Too Far Gone

40

Alexa drove up St. Charles Avenue, following the GPS lady’s unemotional directions, and when the helpful lady informed Alexa that she was at the destination, Alexa turned into the driveway of a monstrous, two-story stone mansion surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence. The sturdy man standing inside the gate opened it just enough to come out. He asked her if she was expected and, even though she said that she was-and what reason would the FBI have to lie about it?-used his radio to call someone to ask if the FBI agent could enter the grounds.

The gate swung open and Alexa drove into the enclosure. Lush foliage grew on a swale that was strategically placed to hide the LePointes from the street. She passed beneath a portico that would protect people from the rain while they got in and out of vehicles. Alexa drove to the courtyard, where LePointe’s dark Bentley Continental and a Range Rover were parked beside each other. Alexa parked beside Casey’s Rover and strode to the front door, passing through open gates to a cage of decorative wrought iron. The downstairs windows also had the same elegant filigree work-attractive, and effective security. The security measure must have been expensive. And she wasn’t surprised that the construction of the home had taken five years. The Civil War-era structure was so pristine that it looked as if it might have been completed six months ago.

A thin, dark-skinned woman wearing an apron over a starched uniform opened the door. Deana was beside her, and the little girl smiled at Alexa. “Hello, Deana,” Alexa said.

Deana spun around and ran down the hall, laughing.

“Stay with me, baby girl,” the woman called out to her.

In the vestibule behind, a vase holding an enormous spray of exotic flowers stood on a table crafted entirely of cut glass. Alexa entered and looked up at a dome that crested thirty feet above the table. The dome was made entirely of elaborate stained glass-a garden scene with greenery and multicolored flowers made brilliant by sunlight. A wide stone staircase floated up to a mezzanine with the same filigree motif in bronze railing as outside. From an arched throat in the foyer, a hallway punctuated on either side by several doorways extended deep into the home.

Alexa saw Deana and a female figure in a flowing silken gown at the far end of the hallway. The woman began waving her arms and striding in a series of exaggerated movements as she made her way toward the front. Deana stood against the wall laughing melodiously as the bizarre ballerina came toward her. Alexa saw that she was elderly, her long gray hair cascading to her shoulders. She appeared to be attempting an interpretative dance, but her joints and muscles could no longer produce fluid movements. Well before she arrived at the foyer, the woman turned abruptly, bowed with her extended and intertwined arms aimed at a doorway, and, raising her right leg awkwardly, lurched, vanishing through it, with Deana following her.

“That’s Mrs. Sarah,” the servant told Alexa.

“Dr. LePointe’s wife?” Alexa asked.

“She have the Alzheimer’s,” the woman said in a soft voice. “She believes she’s a dancer up in New York City, and it’s nineteen-whatever-it-was when she was up there.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Dr. LePointe and Ms. West are in his study. I’ll show you back.”

As Alexa and the maid passed the doorway Sarah LePointe had chosen, Alexa turned and saw Mrs. LePointe-arms waving as though she were drowning-prancing energetically around the furniture in a large formal sitting room. The maid lifted Deana up onto her hip. Sarah LePointe’s eyes were hidden behind large sunglasses-her mind generating music she moved to, her face illuminated with a smile of pure pleasure. Alexa envied the woman her beautiful delusion, and hoped she didn’t stumble over something and snap her hip.

Alexa heard Casey’s raised voice through the heavy door as she approached it. The servant knocked and Casey fell silent. LePointe called, “Come in.”

Alexa was first struck by the Jackson Pollock painting that took up the entire wall behind the desk. There was a sharp contrast between that oil and the likewise massive oil seascape on the wall to its right-a painting that Alexa was sure she had seen before in a book. She pulled her eyes away and looked at Casey, whose face was flushed.

LePointe motioned to a chair. “Please sit down, Agent Keen. You know art?”

“I know the difference between a Pollock and a Turner,” she said, bringing a smug smile to his lips with her accuracy-and perhaps the fact that she would appreciate the value of both. “Usually I see paintings of this quality only in books or museums.”

“Quite so,” LePointe said. “Where they usually belong. This house is climate-controlled and the light is regulated carefully. If the hurricane comes and breaches the levees, all of the art here will be high, dry, and secure. The Turner is one my father purchased for next to nothing that was owned by a collector who fell victim to unfortunate circumstances. The Pollock is one my mother bought in the fifties from the artist himself. She was quite taken with the Moderns.”

Casey said suddenly, “The letter from Gary is a fraud, Alexa.”

“How can you be so sure?” LePointe asked, turning his eyes on his niece.

“Gary never types. He only writes letters with fountain pens. He thinks typing is impersonal. He never even uses e-mail.”

“That’s hardly proof,” LePointe scoffed. “I imagine he knows how to type.”

“Secondly, he wouldn’t send it to you, of all people.”

“Why not?” Alexa asked.

“He hates Unko. He thinks he’s-let me quote: ‘a pompous, controlling, egocentric, self-important windbag.’ Which he is. God, I should have known!”

LePointe stiffened. “Gary’s a man in crisis. I’ve seen this a thousand times. Self-destruction due to the fact that he’s standing at the verge of something life-altering that he knows he doesn’t deserve. He can’t handle the prospect. He’s crying out for ‘poor me saddled with all of this attention’. Anxiety. Self-loathing. Inferiority complex. Mania. Insecurity. Round peg in a square hole, et cetera, ad nauseam.”

“You are so full of it,” Casey snapped. “If that were the case, Gary would have told me yesterday at lunch, or before. I’d have known if he was having problems. Unlike you, I pay attention to those around me. And that letter isn’t in his voice at all. Emotional turmoil? Inner feelings? My future? Never could Gary be so selfish. He would never let me worry like this or leave Deana without her knowing he was coming back soon.”

“So, if he didn’t send it, who did?” LePointe asked.

“Gee, I don’t know,” Casey said. “Maybe it was some pompous ass-bite windbag who wanted to get the authorities off the case. Better to die because nobody’s searching for you than cast a shadow on the immaculate LePointe name,” Casey said, raising her voice. “Obviously it was someone who thinks I’m dumb enough to accept such an obvious crock.”

“May I see the letter?” Alexa asked.

LePointe tossed a folded sheet of typing paper across the desk. Alexa used her ballpoint to open the letter, then read the single-spaced paragraph. Dr. LePointe, Please tell my wife that I am sorry if I’ve caused her any emotional turmoil, but I needed a few days alone in order to evaluate my position in this life and contemplate my future. Please do not involve the authorities, as I am fine and should be home on Saturday, or Sunday at the latest. Give my wife and daughter my love. Gary

“‘My wife and daughter’? It’s clinically impersonal,” Alexa said.

“He didn’t use our names! Impossible,” Casey said sourly.

“The envelope?” Alexa asked.

LePointe looked in the trash can beside his desk, pulled out an envelope, and placed it beside the letter. It was a plain security envelope, available by the hundred anywhere office supplies were sold. It had been opened using a sharp blade. The flap was one that used peel-off tape instead of needing to be moistened to activate the adhesive. The stamp was also a peel and stick. Obviously there would be no DNA to extract.

“Do you have an envelope?” she asked LePointe. “An unused one.”

LePointe opened a drawer and handed Alexa a large envelope made of expensive white paper. Alexa opened the envelope and slid the letter and its envelope into the larger one before she folded it closed. “I’d like to take the letter, if you don’t mind,” Alexa said.

“What is the point of taking the letter?” LePointe asked.

“I’m going to have it analyzed for Gary West’s fingerprints to see if he ever had it in his hands. If he didn’t, I want to know who did. Casey, I’ll need to have something Gary has handled.”

“His prints should be on file,” Casey said. “He was arrested for protesting in New York when he was at NYU.”

LePointe raised an eyebrow, as if Gary West had been arrested for a serious felony.

“Giving me something he’s handled recently might actually be faster than going through AFIS.”

“AFIS?”

“Automated Fingerprint Identification System. I imagine the crime-scene lab needs them anyway in processing the prints found in and on the Volvo.”

“No problem,” Casey said. “Gary has silver accent pieces on his desk-a letter opener, cigarette holder, and lighter. He plays with the cigarette holder when he’s at his desk.”

“What about my fingerprints?” LePointe said. “I handled that letter.”

“Have you ever been arrested?” Alexa asked.

“Of course not! I’ve never even been fingerprinted,” LePointe snapped.

“I would have thought maybe the Secret Service or the Bureau might have printed you for security clearances,” Alexa said.

“They didn’t print me. I suppose I am well-enough known to make that unnecessary,” he said, having missed the point of her barbed comment.

“Another one of your envelopes, please, Dr. LePointe?” While he got another envelope, Alexa opened her purse and took out a spare magazine for her Glock. Using a handkerchief, she carefully wiped the magazine clean and set it on the desk.

“Rub your fingers on your nose. The oil transferred to the pads of your fingers will help make your prints stand out. Just grip that magazine by placing your thumb on one side of it and your fingers firmly on the other, then lift and release it,” Alexa told the doctor.

“You’re not serious.” LePointe acted as though Alexa had asked him to provide her with a stool specimen.

“Uncle William,” Casey said. “It’s important.”

“This is absurd,” LePointe sputtered.

“I’m sure you want to know, as badly as I do, who wrote this if Gary West didn’t,” Alexa told him.

He wiped his nose, reached out, and squeezed the loaded magazine, then took his hand away.

Alexa gripped the magazine by its base, looked at the sharp prints on the polished steel, then dropped the heavy magazine into the fresh envelope.

“I touched the letter and the Volvo,” Casey said. “Do you have another magazine?”

Alexa used her second spare magazine to obtain Casey’s prints just as she had LePointe’s. She placed the second magazine in a separate envelope and wrote Casey’s name on it.

“Now the lab will have exemplars for comparisons,” Alexa said.

LePointe sat silently, his eyes unfocused. Something was bothering him.

“If you’re worried, Dr. LePointe, the lab will be instructed to destroy your print records after they’ve used them for this.”

“It’s just that someone else also handled the letter,” LePointe said. “My investigator. Kenneth Decell. Naturally he read it.”

“I’m sure his prints will be on file with NOPD,” Alexa said.

“So, you’re going to keep looking for Gary?” Casey asked.

“My initial feeling is that this letter is a fraud, perhaps intended to discourage the police from looking for him. I’m not sure what the motive is, but I’m certain, based on the physical evidence alone, that he was the victim of foul play. Even if he did write and mail that letter, somebody attacked him brutally with a pipe afterward. The good news is that this is obviously an amateur production, and I’m certain we’ll be able to figure out who’s behind it. You don’t have any objections to the NOPD and me continuing to look for Gary, do you, Dr. LePointe?”

“Of course not. Why should I?”

“I’ll notify Detective Manseur,” Alexa said. “He’s in Algiers Pointe investigating the death of a retired psychiatric nurse. A woman named Dorothy Fugate.”

LePointe locked his eyes with Alexa’s. What he was thinking was impossible to guess, because his face, although draining of color, was devoid of expression.

“Dotty?” Casey asked, locking her eyes on LePointe. “Jesus! I’m sorry, Unko.”

“Sorry? Why?” he asked, swallowing. It must have been difficult, since he had to have a dry mouth.

“You two were such close friends,” Casey said. “You’ve known her for thirty years, that’s why. You worked together at River Run.”

“Nurse Fugate was employed at the hospital and I was the director of psychiatry. We were hardly friends. She was an acquaintance, although I suppose we developed a superficial relationship over the years. She was a talented and dedicated professional. Naturally I’m very sorry to hear that she’s dead. I haven’t spoken to her since she retired last year. We didn’t see each other socially.”

“Even so, you must be curious to learn how she died,” Alexa remarked.

“I assume it was a heart attack, stroke, or something,” LePointe said. “She was not a young lady.”

“She was murdered,” Alexa said.

LePointe shrugged. “That’s terrible. Did she live in a bad neighborhood?”

“I’m sorry?” Alexa asked.

“Well, she was a nurse. Perhaps drug addicts knew that. She resisted them and they killed her.”

“It appears a mental patient who was living with her most likely committed the crime. So, you’ve never been to her home?”

“Why on earth would I go to her home?”

Alexa would have loved to show him the Polaroid of him standing naked in Fugate’s bedroom preening before her mirror.

“What patient?” It was Casey who asked, and not her uncle.

“I don’t think we need to dwell on such unpleasantness at this particular juncture,” LePointe said stiffly.

“If you haven’t spoken to her, I guess you didn’t know that she was such a dedicated professional that she kept a mental patient locked away in her home?” Alexa asked him. “A mental patient who was supposed to be in ward fourteen at River Run.”

“Nurse Fugate was a career psychiatric nurse and a compassionate human being,” LePointe said. “And she’s retired and capable of helping a patient.”

“A patient who vanished from ward fourteen about the time Nurse Fugate retired.”

“What are you talking about?” Casey asked, bewildered.

“The patient was Sibhon Danielson,” Alexa said. “And Fugate kept her in a padlocked bedroom with bars on the windows and a bolt on the outside of the door.”

There was an audible gasp from Casey, and despite the fact that he’d been doing a good job holding his feelings back till that point, LePointe’s eyes flashed surprise for the briefest instant.

“Her?” Casey whispered, her eyes fevered. Openmouthed, she sat down in an armchair. “Dear God…”

“Oddly, it appears there’s no record at River Run that she isn’t still locked up.”

“You’re sure?” Casey asked. “Oh my God! Lucille Burch was right.”

“Beyond any shadow of a doubt, Burch doesn’t know it for certain, but someone must have told her about it. You didn’t know that Sibby was living with Nurse Fugate, Dr. LePointe?”

“Of course not!” LePointe snapped. “How would I know that?”

“No reason, besides the fact that you’ve been writing Nurse Fugate prescriptions for anti-psychotic medications used for treating schizophrenia. Along with some heavy sedatives. You didn’t prescribe them for Nurse Fugate’s personal medical conditions, did you?”

“I assume, if what you say is accurate, the prescriptions were forged,” LePointe said. “I never prescribed anything for Dotty. I’d like to see them.”

“Nurse Fugate, you mean,” Alexa said. She wondered if he knew the pill bottles were gone. But what would that mean? Either Sibby had told him she’d taken them from the house, which seemed very unlikely, or someone else had told him. But who?

“What?” he asked.

“You said you always called her Nurse Fugate, but just now you called her Dotty,” Alexa said.

“Sibhon Danielson was at River Run and you never told me?” Casey asked her uncle.

LePointe stood, and Alexa could tell he wanted to throw things at her-chase her out of the house swinging the poker that leaned against the fireplace. But he came around the desk and stood beside Casey’s chair. “Agent Keen, you’ve upset my niece with your insinuations. Please leave us and get on about your business. My niece is not emotionally able to withstand this sort of pressure. I am warning you: you are stepping on very dangerous ground.”

Casey was sobbing. When her uncle put his hand on her shoulder, she shot from the chair and fixed him with an icy look of rage. “What is going on here? My God, Unko! What the hell is going on here?”

“I have no idea,” LePointe said. “I don’t know anything about Sibhon Danielson. I’m as stunned as you are, my dear, but I’ve yet to see any proof that she is indeed out of the hospital, or was living with Nurse Fugate.” The smile Dr. LePointe intended to be reassuring would have looked at home on a Bell’s palsy victim. “Let’s not jump to conclusions and say things we’ll regret.”

“That monster murdered my parents!” Casey yelled. She turned her eyes to Alexa. “Where is she now?”

“We have no idea.”

Alexa decided she had nothing to lose in pushing, to see what happened. “You don’t know anything about Sibby Danielson, Doctor? Odd. If Sibby Danielson was an inmate at River Run for the twenty-six years where you were director of the facility, and were seeing patients on her ward, you must have known she was there.”

“Of course I knew she was there,” LePointe replied angrily. “So what? I never treated her. I wouldn’t know the woman if she walked into this room.”

“According to the police files, I understood that she was your patient when she killed your brother and his wife,” Alexa said.

Again Casey’s eyes widened with obvious disbelief. “Unko? Is that true?”

“She was no longer my patient when she did that!” LePointe roared. “She was upset because I had quit treating her. She was a psychotic mess and she was disturbed, and possibly she imagined that my brother was behind my refusal to treat her. Patient transference. She imagined we were married and Curry was standing between her and some ideal of happiness. She confronted my wife and created a scene at the country club. I tried to get her committed before! Casey, I did not know she was out of the hospital! Sibhon Danielson is an extremely dangerous woman. I don’t know, but if she killed Dorothy, it was because poor Dorothy had taken it upon herself to help her, which the hospital was never able to do. Maybe Dorothy aided in her escape in some misguided sense of compassion or sense of duty. It’s even possible they may have had some codependent relationship that Dorothy didn’t want to have ended.”

“I’m sure they’re pulling her records at the hospital about now to get a photograph and a physical description. Since we are here together, perhaps you could give me a current description, Dr. LePointe?”

“What? How would I know? I just told you I haven’t so much as laid eyes on her in years. I never treated her at River Run, if that’s where you’re taking this, Agent Keen. I doubt you’ll find anybody who will say differently.”

“I don’t disbelieve that,” Alexa said truthfully. “But things can change.”

“Maybe I should call Lucille Burch and tell her that Gary’s been abducted,” Casey said.

“No! The media will just make it into a sideshow!” LePointe snarled.

“They’ll jump all over it,” Alexa agreed. “The possibility of a Sibby Danielson connection to Gary’s disappearance will be one hell of a trigger, especially since they were already looking into Sibby’s whereabouts. They’d had a tip that she’d been released from River Run,” she said for LePointe’s benefit. “I assumed it was because it’s an anniversary of the murders. I think we should use them to get word out on Gary.”

“About time,” Casey said.

LePointe’s worried eyes shifted back and forth between Alexa and his niece. Alexa was sure he was seeing the horror of film crews camped outside his high gate, the unpleasant questions, scores of investigative reporters rooting around in his business like a pack of wild pigs.

“The police report said that Kenneth Decell rescued Casey from Sibby that night,” Alexa said. “Your private investigator, who conveniently was here when the postman delivered this letter.”

Alexa felt Casey’s eyes on her, but she kept hers on LePointe, watching every facial tic and eye movement, every gesture.

“Is that some sort of accusation?” LePointe demanded. Clearly Dr. LePointe was a stranger to being accused of anything. “He helps me and the trusts with a variety of matters, and he has been searching for Gary West too. And yes, Sibhon injured him, so perhaps I have felt some degree of responsibility toward him. But he is a good and thorough investigator.”

“I’m not accusing anybody of anything, yet. I’m just stating what I believe to be the facts, and wondering how things may be connected.”

LePointe’s eyes shifted as his mind glimpsed solid ground and stepped toward it. “Do I need to remind you that you are a guest, invited in by us, a consultant who is supposed to help us find Gary?”

“I am an FBI agent trying to assist the local authorities in finding Gary West, and in the course of that investigation I have uncovered information that may figure into the disappearance of Mr. West.”

“And how was it that you ended up at River Run interviewing Dr. Whitfield about Sibhon Danielson?”

Alexa pounced. “I didn’t say that I had been at River Run or mention that I spoke to anyone there. How did you know that?”

Dr. LePointe’s silence was deafening, so she went on.

“The media asked for the official police files pertaining to the homicides, which Detective Manseur pulled to see if there was something there that might be helpful. I thought the media investigating a rumor that Sibby Danielson had been released was too coincidental. I accompanied Detective Manseur to River Run. Nurse Fugate’s name came up, and I discovered, in the course of trying to contact her to discuss Sibhon, that Nurse Fugate had been murdered and that in all likelihood Ms. Danielson had been staying in her home. All that I’ve been trying to do since early this morning is to find Mr. West, and I intend to do exactly that. Unfortunately, this letter’s appearance and your pronouncement of its authenticity to Jackson Evans has cost us precious time. As of now, it appears to me that you may be trying to mislead the authorities and impede their investigation. Now I’m going to kick this into high gear, no matter how the media chooses to deal with it. It appears it may open some personal and professional unpleasantness for you, which I can honestly say doesn’t bother me.”

“There’s a great deal at stake,” LePointe said. “A very great deal. The foundations’ reputations are paramount. If we are careful about what we say publicly, no-”

“I don’t care about that!” Casey snapped. “I don’t care about what anybody says or thinks, and why you do is a mystery. All anybody gives a flip about is how much money they can get from you. They couldn’t care less about our illustrious reputation. Damn you! I’ll give away every penny I own to anybody who will give Gary back to me. If he isn’t back today, I’m going to drop to my knees and beg on television. And if he doesn’t come home, I’ll spend every cent I have to find those responsible and see them punished.”

“If Gary can be found, he will be,” Alexa said.

“Casey, show some backbone!” LePointe growled. “You will not do any such thing. You will not let anyone see you begging!”

Casey pointed her finger at her uncle. “I never realized what a horrible and disgusting person you truly are. I wish to God I could hate you. If I find out you or Decell had anything to do with Gary…I’ll see you in prison.” That said, she rushed from the room.

After collecting the envelopes containing the evidence, Alexa followed Casey, who had taken Deana from the maid and was striding for the front door, while her uncle’s booming voice-ordering her to come back this very moment-rang hollowly through the house.