“It’s your call all the way. Do you really think Grace could be involved in Gary’s abduction? Left at the light.”
“What about her personal life?”
“She spends most of her days with me. She’s a very dedicated and hardworking individual. Gary doesn’t appreciate her. He thinks…Well, it isn’t important why.”
“It might be,” Alexa said.
“He thinks she’s too dedicated. Jealous of him. I know it’s silly.” Casey laughed nervously. “He thinks she’s in love with me.”
“A girl crush?”
“More than a girl crush. It’s nonsense. If she were, you know, I’d know. She loves me because we’re close friends. Gary was just being…Gary. He watches out for me.”
“Does Grace ever seem to dislike Gary?”
“Grace seems to like him just fine.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“Well, she did mention a while back that she met a man who’s in medicine, but she said it wasn’t serious. She calls someone and someone calls her, but she never said it was the same man. She’ll tell me if it gets serious. Right at the next street. That one.”
Alexa glanced at her. “What else do you know about him?”
“Not much. I’ve never met him. I don’t even know his name. I told her to invite him along to a couple of functions, but she always said he was too busy. Wait a minute, she didn’t tell me he was a medical professional. I overheard her answer the phone once; she called him Doc.”
“Does she spend much time with you socially?”
“Well, she’s my friend.”
“Does Grace know about Sibby Danielson?”
“She knows she murdered my parents.”
“Could she have known Sibby was at River Run?”
“How could she? I didn’t know it myself!”
“You’ve been to River Run.”
“Yes, but never on the wards.”
“Do you know what Sibby looks like?”
“No idea.”
“So you could have seen her and not known who she was?”
“Once I took pictures of some of the mental patients. Grace was with me. But those inmates weren’t dangerous or anything. The orderlies brought them in to the cafeteria, stayed while I worked, then took them out again. It wasn’t like I was in any danger. Grace assists me, but out there she was less helpful than usual.”
“Why? Was she frightened?”
“No. She was sort of flirting with one of the orderlies. Small guy. But I don’t really need an assistant for sessions.”
Alexa’s cell phone rang.
“Manseur,” she said, opening it.
“Decell and the Bentley have led us on a wild-goose chase over the twin bridges, out to the English Turn golf course. It looks like we’re heading back to the twin spans.”
“Decell and the Bentley are red herrings,” Alexa told him. “LePointe is going to make the drop. We’re tracking his Mercedes out of New Orleans, along River Road. Maybe we’re heading toward River Run.”
“They’re both headed back to LePointe’s; we’re coming that way. Just keep me posted on your location if you change roads.”
Alexa closed the phone.
“I guess it’s up to us,” Casey said.
“Looks like a definite possibility,” Alexa said.
“Unko’s turning right,” Casey said.
“What’s this way?”
“Nothing,” Casey said.
64
Leaving River Road, LePointe’s Mercedes sped up dramatically. It turned down a series of county roads that Casey said were taking them toward Lake Bourne. By telephone, Alexa fed Manseur each turn. Manseur was racing to intersect them, but evacuation traffic made his route slow going. Alexa could imagine him blasting his horn, using the shoulder like a lane, and using the flashing blue lights like a snowplow.
It appeared that LePointe was carrying the bonds to some remote location. Unless Decell was hidden in the Mercedes, she prayed she could get to the drop before LePointe got himself hurt. If he did get hurt, she and Manseur would catch hell. She would do the best she could, and her first priority was to keep Casey out of harm’s way. The potential for what the feds called a cluster-fuck event was too real.
They were on a narrow gravel road that wound along a mossy bayou. They passed several cabins, but saw no one, nor did they pass any other vehicles.
“He’s stopped just ahead,” Casey reported.
According to the tracker, LePointe had come to a stop or maybe he had reached some predetermined spot and thrown the briefcase from the car. Alexa cut her lights and drove slowly down the gravel road. When the tracker’s location was fifty yards away, she pulled off beside some moss-covered trees and cut the engine. She called Manseur and told him where she was.
“I want you to stay here and wait for Detective Manseur,” Alexa told Casey. She handed her the cell phone, took her Glock and badge case out of her purse, and slipped the ID and the extra magazines into her jacket pockets, one side of the handcuffs behind her belt, one outside.
“But you might need a hand,” Casey protested.
“This is not a negotiation, Casey. You swore to do what I said.”
“I rarely ever swear, but I did agree. Please be careful, Alexa. If you get hurt helping us, I’d never forgive myself.”
“Just stay in the car.”
Casey nodded. “I’m disappointed that you don’t believe that I can handle myself, but your command is my order.”
Alexa took her Kevlar vest from the back seat and stepped out into the sultry night, leaving Casey sitting alone in the Bucar. Outside the car, the air was filled with the smell of mud and stagnant water. The moon offered just enough illumination so she could make out the road and the trees. She slipped on the vest, cinched it tight, and started walking. Thirty yards down the road she came to a dirt driveway. She could just make out the shape of a cabin in a clearing on the bayou and the low shape of the Mercedes parked outside the shack.
As she moved toward the little wood-frame house, she froze. The interior light of the Mercedes came on as the door swung open. LePointe, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a trench coat, despite the heat, climbed out, carrying a briefcase. Motionless, Alexa watched as he closed the car door and slowly approached the cabin’s porch. She had been within thirty feet of the car when LePointe climbed out, close enough that she heard his cell phone snap shut.
Somebody swung the front door open, the interior light silhouetting his form for a moment before LePointe stepped inside and the door closed again.
Alexa closed on the structure, gun in hand. As she neared the porch, she could hear voices. The windows were covered from the inside with what looked like bedsheets.
Hoping to peer in one of the side windows, she moved quickly and as stealthily as possible around the side of the house, across the weed-covered brick-hard ground. The old panel truck they had been looking for was parked just behind the house, its rear end facing the building. On the bayou, a boat with a center console was tied to a short dock.
At one of the two windows at the cabin’s back, a vertical rip in the curtain allowed Alexa to see what appeared to be the main room, lit by a camping lamp hanging from a beam. What she glimpsed through the narrow slit filled her with horror. Gary West, wrapped around with enough duct tape to make him look like a mummy, was bound to a wooden chair, which in turn was taped to a support post. A rucksack lay on the floor at his feet. A man wearing a dark running suit was aiming a handgun at LePointe and rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. He had a woman’s stocking over his face, mashing his features. The briefcase was still in the silver-haired LePointe’s right hand, the brim of his hat pulled down over his brow like some gangster in an old film. The man pulled up the stocking, exposing his face, perhaps to see LePointe better, or so LePointe could see him clearly, because he was smiling broadly and brandishing a small revolver as he spoke.
It appeared to Alexa that the man with the gu
n was an older version of the same young man she’d seen in the pictures in Fugate’s house.
The cabin wasn’t insulated, so Alexa could hear some of what the man was saying. He was giving LePointe a severe dressing down, gesturing menacingly with the handgun, probably building up his courage to put one in the good doctor, Gary West, or both of them. Alexa was certain that since he had seen the man, LePointe was not going to leave the shack alive. She could see LePointe’s right hand slowly reaching into his coat pocket. The armed man was pointing the gun at the ceiling above him and at Gary West, explaining something. Alexa wondered if LePointe was reaching for a weapon.
Alexa moved swiftly to the back door. She’d put her hand on the knob to turn it when two gunshots reverberated inside the building. She shoved open the back door and aimed her Glock inside, her eyes scanning the interior, trying to locate the armed man.
“FBI!” she yelled. The man was gone. LePointe was lying on the floor. She spun, spotted the man aiming at her, and was bringing her gun around when, from behind, a massive hand gripped her neck, a second hand reached around and twisted her Glock from her. He shoved her violently, the force sending her sprawling into the the chair holding Gary West. Whoever had manhandled her had been outside, watching in the darkness. She thought she smelled something familiar from her childhood. Juicy Fruit gum.
“I got her, Doc!” the man who’d shoved her yelled. “Hello there, Miss FBI.”
The still-warm barrel of a gun pressed against her head. The sharp odor of cordite filled her nostrils. She couldn’t take her eyes off the huge figure of Leland Ticholet, his massive hand gripping a section of lead pipe. In his other hand he held her Glock.
“It’s futile to struggle,” the gunman said. “I’d rather not kill you if I don’t have to. Dr. LePointe pulled a gun, so I shot him in self-defense. His fault.”
It’s never the killer’s fault. Alexa turned her head and looked at Dr. LePointe. The wall behind him was peppered with blood and brain matter. A compact semiautomatic handgun lay on the floor beside his lifeless body.
The man Leland Ticholet called Doc dropped to his haunches, opened the briefcase to make sure the bonds were in there, closed it, then stood.
“Where’s Grace?” Alexa asked.
“It wasn’t my turn to watch her.” Keeping his gun on Alexa, Doc reached into the rucksack on the floor and took out a spiral notebook. “You should read this. It is highly enlightening and informative reading on the great and powerful Grand Poo-Bob of mumbo-jumbo, the destroyer of lives for the pure hell of it. He was a sadistic bastard who received too light a punishment. You’ll see that I’ve killed a monster.”
“He was a bastard,” Leland agreed from the door, tapping his leg idly with her Glock.
Doc patted Alexa down, located her handcuffs, and pulled them out. “On your stomach,” he commanded. “Hands behind you.”
Alexa rolled over and, as he cuffed her using her handcuffs, looked at Gary West. She wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead, until he moved his head slightly.
When the masked man rolled her back over, she saw above her a plastic-coated steel cable crisscrossing the rafters between pulleys, and then she saw the shotgun that had been bolted to the rafter. It was aimed down at Gary’s chest. This creature had created a complex booby trap designed to end Gary West.
“Do you like my apparatus?” he asked her. “It was a great deal of trouble to put together, but the tinkering was a nice diversion. Leland, put her gun on the counter.”
How is it set off? Her eyes ran along the cables until she saw the transfer-of-weight mechanism, a steel bowl connected to a counterweighted lever that would, as sand filled the bowl, tighten the wires running through several pulleys, until the increasing pressure on the trigger fired the shotgun.
“You didn’t come out here all by your lonesome, did you?” the man asked. “Leland, is she alone?”
“I ain’t seen nobody else.”
“You can escape,” Alexa said. “If you hurry.”
“Tell Mrs. West that had not Dr. LePointe tried to rub me out, he and Mr. West would both still be alive.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Alexa said. “You can take the ransom and get away. I’ve got backup on the way.”
“Detective Manseur? Gary probably sustained some brain damage thanks to my somewhat overzealous assistant, but he might have recovered had it not been for the double-ought buckshot that will go through his lungs by means of my mechanical invention.”
“LePointe was self-defense. Murder of a hostage in the course of a kidnapping earns you the death penalty.”
“Everybody dies, dear Alexa,” he said. “The question is whether it’s best to die a pauper or prince.” He lifted the briefcase so Alexa could see it. “I think the answer to that lies herein, don’t you? Two point five million.” He reached up, and taking hold of a thin cable, pulled it. Alexa saw the pin fall as the corner of an overstuffed bag opened and a thin stream of white sand started pouring into the bowl.
“Don’t do this!” Alexa yelled at him. “Stop it and go.”
“I’ll go when—”
The front door flew open and Alexa turned her head to see Casey West standing in the doorway with her hands stretched out before her. Leland Ticholet reacted like he was spring-loaded—whirling and darting out into the night.
At Casey’s entrance, Doc turned toward the door. He lifted the briefcase just as Casey fired the gun she was gripping. Bullets slammed into the case and Doc stumbled backwards, using the case as a body shield, moving for the open back door as fast as he could work his legs.
Casey advanced deeper into the house, firing steadily as she came. The reports were earsplitting. Casey ejected the empty magazine, letting it clatter to the floor. She shoved in a new magazine as she moved purposefully toward the kitchen. The man scrambled backward frantically, turned, and ran outside.
Casey fired several more rounds, then stopped.
Outside, a boat motor roared to life.
“Gary!” Casey yelled. She ran to him, dropping the weapon as she reached to hug him.
“Casey, get back!” Alexa yelled. “There’s a booby trap. Get the cuff keys from my jacket!”
Kneeling, a fumbling and shaking Casey located the key and unlocked the handcuffs.
Alexa stood. She could see the cables to the apparatus losing their slack—tightening.
Casey was staring at the shotgun in the rafters. “Do something! Alexa, help him!”
Alexa’s mind raced. The shotgun was not only bolted to the rafter using U-bolts so it couldn’t be moved at all without tools, a steel plate had been placed over the receiver to keep anything from being placed behind the trigger to prevent its discharge. The cables were comprised of plastic-coated, twisted steel strands, which couldn’t be cut without bolt cutters, and they were thin enough to make shooting them in half out of the region of normal marksmanship. Shooting the sandbag, perched near the peak, would only add to the speed the sand was flowing into the bowl, and hasten the inevitable.
Casey began clawing at the duct tape, hoping to free the chair from the column. It was clearly a futile effort, given the speed with which the bag was draining. The bastard had designed his device well; disarming it quickly was impossible.
The gun was going to go off.
Gary West was going to be killed by the blast.
Alexa hurriedly removed her ballistic vest and draped it over Gary’s chest.
Almost before she got her hands clear, the shotgun exploded, the lead’s off-center impact causing the vest to fly off, hitting the floor six feet away. She heard the wind rush out of Gary West’s open mouth; smoke curled between the shotgun and its target.
Casey stood frozen, crying hysterically.
The buckshot hadn’t penetrated the Kevlar vest. Alexa pressed her hand against Gary’s neck and her heart leapt when she felt a weak but steady pulse under her fingers. “He’s okay,” she said.
Casey wrapped her arms around Gary
and kissed him frantically. “Oh, my poor, poor, darling Gary,” she sobbed. “We’ll get you to the hospital.”
Alexa ran to the Bucar for her purse, which held her folding knife. She found her phone on the seat, pressed the CALL button to reach Manseur, and ran back inside the cabin. Quickly, she began cutting away the tape.
“Manseur and Bond are on the way,” she told Casey.
“Thank God,” the other woman said.
Casey peeled the tape from her husband as Alexa made the incisions. When the tape was removed, they lowered Gary to the floor.
Next, Alexa moved over to LePointe, and as she removed his hat, his hair came off with it. When the wig fell to the floor she saw the bright red hair and the unmistakable features of the dead man.
“Poor Unko,” Casey sobbed.
“Your uncle’s still alive. It’s Decell.”
The steady whooping of sirens and bright headlights burned through the window sheets as cars swept into the driveway.
Alexa’s eyes came to rest on the notebook on the floor. She picked it up and folded it, putting it into her purse.
“Is that the diary?” Casey asked.
“I won’t know until I’ve read it,” she answered. Pandora’s book, she thought. Technically the notebook was evidence and she was collecting it for the investigation—albeit surreptitiously. She intended to see for herself what Fugate had written before deciding how she was going to proceed.
“I want to make sure it gets read. Just between us, for the time being, okay, Casey? Your uncle can’t know I have it.”
Casey nodded once and turned her attention back to her husband.
65
Manseur exploded into the cabin, gun in hand, the sirens outside still blasting. “Clear!” he yelled.
Bond came through the back door, holstering his gun. “Back’s clear.”
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