John Miller - Too Far Gone

Leland Ticholet made Betty nervous. He had a reputation for being erratic and violent, and she doubted he took more than a few alligators here and there. Why risk your butt for critters that were dumb as rocks, mean as pimps, and as plentiful as cigarette butts? Elliot Parnell was the biggest by-the-rule-book asshole on earth and everybody hated his ass. She got stuck with him because the other agents all hated blacks-especially black women who weren’t mopping their floors-and they thought she’d quit on account of being with Parnell. “We have important warning to be doing,” she said.

“This is important,” Elliot told her.

“Whatever,” Betty said.

“We can’t have everybody around here thinking they can treat our valuable wildlife resources any way they like.” As he spoke he was watching the screen, which was reflected in his beady little eyes. Elliot had a handgun, but Betty wasn’t done with her probationary period, so she wasn’t packing. In an emergency Parnell had said she could use the shotgun. Although her father and brothers were too familiar with guns, Betty had never fired one in her life, and didn’t know one Wildlife and Fisheries officer who had ever had to use deadly force. Parnell had pulled his gun on several people, but everybody said it was because he got scared and overreacted.

“Oh, my God!” Elliot whispered excitedly. “We got the son of a bitch!”

He rewound and turned the tiny screen so Betty could share the view. The teeny boat entered the frame and a bald, shirtless man who had yard-wide shoulders, a narrow waist, and muscles that would make an ox jealous tied off the boat and carried, on one shoulder, something rolled up in a sheet.

“See the alligator he’s got?” Parnell said.

“It’s so dark in that I can’t see shit. But it might be I can sort of see something rolled up in something looks like a bedsheet. Why would the fool roll a alligator up in a bedsheet?”

“So nobody can see what it is.”

“Who in the Sam Hill would be out here looking at him? I’m new at this, but wouldn’t a gator’s tail be hanging way out?”

Parnell glared at her disapprovingly. He had a bitch-on because she had never been in the great outdoors before and had just studied how to be an enforcement officer at the community college. Parnell and the others were rednecks and they resented her for not doing it the way they did. She knew they blamed affirmative action for making it so they couldn’t just hire one of their inbred potbellied brothers-in-law.

“You ready?” he asked her suddenly.

“Ready for what?”

“To take a look-see in that cabin.”

“I’m new at this, but didn’t I hear the captain say you need a warrant or something to go searching in people’s cabins? I seem to recall something about it.”

“This tape gives me probable cause.”

“Maybe he’s a Klansman and that was his outfit he had over his shoulder,” Betty said.

“And maybe that’s an alligator, or a roll of gator skins he plans to sell.”

Betty looked at the viewfinder again. She saw Leland getting into the boat and holding something against his head, then throwing it like a baseball and going back inside. In the next few minutes of video he came out carrying a gun, got into the boat, and untied it. As the big man drove the boat out of frame, Betty could have sworn Leland looked right at the hidden secret camera.

“Let’s do this,” Parnell said, as he held out the camera to her.

Betty took the camera and watched as Parnell stood, took his big-ass revolver out of the holster, and opened it up like he was afraid the bullets might have escaped from the cylinder since he’d last checked on them-twenty minutes earlier.

After leaving Superintendent Evans’s office, Alexa accompanied Manseur down the stairwell, through the Homicide bull pen, which was a hive of activity, past the interrogation rooms-marked “interview” rooms probably because it appeared to suspects and witnesses as being kinder and gentler-to his office. Several detectives waved and one asked Manseur if he could meet to review a case, to which Manseur said, “I hope so.”

“Please sit,” he told Alexa, lifting a huge stack of files from one of the two chairs facing his desk so she could. He put the files on the conference table, one more stack among many, and went behind the desk after stepping over two boxes in his path. To say Manseur’s office was cluttered would have been as soft as describing Little Richard as being odd.

Alexa, who kept her own office as neat and organized as she did her apartment, sat and took in the piles of manila folders, the boxes containing case files. The last-painted-a-decade-ago beige walls were bare of decoration. A single picture containing three people Alexa assumed were Michael’s wife and daughters was not quite yet lost in the disorder on the credenza that held it. That lone image containing contented females was it as far as personal items were concerned.

“I’m sorry you didn’t make good your escape from New Orleans,” he said cheerfully.

“Truth is, after Casey West came to my hotel room to talk to me, I didn’t want to leave.”

“She did what?” Manseur sat up. “Nobody told me she ever left her house. I have people posted to watch over her.”

Manseur picked up his phone and punched in a number. He asked someone named Walker about Casey West’s trip out of the house, listened, then hung up without saying good-bye.

“Dr. LePointe put a private security detail in charge of the house, inside and out, soon as we left. My watch was called off. LePointe’s people are going to handle monitoring the phones for any ransom demands privately.”

“I thought LePointe was a psychiatrist.”

“Maybe he is technically, but Evans told me he retired from his state position a year or so ago. He’s always officially been the chairman of the LePointe trusts, and I was told he’s giving the family’s holdings his full energies. I wish to hell my own people would tell me what’s happening with my number-one-and presently only-case. Woman’s husband is missing and she is out at all hours running around town and-for all anybody knows-might be in danger herself. Anything happens to her, you know damned well I’m going to get blamed for it.”

“I imagine I’ll get my fair share,” Alexa said. “I hope you know that I’m here to help any way I can.”

“Okay, solve all the cases I have open, give the city enough money to pay my squad to work the overtime we need, keep anybody from killing anybody for a few days, and call off the hurricane while I look for Gary West.”

“How about I just help you find Gary West really fast?”

“And I’ll live with the rest as usual. It’s a deal. So what did Mrs. West tell you that made you want to stick around?”

It took less than five minutes for Alexa to tell Manseur everything Casey West had told her. When she was done, Manseur sat back and rubbed his face. “That’s a bit different than what Dr. LePointe told Evans.”

“I thought the same thing.”

“Dr. LePointe said he knew Director Bender. I guess he pulled in a favor,” Manseur said.

“That’s a possibility. I’d bet Casey put pressure on him because I doubt he did it on his own. Dr. LePointe doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who easily admits he’s wrong.”

“He’s got the sway to make things happen. I prefer to imagine he’s showing his niece he cares about getting her husband back.”

“Alive.” Alexa raised an eyebrow. “How can I help?”

“Let’s get this said and out in the open. Evans hates the fact that he has to let you come in, but he’s got no choice, so he’s pissed off about it, and although he wants this resolved, he wants you-the FBI-to fail, but for us-the NOPD-to succeed. You’re an FBI agent, so, new spirit of cooperation or not, my experience tells me it’s naive of me to think I can open up to you, since somebody always gets burned when we work together with the FBI and the somebody that gets the short end is us. I’ve had trouble with FBI agents sticking with their assurances and promises, especially when they’re faced with pressure from their brass hats. Sometimes I get the old ‘I’m sorry, but’ for my efforts. Usually I don’t even get that.”