Too Far Gone
Page 14
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Manseur told Alexa, “but Sibby was here while he was running the facility. We have to eliminate her as a possible participant in the abduction. I admit it’s somewhat strange on its face. He does have a degree in psychiatry and a well-documented social conscience.”
“I find it somewhat strange on any face that a wealthy physician like LePointe, who probably has a medical school degree from a no-doubt impressive medical school and an ego the size of the Great Pyramid would take on running an ancient, crumbling mental asylum out in the middle of nowhere. Social conscience or not, it’s odd.”
“I seriously doubt Dr. LePointe would commit a crime or otherwise risk his reputation. He’s a dedicated physician.”
“You might just think what he wants people to think. You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you,” Manseur said, bristling. “Let’s do some investigating before we get our panties in a bunch.”
“Michael, are you wearing panties?”
“I don’t believe Sibby Danielson is connected to Gary’s disappearance. She’s a side issue, and LePointe’s connection is better suited to investigation by the state medical ethics board than by the NOPD…or the FBI.”
“So you suggesting we drop Sibby?” Alexa asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Manseur said, defensively.
“We have to compile a list of individuals involved and run their phone records to look for call patterns that tie them to each other and the Gary West event.”
“That could be tricky for me,” Manseur said. “Soon as I ask for LePointe’s phone records, red flags are going to wave all through City Hall.”
“I wouldn’t dream of involving anybody local,” Alexa told him.
Manseur frowned.
“Anybody else, I mean.”
32
Because of the headache, Leland Ticholet was chewing up one aspirin tablet after another as he piloted the boat toward Doc’s place. He needed his good headache pills and a dark space until the lights in his brain stopped flashing. He was tempted to pull over and lie down on the bench with a burlap bag over his head, but he needed his pills bad. It had been a while since he’d had a migraine, because he had pills to take every day to keep them away. They had worked until he forgot to take one due to all the excitement of thumping that man for Doc and all.
As he turned into the channel toward the little house, he could barely focus his eyes ahead because the sunlight hitting the water shot right into his brain like a nail.
He spotted the car Doc drove parked alongside Leland’s father’s old panel truck. He hoped Doc didn’t yell at him or make fun of him in that smart-ass way, because Leland didn’t want to hurt him. But if he did holler, then what happened to him was not going to be Leland’s fault. Most of the time he didn’t even remember the stuff happening that brought the sheriff’s men. He was going along just fine as you please, then somebody did something and the infuriation blast happened and Leland was as surprised as anybody else about it.
Doc was waiting at the back door, looking mad, as usual. “Why didn’t you answer the telephone?” he demanded. “It’s what I gave it to you for. Where is it?”
“I didn’t hear it ring,” Leland said as he pushed easily by the smaller man.
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Battery might have died. Little as it is,” Leland said, going through the kitchen cabinet drawers looking for his pill bottle. “And I got a headache on me. Feels like my brain is on fire.”
“You haven’t been taking these, have you, Lee?” Doc asked. Leland looked up and had to squint to see that Doc was holding his brown bottle of headache pills.
“Give me ’em,” Leland said, reaching for the bottle and snatching it out of the little guy’s hand.
“Where is the cellular phone I gave you?” Doc asked.
Leland remembered hurling it into the water, but he wasn’t about to tell Doc that. He threw six capsules into his mouth and chewed before he answered, his teeth slimy from the plastic casings. “I guess maybe it’s in the boat.”
“Well, go get it.”
“I will when I go back to it,” Leland said. “Right now I’m gonna shut my eyes.”
“Unacceptable,” Doc said. “Totally un-ac-ceptable behavior, even for a man without any social filters whatsoever.”
“Who gives a hoot,” Leland said, going into the closet. He slammed the door behind him, which made his vision go bright white and the pain almost put him on his knees. He curled up on the pine floor like a nesting rat. He heard Doc walking around in the kitchen, but he was smart enough not to say anything else. He sure as hell couldn’t go get the man staying at Leland’s camp, because he didn’t even know where it was. And Leland knew Doc wanted that man brought here. He wasn’t sure why he wanted him moved here, and whatever the sombitch was thinking didn’t matter to Leland one little bit.
33
Kenneth Decell hung up and slipped his cell phone into the pocket of his sports jacket. He looked at his employer, who had been staring at him anxiously while he talked to Veronica Malouf. LePointe raised a bushy white eyebrow, waiting.
“Manseur and Keen left satisfied after Malouf told them Danielson was still in the hospital.”
“Took her word?” LePointe asked.
“They didn’t ask to see for themselves. How the media got on this bothers me. Somebody set them up to it; I just can’t imagine who, or why.”
“Pressure,” LePointe said. “It’s obvious that whoever is behind all of this wants to keep pressure on me until I pay them off.”
“I’m not sure that’s the smartest way to deal with them.”
“It’s your job to deal with this, Ken,” LePointe snapped.
“Keen makes it a lot more complicated. She’s not local. I can’t close her down like I could if it was just Manseur.”
“Casey went behind my back to ask for Keen to be on this because she didn’t trust the police here to be competent.”
“Casey—”
“I don’t blame her, Ken,” LePointe interrupted.
Decell was glad he hadn’t finished his thought because, true or not, it wasn’t a good idea to criticize Casey West in front of her uncle. “He is her husband,” Decell said.
“She loves that little hippie. This Keen person is adept at what she does?”
“Extremely. An almost perfect record of successful case closures. When they’re solvable, her rate rises higher. She doesn’t miss much.”
“Which means what here?”
“For starters, what Veronica thinks Agent Keen believes and what she does believe may be vastly different.”
“If Casey had just left this alone, we wouldn’t have your second front to deal with, but there it is,” Dr. LePointe said. “If she had just left this alone. No second front.” Dr. LePointe had the annoying habit of repeating himself, perhaps just to hear the sound of his own voice, but maybe because he doubted an ex-cop could keep his mind wrapped around the facts LePointe thought worth remembering. “You’re a miracle worker and I need a miracle right about now.”
“I won’t let you down, Dr. LePointe,” Decell promised. “You can count on that.”
“I believe it’s time to let the authorities know about this letter.” LePointe lifted an envelope and then tossed it onto the desk in front of Decell, who removed the letter and read it slowly.
Refolding it, Decell said, “It’s probably better to let Manseur and Keen chase their tails for a few hours, until I can put things in order.”
“Inarguably you are expert at what you do, Decell. Cop-think works well enough situation-by-situation as in working with individual criminal cases. But this game is far bigger than the simple elements you’re concerned with. Dealing with complex situations and looking far into the future is something I have to do with accuracy every day. I intend to hold on to what my ancestors built brick-by-brick over three hundred years of hard work, learning from mistakes, and strategic planning. Natural
ly they suffered the occasional setback, but without receiving a lethal blow. That’s not going to change on my watch. During my tenure, the worth of the family’s assets has increased dramatically, and not merely due, as some might claim, to the economy’s performance.
“What I do,” LePointe said, opening his hands expansively, “is like playing several chess games at once. It’s a blessing that you don’t have to think on the level I do, Ken.” LePointe spoke in the manner of a patient parent explaining something to his child. “Failure is not an option, whatever the cost. Do we understand each other here?”
Decell stared across the desk at LePointe, knowing the man was just starting his Mr. Superior song and dance. Decell was accustomed to having to sit and be lectured to while trying to seem impressed, interested, and in agreement.
“Naturally, you are the only person I trust to handle this, Ken. And for doing so in a satisfactory manner, you will be rewarded most handsomely.”
“You’ve always been more than generous, Dr. LePointe.”
LePointe took a slip of paper from his desk, for a long ten seconds seemed to be considering what he was going to write down, then scribbled a figure on the paper before pushing it across the desktop.
Decell made a show of leaning forward to read the figure and prepared himself to act astounded by LePointe’s beneficence. LePointe had always paid him well, which considering the mundane nature and low effort level that most of LePointe’s requests required was indeed generous. But the figure Decell saw written there stunned him, because it represented the kind of money you’d expect to pay to have a senator killed.
“Is the amount adequate to ensure that this problem is going to be solved to my satisfaction?”
“I guarantee it.”
“That figure will be paid to you upon completion. Wherever and however you choose.”
Decell nodded, and realized he was holding his breath.
LePointe snatched the paper and put it into his desk drawer, stood up, and walked Decell all the way to the front door, which was unusual and—although Decell seriously doubted it was more than a ploy to make him feel appreciated—seemed to signify a change in Decell’s status from servant to trusted associate. It wasn’t the first time, but it was rare. LePointe didn’t want to know details, and Decell wouldn’t spell out the particulars of his mission.
If violent means were required, such measures would be forthcoming, with animal swiftness and absolute certainty. When it came to conducting the symphony of ending threats to his clients, Decell was willing, if not eager, to get his hands dirty.
For what LePointe was paying, ex-detective Kenneth Decell would have dressed up in the vestments of a cardinal, pulled a hammer from underneath his robe, and beat the Pope to death as he addressed the faithful gathered below the papal balcony.
34
Deep in thought, Alexa stared out the passenger window. She was thinking about how things appeared, and wondering how those things might be connected to Gary West’s vanishing. As director of psychiatry, LePointe had been in the perfect position to influence what treatment Sibby received, how that treatment was applied, and probably who administered it. Although it was hard to imagine him doing so, it certainly appeared that he could have been torturing Sibby for years. Unless something untoward had been going on, why would Decell, most likely acting on LePointe’s behalf, have offered Veronica a reward for warning him if anybody came asking after Sibby, LePointe, or this Nurse Fugate. How Fugate fit in with LePointe and Danielson was a mystery Alexa needed to solve. That anybody could imagine they could make a notorious inmate vanish without someone discovering it and reporting it was a mystery worthy of New Orleans.
“Didn’t Sibby have a family?” Alexa asked Manseur.
“Her family was so scandalized that she’d killed the LePointes that they left New Orleans shortly after the killings. I believe her father was some kind of big dog with the Whitney Bank and they lived Uptown in a nice house on Napoleon. Her mother killed herself, I heard. I went to school with her brother at St. Barts. He was a squirrelly little kid who dressed in starched shirts and pressed slacks and had his belt so tight that he looked like he was wearing a lace-up corset from one of those Storyville portraits. He was redheaded and pretty as a girl and held his hand up so it sort of flopped off his wrist, so we all thought he was a little light in the loafers. His name was something odd like Cyrus, or Cecil, which didn’t help.” Manseur shook his head slowly, remembering. “He had a hard time before his sister chopped up the LePointes. I think there was another brother, who was sort of nutty and mean as a snake if you pissed him off, but it’s fuzzy. Not like I hung with him or anything. He didn’t fit in and I didn’t care. Hell, I didn’t fit in either, but I didn’t fit in with a better crowd. So, how do we talk to this nurse without setting off dynamite? I don’t imagine Dr. LePointe is going to sit still when she calls Decell, or him, and you know damn well she will.”
“I won’t know until we talk to her. We’ll just tell her we’re following up on our visit to the hospital, and since she knew Sibby Danielson, we’re wondering what she can tell us about her.”
“Sounds lame,” Manseur said.
“That’s only because it is. I’ll know when I see her and can watch her reactions to our presence and questions. We don’t have to tell her why we’re asking questions. We only need to know where Sibby is and that she isn’t connected to West’s disappearance. Maybe Gary found out about Sibby’s vanishing act. Somebody out at the hospital might have ratted LePointe out to Gary because there was no love lost between them. That could be a connection. Decell could see any threat against LePointe as marching orders.”
“If that’s the case, Dr. LePointe may not even be aware of it. Maybe Decell just does what he thinks needs doing. Maybe he spirited Sibby out and LePointe doesn’t even know it. Decell is capable of who knows what. He could do whatever he thinks is in his employer’s best interest.”
“A spin doctor who carries a gun instead of a pen,” Alexa said. “His relationship with LePointe might go back to Sibby’s murders. And she cut him pretty good. I suppose LePointe may be unaware of Decell’s work on his behalf, but I doubt it.”
Manseur said, “Makes perfect sense to me.”
“In that New Orleans sort of way?”
Alexa was not sure how to take the fact that Manseur hadn’t seemed outraged or even particularly surprised by the LePointe/River Run bombshell. Alexa wondered, if she hadn’t taken him to the hospital, would he have even gone, or just called the director and been told Sibby was there and let it go at that. And it seemed to her that Manseur considered This is New Orleans a phrase that explained anything that was out of line, bordering on illegal behavior in the same way that After all, this is Mars might.
Maybe he was burned-out by the grinding down the job did to a man, the terrible pay, the complex political minefield, the embedded corruption of the city, the endless line of corpses, the guilty being set free in astounding numbers by juries who actually were peers of the accused or just anti-cop enough to ignore the truth, ignorant enough not to get the evidence, or nullify the charges because they didn’t like prosecutors. She couldn’t know that he wouldn’t fold up on her if his career were to be in jeopardy. She still wanted to trust him, but she wondered if trust was something he hadn’t earned, something that shouldn’t be given out like a door prize. True, Winter liked him, admired him, and trusted him based on one situation that had elevated Manseur to his present position. But any way you cut it, Manseur was no Winter Massey.
She tried to picture all of the people she trusted as much as she did Winter, and the gallery walls of her mind were as painfully bare as those of a museum between exhibitions.
There was a lot to admire about Manseur. He seemed to be a good enough detective in a town—to put it kindly—not known for having a gentle, good, or honest police department. He was a family man, who had a picture of his wife and daughters banded to the visor of his vehicle and in his office.
“Manseur,” he said, pulling to a stop beside the dark green Ford Taurus owned and maintained by the FBI.
“Okay, I’ll tell her,” Manseur finished, closing his phone. “That was Evans. Said to tell you Dr. LePointe heard from Gary West, so thank you for your help.”
“Heard how?”
“Letter in the morning mail. West said he’s coming back tomorrow morning from a little trip he took to go off and commune with nature or some other happy crap.”
“You’re serious?” Alexa said.
“It’s what my boss told me. You think he’s lying?”
“Somebody is.”
“Why?”
“You’re joking, right?” Alexa retorted.
“What makes you so sure it isn’t true?” Manseur asked.
“Well, for one thing, when a person is taking a trip to commune or whatever, would he get somebody to crash into his car and hit him in the head with a pipe? LePointe or somebody close to him wants to shut us down. You’re a detective, Michael. What do you really think?”
“I think maybe you’re being a bit paranoid,” Manseur answered. “You’re convinced there’s a conspiracy.”
“Well, why would I imagine such an odd thing? Let me see…Dr. LePointe most likely had the ability to exercise his will over the woman who savagely murdered his only brother and sister-in-law, leaving their young daughter, who witnessed the horrific scene, orphaned and emotionally devastated. He certainly doesn’t want that known, even in New Orleans. Even a plumber’s assistant in any other city in the country would see that as less than a normal circumstance.”
“Maybe he’s a dedicated professional who can set his personal emotions aside in order to help a very sick woman, who isn’t responsible for her actions, regain her sanity. Look, if I were the superintendent of police, and if one of the beat cops gave my wife a ticket, I wouldn’t have to leave the department because his sergeant, a man under my command and control, put him on a foot beat in the projects to teach him a lesson.”