“What if the patrolman had been on drugs and he murdered your wife, and your daughters saw it happen?”
“In that case, he’d be in prison,” Manseur reasoned. “Hopefully on death row. Would I want to kill him? You’re damned straight I would. But I’m a detective and a professional and I do not take the law into my own hands. And I would have the responsibility to my girls not to end up in jail myself.”
“Right. So you are a professional and you could, if not forgive, let the system deal with him. How would it look if you left the department to become the warden of the prison where the man who murdered your wife was doing time? Say he can be paroled whenever the guards agreed he wasn’t a threat to anybody because he had the drug thing kicked?”
“Saddled with two fashion-conscious young girls and the expenses associated with a deceased wife, like a burial and having to hire babysitters, I could never take the pay cut,” Manseur countered, smiling.
“Don’t you feel a burning need to know the truth?”
“About LePointe’s job and if he gave butcher-girl a few extra shock treatments? Most people would say the more shocks the murderess got, the merrier.”
“In the homicide report, it says that Sibby was Dr. LePointe’s patient before the murders. I can’t help but wonder if a psychiatrist could manipulate a mentally unbalanced person to commit a brutal double homicide. Why, you may ask. Because that would make him guilty of double homicide.”
“Motive?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe his brother beat him at backgammon and said, ‘nanny-nanny boo-boo.’ Look, if Dr. LePointe did, how could he make sure the truth never came to light? Me, I might do something like make sure she could never rat me out by keeping her drugged stupid in my own private hospital. And if I were retiring and someone else were taking over her care, I could make certain the ugly truth would remain buried by making her vanish. I might bribe or blackmail someone to help me pull it off. Maybe I would turn to a nurse who would agree to help me.”
“Why would a nurse agree to do such a thing? The man is a multimillionaire! You’d never convince a jury he could or would do such a thing. You couldn’t convince me.”
“A box of chocolates. A lot more money, which he has access to. But I suspect it is worth looking into. Since we haven’t found a shortcut to Gary West, we actually could take a few minutes to check it out. Especially since it could lead us to his abductors.”
“Dr. LePointe did it in the kitchen with a lunatic.” He turned his basset hound eyes to Alexa. “You might make sure your potential witness, who is insane and couldn’t get anybody to believe her if she said Christmas was in December, remains under your control?” Manseur asked, sarcastically. “At the risk of his freedom?”
“Exactly,” Alexa said. “Say she’s where he can still do that. And it’s not too much of a stretch that it’s connected to Gary West’s disappearance. Suppose we can find and use Sibby to pressure LePointe or Decell to come clean, and maybe that gets us Gary West.”
“Evans called it off.”
“Fine. Let him think you’re off it. This hurricane has him with plenty more to think about than what you’re actually doing. In the meanwhile, we keep following the evidence off his radar.”
“If you are right and this does involve them spiriting Sibby away somewhere, like LePointe’s private torture chamber in his basement—”
“Or another hospital,” Alexa offered.
“Okay, another hospital. The nurse will tell Decell immediately and Decell will tell LePointe and LePointe will tell Jackson Evans and then, best case here, he’ll come down on me with a ten-pound hammer and I’ll be ticketing parked cars for the rest of my career. If I’m lucky.”
“Fine. I’ll go talk to Nurse Fugate myself.”
“It’s a free country. I expect you can defend yourself if anybody wants some answers why you kept going on this after it was over and done. The fact is, I’ve been ordered to report to HQ as soon as I’ve dropped you off. The West case is officially closed until something shows up that merits reopening it.”
“So you’re going to HQ?”
“I have no choice in the matter unless I choose to ignore my superintendent’s direct orders,” Manseur said. “It isn’t like I don’t have pressing cases that I’m ignoring to hunt for escaped lunatics and Baby Big Bucks. If I disobey Evans, he’ll cut me a new you-know-what. This is our stopping place. Go home, Alexa.”
“I’m not leaving,” Alexa said, angry. “Not until Gary West is home with his wife and child. I don’t care how much sway LePointe has or even that we are in New Orleans. If he or Decell are in any way involved in Gary West’s abduction, they’re in my sights. If and when I’m sure they’ve committed a federal crime, I’ll push for an indictment with everything I have. If my director calls me off because he is LePointe’s pal, he’ll have to face the consequences of this pissed-off Mississippi gal who can take whatever punishment his Harvard-going ass can devise, and more, because I know firsthand what real meanness is all about.”
“Men like LePointe don’t go to jail,” Manseur pointed out. “Will not happen.”
“The prisons are full of rich people like him who thought the very same thing,” Alexa snapped.
She threw open her door and slid out, slamming the door behind her. Before she got her keys out of her purse, however, Manseur rolled down his window. “Hey, Keen!”
Alexa turned.
Manseur had a smile on his face. “You’re serious about this?”
Alexa raised an eyebrow.
“While you’re running around stirring up a Mississippi shit-storm, I’ll see if I can get Cooley to work faster on identifying those prints, and I’ll go through the phone records if they’re in yet. You call me if you have anything to tell me. We need prints on Casey and Gary West for comparisons.”
“You’re going to keep working this?”
“You can bet that frown I am. I just wanted to see exactly how serious you were. If I go and get my ass fired, I want to know somebody is going to be standing beside me in the unemployment line.”
He winked at her.
She smiled, wanting to slap and hug him at the same time.
“You find out anything, call me and fill me in,” he said. “And if you need my help at any point, you’ll get it. You need a map to that Fugate nurse’s house?”
Alexa found the keys to her car in her purse, and said, “If the GPS fails, I can probably smell my way to it.”
35
The car.
Wind and rain.
It is dark in my eyes.
The dark talks.
I am dark.
You do the chop now.
Cut here and there and everywhere.
Why the winds?
Cuts everywhere.
Look they lie here.
My belly.
Not the baby.
No chops.
Yes chops.
The cop.
Chop a cop.
Sibhon!…Sibhon!…Sibhon!
I am Dibbly, dubbly, do-do Sibby Dibby.
Mommy love you, yes she do.
For the fucker man says to do.
I am Sibhon…what?
You are the bloody one.
You are twenty-one.
He says to fuck.
Fuck yes.
Fuck is good.
Fuck is right.
Fuck at night.
Fuzzy Wuzzy is the bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy put it there.
What? What? What?
Blood. Blood. Blood.
You are the bloodmaker.
They make it so.
I am bloody.
All the blood.
I am here.
We are there.
There is much blood everywhere.
I don’t want to be here.
Take me away.
Get the baby.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
The blood?
To say the truth.
&nb
sp; I have to remember.
Hack Chop, hack chop, hack chop.
Find her, find her, why?
Take me back.
Don’t like it.
You go back, when you
Hack, hack, hack.
I will not forget.
I am not done.
They lie.
They die.
Not I.
Not I.
It is dark in my eyes.
I am inside a whale.
Remember the chop, chop, chop.
They say lies.
Where my eyes?
What’s that sound in my ears?
Is someone coming?
A cop to chop?
36
Miraculously, the GPS knew exactly where Nurse Fugate’s house was located and, in a pleasant lady voice, told Alexa which streets to take, where she was to turn, and in what direction, and even gave her the exact distances between those turns. It was a thirty-minute trip, which was longer than it should have taken, due to the heavy traffic on the bridge over the river caused by a wave of citizens who’d decided to flee the hurricane, which the radio announcer explained was gathering frightening strength over the warm Gulf waters.
If the hurricane did turn from its projected course, didn’t force water over the levees, or lost focus on the way there, and didn’t have the wind left to blow down houses, no one in the city would ever again lend the weatherman their ears. Since the skies were clear and it was hot, humid, and still, it was hard to believe the latest reports predicting an end-time hurricane. The announcer mentioned that there would almost certainly be a mandatory evacuation. What Alexa noticed he didn’t say was that the city would be making modes of transportation available to those residents who had no cars or other vehicles to carry them to safety. He did interview a resident of a housing project who said she would stay because her “check” wasn’t going to arrive before the storm, so she had no choice. That made Alexa feel both sad and angry. She wondered why the President didn’t get the Air Force to send a fleet of C-5As to haul out all the poor and helpless.
Seconds before she arrived, Alexa called the nurse’s number to see if anyone was home, and was disappointed when a machine answered—using a generic message, in what sounded like an electronic voice that came with the unit. She didn’t leave a message, in case the nurse was monitoring the calls—not answering the ones she wasn’t in a mood to take or when the caller ID showed a name and number she didn’t recognize.
Dorothy Fugate’s address corresponded to a single-story, vinyl-sided Victorian on a quiet street in Algiers Pointe near the Mississippi River. Alexa studied the gingerbread facade as she cut off her engine. She had the uneasy sensation of being watched, and when she turned to look at the house across the street, a curtain seemed to be moving gently—as if someone had drawn it back in order to peer out and then released it. But maybe it was a trick of light, a gust of wind moving through the interior of the brick home.
Its sharp points like piranha teeth, a picket fence whose white paint was chalking defended the Fugate yard from potential invasions. Behind the fence, the sheltering oak trees had leeched nutrients from the soil, leaving large areas of the grounds bare.
All Alexa knew about Nurse Fugate was that she had been the top nurse in the ward where Sibby Danielson had been last kept. Alexa wasn’t sure how she was going to find out what the nurse knew. She decided that she would play it by ear, hoping to surprise Fugate, and that her badge would work the magic it had in similar situations. Alexa would push some buttons, read the woman’s body language, interpret facial expressions, and look for tells while she interviewed her, to see if she could figure out what Fugate was afraid of, using her fears to get her to tell what she knew about Sibby Danielson’s exodus from the violent ward.
Alexa gathered her will, buttoned her blazer, strode to the gate, and, opening it, let herself into the yard, the gate slamming shut behind her with a loud metallic click. Climbing the front steps, she looked at the wicker swing hanging from the ceiling at one end of the porch. She twisted the knob to ring the antique doorbell that was built into the door. Taking a deep breath, she rang it again.
No one answered.
Forming a makeshift visor with her hands, Alexa peered through the beveled glass panel set in the door. Judging by what little she could see, it appeared there was no one at home. She knocked harder, using her knuckles against the wood. Then, when that still didn’t raise anybody, she tapped at the glass, using the tip of her car key for a sharper noise and listened for footsteps.
Maybe Nurse Fugate had joined the trek of refugees from the approaching hurricane. Were it not for Gary West, Alexa herself would certainly have been back in D.C. by now, monitoring the storm from the safety of her apartment.
She tried the doorknob and, finding it unlocked, opened it a few inches. One thing was certain: The nurse wouldn’t have left the city with her home unlocked.
The shade from the oak trees made the interior gloomy, and Alexa immediately noticed the weak antiseptic odor of bleach and the smell of something decaying. A fly that must have come in with her buzzed past her and headed down the hallway toward the rear of the house.
“Hello? Anybody home?” Her voice echoed through the house. “Ms. Fugate, your front door is open.”
Several styles of antique furniture were arranged to view the fireplace, which held an arrangement of fifty or sixty long-stem silk roses spraying out from a low Chinese vase in the unfortunate shape of a spittoon.
A lifeless oil painting of a sunrise on a bayou hung over the mantel, and prints Alexa thought were titled Pinky and Blue Boy, by a painter named Gainsborough, in golden frilly frames were positioned with prominence over a marble-topped side table.
Bills and catalogs, lying on the floor in front of the mail slot, were positioned in such a way that no two pieces were facedown or overlapping each other. It was as though someone had moved them around in order to read the envelopes without lifting them. Not wanting to surprise anyone, Alexa slammed the door loudly enough to be heard in the rear of the house.
A mantel clock trapped within a glass globe chimed twice.
From the rear of the house there was the distinctive creaking of floorboards. Alexa’s unease surged and her empty stomach growled. Old houses made settling noises, she reminded herself, but she doubted that was what she’d heard.
What if Sibby was here—in this house? The thought of coming face-to-face with a murderous psychopath was a sobering one. Alexa was capable of defending herself against conventional attacks, but she’d never dealt with a cleaver-swinging lunatic, and she wished she had backup.
“Ms. Fugate?” she called loudly. “Ms. Fugate? Is anybody home? FBI.” Part of her was tempted to open the door and go back outside. The dusky house seemed to hold a malevolent presence, but she was determined, and not about to turn tail. Besides, she was armed with a Glock .40, more than a match for any man or woman. A bullet doesn’t distinguish between whether its target is sane or bubble-blowing crazy.
Alexa unbuttoned her purse, removed her Glock, pulled the slide back firmly, and slid it forward slowly so the shell went silently into the chamber, before returning it to her purse, leaving the flap open so she could get to it rapidly. Though technically the Glock couldn’t fire a chambered round unless the trigger was pulled, she always left her chamber empty unless she needed it armed. Arming the weapon was a pull of the receiver and a release away. And besides, when sobering was required, the sound of that receiver slamming shut had the same effect as the warning buzz of a rattlesnake.
“Hello,” Alexa called again, easing toward the hallway, which was painted Granny Smith green. She flipped the light switch, which chased away the gloom.
“Ms. Fugate? Are you home?”
The smell of decomposition was stronger. Alexa didn’t relish the prospect of opening a door and finding Fugate lying dead and decomposing. If the nurse wasn’t dead, Alexa dreaded the awkward conversation that would follow
if the woman came in from out back and caught a strange and uninvited FBI agent—sans warrant—deep inside her home.
“Ms. Fugate!” she called out, convinced now that it was a waste of effort. Alexa was just snooping now.
Alexa paused at the first door and pushed it open. Light made entrance into the bedroom through the curtains. There was no corpse. Centered on the bed’s coverlet was an open steel security box with four brown pill bottles inside it.
Alexa picked up one of the bottles by the top and bottom edges. The prescription for a strong tranquilizer was filled for Dorothy Fugate. The prescribing physician was William LePointe, MD. The label dated the issuing of that prescription in July, just a month earlier.
The security box had been opened with a key that was still in the lock; a beaded neck chain similar to those used for military dog tags ran through it. Alexa could see several long blond hairs caught in the links.
Personal items lined the dressing table. Nurse Fugate had stacked magazines and books in the precise pyramids that indicated an anal-compulsive personality. In the open closet, several neatly pressed, heavily starched white uniforms sealed in plastic cleaner bags had fallen to the floor. All of the other hanging clothes had been parted and shoved to the sides.
One of the drawers in the chest had trapped a pair of panties, an edge sticking out like a handkerchief accenting the pocket of a gentleman’s suit.
Alexa left the bedroom and peered into the bathroom across the hall. There was a toothpaste tube on the sink, beneath a rack that held a pair of dry toothbrushes. The faucet dripped onto a brown stain in the porcelain sink bowl. A nightgown hung on a hook on the door, and the toilet seat was up. Veronica Malouf had called Nurse Fugate a spinster, but, as far as Alexa knew, only men lifted toilet seats.
The sliding bolt that could be thrown to secure the last door on the right side of the hallway was engaged. Alexa drew the bolt and gently pushed the door open, to reveal a bedroom in the sort of thoughtless disarray you’d expect from a teenager. Flickering light from a television set on a TV tray pulsed over the narrow, unmade bed. Why is the set on, with the sound off? She quickly scanned the room, which also contained a rocking chair on an oval braided rug, and a small dresser. Steel security bars were mounted on the inside of the window frames, probably to prevent anyone from leaving that way, as opposed to preventing someone from breaking in. This was Sibby’s room.
Too Far Gone Page 15