Too Far Gone (21 page)

         

50

Alexa parked on Broad Street and hurried toward the front of the headquarters building. She was approaching the glass front entrance when someone yelled out her name. She turned to see Veronica Malouf carrying a briefcase hugged to her chest as though it were a baby in distress and she was trying to get it to the emergency room.

“Ms. Malouf,” Alexa said. “I tried to call you a few minutes ago to see what you'd come up with.”

“I couldn't leave because Dr. Whitfield was closing the office early. So nonessential personnel could evacuate and I had to finish up. My phone battery was dead and I forgot my car charger, which I couldn't find when I went home for these. Sorry.”

“The files I asked for?”

Veronica ignored the question. “They're the ones you want. Call if you have any questions.”

Alexa took the valise and said, “If I have any questions, you're going to answer them in person. After you.”

“But I need to get packed.”

They rode the elevator up in silence. Manseur looked from the papers he was reading as Alexa and Veronica walked into his office. “Agent Keen. Ms. Malouf,” he said.

“Veronica has something for us,” Alexa said, hanging her heavy purse on a chair.

“I hope you brought us a recent picture of Sibby Danielson.”

Veronica Malouf shook her head. “There isn't one. I looked.”

“Let's have a look at what you do have,” he said.

         

51

Alexa was amazed by what she read in the files, but Manseur might have been reading the phone book for all the reaction he showed. Veronica Malouf sat at the end of the conference table, looking into her lap—Marie Antoinette sitting in the ox-drawn cart being delivered to the Place de la Révolution, where a masked executioner with blood-spattered hands awaited her arrival.

“Dr. LePointe seems to have been Sibby Danielson's sole attending physician during her stay,” Alexa said. “Might that not rise to the level of unethical, even in New Orleans?”

Manseur shrugged. “He lied about that.”

What hasn't he lied about?
Alexa thought. “This is a release form for Sibby, so she was released legally.”

“She wasn't,” Veronica said.

Alexa looked at her. “This is a release form for Sibby Danielson and it's signed by what I assume is an entire committee.”

“Dr. LePointe's signature is on it?” Manseur asked.

“No. How do you explain that?” Alexa asked Veronica.

“They're valid signatures,” Veronica said, looking nervously into Alexa's eyes, “but not on Sibby Danielson's release form.”

“How do you know that?” Manseur asked.

“Because that form was somehow altered. I think one patient's name and number was removed and hers put on. That's how I think they did it.”

“I can't see any alteration,” Alexa said. “It appears to be an original.”

“That form was delivered to Dr. LePointe by Mr. Decell,” Veronica said. “He delivered it in an envelope and Dr. LePointe told me to tell him as soon as it arrived. In the fifteen minutes it took the doctor to come to the office, I opened it and looked at it.”

“How do you know it was altered?”

“Because one of the psychologists who signed it hadn't worked at River Run for two years before it's dated. He died from liver cancer. I…” Veronica stopped.

“Go on,” Alexa said.

“I think it might have been sort of illegal for me to do what I did with the files.”

“Go on.”

“Taking them and, you know, bringing them here. They're hospital property and there's privilege….”

Alexa thought for a moment. Then she said, “The main problem with them is that misappropriated files can't be introduced as evidence in a court of law.”

“So they can't be used against Dr. LePointe?” Veronica asked, a little frantically. “And what about me? Not because of the privileged content, but because I took them.”

Alexa looked at Manseur, then back at Veronica. “If you tell the absolute truth, there will be no legal repercussions from either Detective Manseur or myself. It will end here.” Alexa certainly didn't want anybody knowing she'd intimidated a state employee into stealing confidential hospital files on a hunch.

Manseur nodded for Veronica's benefit. The truth was that the police can lie to suspects with complete impunity. “Just level with us.”

Then Alexa saw it clearly. “You had these before we came to the hospital!”

Veronica sat frozen for a few beats, and then nodded once.

“It's time to come clean, Veronica,” Manseur told the young woman. “We're not going to judge you. We need to know everything you can tell us. If you're afraid that your motives or intentions might paint you in a less than favorable light, don't sweat it. Let's just get the whole story out in the open.”

“We're not interested in when you took them. A man's life may be on the line,” Alexa said.

“Whose?” Veronica asked.

“Gary West's,” Alexa told her. “He was abducted yesterday.”

“You think Dr. LePointe had something to do with it?” Veronica asked, alarmed. “That Mr. West could be dead?”

Alexa shook her head.

“He
might
be dead?” Veronica asked, fear in her pale eyes. “I won't testify against Dr. LePointe or Mr. Decell. You better know that. I don't know anything about any abduction. If Mr. Decell killed him, he could kill me.”

“Do you know Mr. West?”

“He came by the hospital a few times with Casey, Dr. LePointe's niece. LePointe talked about him like he was a horrible person, but he wasn't. He'd ask about a person and he was asking because he wanted to know and not just to be polite. He was good-looking, but it was like he didn't know it, or think he was better because he had money. He wrote plays, but I doubt they were as bad as Dr. LePointe said, though I never saw one. Casey is the same way, and she's also a big-deal photographer. Her assistant is a bitch, always throwing her weight around, acting like she's all that, when she just works for Casey West. She always goes, ‘Mrs. LePointe-West wants this,' or ‘Mrs. LePointe-West wants that.'”

Alexa said, “That's good. Just tell us what you know about Danielson, Dr. LePointe, and Fugate.”

         

52

Veronica Malouf told Alexa and Manseur that she knew someday the files could be crucial in establishing the truth about Dr. William LePointe and his reign over the patients and staff at River Run. She claimed she'd taken the files home with her months before in the hope that she could someday bring the whole stinking story into the cleansing spotlight of authoritative scrutiny. Veronica told Manseur and Alexa that she began watching and listening soon after she started working for Dr. LePointe as his executive assistant, which Alexa translated to mean poorly paid state employee who worked for one of the wealthiest men in America not named Gates, Buffet, or Walton.

“Dr. LePointe was difficult to work for. I never knew which Dr. LePointe would be my boss. He could be the mean arrogant ass, or he could be the sweetest thing, going out of to be thoughtful and helpful to me,” she said. “And he could change from one into the other several times a day sometimes. I'm not saying he used drugs or anything like that, but it sure would explain some one-eighties he subjected me to.”

Alexa nodded, content to let Veronica run on to fill the silence while she read through the files.

“About four years ago, Dr. LePointe called from outside and asked me to get a file from his personal file cabinet and read him something. He told me where the key was. I was putting the files back and opened the wrong drawer by accident and I saw her name on all these files. Well, you can just imagine that caused alarm bells to go off in my head. Sibby freaking Danielson! At that point I didn't even know she was there. Not many people did.” Veronica sipped water from a bottle she had brought with her. “See, I figured that I might find myself with some legal complications, you know, down the road, so I decided to photocopy the files when the doctor wasn't in the office, which was pretty often.”

“To protect yourself if any sort of charges were ever leveled,” Manseur said, sympathetically.

“You had a key to his personal files?” Alexa asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” Alexa prodded.

“Of course, I knew where he kept it,” Veronica said, “from that time.”

“These are all originals,” Alexa commented.

Veronica tried to act surprised, but her acting was not on par with her skills as a thief.

“That's a mistake. I mean, I guess I was nervous about doing it, don't you see?” Veronica said defensively. “I must have inadvertently swapped the copies I'd made for the originals.”

“How did you choose these files of all twenty-six years of her records?” Manseur asked.

Veronica stared silently, surely thinking how she should answer him.

“Why these specifically?” he pressed.

“Well, I couldn't copy all of the files, because there were so many, thousands, like you said.”

“These were the most likely to keep you out of any potential accusations of complicity in malpractice suits,” Alexa offered. “Or criminal charges, of course,” she added.

“Of course,” Manseur said. Alexa could imagine Veronica reading through the volumes of accumulated paper to select the most incriminating, and therefore the most valuable, pages. And Alexa doubted she cared that photocopies were nonadmissible in legal proceedings, but she had known that they'd be useless as blackmail leverage.

Not that Manseur or Alexa cared, but it was obvious that Veronica Malouf had planned to trade the life of an underappreciated laborer for one of a moneyed dilettante. The young woman didn't realize that an assault on LePointe's reputation, and perhaps his very freedom, might be worth big money to him, but Alexa doubted Veronica had what it would take to actually collect any while Kenneth Decell was running interference for him.

Alexa was delighted. If Veronica hadn't had a larcenous streak, they'd have no proof to bolster their supposition that LePointe was as nasty a piece of work as they suspected him to be. The basics contained in the papers were proof that Sibby Danielson had not only been under Dr. LePointe's direct care for those years, but that Dorothy Fugate had been responsible for the patient's day-to-day care for the same time period. Dorothy Fugate had been the most powerful nurse in the hospital, moving steadily, and rapidly, up the ladder of authority until she was the head administrative nurse. The nurses, the nurses' aides, the orderlies, and even the janitorial staff on the wards answered to her directly. Sibby Danielson spent her twenty-six-year tour in the same room in the most violent patients' wing. And Nurse Fugate had taken Sibby home with her and had kept her heavily medicated and imprisoned there.

“How did Dr. LePointe keep all of this from the staff?” Alexa asked Veronica.

“Each doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist, has a full contingent of patients. They only discussed the cases the doctors, psychologists, or nurses brought to the attention of the others. Only Dr. LePointe would have brought up his patients if he wanted to discuss one.”

“Danielson's nurse never had reason to bring her up?”

“Dorothy Fugate was Sibby's only nurse—or her supervising nurse, at any rate—and she was the nurse who brought up the other nurses' concerns at the staff meetings with the doctors and psychologists.”

“So, Dorothy Fugate was where all roads to Sibby intersected?” Alexa asked. “And as director, LePointe controlled these meetings?”

Veronica nodded. “Dr. LePointe personally recruited all of the doctors and psychologists who are working there now. The doctors are real busy and they only worry about their own patients.”

“And Dr. Whitfield?” Manseur asked.

“Let me guess,” Alexa said. “Whitfield is a William LePointe production.”

“He brought him in from a hospital in Richmond,” Veronica said.

“So River Run—a state institution—has been without normal checks and balances of any kind for over twenty-five years?”

“Dr. LePointe still exerts control,” Veronica said.

“Then why did he feel compelled to spirit out Sibby Danielson?” Alexa asked. “Wouldn't it have been safer if he had left her there? Why not just make sure she remained drugged up?”

“Or died,” Manseur offered. “One little mistake with the medication, and there's a natural death. Or overdose her and say she saved up her meds and committed suicide.”

“Dr. LePointe wouldn't ever kill anybody. Sibby's no big deal. There's other patients on the maximum-security wards that are well known,” Veronica told them. “Serial killers, a woman who poisoned her family, even a transvestite who collected severed penises and made hatbands with them that she sold to tourists.”

“We need a picture of Sibby,” Manseur said, changing the subject. “So we can find her.”

“I don't have access to pictures of the inmates. Staff is HR. Inmates is another department altogether. I got you the names of the staff in the ward like you asked, but no pictures or addresses. They're all there.”

“Did you know that Sibby was living with Nurse Fugate?” Alexa asked.

“For real?” Veronica said, appearing genuinely surprised.

“She isn't now,” Manseur said. “Somebody murdered Nurse Fugate, and Sibby was no longer around. That's why we need a picture.”

“Did Sibby chop her up?” Veronica asked.

“Somebody caved in her skull. Might have been Sibby.”

Veronica said, “Was it with a pipe?”

“Why did you say pipe?” Alexa asked.

Veronica shrugged. “Don't know. There was this guy they put into the violent ward who had mega muscles, and scars all over his forehead. I saw them walking him once. One of the girls in Admissions said he caved in somebody's head with a pipe.”

“A pipe?
Do you know what happened to him?”

“I'm not sure. I do know the orderlies said he was the scariest man they'd ever had to deal with. They were saying they would hate to run into him on the outside.”

“What did he do for a living?” Manseur asked. “Clubbing people isn't a full-time occupation.”

“Some kind of fisherman or trapper. They said that's all he talked about. He used that pipe to kill things like animals he trapped.”

“Was he in the same ward as Sibby?” Alexa asked.
Lead pipe…nutria hair…salty water.

“He was in one of the violent wards.”

“Ward fourteen?” Alexa asked.

“Maybe it was.”

“Trapper with a pipe,” Manseur said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Yes, I remember….”

“You know who she's referring to?” Alexa asked him.

“About two years ago some fisherman beat another fisherman half to death in front of a bunch of witnesses. Two other people in the area had been found with crushed skulls, so they figured this guy did all of them. He was strong as an ape. Took half a dozen deputies and three stun guns to restrain him. I can't remember his name, but the case fell apart because the witnesses got amnesia, and the man he beat couldn't remember who'd done it. They had to release him.”

Veronica shrugged. “People get released all the time that shouldn't. That's all I know.” She looked at the papers on the table. “I guess Dr. LePointe has to find out about these?”

Manseur frowned.

“Maybe he won't need to know,” Alexa told Veronica. “You've been a big help.”
Even though you
are
a criminal. Maybe this will straighten you out before you end up in jail…or dead.

“I think that's all for now. Stay near your phone,” Manseur told her.

“Go home,” Alexa said. “Don't even think about discussing this with anybody. If you do, we'll find out, and we won't be nice about it.”

“I'm going to my parents' in Lafayette until next week. The hurricane and all…”

“Go,” Manseur said, waving his fingers at her. “Keep your cell phone hot, and we'll call if there's anything further.”

Veronica grabbed her purse and left the room like there was a bomb on the table, pulling the door shut behind her hard enough to rattle the opaque glass panel.

Manseur went directly to his computer and started typing. Thirty seconds later, he looked at Alexa. “Leland Ticholet was twenty-three. The instrument he was suspected of using to pound the victim's head in was never recovered, but the medical examiner speculated that the attack was most likely committed with an instrument consistent with a section of pipe. Lead pipe is a relatively common item among commercial fishermen. Not sure why.”

Alexa said, “A lead pipe is both heavier than wood and softer than galvanized, so it does more deep damage without splitting skin against the bone.”

“How'd you know that?”

“I spend a lot of time talking to crime techs about cold cases. Or maybe I read it in a novel. Got an address on him?”

“I guess no address could be established. Ticholet was released without any probation or restrictions.”

“I guess the swamp is a nonspecific address. He was locked up in River Run's violent ward while Fugate was there. He might have harbored a grudge. Got even with her,” Alexa said.

“With a meat-tenderizing hammer, not a pipe,” Manseur said.

“Perhaps the hammer was a weapon of convenience. Maybe he knew the pipe would point to him. He could have attacked Gary West with a lead pipe. Maybe he was hired by Fugate to do the West grab and he wanted to up his percentage.”

“Money could have been his motive for attacking Gary West?”

Alexa said, “You've never been open to considering that LePointe might be directly involved. A blind spot.”

“No. I still can't see it.”

“Maybe LePointe knows Leland from the hospital and hired him to kill Fugate.”

“Alexa, think about this. Dr. LePointe hired a retarded giant mental patient to kill Nurse Fugate and abduct Gary West?”

“It's easy for me to imagine Fugate knew far too much about him and Sibby. Maybe he wanted to get rid of Fugate and stuck her with the responsibility of springing Sibby, and he got Leland to get rid of one or both of them. Maybe he worked all of it through Decell. Arm's-length transaction. And if he did that, why is it unimaginable that he grabbed West while they were settling family business. Whoever was in an old green panel truck was in both places. They took Sibby out of Fugate's and they abducted Gary West using it. What are the chances two such trucks were involved?”

Manseur nodded slowly. “I'll concede that point. Somebody did both. I can't picture LePointe risking everything by leading a conspiracy, because he knows enough about people who conspire to know they rat out each other.”

Alexa picked up the handwritten list of staff Veronica had furnished and read it.

Ward 14 Staff:

Nurses:

Judi Bodiker

Vicky Lane

Kerry Hamilton

Abbey Dunn

Jamie Smith

Orderlies:

Bunky Bouvier

Bob Waller

Andrew Tinsdale

Terry Fourchet

Jack Warden

Janitorial:

Tommy Dogrel

Raymond Carrouth

Joe Jefferson

“Sometimes very smart people don't think they can be foiled by what fells lesser men. We're not dealing with a man who believes normal rules apply to him. Arrogance, a sense of entitlement, intelligence, and power can make for a deadly combination. No guns or knives—all blunt force. We find Mr. Ticholet, we'll know the truth. What do you suppose Swamp Boy is driving these days?” Alexa asked.

Manseur shrugged. “I can find out easy enough.”

“Fifty dollars says it's something old and green.”