Too Far Gone (27 page)

         

68

Leland Ticholet wasn't thinking about what had happened at Doc's little house. He was on cloud nine, now that he had finally earned the boat he was piloting through the familiar system of waterways, heading for his little home on the water. He hadn't cut and run when that lady started shooting at Doc. He had actually helped Doc, who was shot up, get into the boat. If he'd had the ownership papers already, though, he wouldn't have risked his ass waiting around for Doc. Anyway, the woman had just been trying to shoot Doc, who deserved it. Probably he'd promised the woman something he hadn't given her too.

Leland's attention shifted to the gas gauge and he frowned. The boat was useless without gas for the big outboard, so he headed to Moody's dock to fill up the tanks so he could get an early start in the morning to run his traps and see if he'd caught any gators.

Thirty minutes later, Leland cut the motor and pulled into the dock near the gasoline pumps. He tied the boat up and looked at Doc, who was slumped in the rear seat, hugging his briefcase. Doc didn't look good, and he was leaking his blood on the fiberglass deck. His skin was even whiter than usual. His gloves were smeared crimson and he was sort of shaking all over.

“What're we doing here?” Doc asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Gassing up,” Leland answered.

“I need immediate medical attention,” Doc told him.

“They only got Band-Aids and alcohol here.”

“Please, Leland.”

“You want a soda, cheese nabs, something?”

“You have to bring a doctor to me. I can't go to a hospital.”

“Where am I going to get one?”

Doc didn't answer. His head fell forward, his chin coming to rest on his chest.

“Sit tight, I'll be back directly,” Leland said. He stepped onto the dock, took out the pump, and, after opening the cap on the first tank, put the nozzle into the hole and locked it open. After both tanks were filled to capacity, Leland replaced the nozzle on the pump and loped inside to pay.

         

69

Grub had seen Leland's fancy boat coming in and had hidden behind the live bait well. He didn't know if Leland was still angry with him, but he didn't want to get thrown into the water if he was. Of all the things Grub didn't like, getting wet was high up on the list. When he heard the store door open and close, he peeked around the well and saw that Leland had left someone sitting in the boat. Curious, he darted from his hiding place and scooted down the pier. He cautiously approached the vessel and looked down at the man sitting behind the center console. The guy looked like he was sleeping. Grub squatted and stared at the man, at the belt tied around his leg, at the blood puddle by his feet. He was hugging a briefcase to his chest.

“Hey,” Grub said. “Was it Leland done that to your leg? He cut you or something? I wouldn't doubt he done that.”

The man didn't respond.

Grub picked up a piece of oyster shell and tossed it into the boat, watched for a reaction, ready to sprint off if the man looked up, but he didn't move. Grub drew closer for a better look. The briefcase. Checking over his shoulder in case Leland was coming, he slipped quickly into the boat, squatted before the man, and studied the briefcase in his hands, reaching out to touch the holes. He wondered if they were from bullets.

“You alive?” Grub asked him.

The man's head lolled, and his right eye opened slowly.

“Help…doctor.”

“I can call one. Five dollars,” Grub said, picking a nice number and holding out his grimy palm. “Cash.”

70

The streets around the hotel were teeming with people who appeared to be going about the business of partying, despite the fact that Katrina was barreling toward their playground with winds approaching 195 miles per hour.

At the Marriott, the lobby was crowded with people who finally understood that it was time to set aside their go-cups and get the hell out of Dodge. Of course, now all the flights were overfilled, all available rental cars had long since left the city, and unless they could find some transportation, the luckless bastards were going to be huddled in the Superdome bleachers along with the city's poorest, sickest, and most unsavory citizens. For hard-core criminals, a city-destroying hurricane had to look like the career opportunity of a lifetime.

On her room's television set, a satellite picture showed Hurricane Katrina as a one-eyed saw blade of white-cloud fury that seemed to cover the entire Gulf of Mexico. Katrina's sustained winds were expected to rise to an unbelievable 210 miles per hour and, the newscaster said soberly, she was going to be the worst hurricane ever to make landfall on American soil.

Alexa, who considered herself beyond being surprised by anything, was stunned. Before, the hurricane had seemed like some abstraction, and she hadn't allowed herself to believe the storm was really out there, because of the tempest she'd been involved with that was already there. She had heard that people died in natural disasters because their minds couldn't grasp an approaching cataclysmic event—the fear zone in the human brain can simply refuse to consider something that seems impossible. People see a tidal wave in movies, but one unfolding before their eyes seems a film to be viewed with awe.

The weathercaster showed a graphic of the evacuation routes out of New Orleans and warned that anybody who was foolish enough to remain in the city might well be underwater when the levees—designed for a maximum category three hurricane—were breached by billions and billions of gallons of water pushed by two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds up the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain and into the vast network of canals surrounding the city. This was the perfect storm the doomsday prophets had been warning residents about for the past forty years.

There were the now-stale scenes of store owners and residents covering glass with plywood or X's made of duct tape. There was footage of bumper-to-bumper traffic, of a fistfight at a gas station that was running dry, shots of fishing fleets tied up in harbors, and of cheering drunks in the Quarter, just around the corner from Alexa's hotel. The bleary-eyed, bald mayor of New Orleans was hoarse from issuing warnings. How many times could one man predict ten feet of water in the city without his words sounding like static?

Alexa turned her back on the video horror, sat on the bed, slipped on a pair of surgical gloves, and removed the folded notebook from her purse. It was just a typical spiral-bound notebook, like the ones sold to students. Alexa opened the cover and began reading.

         

O
NE
W
OMAN'S
L
IFE

L
IVED IN THE
S
ERVICE OF
G
REATNESS
by Dorothy Mason Fugate, RN

         

The writing was in an almost adolescent cursive. The author dotted her i's and j's with tight circles.

I remember the day I first laid eyes on the most handsome young physician (never call him a doctor) I had ever seen. I had been an RN for less than two years at that point, and I was almost knocked off my feet when he spoke his first words to me. I have never considered myself beautiful, but when he looked at me, I felt like I was the most desirable woman on the planet. (He later swore I looked just like Marilyn Monroe.) I saw the desire in his handsome face and piercing blue eyes. His blood is noble, as I will explain, and the LePointe family goes all the way back to ancient France.

We had our first sexual relations a few days later, and although I was not a virgin, it was like it was my first time. When my dear William completed his psychiatric residency, he and his wife (more about that relationship, if you can call it such, later) returned to New Orleans. Knowing how some doctors tell lies to us nurses to get what they want, I must admit that I sort of thought he might not do what he said he would, about bringing me down there, but shortly after he started working at River Run, he secured a nursing position for me in that mental hospital for the criminally insane, where he was starting to do very, very important work, even though he had a thriving private practice, listening to rich people whine. He wanted to deal with really sick people. Even though he was very, very wealthy, he always worked really hard, and as a result of his work many hundreds of sick people have been made better. And I'm talking very, very ill people.

Few men are blessed with greatness, and he is one in a billion. From the day I met him, I was his in every way. I have no regrets whatsoever that I have given my adult life in service to him. By serving, I made a contribution that has value far beyond what most humans, aside from Mother Teresa, ever find.

Alexa shook her head, and turned the page. On the seventh page, she found an entry highlighted with a marker. Flipping rapidly through the remaining pages, she discovered that there were a lot of highlighted sections of text. These she went back to and read carefully. Seeing no reason for the author to have defaced her all-important work that way, Alexa was certain that Doc, or Grace, had marked the most important sections—the most threatening to LePointe's reputation.

Alexa noticed something else too. The pages were bound by spiral wire, but they were scored so that a page could be removed without leaving tattered torn edges. By removing pages that way, a strip still connected to the wire by the tiny holes remained after the page was removed. Three consecutive pages had been removed at some point by someone, perhaps Dorothy herself.
Why? What could have been worse than what she had left in the book?

When Alexa finally closed the notebook, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly to lessen her tension, gather her thoughts. The illuminated entries made her feel sick. It seemed obvious that the nurse had never intended the book to be read by anybody else. These revelations of Dorothy Fugate, committed to paper for whatever reason, explained why LePointe had agreed to pay the ransom. The nurse's words had the power to turn not only LePointe's world upside down, but Casey's as well. Alexa's dilemma was in how to close the distance between her duty as a law enforcement officer and as a human being.

She jumped when her cell phone rang. She reached into her purse for it. It was Manseur. She looked at her watch. It was two
A.M
.

“Yes, Michael,” she answered.

“I'm at Grace's house. I think you'd better come over here.”

“Is she being cooperative?”

“At the moment she's being dead.”

         

71

Grace Smythe lived Uptown in a small house, three blocks from St. Charles Avenue. Manseur's sedan was parked in the driveway. All of the interior lights in the rear unit were burning, and Alexa pulled up to the curb, parked, and as she approached the house, Manseur opened the front door. He handed her a pair of surgical gloves.

“Where is she?” Alexa asked.

“The lady of the house is presently in the bath.”

“How did she die?”

“Appears for the world to be a suicide.”

“Means?”

“Looks like she just slipped under the water. She'd be no less dead whether she started breathing water for the hell of it or took drugs and passed out. She didn't smother herself or choke on a pill bottle cap, because the whites of her eyes are clear. Well, except for blue contacts.”

“Was she helped along?”

“I'm in Homicide, Alexa. No signs of a struggle. No water splashed on anything.”

“Water dries. Bruises show up later. Maybe somebody killed her.”

“Then it had to be some ghost that floated out through the walls. Windows are all locked from inside. Doors, the same thing. Clothes and mat on the floor were dry is all I do know. No noticeable bruising or marks of any kind on her body. Glove up and follow me.”

In the bedroom, two suitcases open on the bed reminded Alexa of hungry clams.

Manseur said, “I tossed those.”

Grace's bedroom walls were covered with framed pictures of Casey, or Casey with Grace Smythe, or Casey with Deana, or both women with Deana. Not one picture included Gary West. There were several of Casey's photo artworks, just as Grace said there would be, but all of them rested on the floor, leaning against the walls. “Jesus,” Alexa murmured.

“Woman was a Caseyholic. You have any idea she was like that?”

“I got some odd vibes. This confirms it.”

Manseur pushed open the bathroom door. Grace Smythe's nude body lay in the now-drained bathtub. Her hair was blond, as was her pubic hair. A wineglass, lying between her legs, contained some trapped bathwater. The gold ear studs were missing, and Alexa saw that there were no pierce holes where they'd been. Two black wigs were perched on foam heads standing on the back of the toilet. Beside the tub stood a nearly full wine bottle.

“Sure looks like she and Doc Doe were working together, and Ticholet was their worker bee.” Alexa reached down and lifted Grace's arm to gauge the rigor. “How long, you think?” she asked. “Before or after the ransom drop?”

“Since the interior lights were off, I think this happened during daylight. Well before the drop. The medical examiner can nail it down. Think she did this out of remorse?”

Alexa shrugged. “Maybe she realized she couldn't get away with it.”

“She left a trail Helen Keller could follow.”

“Her cell phone here?”

“Come with me,” Manseur said. He led Alexa to the kitchen. On the table Manseur had placed a series of evidence bags. “First we have a plane ticket to Paris in her name, and a second—Paris to Madrid, under the name Bridget Longwood. I found a passport in her purse in that name with her picture on it. Bridget the blonde.”

“She'd probably been planning this a good while.”

“I also thought this was interesting,” Manseur said, pointing to several stacks of bills. “There's fifty thousand there in crisp new currency. Tossed into her suitcase. Enough to hold her until her boyfriend met her with the rest.”

Alexa looked at the pristine bills, and reached for the cell phone on the table. She opened it.

“Last calls are from Casey, who kept getting Grace's recorded voice.” Alexa hit the
MESSAGES
key and listened to Casey's voice on four messages, asking Grace to call her back as soon as she got back.

“And this I found in the garbage.” Manseur opened a plastic grocery store bag and removed a stack of photocopied pages. Alexa recognized them as duplicates of the highlighted pages from Fugate's diary.

“You read them?” she asked.

“What do you think?” he said. “Are they from the notebook?”

Alexa nodded. “So, what are you going to do with them?”

Manseur's face showed surprise. “It's evidence. Turn them over, eventually.”

“Why did Grace have a copy?” Alexa asked. “They're worthless without the original to authenticate them. Michael, if you place this into evidence now, what do you think the upside will be?”

“Aside from exposing LePointe for the sick sack of crab shells he is? He could do time for kidnapping, holding Sibby and torturing her, or at the least conspiracy to kidnap her.”

“You really think he'll do time? Who is it who's always saying, ‘This is New Orleans.' Evidence vanishes all the time in places that aren't New Orleans.”

“Okay, I understand. You can take it federal.”

“I could possibly make a case using Veronica Malouf's testimony. It isn't going to be my decision to prosecute, but they might file on it, and they might get a conviction in the federal courts. Of course, you realize they'd try him in federal court here in New Orleans. It's a long shot,” Alexa said.

“And so you would do what? Let it go? Let the old son of a bitch walk?”

Alexa said, “Gary's found. He's free now, and he'll stay that way no matter what we do. LePointe would pay a fortune to get that notebook. Millions.”

“So, he pays us or he pays somebody else?”

Alexa watched as Manseur's eyes narrowed, his face turning into solid rock. “Wait a minute,” he growled.

Alexa put her hand up, palm out. “Relax, Michael. I needed to make sure you were willing to go to the wall.”

“Tit for tat. Okay.”

“The diary will certainly destroy LePointe's reputation, and Casey will hate him, but she has to find out the rest, even though she's already suffered more than anybody deserves to. I think we need to put some serious thought into this. I can't see where making a case on him will have any negative effect on me, but even disgraced, LePointe could still destroy your career. Might cost you your job.”

“I'll just have to find another one,” he said. “Somewhere else.”

“Did Evans call you earlier tonight?”

“He wanted a briefing, so I told him what happened out there. He asked me what we found in the cabin.”

“Did he mention the notebook?”

“He didn't mention it specifically. But he wanted me to give him the list of items we found. After the first time I told him, he asked if that was all and if I was sure. Then he asked me for the list again.”

“Did he talk to Kennedy?”

“Not that I know of. The perps had the notebook before Gary was taken, so why did they go to the trouble to kidnap him?” Manseur said. “There's something about this that doesn't quite add up.”

“Grace obviously wanted Gary dead and out of her way.”

Manseur reached into a small evidence envelope and took out a picture of Grace standing beside a short man with a neatly trimmed beard. “This was in the suitcase,” he told her.

Alexa nodded. “Doc,” she said.

Manseur lifted one last evidence bag and gave it to her. Inside was a receipt for a motel room.