John Miller - Too Far Gone

“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.”