Too Far Gone

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 naive 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.

And what made Alexa cry while watching the tape wasn’t the sight of an old man with gray hair wearing sunglasses despite the overcast, who walked very slowly down a path toward a waiting black Bentley.

What devastated Alexa Keen was the fact that William LePointe’s pace was slowed because of the angelic, towheaded, smiling grandchild who, hand clasping his, walked uncertainly beside him.

Get well soon, Gary West. That little girl desperately needs you to protect her from evil-to make sure she doesn’t grow up to be a LePointe.

She put the snapshot away, closed the drawer, and took a deep breath.

Pausing just long enough to take a sip of lukewarm coffee, Alexa Keen bent forward in her chair to concentrate on the crime-scene photographs from the Akron field office. When she’d done that, she had to review the in-depth case file and search for any edge there might be that had been overlooked.

Alexa Keen had a lot of work to do because, unless she could pull off a miracle, time was extremely short for an abducted Ohio businessman.