Too Far Gone

36

Miraculously, the GPS knew exactly where Nurse Fugate’s house was located and, in a pleasant lady voice, told Alexa which streets to take, where she was to turn, and in what direction, and even gave her the exact distances between those turns. It was a thirty-minute trip, which was longer than it should have taken, due to the heavy traffic on the bridge over the river caused by a wave of citizens who’d decided to flee the hurricane, which the radio announcer explained was gathering frightening strength over the warm Gulf waters.

If the hurricane did turn from its projected course, didn’t force water over the levees, or lost focus on the way there, and didn’t have the wind left to blow down houses, no one in the city would ever again lend the weatherman their ears. Since the skies were clear and it was hot, humid, and still, it was hard to believe the latest reports predicting an end-time hurricane. The announcer mentioned that there would almost certainly be a mandatory evacuation. What Alexa noticed he didn’t say was that the city would be making modes of transportation available to those residents who had no cars or other vehicles to carry them to safety. He did interview a resident of a housing project who said she would stay because her “check” wasn’t going to arrive before the storm, so she had no choice. That made Alexa feel both sad and angry. She wondered why the President didn’t get the Air Force to send a fleet of C-5As to haul out all the poor and helpless.

Seconds before she arrived, Alexa called the nurse’s number to see if anyone was home, and was disappointed when a machine answered-using a generic message, in what sounded like an electronic voice that came with the unit. She didn’t leave a message, in case the nurse was monitoring the calls-not answering the ones she wasn’t in a mood to take or when the caller ID showed a name and number she didn’t recognize.

Dorothy Fugate’s address corresponded to a single-story, vinyl-sided Victorian on a quiet street in Algiers Pointe near the Mississippi River. Alexa studied the gingerbread facade as she cut off her engine. She had the uneasy sensation of being watched, and when she turned to look at the house across the street, a curtain seemed to be moving gently-as if someone had drawn it back in order to peer out and then released it. But maybe it was a trick of light, a gust of wind moving through the interior of the brick home.

Its sharp points like piranha teeth, a picket fence whose white paint was chalking defended the Fugate yard from potential invasions. Behind the fence, the sheltering oak trees had leeched nutrients from the soil, leaving large areas of the grounds bare.

All Alexa knew about Nurse Fugate was that she had been the top nurse in the ward where Sibby Danielson had been last kept. Alexa wasn’t sure how she was going to find out what the nurse knew. She decided that she would play it by ear, hoping to surprise Fugate, and that her badge would work the magic it had in similar situations. Alexa would push some buttons, read the woman’s body language, interpret facial expressions, and look for tells while she interviewed her, to see if she could figure out what Fugate was afraid of, using her fears to get her to tell what she knew about Sibby Danielson’s exodus from the violent ward.

Alexa gathered her will, buttoned her blazer, strode to the gate, and, opening it, let herself into the yard, the gate slamming shut behind her with a loud metallic click. Climbing the front steps, she looked at the wicker swing hanging from the ceiling at one end of the porch. She twisted the knob to ring the antique doorbell that was built into the door. Taking a deep breath, she rang it again.

No one answered.

Forming a makeshift visor with her hands, Alexa peered through the beveled glass panel set in the door. Judging by what little she could see, it appeared there was no one at home. She knocked harder, using her knuckles against the wood. Then, when that still didn’t raise anybody, she tapped at the glass, using the tip of her car key for a sharper noise and listened for footsteps.

Maybe Nurse Fugate had joined the trek of refugees from the approaching hurricane. Were it not for Gary West, Alexa herself would certainly have been back in D.C. by now, monitoring the storm from the safety of her apartment.

She tried the doorknob and, finding it unlocked, opened it a few inches. One thing was certain: The nurse wouldn’t have left the city with her home unlocked.

The shade from the oak trees made the interior gloomy, and Alexa immediately noticed the weak antiseptic odor of bleach and the smell of something decaying. A fly that must have come in with her buzzed past her and headed down the hallway toward the rear of the house.

“Hello? Anybody home?” Her voice echoed through the house. “Ms. Fugate, your front door is open.”

Several styles of antique furniture were arranged to view the fireplace, which held an arrangement of fifty or sixty long-stem silk roses spraying out from a low Chinese vase in the unfortunate shape of a spittoon.

A lifeless oil painting of a sunrise on a bayou hung over the mantel, and prints Alexa thought were titled Pinky and Blue Boy, by a painter named Gainsborough, in golden frilly frames were positioned with prominence over a marble-topped side table.

Bills and catalogs, lying on the floor in front of the mail slot, were positioned in such a way that no two pieces were facedown or overlapping each other. It was as though someone had moved them around in order to read the envelopes without lifting them. Not wanting to surprise anyone, Alexa slammed the door loudly enough to be heard in the rear of the house.

A mantel clock trapped within a glass globe chimed twice.

From the rear of the house there was the distinctive creaking of floorboards. Alexa’s unease surged and her empty stomach growled. Old houses made settling noises, she reminded herself, but she doubted that was what she’d heard.

What if Sibby was here-in this house? The thought of coming face-to-face with a murderous psychopath was a sobering one. Alexa was capable of defending herself against conventional attacks, but she’d never dealt with a cleaver-swinging lunatic, and she wished she had backup.

“Ms. Fugate?” she called loudly. “Ms. Fugate? Is anybody home? FBI.” Part of her was tempted to open the door and go back outside. The dusky house seemed to hold a malevolent presence, but she was determined, and not about to turn tail. Besides, she was armed with a Glock. 40, more than a match for any man or woman. A bullet doesn’t distinguish between whether its target is sane or bubble-blowing crazy.

Alexa unbuttoned her purse, removed her Glock, pulled the slide back firmly, and slid it forward slowly so the shell went silently into the chamber, before returning it to her purse, leaving the flap open so she could get to it rapidly. Though technically the Glock couldn’t fire a chambered round unless the trigger was pulled, she always left her chamber empty unless she needed it armed. Arming the weapon was a pull of the receiver and a release away. And besides, when sobering was required, the sound of that receiver slamming shut had the same effect as the warning buzz of a rattlesnake.

“Hello,” Alexa called again, easing toward the hallway, which was painted Granny Smith green. She flipped the light switch, which chased away the gloom.

“Ms. Fugate? Are you home?”

The smell of decomposition was stronger. Alexa didn’t relish the prospect of opening a door and finding Fugate lying dead and decomposing. If the nurse wasn’t dead, Alexa dreaded the awkward conversation that would follow if the woman came in from out back and caught a strange and uninvited FBI agent-sans warrant-deep inside her home.

“Ms. Fugate!” she called out, convinced now that it was a waste of effort. Alexa was just snooping now.

Alexa paused at the first door and pushed it open. Light made entrance into the bedroom through the curtains. There was no corpse. Centered on the bed’s coverlet was an open steel security box with four brown pill bottles inside it.

Alexa picked up one of the bottles by the top and bottom edges. The prescription for a strong tranquilizer was filled for Dorothy Fugate. The prescribing physician was William LePointe, MD. The label dated the issuing of that prescription in July, just a month earlier.

The security box had been opened with a key that was still in the lock; a beaded neck chain similar to those used for military dog tags ran through it. Alexa could see several long blond hairs caught in the links.

Personal items lined the dressing table. Nurse Fugate had stacked magazines and books in the precise pyramids that indicated an anal-compulsive personality. In the open closet, several neatly pressed, heavily starched white uniforms sealed in plastic cleaner bags had fallen to the floor. All of the other hanging clothes had been parted and shoved to the sides.

One of the drawers in the chest had trapped a pair of panties, an edge sticking out like a handkerchief accenting the pocket of a gentleman’s suit.

Alexa left the bedroom and peered into the bathroom across the hall. There was a toothpaste tube on the sink, beneath a rack that held a pair of dry toothbrushes. The faucet dripped onto a brown stain in the porcelain sink bowl. A nightgown hung on a hook on the door, and the toilet seat was up. Veronica Malouf had called Nurse Fugate a spinster, but, as far as Alexa knew, only men lifted toilet seats.

The sliding bolt that could be thrown to secure the last door on the right side of the hallway was engaged. Alexa drew the bolt and gently pushed the door open, to reveal a bedroom in the sort of thoughtless disarray you’d expect from a teenager. Flickering light from a television set on a TV tray pulsed over the narrow, unmade bed. Why is the set on, with the sound off? She quickly scanned the room, which also contained a rocking chair on an oval braided rug, and a small dresser. Steel security bars were mounted on the inside of the window frames, probably to prevent anyone from leaving that way, as opposed to preventing someone from breaking in. This was Sibby’s room.

Alexa left Sibby’s new cell without searching.

Maybe Veronica’s call to Decell had caused him to warn Fugate to vacate, to move her prisoner. The house sure felt abandoned. As if in answer to the question, Alexa heard, from the back of the house, the loud creaking of a floorboard, followed by the unmistakable sound of a door snapping closed. She pulled out her Glock and held it aimed at the ceiling. “FBI! Come out, I have a gun!”

Getting no response, Alexa lowered the barrel and moved to the swinging kitchen door. Heart pounding from an adrenaline rush, her mouth dry. Breathing slowly, Alexa steadied herself. If she’s armed and it’s between the two of us, I’m the one going home and she’s the one going to the morgue zipped in a bag.

Taking a position of cover behind the jamb, Alexa pushed the door open with her left foot and followed her gun into the kitchen, pivoting and taking in the entire room. The putrid stench of decomposition hit her like the wave of heat from an oven door.

The kitchen and dining room were combined in one large space. There were two partially open doors-a pantry and a broom closet-as well as a third door, this one closed, beside the refrigerator, and a back door with glass panels. Buzzing black flies performed acrobatic maneuvers in the still air over the garbage can.

A bucket filled with rose-colored bleach water rested against the back door, which was locked; the dead bolt was missing the key required to open it. The window over the sink was cracked open, its screen missing, which was obviously how the flies got in.

The flies were gathering on the garbage can. Thanks to its partly open lid, flies crawled in and out freely. Pressing her foot on the pedal to fully open it, Alexa saw a paper sack filled with shrimp husks, the source of the stench.

Stiff spaghettilike strands of a cloth mop filled the sink, its handle resting on the counter. The message machine-also on the counter, beside the telephone-was blinking the number eighteen; the open trapdoors showed her that both its cassettes had been removed. From the time she had called and gotten Nurse Fugate’s outgoing message, someone had removed the tapes in the ten minutes since.

Alexa kept her attention focused on the one door that was closed. Whoever was in the house had to have pulled that door shut from inside, and was hiding behind it.

The floor creaked as she moved carefully to the side of the door. “Nurse Fugate! FBI! I have a gun, come out now!”

Using her left hand, Alexa twisted the knob, pulled the door open, and was surprised to find a set of steep stairs leading down into the darkness. She knew that basements were rare in New Orleans because of the water table. Bodies were buried aboveground in crypts or inside concrete vaults, because a casket buried belowground would, with the first rain, pop up out of the ground like a surfacing submarine.

“Ms. Fugate! You need to come up here. I need to ask you some questions.” Like why you’re running a private insane asylum.

She didn’t see a light switch where it should have been located, so Alexa figured the switch for the light must be downstairs. There wasn’t one good reason to go downstairs alone, and a hundred reasons not to. Even if Fugate was down there with Sibby Danielson, how would Alexa justify coming into the woman’s home and pointing a gun at her? That she’d sweat over later. Alexa, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do!

She reached her left hand into her purse for the small SureFire flashlight. “I said come on up!”

Alexa took a tentative step down, turned on the flashlight, and aimed it down the steep stairs. She was assailed by flies swarming up into the kitchen, and put her hand up to protect her face. There was a creaking noise behind her, and before she could turn, someone shouldered the door hard, slamming it against her and knocking her down the staircase-her left side, her hip, and her arm hitting the edges.

She saw a flash of light when her head struck the floor. The flashlight and the Glock landed noisily on the concrete floor.

She blinked her eyes slowly, stunned. She knew, lying there, unsure whether she was seriously injured, that Fugate or Sibby must have been hiding in the pantry or broom closet, and she cursed herself for not looking inside them. She had driven that person to the kitchen, where there was no escape without the back door key, so they had shut the basement door and had hidden in one of the tiny spaces.

Lying there dazed, Alexa distinctly heard the skeleton key turning-the door into the basement being locked.

She listened to footsteps moving out of the kitchen and down the hallway. When the front door slammed shut, it sounded a million miles away.

Alexa rolled her head and saw the flashlight a few feet away from her, illuminating a circle of brick wall next to the base of an old furnace. Flies swarmed in the beam. There was an odor of blood and decomposition down here that wasn’t coming from a pile of shrimp.

Lying still for a few seconds taking inventory, Alexa moved her arm at the shoulder, then the elbow, the wrist, and finished by wiggling her fingers and making a fist. It was painful, but nothing was broken except her self-respect.

She sat up slowly, wincing. Her head was sore, bruised, but not wet, so she wasn’t bleeding. Her hip felt numb and she knew that she was going to be bruised from her ankle to her shoulder.

Alexa crawled over to the flashlight, and picking it up, she swung the circle of light around to locate her handgun, illuminating as she did a shelf where ancient spiderwebs covered dust-caked jars of canned fruit and pickles so old the tin lids were painted with the white powder of oxidation.

She shifted the light and saw a single, unlaced white orthopedic shoe with a brick-colored sole, and beyond it the foot it belonged to, looking like an overstuffed sausage. The skin on the leg looked like sun-dried earth. The other shoe was still on its owner’s other foot.

Alexa steeled herself before raising the circle of light.

A female corpse sat on the concrete floor, her shoulders against the wall, legs splayed open. Her open left hand rested beside her leg as though positioned to catch a flipped coin. Her right hand gripped an unusually large aluminum meat-tenderizing hammer that was caked with dried blood, bone chips, hairs, and blackened brain tissue.

Alexa had seen all manner of dead bodies in various stages of mutilation and decomposition, but nothing more horrific than what she was sharing the small basement with.

She raised the beam, whimpered involuntarily, as tears filled her eyes.

The woman’s head had been smashed in with such force that the top of her skull was indented in the way of a rotten rubber doll’s head that some child had pushed her thumbs into and peeled open like an orange. The froglike eyes appeared to be coming out of her cheeks. The open mouth was so completely filled with blackened tongue and animated larvae that the jaw was resting against her chest.

Alexa scooted back against the furnace and, using it for support, made it to her feet.

Based on the shoes, Alexa assumed that this horror was what remained of Dorothy Fugate, since the alternative was that the nurse had gone crazy and beat Sibby to death with a meat hammer, which seemed highly unlikely. Although why Sibby would have positioned the corpse that way was a mystery best left to psychiatrists. Maybe it was some sort of humor springing from an insane brain.

Using the flashlight, Alexa located and tugged on the string to turn on the overhead bulb. Flies reacting to the sudden light filled the room like a cloud. Alexa located her gun and stuck it into her purse’s holster compartment.

Alexa was trembling. She wanted only to get out of there, into breathable air, away from the corpse. She heard a noise and realized that it was the sound of her own whimpering as she moved as quickly as she could up the narrow stairs. Peering into the keyhole, she saw that the key was no longer in the lock. Her flashlight caught a glint of the skeleton key, which had been pushed under the door.

Sibby knocks me down into hell and then is thoughtful enough to leave me the key before she flees the house?

Alexa opened the door and after she slammed it shut she leaned with her back against it and took her first deep breaths since she’d been pitched down the steps. Then she started crying, overwhelmed by the embarrassment of being taken by surprise, the pain of the fall, what she had seen. Her whole body was racked by the sobs as she fought to regain her composure.

Her crying turned into the hysterical laughter of someone who understood, at a whole new level, what a blessing life was. She wiped her eyes and headed for the front door.