Too Far Gone

30

In the administration section of the hospital, burgundy linoleum tiles covered the floor, and the walls were an institutional green. Framed black-and-white photographs of plantation manses viewed through parted curtains of Spanish moss adorned the walls. In the offices they passed, Alexa noted, the modern telephones and computers seemed totally out of place in spaces that could have been sets in a movie about the Great Depression.

Dr. Whitfield’s office, in marked contrast, was modern and opulently furnished. Floor-to-ceiling windows, visible through open curtains, were spaced along the far wall. Three matching carpets defined the distinct areas in the huge space. The director’s desk was comprised of a slab of granite two inches thick resting on stainless steel legs.

In the center of the room four black-leather chairs faced each other across a square coffee table. The conference area at the far end of the room held a larger granite and steel table surrounded by eight ebony leather chairs on stainless castors. Built-in cabinets and bookshelves ran along the wall opposite the windows.

Dr. Whitfield, a lanky man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair combed carefully back, entered the room through a door behind his desk that appeared to lead to a private bathroom. He smiled as he shook his guests’ hands. “Thad Whitfield,” he said. “Detective Manseur and Agent Keen, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Please, do sit down.” He motioned to the lounge chairs. Alexa and Manseur declined refreshment.

After Alexa sat, Manseur followed suit. Whitfield sat with his back to the window, crossed his legs, and put his hands together in his lap.

“So, what brings you to my office on this fine day?” the director asked.

“We’re checking into what may just be a rumor,” Alexa told him.

“What rumor is that?” Whitfield asked, still smiling.

“That a patient named Sibhon Danielson was released from this hospital recently. We were curious to find out if that information is correct and, if so, where we might find her now,” Manseur said.

“She was committed twenty-six years ago-a double homicide,” Alexa added.

Whitfield said, “I’m not familiar with that particular patient. I’ve only been here for a few months and we currently have two hundred and sixty-three patients in residence. The majority of our patients, or inmates, in most cases are either violent sexual predators or dangerously unstable offenders deemed not to have been legally responsible for their actions at the time they were committed. We have fourteen wards here, each designated for inmates categorized by threat levels. Number one houses the healthiest, or most improved of our wards, up to number fourteen, which houses the most volatile and violent of our inmates.”

“I don’t know where she’d be on the number system now, but in 1979 she would have been a full-blown fourteen,” Manseur said.

“If she responded to treatment to the point where she could function, she may have been reassigned or released.”

“If she could refrain from acting on the impulse to chop people up,” Manseur offered.

Whitfield flinched. “Detective, the insane are truly no more able to control their behavior-to conform to accepted norms-than a goose can control where it drops its offal.”

“Usually on the golf course greens,” Manseur said. “On in regulation, then they turn a perfect lie into a putt-putt course.”

“All too often,” Whitfield agreed, chuckling. “So you’re a fellow devotee of the old anger sticks. I have a six handicap at present. Yours?”

“I’m afraid I’m up there in the double digits,” Manseur said, smiling. “Maybe if I played more and worked less.”

Alexa was certain, based strictly on his lack of reaction to hearing her name, that Dr. Whitfield had no idea who Sibby Danielson was.

“What exactly is the process for releasing a patient?” she asked, bored by the golf talk and the time it was wasting.

“Release of a patient inmate requires a unanimous vote of the psychiatric review board, and sometimes a prerelease hearing has been stipulated by the courts. Releasing a patient who was formerly violent is not something done lightly. But patients have well-defined rights and ours is not a punishment facility, but a maximum-security treatment hospital whose goal is curing the inmates so they can rejoin society as productive members.”

“You can cure chronic violent sexual predators?” Manseur asked, stiffening.

Alexa knew Whitfield was thinking how he-a man who probably had released untold numbers of rapists he had believed were cured-should respond to a Homicide cop who had probably seen the results of recidivism enough times to doubt such people could ever change or be changed. Most cops believed that any rapist who was released had only managed to con the doctors into believing they could work miracles.

“A board made up of whom?” Alexa asked.

“The staff doctors and clinical psychologists who have treated and evaluated the patient, a nurse, and myself, the director. The committee has at least six individuals, who have to agree before an inmate can safely be released. The liability is too great to leave it to the flip of a coin,” Dr. Whitfield said, laughing at his joke.

“Can we find out if she was released?”

“Our patients enjoy patient-doctor confidentiality, much like those of private medical patients, but whether or not an inmate is in the facility is nonprivileged information.”

To Alexa, the idea that a multiple murderess who had been committed to a maximum-security asylum in lieu of the electric chair or life in prison had the same rights to confidentiality that a citizen undergoing private psychotherapy enjoyed seemed idiotic. She nodded anyway and added a smile of reassurance.

“We just need to locate her,” Alexa said, looking at her watch, not because she didn’t know the time, but to telegraph a sense of urgency. Sibby probably wasn’t going to be a key to locating Gary West. While a freed Sibby Danielson might have attacked him-Alexa knew that a woman in her late forties alone could probably accomplish the assault-she wouldn’t be able to muscle a semiconscious or unconscious man from one vehicle into another. And what would her motive be for such an action? Sibby couldn’t possibly know Gary West. Also, since she had been incarcerated for over a quarter of a century, how likely was it she could enlist someone to help her? Unlikely or not, Alexa knew that if the murderess was out, somebody would have to find out everything they could about Sibby Danielson and eliminate her as a suspect, because anything and everything was possible.

Dr. Whitfield pressed a button on an intercom on the table beside him. “Veronica, could you please come in when you have a moment?”

Veronica came in immediately, holding a pad and pen. “Yes, Dr. Whitfield?”

“Would you please check on the status of a patient for me?”

“Of course,” she said, raising the pad.

“It’s Ms…?” Eyebrows raised, the doctor looked at Alexa, waiting for her to give him the name again.

“Danielson, Sibhon Danielson,” Alexa said, watching Veronica closely when she said it.

Veronica’s expression told Alexa that the assistant was very familiar with Sibby Danielson, but she took the time to write the name carefully on the pad, as though she might forget it. “I’ll check the patient’s status for you, Dr. Whitfield. It should only take me a few minutes.”

“This is a nice office,” Alexa said, making conversation. “For a state facility.”

“Indeed,” the director said. “I can thank my predecessor for the fancy digs. He paid for them himself.”

“Really? A state-paid doctor?”

“Well, he was technically a salaried employee of the state, but he hardly depended on that for his bread and butter.”

“Independent means?”

The director laughed. “Dr. LePointe was never a devotee of Sparta.”

“Dr. William LePointe?” Alexa said. She looked at Manseur and saw that he hadn’t known either.

“When?” Manseur asked.

“From the late seventies until last year. Do you know him?”

“I didn’t know he was the director here,” Manseur said. “Or if I did, I’d forgotten.”

“Veronica was Dr. LePointe’s assistant before I took over.”

Alexa felt as though she’d been poleaxed. Her mind swarmed with implications of the knowledge, and she only waited a few seconds while they sank in before standing. “Excuse me for a second. I need to ask your assistant something.”

Veronica sat at her desk with her back to Alexa, a cell phone to her ear. When the sounds of Manseur and Whitfield’s conversation registered and she realized the door was open, Veronica pressed the END button, put down the phone without saying good-bye. She placed her hands on the keyboard of her computer terminal as though she hadn’t been on the telephone at all, but diligently searching for the whereabouts of the axe princess of the Garden District. Alexa suppressed the urge to lift the phone to look at the number Veronica had just called.

“When did Sibby Danielson leave, Veronica?” Alexa asked.

Veronica turned her chair around to face her. “I was just about to check that for you.”

“Cut the act. We both know she’s gone. Lying to an FBI agent in the course of an investigation is a felony punishable by three to five years in prison. You can ask Martha Stewart.”

“What Sibby did is familiar to anybody from New Orleans. I used to jump rope to ‘Chop-Shop Sibby took an axe to give old Curry ninety whacks; when Becky LePointe saw what she’d done, Sibby gave her a hundred and one.’”

“Very original. Where is Sibby?”

“I’ve never even seen her, because I’ve never been in the wards. The only patients I ever see are when they’re brought into these offices, and it’s never violent-ward patients.”

“You know she’s gone, though. Tell me how.”

Veronica nodded. “The TV reporter, Lucille Burch, called this morning. She said she had it on good authority Sibby was out. I told her I was sure she couldn’t be. I looked her up and her name was on the master patient list.” Veronica pointed at the screen, where Alexa saw Sibby Danielson’s name on a long list. “I told her Sibby Danielson was indeed here in maximum-security ward fourteen, but Burch said, ‘We’ll see about that.’ Later I asked someone who works in the violent wards, and he told me he hasn’t seen her in almost a year. He figured she’d been transferred, since she wasn’t ‘outside’ material. I checked, and there’s no transfer or release information on her in the computer. The person who told me could be wrong. It isn’t unusual for inmates to change wards and even move to other facilities, and often the records are late being updated because we’re so badly understaffed.”

“Why didn’t you mention the media inquiry, or this possible discrepancy, to Dr. Whitfield?”

“I intended to, but I got busy. I was afraid that was why you were here.”

“Who were you calling just then?”

Veronica’s eyes were suddenly filled with what looked very much like terror. “My mother.”

Alexa snatched Veronica’s phone off the desk. “Then you won’t mind if I check the readout.”

“I don’t think you can legally make me show you my personal information like that!”

“If you’re telling the truth and the last call was to Mama Malouf, why does it matter? Will you nod if I guess right?”

Veronica nodded once, slowly.

“Dr. LePointe?”

Veronica shook her head.

“Who, then?”

“You said I could just nod.”

“You got your last nod here, ” Alexa said, reaching behind her, freeing the handcuffs from the case on her belt. “You can play Little Miss Bobble-head all you like before a federal grand jury.”

“No,” Veronica said. “Just a minute.”

“Talk, or I’ll take you to FBI headquarters and let interrogators ask you in a way you won’t enjoy. These days a person can literally vanish into the federal system for a very long time while we investigate them for ties to terrorist organizations. I’m not nearly as nice as I appear to be.”

“Mr. Decell.”

“Kenneth Decell?”

Veronica nodded slowly.

“Why?”

“A few months ago he said I should let him know immediately if anybody ever asked questions about her. Sibby.”

“You told Decell that Lucille Burch called?”

“Yes. He said I’d be rewarded for reporting anything that popped up about Dr. LePointe or Sibby Danielson or Dorothy Fugate.”

“Who is Dorothy Fugate? An inmate?”

“Ms. Fugate was the ex-chief nurse here.”

“How long did you work for Dr. LePointe?”

“Almost six years.”

“Did you like him?”

“Like?” Veronica nodded. “He’s a good man.”

“Do you know where Danielson is?”

“According to the records, she’s still in ward fourteen. That’s all I know.”

“You know the records are incorrect. She’s gone. From ward fourteen straight to the front gate, right?”

“I’m only a secretary.”

“An executive assistant,” Alexa corrected. “This could spell very serious trouble.”

“I didn’t know,” Veronica said, quickly. “I assumed she was maybe moved based on her state, but…”

“Her state?”

“Everybody who has been around her says Sibby’s in the stratosphere. All she ever did was sit and rock back and forth in her chair.”

“So she’s that sick? Or she’s kept heavily medicated?”

“I’m not authorized to see her treatment records and I wouldn’t know what I was looking at if I did.”

“Are there paper records in addition to computerized records on the patients?”

Veronica nodded. “I suppose they’d be in the locked file cabinets.”

“Who would know where she is? Best guess,” Alexa said, her cuffs tapping a steady surgical steel rhythm against her thigh.

“I suppose Nurse Fugate.”

“Why would she know?”

“She was in charge of the nursing staff and the orderlies and janitors on all the wards. She left here around the same time Sibby did. She didn’t just spend a lot of time in that ward, she had her office there.”

“Left about the same time? So you do know when Sibby left. One more lie and you can kiss your sweet butt good-bye.”

“Around a year ago,” Veronica said hastily.

“How do I find this nurse?”

“I can give you her address. But if anybody finds out I told you, I’ll be fired.”

Hands shaking, Veronica Malouf flipped through the Rolodex on her desk and copied down an address and phone number.

“Keep helping me and I’ll do my best to keep it between us. In the meanwhile, if that reporter calls back, tell her Sibby Danielson is still in the hospital, because you checked and saw her. Now, how could she get out through security without having received a release form?”

“She couldn’t. There had to be a release form or she’d never get out the gate, but it isn’t where it should be.”

“Unless she maybe went out in a car trunk?”

“The staff parks in a fenced-in lot to the rear of the building, and it’s under constant surveillance. Standing policy is that every vehicle is searched when it leaves. No exceptions. They’ll search your car when you go out. You’ll see,” Veronica said.

“They searched Dr. LePointe’s car?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. Not always.”

“How much power did LePointe exercise here?”

“His mental health foundation gives a lot of research grant money to most of the doctors as well as the clinical psychologists, and it pays for continuing ed for nurses and orderlies. He’s Doctor Emeritus of River Run, and he’s the past chairman of the state’s mental health board. Half the people on the payroll get some form of financial subsidy from Dr. LePointe. He doesn’t have an office here anymore, but truth is, Dr. Whitfield only runs the place on paper, and he knows it. When Dr. LePointe calls, Whitfield trips over himself to put down his putter and grab the phone.”

“Do you think Dr. LePointe has reason to stay on top of what’s happening here?”

She shrugged. “He checks in with me like I’m still his secretary. Before he retired, he gave me a new Honda Accord Coupe. I think he worked here so long, he can’t let go-hates not knowing everything that’s up. What do I tell Dr. Whitfield about Sibby?”

“I’ll tell Dr. Whitfield that Sibby Danielson can’t have been released. We’ll leave satisfied.”

“He might check.”

“He obviously doesn’t know who she is. But you’re going to search until you find her records for me.”

Veronica’s eyes lost their focus.

“Twenty-six years means there’s an awful lot of paperwork on her. If you want this to go away, you’ll find and deliver that paperwork to me at NOPD HQ. It isn’t a suggestion, Veronica. The alternative to compliance will be catastrophic for you. You have my word on that.”

“Take official records out of here?” Veronica looked stunned, and afraid. “It’s against the law.”

“I’m the only law you need concern yourself with. A word to the wise,” Alexa said, “I know a lot more about all this than I’m telling you. If you cross me, whatever you imagine anybody else might do to you is nothing in comparison to what I will do. Dig for those records like your very freedom and future ability to find meaningful employment depend on it.” Alexa smiled at Veronica. “When you find them…straight to me. Now, when you call Decell back, say we were satisfied that she was here, because there was no release form.”

Veronica nodded slowly.

“And,” Alexa added, “I want the names and pertinent info on all of the staff that worked on Danielson’s ward in the year before she vanished.”

“I don’t know…that’s kept-”

“I have all the confidence on earth that you’ll find those things for me,” Alexa said firmly. “When there’s no choice, there’s always a way.”