“I don’t know what all goes on in the rooms,” she said automatically. “I just collect the money and hand out the keys.”
“Room 113 occupied?” Manseur asked.
The manager made a show of opening a registration ledger and pointing to an entry. “Four days ago. A week paid in advance. Cash.”
Manseur looked at the entry the woman’s finger was resting on, reading it upside down before she turned the book to him. “John Hancock? Stands out among all the Smiths and Joneses,” he quipped.
“You remember him?” Alexa asked.
“How could I forget an educated and polite young man such as he is? Quality individuals are not exactly in plentiful supply around here.”
“Quality?”
“The vocabulary of a man of culture and breeding.”
“Is this him?” Manseur showed her the photo of their John Doe standing with Grace Smythe.
“Don’t tell me he’s in trouble? Don’t tell me. He some kind of what, grifter? They can fool you—the good ones. Thank God he paid in advance.”
“Was he alone?”
“He had a woman in his truck. She didn’t come in. I saw her through the window.”
“Describe her,” Alexa said.
“She’s the one in that picture. I saw her pretty good, even though I didn’t go out and visit with her. He paid cash in advance for ten days, and that’s as far as my interest went into his business.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Day before yesterday morning, I think.”
“What was he driving?”
“An old green truck, which was not what you’d think he would drive. My father had one for his dry-cleaning business when I was a little girl.”
“A panel truck?” Alexa asked.
“Dingy-looking. I figured he was planning to fix it up like people do with old shitty vehicles like that. They have the body fixed, you know, paint them, and it’s no longer junkyard trash to a collector.”
“I’ll need the room key,” Manseur said.
“I’m not gonna stop you. If anything kinky or illegal is going on in there, it’s no skin off my butt.”
Manseur and Alexa went to the door of room 113, Doc’s lair, and stood on either side of it, guns drawn. The extortionist was wounded, but if he was in there, he’d be armed. Inside, the television was blaring hurricane warnings. Manseur slipped the key into the lock and turned it slowly, pushed the door open fast, and rushed in, with Alexa right behind him.
The overpowering stench of human excrement mixed with sweat and stale urine filled the airless room. Alexa hit the light switch and they stared at a large woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform, lying motionless on the horribly soiled sheets. The uniform had been rolled up to expose her naked body from the waist down. Her wrists and ankles had been duct-taped together. Two bands of duct tape had been looped around her head to cover both her mouth and her eyes. Whoever had taped her eyes and mouth had also pinned her long white hair to her head in the process. Two cargo-securing straps had been looped around the bed, and the ratchets tightened to hold her bulk in place.
“Jesus Christ,” Alexa murmured, shoving her Glock into her purse.
“I think it’s more likely Sibby Danielson,” Manseur contradicted flatly. “Why’s she in that uniform?”
Frowning, Alexa moved around the bed and reached to feel for a pulse. The trussed woman jerked from her touch like she’d been touched with a live wire and began thrashing violently. Due to the duct tape over her mouth, her protestations were a steady humming.
“She’s alive?” Manseur asked, surprised.
74
EMS arrived fifteen minutes later. Sibby Danielson had to be sedated before being freed by EMS and strapped to a gurney to be taken to Charity Hospital for a physical evaluation. Then she’d be relocated to the maximum-security mental ward to undergo observation.
The motel room held no obvious clues, and Alexa doubted the techs would find any meaningful fingerprints in the hundreds they would likely collect there. It was clear the maids didn’t bother to wipe the counters between hourly visitors.
The police plane that was using a receiver to search the lakes and swampy areas between New Orleans and Baton Rouge a grid at a time hadn’t picked up the signal from the GPS by nine A.M.
Every available police officer in the region was pulling traffic duty, while the nonstop tourist-driven party on Bourbon Street was still going strong. Katrina wouldn’t even notice that she was blowing intoxicated revelers into Mississippi.
From Charity Hospital, Alexa had followed Manseur back to headquarters and she’d collapsed immediately on the couch in his office and fallen into a fitful sleep. Her dreams were filled with Grace Smythe, Casey West, LePointe, and a menacing giant. When she awoke, two hours later, she was alone. She got up, found the restroom, used the toilet, and washed her hands and her face.
Back in Manseur’s office, she poured a cup of coffee from the pot Manseur had made and stared at the stacks of phone logs they had left on the conference table the afternoon before. Manseur had highlighted the numbers of interest, and she flipped through them again, looking for something in them that would make everything fit together.
Had Grace and Doc’s relationship been purely business? Lovers would probably have talked longer. She wondered how the two of them had met. It was most likely that Doc had instigated the plan to sell Fugate’s notebook to LePointe, since Doc was directly connected by photographs to Fugate. But Alexa was troubled. Why had they kidnapped Gary West? Or had Casey been Grace’s target? Grace clearly had an obsession with Casey. Whatever the motive, killing Gary should have worked. Now, with Grace dead, they might never know her true motive. Unlike Fugate, Grace hadn’t left a diary to fill in Alexa. But had she left one in another form?
Did Grace, Doc, or Sibby kill Fugate to get their hands on the notebook, or had Leland Ticholet done it at their bidding? There was photographic evidence that Fugate had known Doc for most of his life. There was no doubt of the notebook’s value as an instrument that would guarantee the payment of the ransom. Were the three missing pages enough on their own to hold in reserve in case more leverage was necessary? Or to allow them to go back to the well? Had Dorothy Fugate torn the pages out ages ago because she’d made a mistake? Or had she written something on them she felt the need to destroy?
Doc Doe—whoever he was—must have been connected to Ticholet through Fugate and her nursing position at River Run. He must have recruited the violent man for the job. What inducement did Doc offer him? What was a big payday to a fisherman/trapper? A few hundred? Drugs?
Manseur strode in and sat heavily behind his desk. “Brace yourself. Notebook’s out of the bag. It—”
Jackson Evans walked in before Manseur finished his warning. He forced a smile at Alexa.
“Michael tells me you found a diary at the West crime scene.”
Alexa was struck dumb by what appeared to be a betrayal. “I’m sorry?”
“I’ll take charge of it and make sure it’s handled properly.”
“For safekeeping?” Alexa asked, sarcastically.
“It’s evidence, Agent Keen. In a homicide.”
“It’s evidence taken from a crime scene outside your jurisdiction, but clearly within mine. It directly relates to a kidnapping, extortion, conspiracy to commit murder, and using the wires in furtherance of those crimes. You will get a look at that notebook only after it is fingerprinted by my lab and its authenticity is established.”
“May I ask where it is now?”
“In the possession of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“I see. Fine,” Evans said, clapping his hands together. He was seemingly nonplussed by the news. “All in all, I think this was a successful if somewhat unorthodox joint operation. I’ll make sure your director knows you performed professionally and I’ll send a letter of praise for your jacket. You have my personal thanks and I’m sure that of the Wests. I suppose you’ll want to get pa
cked and head back to Washington while the getting’s still possible. If you can find a seat on a flight out.” He looked at his watch.
“I’ll do that. And I’ll have a copy of the notebook sent to you as soon as we’ve fingerprinted it.”
“The notebook’s a moot point,” Manseur said glumly.
“It is? Why?” Alexa asked.
“Because,” Evans said, “despite the fact that moot actually means arguable, every TV station and newspaper already has it. Or will by noon. It’s going to be all over the news very shortly.”
“How?” Alexa asked, the heat of confusion rising within her.
“Copies were delivered to them.”
“Delivered how?”
“In the morning’s mail,” Manseur said.
Alexa grabbed her purse. “I’m out of here.”
“Where are you going?” Manseur asked.
“I have to get to Casey before she hears about the diary from a reporter. All they have are photocopies; it will take some footwork on their part to verify the pages are authentic. They’ll learn the psychiatric-nurse author is dead and that Sibby has been found. They’ll be cautious about confirming before they attack Dr. LePointe, but once they smell that he’s vulnerable, it’s too big a story not to run.”
Alexa reached and picked up an evidence envelope from the table that contained the picture of Doc and Grace. She left the two men and made a beeline for the stairs.
Manseur caught up with her. “You thought I ratted you out,” he said. “Before Evans told you about the deliveries to the press.”
“It never crossed my mind, Michael. Well, just for a split second I was…Obviously the kidnappers were planning all along to take LePointe’s money and kill Gary West and LePointe. And since the copies arrived in today’s mail, the delivery mechanism was in motion before last night.”
“But the notebook might never be authenticated if Doc had given LePointe the original.”
“True. But it would have made LePointe squirm nonetheless. And there’s the missing pages. I don’t think Dorothy took them out. They’re consecutive pages. One event—or a couple of them that are worse for LePointe than what we have. The position of them datewise is crucial. I missed it at first. Those pages would have been written twenty-six years ago.”
“I’ll go with you.”
Alexa’s brain was racing as she went over avenues of investigation out loud. “Michael, we have to identify Doc. Maybe Doc visited the hospital with Fugate. He recruited Leland. That would take more than one or occasional visits. We know he was connected to Fugate and somehow to Grace. Casey told me she took pictures at River Run and that Grace flirted with an orderly. She’s been seeing someone and Casey didn’t meet him. Maybe Doc isn’t a doctor. Maybe Doc is just a nickname. I think he was an orderly at River Run. It fits. Talk to Whitfield or Veronica, if you can find her, and see which orderly he could have been. Can you do that for me? And get an address for him.”
Alexa left Manseur behind her on the stairwell. As she hurried to her car, she dialed Casey’s cell phone. She had to contact Casey and tell her she was coming.
75
Traffic was light and Alexa saw no evidence of a door-to-door forced evacuation as she drove into Casey’s neighborhood. No cops stopped Alexa’s car to demand to know why she hadn’t yet fled the endangered city. The guard Decell had stationed there was ignoring the reporters clustered outside Casey’s gate. Several yelled at Alexa as she walked past them.
“Mrs. West is expecting me,” she told the guard, who looked like a Midwestern college quarterback with perfect teeth.
“She’s inside,” the guard said.
The front door was opened by another guard, who accompanied Alexa back to the kitchen, where a woman in a white uniform was cooking lunch. Casey sat at the table holding her daughter in her lap.
“How’s Gary?” Alexa asked as she placed her purse in one chair and sat down in the one beside it.
“He’s going to pull through,” Casey replied. “They won’t know how much brain damage he has until he regains consciousness. Bad concussion, but thankfully not bad enough to be fatal. He was horribly dehydrated. They’re very hopeful, though. He’s being moved this afternoon by air ambulance to the Mayo Clinic because of the hurricane. They think he’ll be stable enough in a few hours. We can’t risk him being in a hospital here without power or water, and the best doctors are there.”
“Casey, I need to tell you some things about all of this before you get blindsided. I’m not sure it’s my place, but I thought it might be better coming from me than—”
“The reporters,” Casey interrupted. “I’ve been getting calls, but I’m not taking any from numbers I don’t recognize.”
“Good idea.”
“I can’t get Grace on the phone to tell her we have Gary back. Have you spoken with her? Maybe she left with her parents, but she should have called.”
Alexa looked at the cook, then back at Casey. “This is something I think you alone should hear.”
Casey scooted back her chair. “Mary, could you finish feeding Deana? Coffee, Alexa?”
“No. Thank you.”
Casey led Alexa to the den.
“Grace is dead,” Alexa said bluntly.
“Oh, no! It can’t be true! How? When?”
“Yesterday afternoon. She was in her bathtub.”
“She fell?”
“No, she didn’t fall. Coroner says suicide. There were no signs of foul play. She had bathwater in her lungs.”
Casey stared at Alexa. “Not an accident?” she said in disbelief.
Alexa shook her head. “It looks like suicide.”
“So, she was involved in Gary’s kidnapping?”
“Yes, it appears she was.”
“Was there a suicide note?”
“We didn’t find one.”
“Poor, poor Gracie!”
“Maybe she did it because, even though they might have gotten away with the ransom, she must have been sure we’d figure out her part in it. Or maybe she regretted her involvement. Couldn’t live with the betrayal,” Alexa said. “I believe her accomplice, the man you wounded, was connected to Dorothy Fugate, maybe even related to her. He killed Dorothy and then stole her diary to blackmail your uncle. It appears he and Grace took Sibby to a motel and tied her up. I have positive IDs on Grace and her accomplice.”
“Why?”
“The diary Fugate kept might hold some answers. I don’t know yet.”
“So she kept a diary? Who gives a damn if Unko sleeps with a nurse? Was it because of Sibby and the hospital?”
“Yes, that was detailed in the diary pages. But I’m afraid there’s more that is far worse than that. Casey, your uncle treated a young psychiatric patient. He got her pregnant.”
Casey gnawed her lip, then shook her head. “He had an affair with a patient? And Fugate knew it?”
“She did. The baby was born in Fugate’s house, and taken away from the girl. It was adopted. Your uncle had a judge friend handle the placement. Nobody knew the patient was pregnant. She had gone missing and her family was sure she was wandering the city, which she’d done before.”
Casey shook her head dazedly. “Unko has an illegitimate child somewhere? He’d be a blood heir. That would explain why Unko wanted the diary so badly. The money is far more important to him than Gary ever was.”
“Sibhon Danielson was the patient.”
Casey’s eyes were blank with disbelief. “I have an illegitimate cousin whose mother is an insane murderer? The woman who murdered my parents has a child who’s related to me?” Her frown grew deeper. “You can’t mean little Bill. He died. He wasn’t Sarah’s son?”
“It wasn’t a boy. Your uncle gave her to a couple who desperately wanted a child but couldn’t have one of their own. Someone in the family.”
“In our family? Like a distant cousin? Who?”
“Your parents.”
“But I’m the only daughter my parents…” Ca
sey faltered, and the color drained from her face.
Alexa nodded.
Casey stood, stumbled, and collapsed.
76
“Sit here. I’ll get you some water,” Alexa said.
“It’s impossible,” Casey insisted. “I don’t believe it. Fugate lied in her diary.”
“I’m absolutely sure she didn’t,” Alexa told her.
“How can you be one hundred percent sure it’s true?”
“I’m sure DNA will confirm it. According to Fugate’s diary, your uncle spent a great deal of money to buy silence. Decell was first on the crime scene, and he freed you from Sibby. Fugate’s diary says that Decell knew about Sibby being your mother, but not how he found out. Sibby could have told Decell that night or maybe he saw Dr. LePointe there. That secret explains his connection to your uncle, more than the fact that she attacked him when he interceded.”
“Me? I’m…?” Casey was totally stunned. “My uncle and that woman? Unko is my father? My birth mother is a schizophrenic psychopath?”
Alexa nodded.
“She killed my parents. Was she going to kill me?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so.”
“She was here to, what, take me back? Motherly instincts?”
“It’s possible, I suppose.”
“It’s totally preposterous! Four years after I was born she just decided I was here and came here and murdered my parents. Don’t you see, if it’s true she knew I was here, then Dorothy Fugate must have been the one who told her.”
“You may be right. That was twenty-six years ago, though, and I doubt we’ll ever know.” Again Alexa thought about those missing pages.
“After the murders, Sibby was committed to River Run, where your uncle was practicing. He and Fugate made sure Sibby never said a word about what had happened. The two of them conspired to keep her in a mental fog. Just in case she came out, your uncle performed a prefrontal lobotomy on her, which was not recorded. The doctors at Charity confirmed that by the scars.”
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