s somewhere around here,” Freaky suddenly said.

Amanda kept going, but she drove slower.

“Just past here I think,” Freaky said.

“Where?” I asked, not seeing anything.

“Stop!” Freaky said.  Then she pointed to the thick bushes at the side of the road.  “I’m pretty sure it’s right there.  You’ve got to open it up.”

I looked and didn’t see anything.  “Open what?”

Freaky got out of the car and I went with her.  She walked up to one of the trees and started poking around.  “I think it’s here somewhere,” she said.  “I’m pretty sure this is where they always go.”

I noticed that most of the vegetation in that area was dead.  That clued me in.  I took a closer look at the tree and found a hidden gate latch.  I flipped it and chanced pulling on it.  The entire large section of bushes between two of the trees swung open like a gate, revealing another road.  As I kept pulling,  I noticed that the bushes that the gate was made of were brushing the ground.  They would pretty much erase any tracks showing where it was.  Once again, Bo Jeskey’s handwork had been ingenious.

We got back into the car and followed the new road.  We kept going and going.  I was fairly sure we were no longer on the Jeskey property, but that fact didn’t matter much.  It was all woods, and I was betting that nobody ever came out here, not even to hunt.

“Here!” Freaky suddenly said.  “This is it.”

We all got out and looked around.  “See,” Freaky said.  “That’s the tree where they hung me from last time.”

I looked and saw a thick piece of rope still hung over one of the big branches.

“And here’s where they keep burying me,” Freaky showed us next.

I looked.  There was a rough hole in the ground.  I could easily imagine someone being shoved in there and buried with nothing but their head sticking out.

“Sheriff….” Amanda called.

“Yeah?”

She wasn’t looking at the hole in the ground.  She was about twenty feet away staring over the side of a hill.  I went to take a look.  I couldn’t believe what I saw.  “Holy mother of….”  I stopped myself right there.  The entire area was filled with vehicles.  It looked like one big junkyard.

I started walking down the hill for a better look, when something snapped in the dirt under my feet.  I stopped for a look and saw something white sticking up from the leaves that covered the forest floor.  That something white though was pretty easy to identify.  It was a bone.  A leg bone from a human.

We had found the Jeskeys dumping place for not just the vehicles, but all the bodies.

“There’s a bear over there,” Amanda pointed out.

I looked.  She was right.  “There’s another one over there,” I showed her.

I didn’t say it out loud, but it looked to me like the Jeskeys had dumped the bodies out here and simply let the bears eat them to get rid of them.  Identifying any remains was going to be nearly impossible.  There was one other fact about it that hit me as well.  Dead bodies that had been left to the bears to dispose of meant that those bears were probably used to eating human flesh.  No wonder there were a lot of bears in this area.  And if they were used to eating human flesh, that made every one of them a maneater.  They would all be far more dangerous than anyone thought.

I looked around for Freaky, but she was nowhere near us.  I saw her, Lisa, and Shantel looking at a pile of bushes back behind where that hole was.

“I’m going to get the rifle from my trunk,” Amanda said as I headed for Freaky to see what she was doing.

“Good idea,” I told her.

I went over to see what the women were looking at.  “Is this where you heard them doing something?” I asked Freaky.

“I think so,” she said.  “I couldn’t ever see though.”

I started looking around with her, and I finally found another one of those gate latches.  I pulled and immediately noticed that while everything moved, it was very heavy.  With a bit of effort though, a much larger section of bushes than the one that formed the gate hiding the road swung out.  But behind those bushes wasn’t another road.  What we found instead was a cave.  A cave with a rather large opening.  And inside that cave, was a truck.  A truck with a flatbed.  And on that bed was something large that was covered completely with a tarp.  It was all strapped down like it was ready to go down the highway.

I climbed up on the back of that truck and pulled up the tarp at the back.  Under the tarp, I found exactly what I was expecting to find.  One ginormous safe.