Too Far Gone (17 page)

         

38

When Leland's head stopped hurting, he was in the closet, his body drawn up into a tight fist, drenched in sweat. One second pain was all there was in the world and then it was gone, leaving him totally spent. He knew the weakness would pass momentarily and he could step back into the light-filled world. He wouldn't soon forget to take the medicine Doc had gotten for him.

After a few minutes, Leland climbed out from the stuffy space, to discover that Doc sat on the edge of the bed reading a red notebook he carried everywhere he went.

“Feeling better?” Doc asked without looking up, or meaning it either.

“Hate headaches,” Leland said.

“I agree,” Doc said. “Nothing worse than a migraine. Unless it's having an abscessed tooth, your fingers flattened by a hammer while a furious big dog is chewing on your balls and you're having to hit him with your broken hand.” Doc chuckled to himself.

“You say awful things, you know that?” Leland said.

“Medical knowledge warps the innocent. I can't help it.”

“What's it say in that there book that's so interesting you have to keep reading it all the time?” Leland had never learned to read, but he knew some of the alphabet, and recognized his name when he saw it written out. And he could write it down by rote, having learned to re-create the specific letters.

“Aside from wealth beyond imagination?” Doc closed the book with a
pop.
“Nothing to speak of, my fine cretinous companion.”

“What you need me to do now?”

“You may go out into yon murk and mire to get the nice young man who's presently residing within the four walls of your lovely floating hovel and bring him back here.”

“What if he's already dead? Then do I have to?”

“Regardless of his vitals, you definitely have to do that for me. Best if he is, of course, but what is, will be.”

Leland shrugged. “I need to go get in my boat and check on my traps, because you stay off for long and just anybody can mess with your traps and lines. You know it?”

“
Your
boat?” Doc said in his high-pitched voice. “
Whose
boat is it, Leland?”

“You said I could have it for the jobs I've done did already,” Leland said, feeling the heat building in his head. People that lied and did take-backs got hurt and deserved it. Leland couldn't change the way he saw that, and none of the doctors at the old hospital that smelled of pine resin and Clorox could either. The medicine they gave him made his arms feel heavy as wet oak logs, and he didn't plan to ever take it again, on account of he didn't like the way it made him feel like he was living in an underwater dream.

Doc wagged his finger at Leland. “Don't go ribbity-rabid on me, Lee baby. It's going to be your boat after tonight's activities. The vessel will be a gift to you from me as soon as this is all over. The job isn't over till the fat lady sings.”

Leland hadn't heard a fat lady sing since he was in the hospital, and her voice hadn't been worth listening to either. Maybe Doc liked bad singing, which wouldn't surprise Leland. Anything Doc said or did wouldn't surprise Leland one bit. “With owning papers saying it's so, right?”

“Of course with a proper bill of sale turning the immaculate vessel over to one Leland Ticholet, Superman of the swampy glade. Don't I always tell you the truth? Who was it that furnished you with copious quantities of Juicy Fruit during your unfortunate incarceration?”

Leland searched his memory, and it was true that, so far, Doc had always done just that. But Doc was a little bitty smarty-ass fool who seemed to like to get Leland just on start-up mad and then cool him back down with his flowery promises. Leland nodded and felt the heat in his face cooling. The mention of Juicy Fruit sent his mouth to watering. Leland smiled at the memory of the explosion of flavor he experienced when he chewed the magnificent little slabs of chewing gum that came wrapped in yellow. He kept forgetting to get some when he bought supplies.

“That's better,” Doc said, putting the red book into a paper bag. Leland wondered why Doc was always wearing those gloves that made his hands look like he painted them blue.

“I need to get back out to my camp,” Leland said. “You got any Juicy Fruit?”

Doc reached into his pocket and threw Leland a jumbo brand-new pack of the gum, which hadn't even been opened yet.

“Keep it,” Doc said.

“I have to go now.”

“Yes, so you've said. Go and fetch forth our guest. There's lots to do before tonight's big bang-bang. Don't tell me you aren't excited.”

“About what?” Leland asked, suspiciously.

         

39

After a hot shower to remove the smell of death she imagined was on her skin, Alexa dried off and looked at herself in the mirror, shaking her head at the dark splotches, scratches, and welts she'd acquired in her tumble. She was extremely lucky that she hadn't broken any bones. Or her neck. Sibby Danielson was a local matter, unless it involved the abduction of Gary West. Truthfully, LePointe wasn't the only man with power who used it to abuse weaker people, or who believed the rules of conduct and law that applied to everyone else carried a clause exempting him because of an accident of birth.

Alexa opened her suitcase for a change of clothes. She looked at a stack of postcards in there bound together with a rubber band. Lifting them, she flipped through them so she could see the bottom one. It was addressed to her, care of her D.C. apartment. There was no return address. The note consisted of carefully printed words, written by a hand she knew very well.
You are dead, kitty cat. I will hate you forever.

Alexa's throat closed as though being gripped by powerful hands, and she threw the stack of postcards into the suitcase, closed the lid, and zipped it up. She knew she should tear them into confetti, but it was as if she didn't have the strength, so she merely collected them, and had brought them with her to New Orleans. There were ten of the picture postcards, each postmarked from a city in a different state or foreign country, even though the author was under arrest, being held in Virginia. The picturesque correspondence had arrived at the rate of one a month for the past ten consecutive months. Some were promising violence:
You will die soon;
some just said something like
Thinking only of you…bitch.
Threats or not, Alexa hadn't brought them to the FBI's attention, because she knew who the author was, and knew there was nothing anyone could do to stop her.

The person who had penned them might or might not actually mean her physical harm; the harm they did wasn't visible. Overwhelmed with grief and the pain of failure where it most mattered, Alexa had cried while reading each of them. Every time she read them, the wound was torn open again.
Hate me if it makes you feel better about who and what you became. I did what I had to do, what was right. I would do nothing differently. Nothing, but go back to our childhood and try to make sure you had turned out differently, or at least more right than you did. I did the best I could for us both.

Saddened beyond words, Alexa turned and saw the book Casey had given her earlier. She picked it up and opened it to the inscription Casey had penned, which she hadn't read in the author's presence.
For the Patron Saint of the Lost. Kindest thoughts & warmest regards. Always, Casey.

Casey had appealed to her for help, and Alexa was going to help. Casey was a woman who had learned that enormous wealth was no guarantee that pain couldn't find you just like it did the less fortunate. That beautiful woman, who seemed to have everything, stood to lose the only thing that made having everything matter to her. She trusted Alexa, a woman she had just met, to make her life whole. How could you not feel for a small girl who had seen her parents horribly murdered? How could anyone not empathize with a child who had been raised by people who measured life by a heavily weighted balance sheet or placement on the social register?

Alexa had known real physical and emotional pain in her own life, but she felt lucky not to have felt the kind Casey LePointe West had.

She thumbed through the pages of Casey's book. Alexa felt as though she should be wearing cotton gloves to keep from soiling the page corners. Casey's work had an intensity to it, an edge that held Alexa in its thrall. Each of her subjects seemed to have been stripped of pretension, their souls reflected in their expressions, their eyes.

The photos weren't captioned with the subjects' names, but with dates and geographic locations where the images were taken, or perhaps where the subject lived. “10/09/04—West Virginia” was a man whose face was so blackened with coal soot that his eyes seemed to be twin pools of turquoise water surrounded by a fire-scorched, heat-cracked wasteland. Alexa went from each image to the next, pausing a few seconds to study the people depicted. “5/27/03—Georgia Coast” showed an elegant, elderly, seated woman regally posed, her ancient skin glistening like wet bronze. She wore a starched servant's uniform, her rheumatoid hands folded together on her knee. She possessed a raw pride and peered through rheumy eyes that seemed to convey that she had lived her life at peace with the universe.

Alexa's cell phone rang and she opened it and saw that Casey West was calling her. “Hello.”

“Hello, Alexa. I thought I should call to tell you something wonderful.”

“I heard Gary sent a letter to your uncle.”

“I'm just now driving over to see it,” Casey said. “Of course, I'm going to be pissed off at Gary for all of five minutes. I can't believe it! What was he thinking? I should be furious for what he's put us through, but I'm not.”

“I'm happy for you and Deana,” Alexa said, not wanting to throw a wet blanket over Casey's elation by saying that she'd believe it when she saw Gary with her own eyes.

“Listen, if you aren't too busy, could you come to Unko's?”

“I suppose. Why?”

“I could use a friend along for moral support. It's not necessary if you're busy. I wouldn't ask, but Unko has a way of sort of intimidating me. Honestly, I wouldn't ask, but if you're there, maybe it won't be so one-sided.”

“Where's Grace?”

“She had some errands to do for her parents to get them ready to leave the city. We'll all be leaving for Manhattan as soon as Gary gets back. We're sure not going to stay here. A couple of weeks away will be like a second honeymoon.”

“Give me the address.”
I need to see the letter for myself anyway,
Alexa decided.

Alexa scribbled down the address on St. Charles Avenue. Before she left, she slid the book back in its slipcover and started to put it into her suitcase, remembered the postcards, and decided against it, putting the volume instead into her briefcase with her laptop. She dressed quickly, and before leaving the room took the folding knife from under her pillow and slipped it into the bottom of her purse.

         

40

Alexa drove up St. Charles Avenue, following the GPS lady's unemotional directions, and when the helpful lady informed Alexa that she was at the destination, Alexa turned into the driveway of a monstrous, two-story stone mansion surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence. The sturdy man standing inside the gate opened it just enough to come out. He asked her if she was expected and, even though she said that she was—and what reason would the FBI have to lie about it?—used his radio to call someone to ask if the FBI agent could enter the grounds.

The gate swung open and Alexa drove into the enclosure. Lush foliage grew on a swale that was strategically placed to hide the LePointes from the street. She passed beneath a portico that would protect people from the rain while they got in and out of vehicles. Alexa drove to the courtyard, where LePointe's dark Bentley Continental and a Range Rover were parked beside each other. Alexa parked beside Casey's Rover and strode to the front door, passing through open gates to a cage of decorative wrought iron. The downstairs windows also had the same elegant filigree work—attractive, and effective security. The security measure must have been expensive. And she wasn't surprised that the construction of the home had taken five years. The Civil War–era structure was so pristine that it looked as if it might have been completed six months ago.

A thin, dark-skinned woman wearing an apron over a starched uniform opened the door. Deana was beside her, and the little girl smiled at Alexa. “Hello, Deana,” Alexa said.

Deana spun around and ran down the hall, laughing.

“Stay with me, baby girl,” the woman called out to her.

In the vestibule behind, a vase holding an enormous spray of exotic flowers stood on a table crafted entirely of cut glass. Alexa entered and looked up at a dome that crested thirty feet above the table. The dome was made entirely of elaborate stained glass—a garden scene with greenery and multicolored flowers made brilliant by sunlight. A wide stone staircase floated up to a mezzanine with the same filigree motif in bronze railing as outside. From an arched throat in the foyer, a hallway punctuated on either side by several doorways extended deep into the home.

Alexa saw Deana and a female figure in a flowing silken gown at the far end of the hallway. The woman began waving her arms and striding in a series of exaggerated movements as she made her way toward the front. Deana stood against the wall laughing melodiously as the bizarre ballerina came toward her. Alexa saw that she was elderly, her long gray hair cascading to her shoulders. She appeared to be attempting an interpretative dance, but her joints and muscles could no longer produce fluid movements. Well before she arrived at the foyer, the woman turned abruptly, bowed with her extended and intertwined arms aimed at a doorway, and, raising her right leg awkwardly, lurched, vanishing through it, with Deana following her.

“That's Mrs. Sarah,” the servant told Alexa.

“Dr. LePointe's wife?” Alexa asked.

“She have the Alzheimer's,” the woman said in a soft voice. “She believes she's a dancer up in New York City, and it's nineteen-whatever-it-was when she was up there.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Dr. LePointe and Ms. West are in his study. I'll show you back.”

As Alexa and the maid passed the doorway Sarah LePointe had chosen, Alexa turned and saw Mrs. LePointe—arms waving as though she were drowning—prancing energetically around the furniture in a large formal sitting room. The maid lifted Deana up onto her hip. Sarah LePointe's eyes were hidden behind large sunglasses—her mind generating music she moved to, her face illuminated with a smile of pure pleasure. Alexa envied the woman her beautiful delusion, and hoped she didn't stumble over something and snap her hip.

Alexa heard Casey's raised voice through the heavy door as she approached it. The servant knocked and Casey fell silent. LePointe called, “Come in.”

Alexa was first struck by the Jackson Pollock painting that took up the entire wall behind the desk. There was a sharp contrast between that oil and the likewise massive oil seascape on the wall to its right—a painting that Alexa was sure she had seen before in a book. She pulled her eyes away and looked at Casey, whose face was flushed.

LePointe motioned to a chair. “Please sit down, Agent Keen. You know art?”

“I know the difference between a Pollock and a Turner,” she said, bringing a smug smile to his lips with her accuracy—and perhaps the fact that she would appreciate the value of both. “Usually I see paintings of this quality only in books or museums.”

“Quite so,” LePointe said. “Where they usually belong. This house is climate-controlled and the light is regulated carefully. If the hurricane comes and breaches the levees, all of the art here will be high, dry, and secure. The Turner is one my father purchased for next to nothing that was owned by a collector who fell victim to unfortunate circumstances. The Pollock is one my mother bought in the fifties from the artist himself. She was quite taken with the Moderns.”

Casey said suddenly, “The letter from Gary is a fraud, Alexa.”

“How can you be so sure?” LePointe asked, turning his eyes on his niece.

“Gary never types. He only writes letters with fountain pens. He thinks typing is impersonal. He never even uses e-mail.”

“That's hardly proof,” LePointe scoffed. “I imagine he knows how to type.”

“Secondly, he wouldn't send it to you, of all people.”

“Why not?” Alexa asked.

“He hates Unko. He thinks he's—let me quote: ‘a pompous, controlling, egocentric, self-important windbag.' Which he is. God, I should have known!”

LePointe stiffened. “Gary's a man in crisis. I've seen this a thousand times. Self-destruction due to the fact that he's standing at the verge of something life-altering that he knows he doesn't deserve. He can't handle the prospect. He's crying out for ‘poor me saddled with all of this attention'. Anxiety. Self-loathing. Inferiority complex. Mania. Insecurity. Round peg in a square hole, et cetera, ad nauseam.”

“You are so full of it,” Casey snapped. “If that were the case, Gary would have told me yesterday at lunch, or before. I'd have known if he was having problems. Unlike you, I pay attention to those around me. And that letter isn't in his voice at all. Emotional turmoil? Inner feelings?
My
future? Never could Gary be so selfish. He would never let me worry like this or leave Deana without her knowing he was coming back soon.”

“So, if he didn't send it, who did?” LePointe asked.

“Gee, I don't know,” Casey said. “Maybe it was some pompous ass-bite windbag who wanted to get the authorities off the case. Better to die because nobody's searching for you than cast a shadow on the immaculate LePointe name,” Casey said, raising her voice. “Obviously it was someone who thinks I'm dumb enough to accept such an obvious crock.”

“May I see the letter?” Alexa asked.

LePointe tossed a folded sheet of typing paper across the desk. Alexa used her ballpoint to open the letter, then read the single-spaced paragraph.

Dr. LePointe,

Please tell my wife that I am sorry if I've caused her any emotional turmoil, but I needed a few days alone in order to evaluate my position in this life and contemplate my future. Please do not involve the authorities, as I am fine and should be home on Saturday, or Sunday at the latest. Give my wife and daughter my love.

Gary

“‘My wife and daughter'? It's clinically impersonal,” Alexa said.

“He didn't use our names! Impossible,” Casey said sourly.

“The envelope?” Alexa asked.

LePointe looked in the trash can beside his desk, pulled out an envelope, and placed it beside the letter. It was a plain security envelope, available by the hundred anywhere office supplies were sold. It had been opened using a sharp blade. The flap was one that used peel-off tape instead of needing to be moistened to activate the adhesive. The stamp was also a peel and stick. Obviously there would be no DNA to extract.

“Do you have an envelope?” she asked LePointe. “An unused one.”

LePointe opened a drawer and handed Alexa a large envelope made of expensive white paper. Alexa opened the envelope and slid the letter and its envelope into the larger one before she folded it closed. “I'd like to take the letter, if you don't mind,” Alexa said.

“What is the point of taking the letter?” LePointe asked.

“I'm going to have it analyzed for Gary West's fingerprints to see if he ever had it in his hands. If he didn't, I want to know who did. Casey, I'll need to have something Gary has handled.”

“His prints should be on file,” Casey said. “He was arrested for protesting in New York when he was at NYU.”

LePointe raised an eyebrow, as if Gary West had been arrested for a serious felony.

“Giving me something he's handled recently might actually be faster than going through AFIS.”

“AFIS?”

“Automated Fingerprint Identification System. I imagine the crime-scene lab needs them anyway in processing the prints found in and on the Volvo.”

“No problem,” Casey said. “Gary has silver accent pieces on his desk—a letter opener, cigarette holder, and lighter. He plays with the cigarette holder when he's at his desk.”

“What about my fingerprints?” LePointe said. “I handled that letter.”

“Have you ever been arrested?” Alexa asked.

“Of course not! I've never even been fingerprinted,” LePointe snapped.

“I would have thought maybe the Secret Service or the Bureau might have printed you for security clearances,” Alexa said.

“They didn't print me. I suppose I am well-enough known to make that unnecessary,” he said, having missed the point of her barbed comment.

“Another one of your envelopes, please, Dr. LePointe?” While he got another envelope, Alexa opened her purse and took out a spare magazine for her Glock. Using a handkerchief, she carefully wiped the magazine clean and set it on the desk.

“Rub your fingers on your nose. The oil transferred to the pads of your fingers will help make your prints stand out. Just grip that magazine by placing your thumb on one side of it and your fingers firmly on the other, then lift and release it,” Alexa told the doctor.

“You're not serious.” LePointe acted as though Alexa had asked him to provide her with a stool specimen.

“Uncle William,” Casey said. “It's important.”

“This is absurd,” LePointe sputtered.

“I'm sure you want to know, as badly as I do, who wrote this if Gary West didn't,” Alexa told him.

He wiped his nose, reached out, and squeezed the loaded magazine, then took his hand away.

Alexa gripped the magazine by its base, looked at the sharp prints on the polished steel, then dropped the heavy magazine into the fresh envelope.

“I touched the letter and the Volvo,” Casey said. “Do you have another magazine?”

Alexa used her second spare magazine to obtain Casey's prints just as she had LePointe's. She placed the second magazine in a separate envelope and wrote Casey's name on it.

“Now the lab will have exemplars for comparisons,” Alexa said.

LePointe sat silently, his eyes unfocused. Something was bothering him.

“If you're worried, Dr. LePointe, the lab will be instructed to destroy your print records after they've used them for this.”

“It's just that someone else also handled the letter,” LePointe said. “My investigator. Kenneth Decell. Naturally he read it.”

“I'm sure his prints will be on file with NOPD,” Alexa said.

“So, you're going to keep looking for Gary?” Casey asked.

“My initial feeling is that this letter is a fraud, perhaps intended to discourage the police from looking for him. I'm not sure what the motive is, but I'm certain, based on the physical evidence alone, that he was the victim of foul play. Even if he did write and mail that letter, somebody attacked him brutally with a pipe afterward. The good news is that this is obviously an amateur production, and I'm certain we'll be able to figure out who's behind it. You don't have any objections to the NOPD and me continuing to look for Gary, do you, Dr. LePointe?”

“Of course not. Why should I?”

“I'll notify Detective Manseur,” Alexa said. “He's in Algiers Pointe investigating the death of a retired psychiatric nurse. A woman named Dorothy Fugate.”

LePointe locked his eyes with Alexa's. What he was thinking was impossible to guess, because his face, although draining of color, was devoid of expression.

“Dotty?” Casey asked, locking her eyes on LePointe. “Jesus! I'm sorry, Unko.”

“Sorry? Why?” he asked, swallowing. It must have been difficult, since he had to have a dry mouth.

“You two were such close friends,” Casey said. “You've known her for thirty years, that's why. You worked together at River Run.”

“Nurse Fugate was employed at the hospital and I was the director of psychiatry. We were hardly
friends.
She was an acquaintance, although I suppose we developed a superficial relationship over the years. She was a talented and dedicated professional. Naturally I'm very sorry to hear that she's dead. I haven't spoken to her since she retired last year. We didn't see each other socially.”

“Even so, you must be curious to learn how she died,” Alexa remarked.

“I assume it was a heart attack, stroke, or something,” LePointe said. “She was not a young lady.”

“She was murdered,” Alexa said.

LePointe shrugged. “That's terrible. Did she live in a bad neighborhood?”

“I'm sorry?” Alexa asked.

“Well, she was a nurse. Perhaps drug addicts knew that. She resisted them and they killed her.”

“It appears a mental patient who was living with her most likely committed the crime. So, you've never been to her home?”