Too Far Gone

23

Other than saying he’d learned a lot from her talk at the Marriott, Kyler Kennedy didn’t speak to Alexa during most of the long ride to Casey’s house from HQ. She knew the young detective felt slighted because Manseur hadn’t shared what was happening inside the investigation, which he almost certainly had to believe should have been his to run. Alexa was actually thankful he wasn’t making small talk, because she used the heavy silence to think about the case.

She had requested a Bucar, an official FBI vehicle, from the local FO, and had been assured that one (complete with a GPS mapping system) would be delivered to her at the West residence within the hour. Alexa was also told that the Bureau’s office was being readied for a move out, because the hurricane probably wasn’t going to change course enough to spare New Orleans some serious damage. The decision had been made that nonessential staff and the families of agents were being evacuated from the city the next morning. The office in Baton Rouge would become their temporary HQ until it was safe to return to their offices at the Lakefront in New Orleans.

Alexa trusted Michael Manseur because Winter Massey vouched for him-not something the ex-U.S. deputy marshal, and Alexa’s dearest friend, did often or lightly. If Massey recommended she trust somebody, she would do so without reservation-but she would also verify periodically just to make sure that trust wasn’t misplaced. It wasn’t that Alexa couldn’t trust people-not exactly. Some people were such good liars and manipulators, though, that you either never knew the truth of them, or didn’t learn their agendas until it was too late. She was 99.9 percent certain that Michael Manseur was every bit as trustworthy as he appeared to be-as Massey believed him to be-but having the GPS would free her to travel independently, so they could work the case much more effectively and require fewer bodies. She certainly didn’t trust anyone else in the New Orleans Police Department.

As an FBI agent in the field, Alexa sometimes had to ignore her instincts and go in whatever directions her superiors pointed her. Cases she’d worked on had turned out badly because she’d had to follow orders instead of her own instincts. But, as importantly, she had been wrong on a few occasions and had paid a price for letting her opinions or impressions color an investigation. Her superiors didn’t care that nine times out of ten her initial read on people and situations was right. For instance, in child abductions, she could spend ten minutes with the family and know which, if any, of them were lying and therefore hiding something they were ashamed of, or might even be involved in the crime. She wasn’t psychic-didn’t believe in the ability to see through the eyes of dead people or talk to spirits-but sometimes she could stand at a crime scene and see how things had happened with the clarity of a film.

It is scientific fact that some people have an instinctive ability to detect lies. People can learn to read others with amazing accuracy, because there are scores of facial expressions, eye motions, and facial muscles that act independently and denote a person’s truthfulness in responding to a question with far greater accuracy than either a lie detector or voice-stress analysis. Professors at Duke University who were studying human ability to detect deceit agreed that Alexa Keen was very talented when it came to spotting liars. After she took an advanced course in reading evasion techniques and standard facial tics, she was even better.

Knowing when people are lying is a blessing and a curse. In any event, hunches were not admissible in court, or valid cause for a search warrant.

Kyler Kennedy pulled up out front of the Wests’ home. “You want me to come in with you?” he asked, violating his silence. “Mrs. West knows me, feels comfortable with me since I’ve interviewed her already.”

“Thanks, but this needs to be a girl-to-girl thing,” Alexa said as she climbed from the car, taking her shoulder bag with her.

She closed the door and Kennedy roared off down the street like a teenager who’d just been jilted. Alexa walked to the gate, which was opened by a man built like a professional boxer. He locked his intense eyes on her. “May I help you?” he asked, but his body language said that being accommodating was dead last on his list of things he wanted to do.

Alexa reached into her purse, which caused the man to slip his hand deeper inside his jacket, until she pulled out her badge case. He scrutinized her FBI identification and stepped aside, saying, “Mrs. West is expecting you.” Alexa wondered what the man would have done if she had come out with her Glock instead of her badge. There was no way he could have drawn his gun before Alexa had blown his heart out. Standing so close, he should have kept his right hand free so he could use it to disarm her, were she so inclined to pull a weapon.

Grace, Casey’s assistant and best friend from childhood, opened the front door. “Casey’s taking a shower. She didn’t sleep at all. She thought she looked terrible. Like that’s possible.”

Deana trotted up the hall, hugged Grace’s leg, and, sticking out her bottom lip, peered up at Alexa.

“Hello, Deana,” Alexa said, smiling.

“She’s acting out because of the thing. Come on back to the den,” Grace said, leading the way. Deana took off, running ahead of them, but Grace scooped her up and held her to her side as the child squealed and kicked violently to free herself.

“Me-do-ee!” she protested.

“No, Aunt Grace will help you, Deans. She’s at the age where she wants to do everything herself, like she’s capable. It slows everything to a crawl. Gary spoils her by caving in to her whims. But who am I to say that isn’t how I’d do it?” As they passed by the dining room, Alexa saw a man seated at the table with a tape-recording device in front of him. Grace said, “He’s monitoring the phone in case there’s a ransom demand.” The man looked up from the magazine he was reading and stared at Alexa as she went by. “Casey told me she went to see you at your hotel. We are absolutely thrilled you’re on the case. Casey says she can’t live without Gary, and if anything has happened to him, I’m afraid of what she’ll do to herself.”

Alexa sat on the sleek Italian leather sofa. The coffee table was a long slab of rose-colored hardwood with several lighter wood butterflies to keep the cracks from enlarging. Alexa couldn’t remember the maker’s Japanese name, but she knew he had worked in a studio in the Pacific Northwest and his work was very collectable and valuable. Alexa was familiar with the Avedon image of Andy Warhol’s scarred torso. In the picture Warhol’s hand held up his black leather jacket to allow Richard Avedon’s view camera to capture the damage to his chest that a psychotic woman inflicted by shooting him several times point-blank for not making her a movie star, or some imagined slight. The Frankenstein-like stitching on the lily-white torso-this one enlarged to four-by-five feet, and framed by black lacquered wood-was a visual jackhammer that dominated the warm, sunlit room like a rogue elephant.

Deana went straight to a box of her toys and started lifting them out one by one and throwing them behind her without seeming to care where they landed.

“Casey tells me you two have known each other for a long time.”

“We’ve been thick as thieves since second grade,” Grace said. “Casey is the kindest, most generous person who ever lived, and the most thoughtful. I hung out with her-of course, everybody wanted to, but most of the time it was just us two. Mrs. LePointe, Casey’s grandmother, started taking me with them all over the world when we were twelve-Casey insisted because she was always bored to death when she was with her family by herself. We got in our share of girlish mischief. We were as close as twins.” Grace smiled. “Casey could do no wrong, of course. When she went to boarding school, she begged to take me along, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it. Mrs. LePointe would have paid for it, but my parents wanted me at Blessed Heart because it’s a family tradition.” At that, Grace’s eyes seemed to lose their focus for a split second and her facial muscles shifted. Alexa read her last statement for an exaggeration maybe the woman almost believed.

“We wanted to go to college together, but I went to LSU and she went to Harvard, like everybody in her family does. Then about six years ago, Casey was getting so much interest in her work, she needed someone to organize her life, so I left my job-I was an executive assistant buyer at Bloomie’s-and started working with her full time. Like she needs anyone to organize anything. She’s brilliant and totally focused. Always has been. Oddly enough, I’m the disorganized one, but for her I somehow organize the organized.”

“So you’re Casey’s employee.”

“Technically speaking, you can say I am, but she treats me like her sister. I get a generous salary, but I do work hard and I’m totally dedicated to Casey and her career. Loyalty is something you can’t buy. I’d do what I do for nothing, but unfortunately I can’t devote my life to anything without financial compensation. I’m not independently wealthy.”

“You keep regular hours?”

“I don’t punch a time clock or anything. It’s not set up as an hourly arrangement. I liken coming to work every day to what a priest must feel upon entering the Sistine Chapel and looking up. You’ve seen Casey’s art?” Grace’s eyes brightened.

“No. Are you a fan of Gary’s plays?”

“I guess I’m his biggest fan after Casey. Casey’s art is in a class of its own.”

“I thought she was a photographer?”

Grace frowned. “Her photography elevates the medium to art.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure.” Alexa looked around hoping she might see a portrait that Casey had done hanging in the large room. Counting the torso, there were seven Avedons on the walls-all were Avedon’s portraits that Alexa was familiar with from his books.

“She doesn’t have any of her own work hanging here. She doesn’t have an ego. My apartment is completely done in her portraits. Another advantage of my position is that she gives me whatever prints I want. The frame shop that does her framing does them for me for practically nothing, because Casey uses only one frame stock-which she designed, and has it manufactured exclusively for her photographs. They keep a ton of it in stock for her work only. Nobody else gets any of it but me unless they buy a portrait. Would you like to see?” Grace’s excited eyes were lit up like Christmas bulbs.

Deana had gone to the window and was beating on the glass with a rubber dog toy that emitted a sharp squeak with each blow. This seemed to fascinate her, because she kept doing it. “Eeep, eeep, eeep, eeep.”

“Didn’t you just say there wasn’t any of her work here?”

“Not on the walls,” Grace said softly. She went to the bookshelf and took out a large book and, after removing it from its cloth slipcover, handed it to Alexa. “She owns the most extensive collection there is of the most important photographers, from Brady to Avedon. She has most of it out on loan or donated to museums, or in a climate-controlled storage facility in Manhattan. This volume of her own work just came out two weeks ago, in a very limited edition of five hundred copies. One thousand dollars per. I don’t have one, but I will, because it’s being reprinted in a larger and less expensive edition next month. Casey only got three of these for her own use, because it was completely presold. Gary has one, of course. And Casey has two-one locked up for Deana, and this one.”

“The small edition means she won’t be signing very many copies.”

“She doesn’t ever sign them, because she just doesn’t feel comfortable doing so. She doesn’t think the book is about her, but her subjects. But I expect she’ll pen a note to me in one of the mass-produced ones if I pester her.”

The book, which Grace placed on the coffee table, was roughly ten-by-fourteen, and an inch thick. On it, what appeared to be a photographic print of a young woman had been mounted on the off-white linen binding. An acetate sleeve protected the cloth and the image. The child-woman portrayed in the shot had enormous, almond-shaped eyes that stared into Casey’s lens with the sort of mixture of intensity and revulsion of someone who was studying a spider in the process of capturing a luckless butterfly. The title of the volume was All Together/All Alone: Portraits by Casey West. Not Casey LePointe West, Alexa noted.

Grace said, “This is a show catalog published by the museum in Zurich that hosted the exhibition. The show is going next to the Corcoran in D.C., and then to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She spent six months working as an intern for Avedon, but everybody thinks she’s far better than he was.”

“I’ll make a point to see it at the Corcoran.” Alexa opened the book and turned the pages gently. Grace put her hands together as if praying and studied Alexa intently as she scanned the introduction penned by Casey’s husband. “A better husband and father never drew a breath.” Alexa had heard a dozen times in investigations. “They broke the mold.”

The foreword was an affectionate critique, obviously penned by a fan.

Medium format camera somehow captures her subjects’ essence-their hopes, dreams, illusions, and fears laid bare for the viewer in equal measure. They say the eyes are mirrors to the soul, and Casey’s art seems proof that the soul exists, and that we-despite our differences-are all variations of a single being. To experience Casey West’s work is to not just see, but to experience our most basic and complex connections to one another. How one person among millions is touched by the magic so they are able to show us so much about ourselves in others is a question that has puzzled man since the dawn. Art is most often created out of painful experience. Despite her amazing complexity, Casey is somehow able to see simple truths in those around her, and to capture those truths in such a way as to say, through light and photographic dyes, what Leonardo da Vinci said in oils, William Faulkner said with words, and Michelangelo said in marble. As her husband, I have been blessed and privileged…Casey is following a divine calling, following her inner vision armed only with a camera…

If Casey really lacked an ego, Alexa reflected, Gary’s words of praise must have made her squirm. Only love for him could have allowed his worshipful foreword to be connected to her work.

The first portraits hit Alexa with the force of open-hand slaps, each one more powerful than the one before it. The expressions on the subjects in the static and crisp images were like the unblinking eyes of cocked handguns, remarkable in their emotional power. The eyes of each subject-vulnerable in one, sad in another, and furious in yet another-had a hypnotic effect on Alexa. She was awed by Casey’s work. Most photographers would have been lucky to get even one picture the equal of these in the course of a long career, but here were scores of photographic masterpieces, gathered in one collection.

“That one says it all, and then some.”

Grace was referring to a portrait entitled “Husband and Daughter-2003, Monaco,” showing a shirtless and strikingly handsome man holding a small child against his chest, his hand positioned in such a way as to hide her features behind his fingers. Gary West stared into the lens with the naked emotion of a lioness protecting her cub from a gathering of starving hyenas.

“He looks protective,” Alexa said. It wasn’t the smiling man she’d seen in the snapshots of him she’d seen before.

“He didn’t even want that picture of Deana in the book. He lives for Deana and Casey. Protecting Deana is an obsession with him.”

“Does he have any flaws?”

“Well,” Grace said, frowning. “An obsession with anything might be a flaw, don’t you think so? Every person has flaws-only some people can’t see them.”

“Give me that!” Casey demanded as she entered the room-hand outstretched to Alexa. Her cheeks were bright red, and Alexa couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed or angry. Her eyes were red from crying or lack of rest, and the fingers of her outstretched hand trembled.

“This is amazing-” Alexa began.

Deana ran over and held up her arms to her mother, hoping to be lifted. Casey looked at her, placed her free hand on Deana’s head gently. “Just a sec, darling. Mommy has to do something.”

“Uh-uuuuh,” Deana protested. “Ut.”

Alexa closed the volume gently and handed it to Casey, who sat beside her. “Grace, my pen.”

Grace went to a writing desk across the room and brought Casey back a lacquered fountain pen. Casey uncapped it, opened the book to the flyleaf, and carefully wrote something in the page’s center. After Casey capped the pen, she blew gently on the wet ink for a few seconds until she was certain it was dry. Returning the volume to its slipcover, she handed it to Alexa and smiled uncertainly. “This is for you.”

“I can’t accept it,” Alexa protested, honestly. Taking a gift from a subject in these circumstances-which might have been misinterpreted as an agent taking a gratuity from a vulnerable woman-could easily come back to haunt her. And a one-thousand-dollar gift at that.

“It’s just a book,” Casey insisted. “Are you resisting because you’re an FBI agent? Is it against some federal law?”

“That’s not it. I just know how dear this book is-how few copies you have,” Alexa said. Of course she wanted the book. Who wouldn’t?

“Well, I’ve already inscribed it, so unless someone named Alexa Keen comes along, it won’t be of any use to anybody else. I do hope you’ll enjoy it.”

Grace stood near the couch, looking as though someone had just told her they’d run over her kitten.

Alexa said, “It’s far too generous.”

“So you will accept it?”

“I guess you’ve left me no choice. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Deana was trying to climb onto the couch. With her eyes on the book in Alexa’s lap, Casey pulled Deana onto her lap. The child started pulling at the gold chain her mother was wearing. Casey allowed her to tug to her little heart’s content.

“Casey, Director Bender asked me to assist the police. I thought your uncle was responsible for talking to him, but I’m not sure he was.”

Grace looked away, her body language a blast of super-chilled air.

“Alexa, your director’s daughter, Alicia Bender, went to school with me. A portrait I did of her was in my first book. I don’t accept commercial assignments because what I do, I do because something I can’t explain about a subject attracts me. When people ask me to do their portraits, the pictures rarely ever work nearly as well, so usually they’re just technically pleasant likenesses. Alicia’s mother wants me to do her husband’s official FBI portrait. I’ve avoided doing it, and somehow I doubt he’d open himself up. I called Alicia early this morning, and I mentioned our desire that your expertise and assistance be made available to us, and I think I told her how much it would mean to me personally. She called her mother in Aspen.”

“I’m amazed,” Alexa said. She tried to imagine how the director’s wife felt about being called hours before the sun came up.

Casey seemed to read her thoughts.

“I didn’t wake Felicity. I awoke Alicia, who assured me her mother was wide-awake in Aspen. Perhaps after this is over,” Casey said, “you’ll allow me to photograph you.”

“Why me?”

“You have a remarkable presence and you are beautiful, have amazing eyes, exotic features, remarkable hands. Strength and depth.”

Alexa was embarrassed, not merely because she chewed her fingernails and was ashamed of that compulsive habit, but because she had never felt comfortable receiving praise unassociated with her job. She felt herself blushing and was powerless to stop it.

“I’m embarrassing you.” Casey smiled at Alexa and patted her hand. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“I came because I have some news,” Alexa said.

“My uncle told me you found my Volvo. What did you learn from it?”

“Your Volvo?” Alexa asked.

“The Volvo is technically my car. Gary took it yesterday because Deana’s car seat was in his Pontiac, since he brought her to the lake. It was easier than changing it out. I went there from the studio to meet them. We have one baby seat for each car, but I’d taken mine out the day before to make room for some framed prints Grace had to ship out.”

“What kind of Pontiac does he drive?” Alexa asked.

“A white 1965 GTO convertible with a red top that I bought for him as an anniversary present a few years ago. That’s what he was driving yesterday. He also has a Rover, which he sometimes drives to spare wear and tear on the GTO.”

“The GTO is his only toy,” Grace added.

“Gary always wanted one because it was something his father had when Gary was a child.”

“And you didn’t see the Volvo after you left the restaurant?”

“No.”

“I guess you didn’t head in the same direction,” Alexa said.

Casey shook her head slowly and wiped away a tear. “I wish we’d left together. I assumed he was long gone, so I didn’t even look for him.”

“We don’t have the results from the crime-scene technicians yet. Detective Manseur is handling that as we speak.”

“Shouldn’t your people be doing that?”

“The local crime techs are fine for the prelims. All we know so far, or what we think happened based on what we saw, is that it appears that an unsub ran into the Volvo, approached Gary’s door, opened it-or maybe Gary did-and the unsub-”

“Unsub?” Casey asked.

“It’s FBI jargon for unknown subject,” Grace chirped in.

“He struck Gary while he was still inside the Volvo.”

“A violent attack?” Grace asked.

“Yes, it was.”

“Could it have been fatal?” Grace asked.

Casey’s eyes widened. She clenched her daughter tightly to her chest.

“No, I don’t think so,” Alexa said.

“What did he use?”

“The object used was probably some short, cylindrical club.”

“A golf club?” Grace asked.

“We don’t know exactly what it was. May have been a weapon of convenience-something the unsub picked up at the scene. Or perhaps he had the weapon with him already.”

“Weren’t there any witnesses?” Grace asked.

“Not that we’ve located,” Alexa said.

“Then how do you know he was attacked?” Grace asked. “What evidence is there?”

“I’d rather not go into that.” Alexa had already told them much more than she normally would have, and she didn’t want to upset Casey any more than she had already.

“Please, Alexa,” Casey said. “I need to know.”

“Okay. There was low-velocity blood spatter inside the Volvo and a mark on the door that seems to have been made during the course of the event.”

“How do you know it was his blood in the car?” Grace asked.

“The blood was human and O negative, which is the same as Gary’s. He was driving the vehicle, so I think we can assume it’s his.”

“How did you know his blood type?” Casey asked. “I didn’t tell anybody that.”

“The identification card in his wallet listed his blood type,” Alexa told her.

“You found his wallet in the Volvo?” Casey asked.

Alexa nodded. “He was most likely struck while getting his license out because he’d been rear-ended and was expecting to exchange information. The wallet, containing cash and credit cards, was on the console, so I figure it was already in his hand when the event occurred.”

“Event?” Tears ran down Casey’s cheeks. Grace fetched her a tissue. Deana looked at her mother curiously and reached up to touch the tears.

Alexa felt a catch in her throat and fought the urge to show any emotion. FBI agents did not let anyone see their softer side. They were not supposed to become emotionally invested with victims, because emotion clouded objectivity.

“Excuse my choice of terminology. We don’t have enough facts to draw many conclusions. I’m just telling you what evidence we do have, which is very preliminary and may give us an inaccurate picture. We can’t afford to jump to any conclusions at this stage. The early evidence is often misinterpreted.”

“Do you think he could be dead?” Grace asked.

“Grace!” Casey snapped angrily. “Gary isn’t dead! If he were, I’d know it. He’s alive! Don’t you dare say he’s dead!”

“I’m sorry,” Grace said immediately. “Of course he isn’t, Casey. I didn’t mean…” She let the apology dangle unfinished-lingering in the silence like an unpleasant odor.

Alexa didn’t particularly care for Grace, but she admonished herself for that judgment. Grace may have been trying to comfort Casey in her own misguided way, or trying to control the situation in her capacity as Casey’s closest friend and an employee whose job was to make herself useful in whatever way she could.

“On the positive side,” Alexa told them, “there wasn’t the amount of blood to indicate a fatal wound. The blows, based on the weapon’s mark in the door panel, would seem to indicate that the door’s proximity to Gary’s position means the area necessary to draw back was shortened and lacked enough inertia to inflict a fatal injury.”

“But he still might have been very seriously injured?” Casey asked.

Alexa nodded. “That’s possible.”

“It isn’t a probability?” Grace asked.

Casey fixed her with a warning glare.

“Forgive my intrusion, Casey, but if someone killed Gary, they’d probably have left the body there, right?” Grace asked.

Alexa nodded.

“I mean, why would they drag a body from one vehicle to another in a residential neighborhood, where they could be seen by anybody looking out the window? They abducted him, and chances are, he’s going to be alive in case Casey wants proof of life, right? Isn’t that how it goes? Abductors usually release the people after they get the ransom, don’t they?”

“Well, taking him could be a positive thing,” Alexa said, fighting to control her urge to ask Grace how she knew where the Volvo had been found. Instead, she turned to Casey and said, “Casey, could I have some water?”

Grace left the room without waiting to be sent for the requested water.

Deana slipped down from the couch, went back to her toy box, and began looting it again, squealing with delight.

“My poor baby,” Casey said. “Deana knows only that her father isn’t here. I’m thankful for that. I know she’s picking up on my fear and anxiety. I should try not to be so emotional, but I can’t help it. I know you’ll find Gary and he’ll be all right. I know that.”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Alexa said. “Look, I’ll keep you apprised as best I can as the investigation goes forward, but I’m asking you not to share anything I tell you from here on out with anybody else.”

“You mean Unko? Ken Decell?”

“I mean anybody. I know it’s going to be hard, but can you do that for me?”

“Anything you say, but…You can’t mean even Grace?”

Alexa nodded solemnly. “Normally I wouldn’t be sharing as much as I have, but since you’re responsible for my involvement, I’m breaking protocol a lot more than I should. Protocols are in place for good reason. It dictates we share almost no information with a possible suspect, or anyone who might share our information with someone who might be involved, and giving you premature information that could change has obvious drawbacks and risks, putting you through needless emotional turmoil, or might give you unrealistic expectations. I’m making an exception here because I think you need to know certain things so you might see something we don’t or make some connection we wouldn’t that’s useful in locating your husband.”

“Okay,” Casey said softly. “Nobody. I promise.”

“You should also understand I’m not warm and fuzzy when it comes to my work, and what I tell you may seem blunt or harsh. I hope you’ll understand that it isn’t because I don’t empathize with you. Empathy can be detrimental. Casey, I promise you I’m going to do everything I can possibly do to find Gary, but you have to understand that I might not succeed. As much as I hate to say so, there are no guarantees. I’m not in control of this, and may not ever be. But I will do everything in my power to resolve this satisfactorily.”

“I’m really much tougher than I look,” Casey said.

“I’m sure you are. I need Grace’s social, phone numbers, and her current address,” Alexa said, taking out her notebook.