Too Far Gone

by John Ramsey Miller

  “I’m in a hurry at the moment. But in a little while, Edgar, I’m going to strip your clothes off and do wonderful things to your body. Do you want that, Edgar?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I sure will…do.”

  “And you’ll return the favor, won’t you?”

  “If you want me to,” he said huskily.

  She turned from him and pulled on her top, lifting her hair clear of the turtleneck and letting it drop.

  “Is Keen here alone?” she asked.

  “There’s no cars on the street.”

  “Good boy, Edgar. You be a doll and go to the den. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go to the den and wait.” He turned.

  “And Edgar,” Casey said, checking herself in the mirror. “One more thing.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Keep that thing of yours nice and hard for me.”

  104

  In the wine room, Casey selected a ’97 vintage, Nuits-Saint-Georges Grand Vin de Bourgogne. It was her last bottle of the Burgundy and, she decided, an excellent choice. It had been good enough to tempt Grace into drinking.

  Carrying the dusty bottle, Casey went to the kitchen and took down two glasses. Before carrying them out to the pool house, she went into the bathroom with one of them, closed the door, and opened the secret wall vault behind the medicine chest. She pulled out the sole item in there—a small cobalt blue bottle she’d put in there two years before—opened it, and using an eyedropper, carefully moved the tip around the wineglass’s inside edge, squeezing the bulb gently as she did so. There was a shine where the clear liquid coated the lip, so she blew on it gently until it dried.

  She had only used it once before, the afternoon Grace died, and she knew the venom cocktail she’d paid six thousand dollars for was worth every penny. After making sure the wineglass was the one of the pair that had a small crack in the base, she replaced the blue bottle and went out to the kitchen, where she placed the wine bottle and glasses on a tray.

  She lifted Deana to her hip. “Mary, I’ll be right back. Make some coffee.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Casey wanted Alexa to be at ease, so she decided that Deana’s presence would be disarming and distracting. She lifted the tray, and started for the pool house.

  “We’re going to see Alexa, honey. And, sweetie, Alexa is not your friend. I’m your only friend. I’m the only friend you’ll ever have.”

  105

  Alexa removed the tape of Sibby’s statement, dropped in a blank one, and pressed the RECORD button. She looked out at the storm, which was tearing bushes apart and blowing wrought-iron pool furniture across the courtyard. A sheared tree limb slammed into the soft earth of a flower bed, sticking upright like a diseased sapling.

  When Casey returned, she had dressed in black jeans and a long-sleeved turtleneck. She had Deana on her left hip and carried a tray with two glasses and a bottle of wine. Casey handed Deana to Alexa and placed the tray on the table.

  “I not you fren,” Deana said. It seemed to Alexa that the little girl seldom said anything else. Deana stared up at Alexa, a smile on her cupid lips.

  “Darling, be nice to Alexa.”

  “Poo-poo,” Deana said.

  Casey handed the wine bottle to Alexa. “Could you open this for us?”

  She placed a glass in front of Alexa, then lifted it. “Oh, damn. The base has a crack in it. I’ll go and get you a good one.”

  “This is fine,” Alexa said. “I’m not drinking out of the base.”

  “You take mine. I’ll use the damaged one.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Alexa said. “Should this sit before we drink it?”

  “Let it breathe in our stomachs.”

  After Casey poured wine into each of the glasses, Casey took Deana and put her in a high chair.

  “Cooteeee!” the little girl demanded.

  Casey went to the kitchen cabinets and, after rummaging around, returned with three chocolate cookies.

  Casey laughed. “She’s a baby. She’s happy with cookies. Why should I deny her? I was never denied and I turned out fine.”

  Alexa was silent, took a long sip of the wine, and was delighted by the rich flavor. “Tastes marvelous. What is it?”

  “Burgundy. A very special wine I’ve been saving for a special occasion. This is certainly that. Today I’m closing the door on the past and bringing in a new day.”

  “I could grow accustomed to good wine,” Alexa said, smiling.

  “That’s probably the best wine you’ll ever drink.” Casey looked at Alexa and smiled. “I have to say, I feel like a great burden is lifting off my shoulders.”

  Alexa took another swallow, then set the glass on the table. She wasn’t going to get tipsy.

  “I have a confession to make,” Casey said.

  “Yes?”

  “When I came out earlier, I unloaded your gun and took the magazines. I hope you can forgive me going into your purse without permission.”

  “Why?” She intends to kill me.

  “I thought you might pull it on me since I admitted…you know, killing Andy. Killing Grace. How do you like the wine?”

  “I suppose expensive wine is an acquired taste. I guess it’s wasted on me. You took my bullets because you don’t trust me. You don’t intend to change, do you? You aren’t capable of changing.”

  Casey picked up her glass and emptied it in three swallows. “You should have let me replace the glass for you.”

  “The wine?”

  “It’s laced with a little something that is decidedly lethal and highly unlikely to be detected. Since you wanted to know, it’s what I used to put Grace down. She purchased the poison, so it will ultimately be traced to her. I’ll say Grace gave me the wine, knowing I would drink it and die, but, horror of horrors, you drank it. After they know what to look for, your blood will show it. A flawless plan, I think. It works in only a few minutes. Do finish the wine. It won’t make any difference, I assure you.”

  “Casey, why?” Alexa asked, setting down her half-empty glass. Terror blossomed inside her. A burning sensation grew in her chest and she found it hard to get her breath.

  “I really do admire your abilities, Alexa. That makes this very difficult for me. I’m sorry to have to kill you, but you’re a little too dangerous for my tastes. Nothing personal.”

  “You didn’t—”

  “You’ll feel the paralysis starting any time now, Alexa. I was assured it’s not at all painful. It simply paralyzes the lungs, stops the heart.”

  “You’re drinking the wine too.”

  “I put the poison on the rim of your glass. I’ll put some in the bottle later and say I was fortunate not to have had any before you collapsed.”

  “Casey, you need to listen to me. What is the poison? You have to tell me, so I can help you.”

  “Help me?”

  “Tell me! What’s the antidote!”

  “There’s no antidote, Alexa.” Casey’s smile was not one of regret or pity. It was the smile of victory and pleasure.

  “You didn’t poison me,” Alexa told her. “I switched wineglasses when you were getting the cookies.”

  “What?”

  Alexa stood and looked down at her would-be murderer. “You poured me more than you poured for yourself. I don’t like red wine and I didn’t want to drink too much. Please, tell me how to stop it!”

  Casey’s face was a luminous white. She looked at the wineglass in front of her in disbelief. “Alexa, what did you do?”

  Casey stared at Alexa with an expression that morphed into one of unbridled hatred. “You? You! You bitch! I…can’t die. I can’t! You…” She stiffened suddenly in her chair, locked her eyes on Deana, then turned them back to Alexa. “I…can’t…breee.”

  Casey fell sideways to the floor. Alexa rushed around the table, rolled Casey over onto her back, and started CPR compressions.

  “Mary! Call 911!” she yelled.

  Alexa pres
sed as hard as she could on Casey’s chest as she counted the compressions. But as hard as she worked, as horrified as she was, she knew that Casey couldn’t be brought back from where she was going. Casey shuddered violently, and then was still.

  “Mommy nigh-nigh,” Deana said, waving a partly eaten cookie in the air. “Ahm not your fren,” Deana said, smiling down at Alexa coyly.

  Alexa kept working, compressing and blowing into Casey’s open mouth for ten minutes, then gave up. She realized that she was crying, and put her head in her hands. She heard the security guard talking to Mary, but she couldn’t make out the words.

  The wind howled, rattling the windows violently like a raging man trying to beat them in to save his children from a fire inside. The moaning and creaking sounded like a chorus of grief-stricken mothers.

  As she knelt staring into Casey’s fully dilated and clouded eyes, she was aware of an explosion as an oak tree gave up its grip on the earth, rolled over, and crashed into the long hallway, collapsing the roof and exploding the glass walls.

  106

  The J. Edgar Hoover Building

  Washington, D.C.

  March 2006

  Alexa was aware of the ticking of the clock on her desk, of each second of precious time passing—the merciless race she was running. Her eyes were locked on a series of still photos depicting two dead bodyguards, whose employer, an industrialist from Akron, had been abducted from his house by unsubs, who’d demanded fifteen million dollars for his safe return. Alexa was painfully aware that the man was going to die unless she and her team could find him before his abductors decided to end his life. The FBI hadn’t been brought in by the local authorities until it was too late for Alexa to get on-site before the deadline had passed to pay the extortionists.

  Her gut told her it wouldn’t matter if she was there. She wasn’t as convinced of her gut feelings being right as she once had been.

  When her direct line rang, she reached for the receiver reflexively.

  “Keen,” she said, automatically.

  “How you doing, Alexa?”

  “Michael Manseur!” Alexa exclaimed, sitting back in her chair. “How are you?”

  “Well, you know as well as I do. You were here for the worst part of the afterward.”

  Alexa had spent two days trying to help the city’s residents who had remained in New Orleans and become trapped by the flooding. She would have stayed even longer, but her director had ordered her to return to duty in D.C. and had sent a helicopter specifically to take her out. She had refused to leave until the pilot agreed to take Sibby Danielson from flooded Charity Hospital to safety.

  “How are you feeling, Michael?”

  “I can’t complain,” Manseur said. “My jaw isn’t wired shut now, and although my sinuses are giving me fits, I’m not drooling through a tube into a cup anymore. I’m back at work, up to my wide butt in alligators. Murders are way down, you know. City’s more like Mayberry RFD these days, since we exported our worst offenders.”

  All of the evidence she and Manseur had collected had been destroyed by the floodwaters that had slammed into the NOPD’s property and evidence rooms. NOPD had also lost all case files and records that weren’t computerized. The same had happened to courthouse files, leaving a few hundred lucky criminals free—unless they continued their evil ways, which every cop knew most of them would, they’d never be brought to justice.

  “Alligators.” Alexa laughed. “Figuratively this time, I hope.”

  “We’re seeing a lot of progress, given everything. Emily and the girls hope to be coming back in a few weeks. I’ve got mixed feelings about that. We don’t know what all’s in the soil and the water, but the water’s been poison long as I can remember. No schools open yet, and the city is broke, like always. It’s never going to be like it was, but it’s where I live.”

  “I see Jackson Evans wound up in Detroit.”

  “Yeah, and good riddance. The new chief is all business, and he hates microphones and cameras.”

  There was a long silence.

  “What can I do for you, Michael?”

  “Did you get the tape I sent?”

  “Yes, I did. I’m sorry, I haven’t had time to watch it.”

  “No hurry. Reason I called, I thought I should catch you up on what’s going on down here with you-know-who.”

  Alexa closed her eyes and rubbed them gently. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to call you too. You know how it is. So, what’s the latest?”

  “Dr. LePointe hasn’t been indicted yet. You know where that’s at?”

  “The federal prosecutor has offered Dr. LePointe a deal. I tried. I truly did. Interesting speculation, coincidences, circumstantial evidence, and the word of a lunatic, who is less than presentable to a jury against LePointe. Twenty-five years of heavy drugs—and a lobotomy, to boot. And after what Casey did, LePointe doesn’t look so despicable.”

  “Sibby’s in a nice facility in Virginia, I understand.”

  “Yes. I’ve been to visit her. Dr. LePointe set aside enough money to keep her wherever she likes. And he doesn’t know where she is.” The bastard. Since Alexa had recorded proof of what Casey had done, LePointe’s lawyers had managed to cast the public’s attention on Casey’s bad deeds, and to blunt the truth of what he had done, who he really was. What he and Nurse Fugate had done to Sibby had become mostly what Nurse Fugate had done due to some misguided loyalty blended with a sickness that LePointe, a very busy and dedicated professional who only wished to help Sibby, had been unaware of. No witnesses came forth to dispute his assertion of his naïve innocence and misplaced trust in Fugate. It was disgusting, though hardly surprising.

  “His wife, Sarah, passed away day before yesterday. If I were him, I’d take a long trip to Europe and never come back. He has nothing but time on his hands now—since the trusts are being run by a bunch of bankers and lawyers, and he’s surrendered his license to practice at the request of the medical ethics board.”

  “He belongs in prison.”

  “You don’t think what’s happened to him is worse than jail? He’s disgraced. He’s lost everything he gives a damn about. The media’s roasted him. People openly mock him. Despite the evidence, most people don’t really believe Casey was the insane psychopath LePointe claims she was.”

  “Disgrace is temporary if you’re rich enough. He’s still very, very rich.”

  “He is. And poor Leland Ticholet is on death row. His lawyers are trying to have his conviction overturned and him committed because he’s insane. Big surprise. He never denied any of it.”

  “He wasn’t competent to stand trial,” Alexa said. She had testified at his trial, and he’d had to be taken from the courtroom because he had spent the time she was testifying interrupting the proceedings to ask her when she was giving him a new boat, and to yell out that she’d lied to him. “He never understood that he was on trial for his life.”

  “The ME identified the poison that Casey used on Grace and herself. It was a mixture of jellyfish venom and something to get it in the bloodstream through the stomach wall. Very rare. Took a top lab to identify it. Iritableji or something. I have it written down here…E-ray-kon-ji. It’s collected from a teensy little jellyfish by that name from Australia. Grace Smythe bought it from some research assistant she knew.”

  “And Gary?” Alexa asked.

  “He’s making progress. He’s learning how to walk, and he’s saying a few words. I’m praying he gets it together real soon.”

  “So he’ll be getting Deana back?”

  “When he gets better, I suppose so. Casey’s former lawyers are now working for Deana. They may not like the fact that Gary might be a threat to their jobs, but they don’t like LePointe either. They’re watching him like hawks.”

  “I hope Gary’s better soon. I have a suspicion he’ll be equal to the task.”

  “Sooner the better. We all hope that,” Manseur said. “We all do. You doing okay, Alexa?” he asked.

  “Michael
, I appreciate your concern. Truth is, I have this case I’m working on that’s had me running around like crazy. I haven’t had any time to dwell on the tragedy yet. Maybe I’ll have a breakdown when I do have time to think about it, but I’m okay for the moment.”

  “It’s the job. Heartbreak is a constant, darlin’. You ever stop having your heart broke, you quit the job. You did good, real good. You have nothing to regret. You did what nobody else would or could have done. You hear me?”

  “I hear you, Michael.”

  “Alexa, if you ever need to talk, I’m sitting right here. I mean that.”

  “Thanks. If I need to talk, I’ll call you.”

  “Promise?”

  “You take care of yourself,” Alexa said.

  “I’ll do the best I can. This is New Orleans, you know,” he said, hanging up.

  And you can have it, she thought.

  Opening her desk drawer, Alexa removed a photograph. In it, a boy named Andy and an orphaned girl tugged at a little red wagon. Alexa rested her finger on the girl’s face—the spitting image of her own daughter, Deana. Alexa couldn’t bear to toss the purloined print in the trash can. Maybe, she told herself, she would make sure Deana got it someday.

  In the image, a delighted young girl did not yet reflect the razor-sharp beauty that would become her tool. The pain that would spawn an amazing talent was just a seed waiting in her to bloom, along with a sickness that would lead to deaths and self-destruction.

  Alexa had lied to Manseur. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that she had watched the videotape he’d sent—more times than she could count, just as she had pored over the book of photographs that Casey had given her. Maybe she was punishing herself for being so wrong about Casey. How she had missed for so long that such a talented and sensitive artist, a seemingly loving wife and mother, could have been a totally evil and psychopathic entity. Alexa wasn’t sure she wanted to face any of the answers that could explain it.

  The video was a compilation of the news coverage of the case, the notebook’s stunning revelations, the shoot-out in the swamp, and the coverage of Leland Ticholet’s trial. But the thirty seconds of footage at the end always made Alexa cry. The shot had been recorded by a news camera with a very long lens, near the LePointe family tomb in the city-sized cemetery in Metairie. It showed Casey LePointe West’s body being buried beside those of her deceased ancestors. It wasn’t the fact that she had seen Casey die, or that she blamed herself in any way for any of what had happened, that made her cry. Alexa had done her job to the best of her ability, and Casey West had been killed by her own devices.