LePointe’s eyes shifted as his mind glimpsed solid ground and stepped toward it. “Do I need to remind you that you are a guest, invited in by us, a consultant who is supposed to help us find Gary?”
“I am an FBI agent trying to assist the local authorities in finding Gary West, and in the course of that investigation I have uncovered information that may figure into the disappearance of Mr. West.”
“And how was it that you ended up at River Run interviewing Dr. Whitfield about Sibhon Danielson?”
Alexa pounced. “I didn’t say that I had been at River Run or mention that I spoke to anyone there. How did you know that?”
Dr. LePointe’s silence was deafening, so she went on.
“The media asked for the official police files pertaining to the homicides, which Detective Manseur pulled to see if there was something there that might be helpful. I thought the media investigating a rumor that Sibby Danielson had been released was too coincidental. I accompanied Detective Manseur to River Run. Nurse Fugate’s name came up, and I discovered, in the course of trying to contact her to discuss Sibhon, that Nurse Fugate had been murdered and that in all likelihood Ms. Danielson had been staying in her home. All that I’ve been trying to do since early this morning is to find Mr. West, and I intend to do exactly that. Unfortunately, this letter’s appearance and your pronouncement of its authenticity to Jackson Evans has cost us precious time. As of now, it appears to me that you may be trying to mislead the authorities and impede their investigation. Now I’m going to kick this into high gear, no matter how the media chooses to deal with it. It appears it may open some personal and professional unpleasantness for you, which I can honestly say doesn’t bother me.”
“There’s a great deal at stake,” LePointe said. “A very great deal. The foundations’ reputations are paramount. If we are careful about what we say publicly, no—”
“I don’t care about that!” Casey snapped. “I don’t care about what anybody says or thinks, and why you do is a mystery. All anybody gives a flip about is how much money they can get from you. They couldn’t care less about our illustrious reputation. Damn you! I’ll give away every penny I own to anybody who will give Gary back to me. If he isn’t back today, I’m going to drop to my knees and beg on television. And if he doesn’t come home, I’ll spend every cent I have to find those responsible and see them punished.”
“If Gary can be found, he will be,” Alexa said.
“Casey, show some backbone!” LePointe growled. “You will not do any such thing. You will not let anyone see you begging!”
Casey pointed her finger at her uncle. “I never realized what a horrible and disgusting person you truly are. I wish to God I could hate you. If I find out you or Decell had anything to do with Gary…I’ll see you in prison.” That said, she rushed from the room.
After collecting the envelopes containing the evidence, Alexa followed Casey, who had taken Deana from the maid and was striding for the front door, while her uncle’s booming voice—ordering her to come back this very moment—rang hollowly through the house.
41
The name his mother gave him was Elvis Cash Orbison Brown, but nobody had called him that since he was a kid, and so he thought of himself, as everybody else did, as Grub. He wasn’t sure how old he was, but he reckoned it at nineteen or twenty years, give or take. He knew his birthday was in the winter, and since it could be Thanksgiving, he had decided on that day. Someone asked him for the exact day he was born, because they said Thanksgiving was always on the third Thursday in November. Grub was still trying to figure out why they’d laughed at him, though he believed it had something to do with him having his birthday on a big holiday.
By the time his mother passed—dying from a cottonmouth bite that she got while walking home along the bayou late one night from the Big Time Tavern—Grub had already been working odd jobs around Moody’s Bait & Gas a good while, to earn the pocket change that his mother had taken from him as soon as he got home. Well, she stopped that when she died. He wasn’t glad she died, because he’d liked the way she cooked for him and stuff, but it was the first opportunity he’d had to keep what he earned.
Once she had told him that she’d give him a dollar if he could jump over his own shadow, and when the men in the store had laughed at him about the Thanksgiving birth date, he had told them that very thing. It silenced them and they didn’t laugh at him for a while. And Grub wondered if any of the men at the store could jump over their own shadows, because he had tried and tried till he was winded, but it was too hard. He could only jump all around it, so he’d given up.
He hadn’t gone to school long because of how the other children held their noses and laughed at him and the teachers decided he wasn’t able to learn the stupid crap they wanted to teach him. Even though they’d acted like they liked him, he’d known the teachers didn’t. His mama didn’t care one way or the other, but the few times she’d read the notes they’d sent home pinned to his clothes, she’d gone to the school drunk and raised almighty hell with them. After the last visit, they stopped talking to him, much less pinning notes on his shirt. His mama was most happy walking back and forth from the bar along Bayou Berant where she’d spent her time.
Although he wasn’t book smart, Grub knew enough to hide when he saw Leland Ticholet pulling up to the dock. Leland didn’t just get mad at you and forget it later. Leland had never given Grub any money, because he didn’t look for help from anybody, and you didn’t want to talk to him unless he talked to you first. Grub had broken that rule that morning trying to be friendly and make conversation, but it had gone wrong because Leland was a mean shit-head and he had given Grub offense. Leland didn’t want any friends and, the way he acted, he wasn’t about to get any either.
Grub knew what Mr. Moody had told the game wardens a few days back was a big lie. He’d told them that he didn’t know if Leland sold alligators, and nobody with good sense wanted to know bad enough to go near Leland’s camp. Mr. Moody told them nobody he was aware of bought alligator meat or skins, but Grub knew Moody bought them—not only from Leland, but off of lots of other people, too, only not at the store. He did that at a shack he used for alligator business.
Leland stole things, and people didn’t like it. In these parts a man with more smarts than a tire tool didn’t go near another man’s traps—nets, crab traps, the floating jugs that marked trotlines, or muskrat or nutria traps. Stealing from the residents out in the swamps was suicidal, unless you were Leland Ticholet. If people knew Leland stole from them, they didn’t say it to him.
Grub wondered if the wardens knew what sort of crazy bastard they were messing around with asking after Leland. Grub didn’t like Leland, but he didn’t like the wardens even more.
Leland didn’t have friends, but a week earlier, when he’d come over for some gas, which the new boat used a great deal of, he’d had with him a little soft-handed stranger who was wearing a shirt with the collar turned up like it was cold and a big straw hat with a wide brim and he’d had on sunglasses. Moody wondered if he was a fisherman Leland was guiding, which was what Leland claimed, but Grub didn’t see any fishing pole rigs or bait either. The man acted like he might be a movie star trying not to be recognized. One time they had filmed part of a movie around the dock, and Grub heard that some of the actors were famous, but he didn’t know much about movies or the people that were in them. They all wore odd hats and sunglasses and talked funny. Grub didn’t watch television or go to movies because he couldn’t sit still long unless there was a lot of shooting and chasing, and he tended to lose track of what they were all about.
Grub lived in a surplus school bus that Mr. Moody parked in the trees near the bait and gas store, for free so long as he did chores for his keep. Grub got to eat the sandwiches that Mrs. Moody made that didn’t get sold. People in the boats sometimes gave him money for helping load and unload their boats. He also cleaned fish for a dime each. He kept all his money in coffee jars that he hid in really g
ood places so nobody could steal them.
That new boat was a puzzle that nobody could figure out. Nobody knew where Leland got the boat from, and nobody dared to ask him anything they could help not to, because he might get crazy and growl in your face, throw you in the water, or break something. Mr. Moody said it was likely he stole it, because there wasn’t any way he’d scraped up enough in one piece to get it, and nobody in their right mind would finance a maniac like Leland Ticholet even if God Himself cosigned the loan. Mr. Moody allowed as how God had better sense than to do something so stupid as that.
That morning, Grub watched Leland come racing in, pull up to the pier, tie the boat, jump up, get the pump handle, pull it to the gas tanks, and squat down while the tanks filled up. When Leland was done, he put the pump handle back, ran in, and paid Mr. Moody by signing his book for it, which went against what Mr. Moody owed him for the gator hides he didn’t actually buy—just traded goods for them.
Grub waited until Leland was inside the store before he ran up the dock to the boat and looked inside it. There was something big wrapped up in a bedsheet. Grub figured it was a person, on account of the shoes sticking out at one end. It appeared to Grub that the sheet was moving, that whoever it was wrapped up in there was alive. If he’d had time he would have poked the bundle with something to see if it moved, but if Leland was to catch him poking at his sheet deal, he might get crazy.
Grub had quickly jumped up onto the graveled lot above the dock, scampered back to the store, and hidden behind the live-bait well. Leland came back out with a loaf of white bread under his arm and a cola in his hand, and pretty soon he was eating a handful of bread, and was hauling ass away from the dock at full speed, no matter the signs said NO WAKE. Leland wasn’t big on minding signs—if he could even read them, which Grub doubted he could.
Grub figured that the little movie star with the sunglasses and the straw hat was likely who was rolled up in the sheet. Grub considered mentioning the man in the sheet to Moody, but the store owner didn’t care about what people did as long as they didn’t do things that could make trouble for him. Plus, if Leland was to find out that Grub was telling his business, like wrapping up people in things and driving them around the swamps, it might end up being him that was rolled up and lying in the bottom of that fancy new boat.
Grub couldn’t swim, and didn’t want to have to learn all the sudden either.
42
Alexa followed Casey West’s Range Rover, glancing down to find Manseur’s number in her phone’s directory and press the button to dial him. He answered immediately.
“Yeah, Alexa.”
“Michael, the West letter is a fraud, so the hunt for Gary West is back on. I think LePointe or Decell authored it.”
“You sure?”
“Casey said Gary writes everything out by hand and it isn’t in his voice at all and he wouldn’t send it to LePointe because he hates him. I have the letter with me. We won’t find West’s prints on it, but it gave me an opportunity to get LePointe’s print for reference, and I’m on the way to get some of Gary’s things.”
“Why would the doctor try something so transparent?”
“Desperation,” Alexa said. “We’re ripping his world apart and he can’t do anything about it.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m following Casey to her house for Gary’s fingerprints. I’ll see you at HQ in half an hour or so. You’ll be there?”
“Where else would I be? The mayor’s got the press assembling and he’s going to get the cops to go door to door to enforce the order. They’re going to pull every available cop off whatever else they’re working on.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think LePointe had something to do with the hurricane’s timing.”
“I wouldn’t bet any of my money he didn’t,” Manseur said.
43
Casey sat at the dining table where Alexa had first met her, crying. Grace Smythe, who had finished seeing after her parents’ packing, had been there when they’d come in and had taken Deana out in the backyard and was playing with her, which amounted to making sure the child didn’t jump into the pool.
“I never thought Uncle William could be so horrible. It makes me wonder if he’s behind Gary’s disappearance, and that letter is supposed to give Decell the time he needs to get everything cleaned up so nobody can prove anything. Is that possible? Kenneth Decell knows how to cover things up. You’re never going to find Gary,” Casey sobbed. “Unko knew Dorothy Fugate very well. Very, very well. Boy, did he know her well!”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I saw him with her. Once, seven, eight years ago when my grandmother and Aunt Sarah were away in New York and I was supposed to be staying with a girlfriend, I came back home to get something. The servants were all off that day. I used my key, and as I was passing his office—the door was cracked open—Dorothy was bent over on his desk naked except for the nurse hat and he was behind her. His pants were down and he was standing there—you know.” Casey smiled. “She was chanting.” Casey laughed suddenly. “I can’t say it. It’s too vulgar.”
“Go ahead,” Alexa said. “We’re adults.”
“‘Oh, Dr. Fuckerman! Oh, Docky Big Dick! Oh, pour it to me, Dr. Fuckerman! Dr. Fuckerman. How distinguished!’”
Alexa didn’t mean to, but she laughed too.
“‘Oh…Docky Dick! Pour…it…to me! Heeeere I come again, Dr. Fuckerman!’ And Unko’s bare buns and those socks being held up with those garters and his shoes on. Shirt and tie in place! It was like a…a Monty Python skit.”
Casey leaned back and laughed harder. Soon, they were both laughing.
“He and Dorothy carried on for years. My aunt Sarah and grandmother knew it and they ignored it the way someone knows their adult child is sneaking a cigarette and they don’t mention it. Aunt Sarah was never in love with my uncle. I’m not sure she liked him much or had any respect for him. She stayed gone from our house more than she was there, and Uncle William didn’t care.”
Casey used the word house instead of home, Alexa noted.
“As long as Aunt Sarah was in town for the right social events, he couldn’t have cared less. The universe revolves around Uncle William.”
“Narcissistic personality,” Alexa said.
“That’s what Gary says,” Casey told her. “He told me that Uncle William didn’t love me because he didn’t know how. Maybe it’s true. He’s always been so rigid. He sees everything in strict terms of how it will affect him, or the family’s reputation.
“He’s always thought I’m too soft to take an active part in the family trusts. Since I was very young, he’s pecked at my self-esteem instead of building it, and berated me for being emotional and weak. He gives me a compliment and it’s a barely concealed dig. He’s passive-aggressive, like my grandmother was. My grandmother would say, ‘I like your hair short, Casey. It will look so much better when you’ve lost a few pounds.’
“I don’t really remember my parents, but I know they were always holding me, kissing me. I think I can remember their laughter. Grandmother never laughed. Aunt Sarah used to laugh at the dinner table, and Uncle William and my grandmother would scowl at her like she’d passed gas. It was hell growing up in that hideous mausoleum. I know my parents’ house wasn’t like that. Do you know what it’s like to grow up unloved and unappreciated?”
“He seemed very protective and complimentary about your work last night,” Alexa said, purposely not answering Casey’s question.
“Only because Detective Kennedy called my work snapshots. Unko has called my photography a lot worse things, though. Grandmother said photography was a common pursuit. She wanted me to paint or sculpt as a hobby. ‘Why would you want to take pictures when you can hire a professional,’ she said. Had I funded a photographic center for underprivileged children, or something that made the family look as though it cared about the poor, that would have been okay. When I started getting outside attention, pr
aise from their social equals, and publicity in the right magazines, it became somewhat bearable. Of course, being a LePointe helped get the right sort of people interested in my work. The right curators, critics, gallery owners, corporate and museum collections…”
“Your work is remarkable,” Alexa said. “I’ve seen enough to know that who you are is irrelevant to the work. The accolades are well deserved.”
Casey smiled. “That’s very kind of you.”
“It may be kind, but it’s also the truth.”
“You grew up unloved,” Casey said, studying her. “Neglected.”
Alexa looked out at Deana, who was tugging flowers from their stems while Grace looked on passively.
“What makes you think that?” Alexa said. The denial she wanted to convey sounded false to her.
“Alexa, even a cat that’s been raised since birth by a dog knows another cat when he sees one. I’ve felt it since the moment we met. Maybe that’s why I know I can trust you. I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped. Your personal life is none of my business. This is all professional with you, and I understand that.”
Alexa knew exactly what it felt like to be unloved and beaten down by passive-aggressive people. But the emotional pain from her past wasn’t something she could share with Casey West. She had always told herself that her history never adversely affected or interfered with her job. The idea that this woman and she had something that basic in common had no bearing on the job at hand. Alexa’s empathy, while powerful, was irrelevant. Casey must see her only as a professional.
Alexa looked out again and caught Grace Smythe staring in at her from the garden. The assistant averted her gaze immediately. She suspected that Grace wasn’t accustomed to being out of Casey’s loop, and Alexa was sure she resented it.
“Forgive my prying?” Casey asked.
Too Far Gone Page 19