Too Far Gone (29 page)

         

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.”

“Where's the Fugate diary? I want to see it for myself.”

“I have it in a safe place. I intend to use it to build a case against your uncle. I just wanted you to know what's in it before it becomes public knowledge.”

“Where's Sibby now?”

“She's hospitalized for observation at Charity.”

“What will happen to her?”

“She'll be going back to River Run, or someplace like it, I imagine. I don't know how dangerous she is now. They'll have to evaluate her and make that decision.”

“I can't believe my mother is…that woman. And you think Grace knew it?”

Alexa nodded.

“How?”

“This is the man she called Doc.” Alexa took out the picture of Doc standing with Grace and handed it to Casey. “He had a connection to Fugate and another inmate at River Run, who helped them kidnap Gary and kill Dorothy. Grace had a copy of the diary at her house.”

“I've seen him before. Wait. He's that orderly at River Run. Just a minute. Is he the man I shot?”

“He may be a relative of Fugate's. She mentioned her nephew in the diary, but not by name. I think he targeted Grace and somehow enlisted her help.”

“Grace was so alone that it probably wasn't hard. He probably seduced her, poor thing. What's his name?”

“Doc is the only name we have. That's what I heard Leland Ticholet call him.”

“Grace is
—was
my closest friend. She was loyal.”

“Maybe you were her friend, but it appears she wasn't yours. I'm sorry to have to tell you all this.”

“You were suspicious all along.” Casey shook her head. “You said I shouldn't tell her anything you told me….” She put her head in her hands, ran her fingers through her hair. “My grandmother told me never to trust anybody. She said those closest to me would be the most envious of what I had. She didn't care for Grace, but allowed us to be friends because Grace was socially acceptable. My grandmother wasn't much fond of anybody.” Slowly, Casey tucked her hair behind her ears. “Maybe you're wrong. Maybe Grace was framed and that man I shot killed her so we wouldn't know. It's possible, right?”

“The man you shot got away. I think he gave Grace the money they'd need to get away until they could cash the bonds. We found a plane ticket to Paris in her name and another to Spain, in her false name. Her suitcases were packed. Grace had dyed her hair and had colored contacts to alter her appearance. This was well planned.”

“Grace always was organized.”

“I think Grace and Doc sent out photocopies of the diary to the media. That's why they're calling you.”

“Why would she do such a thing? This is all going to be made public? All of it? Why? And if this Doc had the diary, why did they bother to kidnap Gary?”

“I'm not sure, but I think that may have been Grace's idea, maybe a requirement for helping Doc. She had lots of pictures of you in the apartment.”

“We've been friends for nearly twenty-five years. I have pictures of her in my house and studio.”

“She had boxes filled with them. Covering the walls, in drawers. She was obsessed with you.”

“You mean like stalker obsessed?”

Alexa nodded.

“Is it possible that Unko or Fugate told Sibby about my parents? So that she'd harm them? How awful!”

“The diary didn't say so.”

“It wouldn't necessarily, would it? Who in their right mind would write
that
down? That they'd deliberately sent a madwoman into the home of two innocent people, to butcher them? Unko would never have had any control if my father had lived. Alexa, my family history is filled with the person in control being ousted by the person next in line. The strongest warrior in waiting defeats the king, and takes over. Alexa, it's true! I know that's what happened. Unko deliberately used her to murder my parents!”

“I'm sorry you had to hear all of this from me. Sorry you had to hear it at all.”

“You're most sorry because it's true,” Casey said, smiling for the first time since Alexa had mentioned the notebook. “You are a wonderful, kind person, Alexa Keen. We're alike, you and me. Orphans. It's true. Don't you see?”

Casey embraced Alexa. “You
are
the savior of the lost. If there's anything I can ever do for you, it's yours.”

Alexa left the West house. She ignored the shouted questions of the members of the fourth estate, gathering like hungry crows.

         

77

Alexa tried to call Manseur to give him an update on her meeting with Casey, and to check the status of the search for the tracker that might lead them to Leland Ticholet and the wounded Doc Doe. The call went straight into his voice mail.

“Call me when you get this,” Alexa said.

Ten minutes later, when her cell phone rang, she flipped it open.

“Keen,” she answered.

“Alexa,” Manseur said. “Where are you?”

“Almost back to the downtown.”

“Have any blue jeans with you?” he asked her.

“At the hotel. Why?”

“Sneakers?”

“I have running shoes? Why?”

“Go to your room and change into them. We got a signal on the briefcase tracker in the swamp. I'm leaving the office. I can swing by and pick you up. Kennedy and Bond are getting some equipment and they'll meet us.”

“Ten minutes,” Alexa said. “I'll be out front waiting for you.”

         

Twelve minutes later Alexa climbed into Manseur's car just as he was yawning. “I thought this might be better than a purse out there.” Manseur handed her a high-rise belt holster for her Glock as well as a magazine holder with a pair of loaded magazines. “Those are your mags. The lab returned them.”

“You are so thoughtful.” Alexa went into her purse to give Manseur the one he'd loaned her.

“The cell phone you found in the grass was the mystery prepaid cell number,” Manseur said. “The phone links Grace to the other perps.”

“No surprise there. By the way, Casey confirmed that our Doc was the orderly from River Run that Grace was flirting with when she was taking pictures out there.”

“Which reminds me. Doc's real name is Andy Tinsdale. Veronica gave me his last known address. Tinsdale was on the violent wards for three years. He left, under a dark cloud, about the time Fugate did. There were some unsavory accusations involving patient abuse and missing meds.”

“Tinsdale. I remember the name from the list of staff. We need to have a look in his place.”

“We will when we get back. I had patrol check the apartment and it's locked up tight. Neighbor said nobody's been in since day before yesterday. By the way, don't be surprised if there are sound trucks from a caravan behind us. The damned media is in a feeding frenzy, trying to slip this bombshell in to augment their hurricane coverage.”

“Already? They don't know the diary's authentic yet.”

“Yes, they do.”

“How?”

“Casey West told them.”

“Casey? You sure?”

“Saw her on the TV myself just before I called you. Announced that she's just learned about the diary from an FBI agent, who told her it was authentic. Said she's crushed by LePointe's actions, but says her uncle should have a chance to explain everything to her and to the public before he's judged. No matter how scandalous and despicable his actions were, or what actual crimes he committed, he has been a friend of this community, or some such happy crap. Woman threw the old goat to the wolves.”

“Couldn't happen to a more deserving individual,” Alexa said. She certainly couldn't blame Casey for reacting as she had, but she hadn't expected Casey to go public.

Usually people like the LePointes played things close to their vests and the public arena wasn't the place for washing their dirty laundry. But Casey had certainly earned the right to change the LePointe family handbook.

Alexa almost felt sorry for LePointe. Almost.

         

78

Alexa and Manseur listened in silence as the car's radio informed them that refugees from Katrina, using everything from motorcycles to bus-sized RVs, were leaving New Orleans. All of the lanes of the major roads leaving the city were handling one-way traffic only, and the vehicles on the main roads were leaving at a crawl. Vehicles of every description littered the sides of the roadways, some with hoods raised, their occupants waving desperately at passing cars. Even the back roads were bumper-to-bumper. Gasoline stations were mobbed by desperate motorists or people wanting gas for generators, or the stations had run out of fuel.

Mayor Ray Nagin's strong voice came over the airwaves, pleading.
“…believe that. People, the plain fact is that Hurricane Katrina is going to be the most powerful hurricane ever to make landfall in the history of the United States, and it is coming in right here this evening. The water surge, a wall of water twenty feet high, is going to be pushed by two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds up the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain, and it
is
going overtop the levees. It is suicide to remain in the city, because your homes are going to be flooded. The police are going door to door with orders to forcefully remove everybody found in any home or apartment, and those people are going to be taken to the Superdome, which is twenty feet above sea level. I urge you all to heed this warning and get out of your homes and businesses and remain out of the area until we give an all-clear to return. The police and National Guard will deal with any looters, using all necessary force. If you cannot get out of the city, go to the Superdome now. This is going to be the worst-possible-case scenario storm. I can't say this any stronger. There are going to be bodies floating in the streets.”

The governor spoke about coordinating state and federal agencies. But a new voice had been added to the dire warnings. President George Bush talked about which federal agencies he was sending and finished his message with
“I have just three words to say to the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Get. Out. Now.”

“I guess he's made himself clear,” Manseur said.

“It's mind-blowing that people think they can ride this one out,” Alexa said.

“This is New Orleans, Alexa. Where fantasy and denial meet over drinks from sundown to sundown.”

“We need a helicopter to get us around this,” Alexa said.

“I tried to get one. There wasn't any to be had for two hours.”

“Maybe we should have waited.”

“Look,” Manseur said. “We caught up to Bond and Kennedy's car.” When Bond saw the blue lights coming up behind his Crown Vic, he slowed and let his ex-partner pass him. Seconds later Bond's car was riding right behind Manseur's bumper.

With sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, it took an hour and a half of hard driving on rural highways and snaking parish back roads to get to their destination.

The two-car caravan got to Moody's landing, where Buddy Lee Tolliver's sheriff's department boat had just been unloaded from its trailer and now waited, moored to a dock beside a bait and tackle store. There was a cluster of small boats—a redneck armada—waiting their turn in the channel to be loaded onto trailers, one of which, behind a ratty pickup, was submerged to allow a young boy to drive his boat onto it. One of two deputies dressed in a brown-and-tan uniform stood at the vessel's center console. He waved at Manseur when he saw him.

“Must be our guide,” Manseur explained to Alexa.

Larry Bond slid out of the other car, wearing hunting boots and camouflage pants like a deer hunter. Detective Kyler Kennedy was dressed the same way.

One of the deputies stood smoking a cigarette beside the truck that had pulled the boat's trailer, looking up at the fast-moving clouds above him—the early feeder-band edge of a doomsday, two-hundred-mile-per-hour grass-skinner. As he made his way over to the arriving Crown Vics, Alexa noticed the large deputy's shirt was darkly wet where it stuck to his torso.

“Detective Manseur?” the man asked, looking at the two detectives in camouflage at the second car.

“I'm Manseur.”

The deputy turned to the source of the voice. “Sheriff sends his regards, sir. Kip Boudreaux is going to take you back in there. Kip's been fishing around here all his life. He's the sheriff's cousin by marriage. Going back in there without an experienced man is asking for trouble. Going in after Leland Ticholet anytime is looking hard for trouble. Sheriff said if you need any more men, he'll try to send a couple. But you know what it's like right now.”

“How will they find us?” Manseur asked.

“Boudreaux is going to leave markers floating so we can find y'all in case you need us. He was in on arresting Leland a few years back, and he can advise you some on him. Only thing for sure is, he's one badass sombitch, and pepper spray don't bother him any more'n a cat fart would. Most people live back in here are tough customers or they don't make it, but people here go miles out of their way to avoid Leland.”

The deputy reached into his back pocket for an envelope. “It's his mug shot. He's six three, weighs two-sixty and he ain't got a inch to pinch on him. If he decides to fight it out, I'd just go on and shoot him like a hog. Won't nobody miss him. Y'all best be back out before two o'clock with or without him. Wind is going to be picking up by then and the water is going to get choppy.”

Alexa took the envelope, slipped out the picture, and studied the shirtless, wild-eyed young man with a full head of Medusa-like hair and a wild beard specked with twigs and a forehead marked with small crisscrossing scars. His chest and arm muscles looked like they'd been machined from surgical steel and covered with wet nylon. “His hair is short now,” Alexa said, handing the picture to Manseur. “No beard.”

“How's radio reception out there?” Manseur asked.

“Real good. There's repeater towers all over, and you can use cell phones most everywhere in the parish these days. Most of that is on account of the oil companies.”

“Okay, then we'll advise the sheriff when we make the arrest,” Manseur said.

“I guess I could go along if you want extra help,” the fat deputy offered.

“Thanks anyway. You've got your hands full with Katrina. I think we can handle this.”

Alexa saw a flood of relief wash over the deputy's reddened baby-face. He waddled back over to the truck at twice the speed with which he had approached, lighting another cigarette as he went.

Manseur popped the trunk of his car, picked up a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun. He loaded the magazine with 12-gauge buckshot rounds. He did the same with a second shotgun. Alexa took a ballistic vest from the trunk and slipped it on. Manseur put his on, then pulled on a black baseball cap with
NOPD
emblazoned in gold. He handed Alexa a plain dark blue ball cap and a windbreaker with
POLICE
in three-inch letters across the shoulders in the rear and the same word in smaller letters over the left breast.

Alexa looked down and noticed that Manseur was wearing his brown wingtips. “Don't you have any other shoes?”

“These are very comfortable,” he said. “I don't own any Keds.”

“Keds?” Alexa laughed. “Do they still sell Keds?”

A sudden hissing made Alexa turn. Bond was spraying his ankles with repellant from a green aerosol can. “Chiggers,” he explained. He handed the can to Alexa. “Spray yourself good. There's also mosquitoes, ticks—”

“I've had chigger bites before.” Alexa accepted the can and sprayed herself liberally. “Nothing short of losing an arm in a machine could be worse than chigger bites.”

Bond and Kennedy opened gun cases and removed high-powered rifles with telescopic sights and slings.

“The signal is coming from five miles west of here,” Manseur said.

“There's a labyrinth of bayous and canals and you can't go anywhere back in there by straight lines. This is by far the closest road in any direction,” Bond added.

Alexa looked toward the ramshackle store. She spotted an emaciated and hump-shouldered young man, whose nose was so long and sharp that—coupled with the shoots of blond hair radiating out from his head—he appeared as much bird as human. He leaned against the corner of the building watching the detectives through narrowed eye slits. When he saw that Alexa was looking at him, he averted his gaze and slipped around the corner like a starving but fearful dog.

“How many boat launches are there around here?” she asked.

“Not many,” Bond offered. “One other within five miles.”

“You're familiar with this place?” Alexa asked.

“I've fished some around here a few times. With a guide.”

“We should ask inside if they know Leland,” Alexa said. “This is likely where he buys fuel.”

Manseur reached into his pocket and took out the picture of Grace and Doc, which he showed to Bond and Kennedy. “This other one is Andy Tinsdale. He's the guy that Casey West shot. Hasn't showed up in any clinics or hospitals and he isn't home. Hopefully, he's still with Leland.”

Alexa accompanied Manseur into the store while Bond and Kennedy went to the boat to load their equipment and meet the pilot. There were people shopping inside. A couple of rough-looking fishermen in oily clothes were standing at the counter, and they moved back as Manseur and Alexa approached. The radio droned warnings. The shelves, made of unpainted lumber, were almost cleaned of canned foods. The square-headed man behind the counter was built on the order of a potbellied stove. The cap perched on his head was so grimy, it was impossible to read the logo. He blew his nose into a red and white bandanna and shoved it into his back pocket. Coils of black hair seemed to be growing from his shirt up his neck like wisteria vines, and covered his forearms and the backs of his hands like fur.

“I'm Allen Moody, the owner. Can I help you folks?” he asked, lighting a cigar that had probably been lit on several previous occasions.

Manseur flashed his badge. “You know this man?” he asked, showing a mug shot picture of Leland Ticholet.

Moody leaned forward to get a better look, taking a pair of reading glasses from the counter and putting them on. The fishermen strained to look, without moving in closer.

“'At's Lelun,” Moody said. “He's crazy as a rat in a milk pail.”

“Tickerlay's his name,” a young fisherman said, nodding. “Some call him Tickle.”

“You wouldn't want him to catch you calling him Tickle,” another fisherman added. “He ain't got a sense of humor. He's a lot like his daddy was in that respect. A sorrier sample of a man than that Jacklon never drew breath.”

“He sure shit never drew a sober one,” Moody said, chuckling.

The older fisherman nodded in agreement.

“'At's a pure-dee fact,” Moody agreed. “His redbone second wife, Alice Fay, killed him.”

“Red Bone?” Alexa asked.

“That's an Indian and nigger mix,” the younger fisherman translated.

The older fisherman elbowed his younger buddy, who frowned, realizing he'd made a social faux pas. “I certainly didn't mean to insult you by that, miss,” he mumbled.

“You get on Lelun's bad side and you can go missing. Like some done recently,” the older fisherman said.

“What do you mean?” Alexa asked.

“Game warden name of Parnell was asking about Lelun a few days back, 'cause he was thinking Lelun bought that new boat he's been riding around in with alligator hide profits. Wanted to know where he stayed at,” Moody said. “Now they're looking for Parnell and a lady warden that was with him yesterday. I wouldn't be surprised if they never found a trace of them.”

“That Parnell's a pure-dee bastard,” the older fisherman declared. “He probably checks his own licenses hoping he can write his own self a citation ticket.”

The fishermen and Moody laughed. The sound was that of a donkey fighting with seals.

Manseur showed them the picture of the young man standing with Dorothy Fugate. “What about this one?”

“The woman, or him?” Moody asked.

“Him. Have you seen him before? Maybe with Ticholet?”

“Never seen anybody with Lelun. Well, this one time a few days back a man was with him, but I didn't get close enough for a look. Figured he was taking him fishing or something. You could ask Grub. He's right nosy.”

“Grub?” Alexa asked.

“What'd Lee do this time?” one of the fishermen asked.

“He stole that boat,” the store owner announced. “I knew he don't have that kind of money sitting around. That boat cost thirty thousand if it cost a nickel. He was driving a beat-to-shit aluminum fourteen flat-bottom with an old smoke-belching Johnson on it one day, the next he's in that new one, riding around like the king of the bayous.”

“What did he say about the new boat?” Manseur asked.

“I asked him about it and he said it was payment for some jobs he was doing for a somebody, who he didn't name. I figured he was fulla shit and stole it somewhere. Maybe knocked some poor bastard in the head for it. I wouldn't want him taking a fancy to anything I had.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Late last night he come by and fueled up.”

“You think he done in them wardens?” the older fisherman asked.

“Was he alone?” Alexa asked.

“Have to ask Grub. He was around. He always is.”

“Where is this Grub?” Alexa asked.

“He's the retard works outside,” the younger fisherman said. “Wormy-lookin' kid.”

Alexa decided she could talk to this Grub later.

“Any of y'all know where Leland's camp is?” Manseur asked.

The men fell silent, blinking at him like owls.

“Okay. We'll find it.”