Too Far Gone

37

If she had been a smoker, Alexa would have lit up and gone through an entire pack. At the gate, she looked in both directions down the still street. Sibby Danielson was gone.

Reaching into her purse, Alexa found her cell phone.

“Yeah,” Manseur answered.

“I’m at Fugate’s.”

“She know where Sibby is?”

“I couldn’t ask. She’s dead.”

“You sure it’s her?”

“Reasonably. I mean, the corpse is a bottle blonde, and I don’t have the slightest idea what Sibby looks like.”

“How did she die?”

“Somebody played patty-whack on her skull. Best I can tell from looking at her and based on the odor and the insects’ labors, she’s been dead a few days. But Sibby was here until a few minutes ago.”

“Danielson did it?”

“She didn’t type out a confession, but based on the fact that it’s pretty clear she’s been staying here in the house, and given her track record for anti-social and impulsive behavior, it’s a good bet it wasn’t the mailman.”

“Don’t do anything. I’m on my way.”

“I think I’ve done quite enough for the time being,” Alexa said after she hung up.

It appeared to Alexa that Sibby Danielson had killed her jailer and then stayed in the house. Maybe, Alexa thought, the woman hadn’t had any place to go. Most people, even insane ones, would have left the scene of their crime before now, especially considering the smell.

Alexa decided that while she was waiting for Manseur, she would take a look around and see what she could discover about Sibby. She was no longer worried about not having a search warrant to enter-the odor of decaying flesh wafting through the open front door had given her enough probable cause. Manseur could collect evidence since it was a homicide.

The pill bottles that had been with the steel box on the bed were gone, but the box was where it had been earlier. Had Sibby stopped escaping long enough to pick up the bottles because she needed to take the medication? If she’d been medicated, would she have killed Fugate?

In the drawer in Fugate’s bedside table, Alexa found a polished wooden box with delicate ivory inlay work on its lid, which she opened, to discover a stack of snapshots. She flipped up the prints by their edges so she wouldn’t disturb the existing fingerprints, or make new ones. Despite the very heavy makeup and teased blond hair, the buxom Dorothy Fugate had been attractive in her younger years. In a picture probably taken at her graduation from nursing school, she looked more like Jayne Mansfield playing a nurse than a real one. As time had passed she had become somewhat pudgy, and, though still attractive, her features had softened with age, her body rounding itself off. The hellish effigy in the basement bore no resemblance to the woman in the pictures, but Alexa had no doubt this was Sibby Danielson’s keeper.

Alexa lifted the mattress and found nothing. There was nothing of interest in the drawers but a few pieces of fairly expensive-looking gold jewelry.

Looking into Fugate’s closet, she lifted the fallen nurse uniforms and noticed that one of the wide floorboards wasn’t flush. She raised it, to find a secret compartment, within which was a lone wooden cigar box. Inside, there were more pictures. Again being careful in handling them, she flipped through them one by one.

There was a snapshot of a small boy and a young girl attempting to pull a red wagon with an adult laughing man seated in it. Another seemed to be a fairly recent shot of Dorothy and the same grown man, whose hair had turned gray. There was such a marked similarity in their features, Alexa thought he was a relative of Fugate’s.

Another picture showed a stern-faced Dorothy standing beside a short male teenager dressed in a military school’s uniform who stared blankly at the camera. The young man could be a relative or a friend’s child and he might even be the wagon-pulling child. He had a round face, which matched his body, small eyes, and his fat lips added to the smirk he wore.

The other snapshots were of Nurse Fugate with hospital staff or civilians, taken at various times over the years. There were several shots of small groups that included Dorothy, some of which also contained Dr. William LePointe. The next-to-last photo in the stack was of Dorothy in her starched uniform standing alone with LePointe at a party. It was a recent photo, and Alexa thought it might have been her or his going-away party, because there was a partially disassembled slab cake on a table in the background. Dorothy was smiling broadly, while Dr. LePointe looked like he was about to have a tooth extracted instead of his picture taken. In the background, Veronica Malouf was in profile and was obviously talking to someone out of frame.

The final shot was the stunner. It was a Polaroid taken from the hallway into the bedroom through a partly opened door. The image showed a naked man with wet and carefully combed silver hair standing in front of a full-length mirror, obviously admiring his body, which was nothing to write home about. Well, he was naked but for the black socks held up by elastic bands. “Jesus,” Alexa murmured. Dr. William LePointe’s appearance, aside from being naked in Dorothy Fugate’s bedroom, might be the key to some answers. Unless he had been showering at Fugate’s house for some innocent reason, Fugate and LePointe appeared to be more than coworkers.

Alexa put the cigar box on the dresser and replaced the board in the closet floor. She noticed that there was a smudge on the outside of the box, and it appeared to have been made by a bloody finger.

She sat in the living room to wait for Manseur. She had no physical description of Sibby nor any idea how she was dressed. Let Manseur’s locals handle this. She pictured LePointe’s smug face and felt a flush of anger. Controlled through modern medicine, she thought to herself. You really flubbed this one, Doctor. Now Dorothy Fugate is dead and Sibby killed her for some reason we’ll probably never know. I guess they’ll round her up and send her back to River Run.

When Manseur came in, Alexa led him back to the kitchen, letting him stamp alone down the stairs. She’d already seen more than enough of the basement.

Manseur spent five minutes downstairs, and when he re-emerged he was holding a handkerchief to his nose.

“I’ll never get used to that smell,” he declared. “You okay?”

“Sibby shoved me down those stairs,” Alexa snapped. “Can we go outside before I faint?”

“Tell me everything,” he said as they walked.

“I knocked and got no answer. I tried the door and it opened. I smelled decomposition and entered to investigate. While searching for the source of the odor, I heard a door closing. I came into the kitchen, and the basement door was the only one that was closed. While I was shining my light down there, somebody-whom I assume was Sibby-knocked me down the steps.”

“Solid statement. Did you get a good look at her?”

“No. The basement door was between us.”

“How do you know it was her?”

“I’m just assuming it, based on the fact that she’s been staying in Nurse Fugate’s guest cell,” Alexa said.

“Christ,” Manseur said. “This is a grand mess.”

“There’s a cigar box with a bloody fingerprint on it that was under the closet floor in Fugate’s room. Sibby might have taken something of hers out of it at some point. There’s a metal lockbox on Fugate’s bed that was full of tranquilizers and anti-psychotic drugs prescribed to Fugate by Dr. LePointe. Sibby took them when she split.”

“Alexa. Only you saw them, but she took them. Maybe she’ll have them with her when we find her and we can use them somehow to question LePointe. We have to be damn sure of something before we accuse him of anything. Very, very damn sure.”

Alexa nodded.

“You’re lucky she just pushed you down the stairs,” he said. “That sure isn’t the worst she’s capable of.”

“Obviously not.”

Manseur said, “Here’s the deal. I’ll handle this as an anonymous-reported death and keep you out of it. So, how do you think it went down?”

“I think Fugate was attacked in the kitchen probably with that meat hammer and dragged down to the basement, because the kitchen and the stairs were cleaned up. You know, something about Sibby doing this doesn’t quite make sense,” Alexa said.

“Since when do crazy people make sense?” he asked.

“Okay, she loses it, beats Fugate to death, then drags the body down there to keep it from being found, which means she knew killing her was wrong. I wouldn’t imagine an inner-voice-minding psychopath would bother to mop up. And there’s no blood spatter on the walls and ceiling. That would seem to indicate Fugate was first assaulted upstairs, maybe was struck just hard enough to knock her out. Sibby calmly drags her down the stairs, props her against the wall, and then does the real damage with the mallet and puts it in her hand for some reason.”

“Maybe her rage grew as it went on,” Manseur conjectured. “Or she was staging it as a suicide.”

“Funny. To be released by the committee, Sibby had to be cured. Twenty-six years rocking away and suddenly she does this. It doesn’t feel right. And why would she mop up?” Alexa asked.

“Maybe she was crazy enough to kill her, but cured enough to realize she screwed up and, filled with remorse, cleaned up as best she could. Or maybe she just straightened up because she planned to stay here and didn’t want to stumble over the corpse every day when she was cooking her breakfast.”

Alexa was silent.

“So, where’s Danielson now? I have to get an updated description of her.” Manseur nodded solemnly. “I’ll see if that young woman at the hospital can give me one. You suppose Fugate’s tied into the West thing?” he asked. “I didn’t see a car in the driveway. Maybe Sibby took her car and went after Gary West?”

Alexa shrugged, which made her shoulder ache. “I only know that the only common thread in both is Dr. LePointe,” she said.

“I’ll assign two of my detectives to this scene. Find anything on Fugate’s next of kin?”

“I found papers and pictures. If she has kin, I don’t know who they are or where. Somebody took the answering machine’s outgoing and incoming voice tapes out. The machine showed there were eighteen new messages, though. We need her phone records.”

“I spoke to Jackson Evans about the letter from Gary West. I asked to see it and Evans thanked us for trying to help. I’m not sure how to handle it to get a look at the letter. He’s made it clear the case is closed.”

“You could push it,” Alexa said.

“How?”

“You’d have to bring in this murder.”

“Not unless I have cause,” Manseur said. “I don’t think this is enough as it stands.”

“Maybe when you process this place, you’ll get something. Check the toilet for prints. I think a man was here recently. He might have left something of himself. Fingerprint, DNA in the bowl.”

“I’ll tell Cooley to check.”

“Come take a look at something I found,” she said, leading Manseur to the cigar box. Carefully she sifted through the pictures until she got to the money shot of LePointe.

He whistled softly. “I could have gone the rest of my life without seeing that. I think I should take that one out.”

“Send it to Playgirl magazine,” Alexa said. “It’s evidence.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure of anything other than the doctor’s obvious suntan deficiency,” Manseur said.

“I’ll figure it out.” Alexa picked up her purse, wincing. “First thing I’m going to do is run by the hotel and take a hot shower and change clothes. Then I’m going to have a talk with Casey West.”

“Remember that the letter means it’s not a kidnapping,” Manseur reminded her, shrugging.

“Even if Gary West did send LePointe a letter, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t abducted after that. Gary West was the victim of foul play. Only question is who’s behind it and what the reason was. Maybe West will show up, but he’ll have a bad knot on his head and hopefully he’ll tell us what happened and who abducted him.”

“This is your field, but if he knows who abducted him, will they let him live?”

“That’s not how it normally goes, unless the abductor used a third party, or Gary has a reason not to tell anybody. I’m going.”

“Like they know if he tells he’ll have more to explain. Maybe Gary West has a secret he doesn’t want anybody to know. Think Gary has secrets he doesn’t want Casey to know? West could have staged this.”

“Why?”

“To get his wife wet for him. I don’t know. The way this is shaking out, nothing would surprise me. Rich people like them live in a different universe than we do.”

“And who makes that possible?” Alexa asked, waving good-bye as she left.