Too Far Gone

39

After a hot shower to remove the smell of death she imagined was on her skin, Alexa dried off and looked at herself in the mirror, shaking her head at the dark splotches, scratches, and welts she’d acquired in her tumble. She was extremely lucky that she hadn’t broken any bones. Or her neck. Sibby Danielson was a local matter, unless it involved the abduction of Gary West. Truthfully, LePointe wasn’t the only man with power who used it to abuse weaker people, or who believed the rules of conduct and law that applied to everyone else carried a clause exempting him because of an accident of birth.

Alexa opened her suitcase for a change of clothes. She looked at a stack of postcards in there bound together with a rubber band. Lifting them, she flipped through them so she could see the bottom one. It was addressed to her, care of her D.C. apartment. There was no return address. The note consisted of carefully printed words, written by a hand she knew very well. You are dead, kitty cat. I will hate you forever.

Alexa’s throat closed as though being gripped by powerful hands, and she threw the stack of postcards into the suitcase, closed the lid, and zipped it up. She knew she should tear them into confetti, but it was as if she didn’t have the strength, so she merely collected them, and had brought them with her to New Orleans. There were ten of the picture postcards, each postmarked from a city in a different state or foreign country, even though the author was under arrest, being held in Virginia. The picturesque correspondence had arrived at the rate of one a month for the past ten consecutive months. Some were promising violence: You will die soon; some just said something like Thinking only of you…bitch. Threats or not, Alexa hadn’t brought them to the FBI’s attention, because she knew who the author was, and knew there was nothing anyone could do to stop her.

The person who had penned them might or might not actually mean her physical harm; the harm they did wasn’t visible. Overwhelmed with grief and the pain of failure where it most mattered, Alexa had cried while reading each of them. Every time she read them, the wound was torn open again. Hate me if it makes you feel better about who and what you became. I did what I had to do, what was right. I would do nothing differently. Nothing, but go back to our childhood and try to make sure you had turned out differently, or at least more right than you did. I did the best I could for us both.

Saddened beyond words, Alexa turned and saw the book Casey had given her earlier. She picked it up and opened it to the inscription Casey had penned, which she hadn’t read in the author’s presence. For the Patron Saint of the Lost. Kindest thoughts amp; warmest regards. Always, Casey.

Casey had appealed to her for help, and Alexa was going to help. Casey was a woman who had learned that enormous wealth was no guarantee that pain couldn’t find you just like it did the less fortunate. That beautiful woman, who seemed to have everything, stood to lose the only thing that made having everything matter to her. She trusted Alexa, a woman she had just met, to make her life whole. How could you not feel for a small girl who had seen her parents horribly murdered? How could anyone not empathize with a child who had been raised by people who measured life by a heavily weighted balance sheet or placement on the social register?

Alexa had known real physical and emotional pain in her own life, but she felt lucky not to have felt the kind Casey LePointe West had.

She thumbed through the pages of Casey’s book. Alexa felt as though she should be wearing cotton gloves to keep from soiling the page corners. Casey’s work had an intensity to it, an edge that held Alexa in its thrall. Each of her subjects seemed to have been stripped of pretension, their souls reflected in their expressions, their eyes.

The photos weren’t captioned with the subjects’ names, but with dates and geographic locations where the images were taken, or perhaps where the subject lived. “10/09/04-West Virginia” was a man whose face was so blackened with coal soot that his eyes seemed to be twin pools of turquoise water surrounded by a fire-scorched, heat-cracked wasteland. Alexa went from each image to the next, pausing a few seconds to study the people depicted. “5/27/03-Georgia Coast” showed an elegant, elderly, seated woman regally posed, her ancient skin glistening like wet bronze. She wore a starched servant’s uniform, her rheumatoid hands folded together on her knee. She possessed a raw pride and peered through rheumy eyes that seemed to convey that she had lived her life at peace with the universe.

Alexa’s cell phone rang and she opened it and saw that Casey West was calling her. “Hello.”

“Hello, Alexa. I thought I should call to tell you something wonderful.”

“I heard Gary sent a letter to your uncle.”

“I’m just now driving over to see it,” Casey said. “Of course, I’m going to be pissed off at Gary for all of five minutes. I can’t believe it! What was he thinking? I should be furious for what he’s put us through, but I’m not.”

“I’m happy for you and Deana,” Alexa said, not wanting to throw a wet blanket over Casey’s elation by saying that she’d believe it when she saw Gary with her own eyes.

“Listen, if you aren’t too busy, could you come to Unko’s?”

“I suppose. Why?”

“I could use a friend along for moral support. It’s not necessary if you’re busy. I wouldn’t ask, but Unko has a way of sort of intimidating me. Honestly, I wouldn’t ask, but if you’re there, maybe it won’t be so one-sided.”

“Where’s Grace?”

“She had some errands to do for her parents to get them ready to leave the city. We’ll all be leaving for Manhattan as soon as Gary gets back. We’re sure not going to stay here. A couple of weeks away will be like a second honeymoon.”

“Give me the address.” I need to see the letter for myself anyway, Alexa decided.

Alexa scribbled down the address on St. Charles Avenue. Before she left, she slid the book back in its slipcover and started to put it into her suitcase, remembered the postcards, and decided against it, putting the volume instead into her briefcase with her laptop. She dressed quickly, and before leaving the room took the folding knife from under her pillow and slipped it into the bottom of her purse.