Jackson Evans sat regally behind his desk in his uniform. Michael Manseur was slumped in the chair opposite. Both men stood when she entered.
“Come in, Alexa,” Evans boomed in his finest microphone-ready voice. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Detective Manseur,” Alexa said, nodding, “Superintendent Evans.”
“Please, in this room, it’s Michael and Jackson,” Evans corrected. “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Alexa?”
“No, thank you…Jackson,” she said, cordially, trying not to smile at how the men’s names fit together into what some would see as a comical arrangement. She took the chair beside Manseur. “Nice to see you again, Detective.”
“My pleasure, Agent Keen,” Manseur said, suddenly yawning into his hand. “Excuse me.”
“So I guess we all know why we’re here, Alexa.” Evans sat down and rocked back in his chair, crossing his legs. “I had a brief conversation a little while ago with your director. He asked me if it might be advantageous if the FBI were to maintain a presence in the form of one Special Agent Alexa Keen. He also offered expedited lab service and whatever additional manpower support we should require, which Agent Keen would coordinate. I must say that having the Bureau’s resources at our disposal is a plus. Let’s hope that Mr. West comes home with a hangover and his tail tucked between his legs and that we won’t need the FBI’s gracious assistance.”
Alexa nodded. Manseur sat in silence.
“If he’s going to return under his own steam, he’ll likely do it by noon,” Evans said. “Can we all agree on that? Hell, maybe he evacuated ahead of his wife and daughter.”
“I suspect that’s correct,” Manseur said. “Not that he evacuated. That he’ll come in by noon if he can do so.”
“Let’s hope so,” Alexa said.
Evans went on, smiling, “Alexa, I’ve been talking to Michael and this is how we both think this should work. Michael will be handling this as his case along with Kennedy of Missing Persons. I know this is a missing persons case and should be Kennedy’s baby until such time as the situation changes, but I believe that, due to Detective Kennedy’s lack of experience with high-profile, high-pressure cases, Michael should head the team. I hope you can work alongside them, Alexa, to monitor the situation as things develop and not seize the case.”
“If there even is a case,” Alexa replied. “Might just be premature evacuation.”
Evans nodded, his smile drying up.
“Michael has agreed to work on this case exclusively until it’s successfully resolved.”
Alexa nodded slowly. Evans wanted only to come out of this with applause from the right people, and hopefully a nice award for his wall. She heard herself say, “Of course.” As long as you don’t put up any walls I have to knock down.
“I hope it won’t take too long,” Manseur said, sadly.
“It shouldn’t take long,” Jackson Evans said. His words contained equal parts of optimism and threat.
If Gary West didn’t come back, Alexa wondered, how long would it be before she’d have to shove everybody to one side so she could do what needed to be done?
14
The rising sun turned the eastern windows of the listing cabin a brilliant hot-fire orange. Standing shirtless on the plywood trap-floor, Leland Ticholet stood in the doorway studying the murky surface of the still water in the channel and eating instant coffee granules out of the jar with a spoon.
His guest was still exactly where he’d laid him out on the cot. Bringing the guy out for Doc had cost Leland a day of taking care of his own business, but since he would own the boat moored to his dock for one job of work, it did sort of balance out. He was thinking about all the nutria that were, at that moment, swimming around in his water, eating his vegetation into extinction, pooping floating black pellets by the hundreds, screwing like rabbits, and just plain asking for it while he stood there with his thumb up his ass babysitting some worthless shit-hole, long-haired city boy.
Leland was not comfortable sharing his cabin with anyone, asleep or awake. He couldn’t remember anybody but his daddy, and some of his ’shine customers, ever being inside it. Not one visitor since his daddy passed, and Leland hadn’t ever wanted another one. He didn’t have any conversations he could avoid. In his world, he could go weeks without saying a word out loud, or seeing another human being except in a passing boat.
Leland didn’t own the waterways or any of the land that touched it, yet it was his to use as he saw fit, just as it had been his father’s, and his father’s father’s before him. Leland was like a female alligator that tolerated the presence of others as long as they didn’t get too close to her nest or she wasn’t hungry enough to go after them.
15
Using an electric trolling motor so’s not to be heard by their quarry, Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement Officer Elliot Parnell and rookie Betty Crocker pulled up on the eastern finger of dry land, one of two thinly forested and weed-choked tracts that sheltered Ticholet’s shallow bay. The sixty-yard-long bay ranged from a width of twenty-five yards at its mouth to fifteen at the back, where a U-shaped dock, which was anchored on both ends, held the floating cabin in place.
Crouching and moving slowly, Betty followed Parnell to the hidden camera and watched as her superior removed it from the tree with the giddy enthusiasm of a child on Christmas sneaking downstairs ahead of the family to get a surreptitious look at his presents.
The new boat was gone, so their subject was off, presumably doing something illegal. As a kneeling Parnell was opening the viewing screen, Betty realized she was sweating to the point where her uniform was sticking to her skin. The still August air was muggy. She wished the hurricane would come on and push some wind through the swamps. They were supposed to be riding around the camps making sure everybody that lived around the area knew a monster-ass storm was coming right at them, and would most likely deroof and maybe remove any trace of the rickety-ass buildings that dotted the swamps. They were supposed to be helping the Sheriff’s office by making sure all these poor sons of bitches knew staying was dumb as shit. Like the rat-faced inbred scamps that lived back in here ever came upon a smart idea. Everyone they had told said something like: “She’ll turn.” “This camp’s been here through ten big hurricanes.” “If my dog runs for it, I’ll be right behind her.” Most of them were dumb, paranoid, suspicious, and as quick to pull a gun as crack dealers. Maybe no hurricane would be more apt to kill them than it would a snapping turtle. Parnell had been told that the investigation into Leland Ticholet was not a priority, but he had a hard-on for Leland, and that was it. And she didn’t like the way Parnell was always looking at her out of the corner of his piggy eyes. First time he tried to mess with her, she’d be filing one of those sex harassment lawsuits on his fat ass.
Leland Ticholet made Betty nervous. He had a reputation for being erratic and violent, and she doubted he took more than a few alligators here and there. Why risk your butt for critters that were dumb as rocks, mean as pimps, and as plentiful as cigarette butts? Elliot Parnell was the biggest by-the-rule-book asshole on earth and everybody hated his ass. She got stuck with him because the other agents all hated blacks—especially black women who weren’t mopping their floors—and they thought she’d quit on account of being with Parnell. “We have important warning to be doing,” she said.
“This is important,” Elliot told her.
“Whatever,” Betty said.
“We can’t have everybody around here thinking they can treat our valuable wildlife resources any way they like.” As he spoke he was watching the screen, which was reflected in his beady little eyes. Elliot had a handgun, but Betty wasn’t done with her probationary period, so she wasn’t packing. In an emergency Parnell had said she could use the shotgun. Although her father and brothers were too familiar with guns, Betty had never fired one in her life, and didn’t know one Wildlife and Fisheries officer who had ever had to use deadly force. Parnell had pulled his gun on several people, b
ut everybody said it was because he got scared and overreacted.
“Oh, my God!” Elliot whispered excitedly. “We got the son of a bitch!”
He rewound and turned the tiny screen so Betty could share the view. The teeny boat entered the frame and a bald, shirtless man who had yard-wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and muscles that would make an ox jealous tied off the boat and carried, on one shoulder, something rolled up in a sheet.
“See the alligator he’s got?” Parnell said.
“It’s so dark in that I can’t see shit. But it might be I can sort of see something rolled up in something looks like a bedsheet. Why would the fool roll a alligator up in a bedsheet?”
“So nobody can see what it is.”
“Who in the Sam Hill would be out here looking at him? I’m new at this, but wouldn’t a gator’s tail be hanging way out?”
Parnell glared at her disapprovingly. He had a bitch-on because she had never been in the great outdoors before and had just studied how to be an enforcement officer at the community college. Parnell and the others were rednecks and they resented her for not doing it the way they did. She knew they blamed affirmative action for making it so they couldn’t just hire one of their inbred potbellied brothers-in-law.
“You ready?” he asked her suddenly.
“Ready for what?”
“To take a look-see in that cabin.”
“I’m new at this, but didn’t I hear the captain say you need a warrant or something to go searching in people’s cabins? I seem to recall something about it.”
“This tape gives me probable cause.”
“Maybe he’s a Klansman and that was his outfit he had over his shoulder,” Betty said.
“And maybe that’s an alligator, or a roll of gator skins he plans to sell.”
Betty looked at the viewfinder again. She saw Leland getting into the boat and holding something against his head, then throwing it like a baseball and going back inside. In the next few minutes of video he came out carrying a gun, got into the boat, and untied it. As the big man drove the boat out of frame, Betty could have sworn Leland looked right at the hidden secret camera.
“Let’s do this,” Parnell said, as he held out the camera to her.
Betty took the camera and watched as Parnell stood, took his big-ass revolver out of the holster, and opened it up like he was afraid the bullets might have escaped from the cylinder since he’d last checked on them—twenty minutes earlier.
16
After leaving Superintendent Evans’s office, Alexa accompanied Manseur down the stairwell, through the Homicide bull pen, which was a hive of activity, past the interrogation rooms—marked “interview” rooms probably because it appeared to suspects and witnesses as being kinder and gentler—to his office. Several detectives waved and one asked Manseur if he could meet to review a case, to which Manseur said, “I hope so.”
“Please sit,” he told Alexa, lifting a huge stack of files from one of the two chairs facing his desk so she could. He put the files on the conference table, one more stack among many, and went behind the desk after stepping over two boxes in his path. To say Manseur’s office was cluttered would have been as soft as describing Little Richard as being odd.
Alexa, who kept her own office as neat and organized as she did her apartment, sat and took in the piles of manila folders, the boxes containing case files. The last-painted-a-decade-ago beige walls were bare of decoration. A single picture containing three people Alexa assumed were Michael’s wife and daughters was not quite yet lost in the disorder on the credenza that held it. That lone image containing contented females was it as far as personal items were concerned.
“I’m sorry you didn’t make good your escape from New Orleans,” he said cheerfully.
“Truth is, after Casey West came to my hotel room to talk to me, I didn’t want to leave.”
“She did what?” Manseur sat up. “Nobody told me she ever left her house. I have people posted to watch over her.”
Manseur picked up his phone and punched in a number. He asked someone named Walker about Casey West’s trip out of the house, listened, then hung up without saying good-bye.
“Dr. LePointe put a private security detail in charge of the house, inside and out, soon as we left. My watch was called off. LePointe’s people are going to handle monitoring the phones for any ransom demands privately.”
“I thought LePointe was a psychiatrist.”
“Maybe he is technically, but Evans told me he retired from his state position a year or so ago. He’s always officially been the chairman of the LePointe trusts, and I was told he’s giving the family’s holdings his full energies. I wish to hell my own people would tell me what’s happening with my number-one—and presently only—case. Woman’s husband is missing and she is out at all hours running around town and—for all anybody knows—might be in danger herself. Anything happens to her, you know damned well I’m going to get blamed for it.”
“I imagine I’ll get my fair share,” Alexa said. “I hope you know that I’m here to help any way I can.”
“Okay, solve all the cases I have open, give the city enough money to pay my squad to work the overtime we need, keep anybody from killing anybody for a few days, and call off the hurricane while I look for Gary West.”
“How about I just help you find Gary West really fast?”
“And I’ll live with the rest as usual. It’s a deal. So what did Mrs. West tell you that made you want to stick around?”
It took less than five minutes for Alexa to tell Manseur everything Casey West had told her. When she was done, Manseur sat back and rubbed his face. “That’s a bit different than what Dr. LePointe told Evans.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“Dr. LePointe said he knew Director Bender. I guess he pulled in a favor,” Manseur said.
“That’s a possibility. I’d bet Casey put pressure on him because I doubt he did it on his own. Dr. LePointe doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who easily admits he’s wrong.”
“He’s got the sway to make things happen. I prefer to imagine he’s showing his niece he cares about getting her husband back.”
“Alive.” Alexa raised an eyebrow. “How can I help?”
“Let’s get this said and out in the open. Evans hates the fact that he has to let you come in, but he’s got no choice, so he’s pissed off about it, and although he wants this resolved, he wants you—the FBI—to fail, but for us—the NOPD—to succeed. You’re an FBI agent, so, new spirit of cooperation or not, my experience tells me it’s naïve of me to think I can open up to you, since somebody always gets burned when we work together with the FBI and the somebody that gets the short end is us. I’ve had trouble with FBI agents sticking with their assurances and promises, especially when they’re faced with pressure from their brass hats. Sometimes I get the old ‘I’m sorry, but’ for my efforts. Usually I don’t even get that.”
“I understand that very well,” Alexa replied. “I run into that roadblock every day from local authorities. All I can tell you is that you’ve never worked with me.”
“Can you give me your word that it won’t be the case here?”
“I go by the old adage that there is no limit to what can be accomplished as long as it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”
“Winter Massey told me you were especially good people, so I’m going to level with you, and I’m asking that you remember I depend on this job to support my family and I’m too old to start a new career feeding the animals at the zoo. I’m aware that everybody from Evans up to Dr. LePointe have my proverbial balls under their heels, and I don’t want any of them to decide to jump up and down.”
“Michael, I can’t control your superiors, but I give you my word that I won’t do anything to burn you. If my superiors attempt to hog the credit at the expense of your department, misrepresent facts, or spin things in such a way as to be harmful or deny your department the credit you deserve, I will tell the truth
whether or not my superiors like it. I love my job, but I can do other work if I have to. Also, I should tell you that you can’t depend on me to lie or to otherwise cover up criminal behavior by anybody, cop or civilian.
“In certain instances, my back may be turned at a crucial moment or my memory may fuzz. But I take my oath seriously. If you abuse my trust, you’ll regret it. I’m just a little Mississippi gal, but I can be very large and unpleasant when I’m pissed off or peed on. If Evans or anybody else tries to block us from doing our jobs, I’ll handle it with a federal hammer. My orders from Director Bender are clear.”
Manseur stared at Alexa, seemed to consider her words for a few long seconds, then nodded. “Evans wants me to report to him what you’re thinking and doing. Although I don’t know for sure, I expect he’s asked Kyler Kennedy to do the same. He told me to keep Kennedy meaningfully involved, and I doubt it’s because he cares about hurt feelings. Jackson is most likely reporting to the mayor, the governor, congressmen, judges…”
Alexa yawned into her hand. “Jackson Evans’s instincts for survival are perfectly pitched. His MO is that he gets as close as possible to the most powerful people that he can ally himself with in whatever city he’s running the department in. His staff builds a bulletproof cocoon around his image. As soon as his rising star has hit its zenith, or the real stats are about to be released, and while the perception of other troubled cities is that he has vanquished crime from the city he’s in, he gets offers from one or several municipalities in need of a savior. He takes the most attractive offer, and he’s off—lock, stock, and super-staff road show.”
Manseur shrugged. “I don’t have any reason to think Jackson Evans would sabotage this case. There’s nothing criminal about having ambition. I used to have a little myself.”
“Let he who is without sin…?”
Manseur opened his hands in resignation, reminding Alexa of a beleaguered Mexican border official.
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