John Miller - Too Far Gone

“Dr. LePointe seems to have been Sibby Danielson’s sole attending physician during her stay,” Alexa said. “Might that not rise to the level of unethical, even in New Orleans?”

Manseur shrugged. “He lied about that.”

What hasn’t he lied about? Alexa thought. “This is a release form for Sibby, so she was released legally.”

“She wasn’t,” Veronica said.

Alexa looked at her. “This is a release form for Sibby Danielson and it’s signed by what I assume is an entire committee.”

“Dr. LePointe’s signature is on it?” Manseur asked.

“No. How do you explain that?” Alexa asked Veronica.

“They’re valid signatures,” Veronica said, looking nervously into Alexa’s eyes, “but not on Sibby Danielson’s release form.”

“How do you know that?” Manseur asked.

“Because that form was somehow altered. I think one patient’s name and number was removed and hers put on. That’s how I think they did it.”

“I can’t see any alteration,” Alexa said. “It appears to be an original.”

“That form was delivered to Dr. LePointe by Mr. Decell,” Veronica said. “He delivered it in an envelope and Dr. LePointe told me to tell him as soon as it arrived. In the fifteen minutes it took the doctor to come to the office, I opened it and looked at it.”

“How do you know it was altered?”

“Because one of the psychologists who signed it hadn’t worked at River Run for two years before it’s dated. He died from liver cancer. I…” Veronica stopped.

“Go on,” Alexa said.

“I think it might have been sort of illegal for me to do what I did with the files.”

“Go on.”

“Taking them and, you know, bringing them here. They’re hospital property and there’s privilege…”

Alexa thought for a moment. Then she said, “The main problem with them is that misappropriated files can’t be introduced as evidence in a court of law.”

“So they can’t be used against Dr. LePointe?” Veronica asked, a little frantically. “And what about me? Not because of the privileged content, but because I took them.”

Alexa looked at Manseur, then back at Veronica. “If you tell the absolute truth, there will be no legal repercussions from either Detective Manseur or myself. It will end here.” Alexa certainly didn’t want anybody knowing she’d intimidated a state employee into stealing confidential hospital files on a hunch.

Manseur nodded for Veronica’s benefit. The truth was that the police can lie to suspects with complete impunity. “Just level with us.”

Then Alexa saw it clearly. “You had these before we came to the hospital!”

Veronica sat frozen for a few beats, and then nodded once.

“It’s time to come clean, Veronica,” Manseur told the young woman. “We’re not going to judge you. We need to know everything you can tell us. If you’re afraid that your motives or intentions might paint you in a less than favorable light, don’t sweat it. Let’s just get the whole story out in the open.”

“We’re not interested in when you took them. A man’s life may be on the line,” Alexa said.

“Whose?” Veronica asked.

“Gary West’s,” Alexa told her. “He was abducted yesterday.”

“You think Dr. LePointe had something to do with it?” Veronica asked, alarmed. “That Mr. West could be dead?”

Alexa shook her head.

“He might be dead?” Veronica asked, fear in her pale eyes. “I won’t testify against Dr. LePointe or Mr. Decell. You better know that. I don’t know anything about any abduction. If Mr. Decell killed him, he could kill me.”

“Do you know Mr. West?”

“He came by the hospital a few times with Casey, Dr. LePointe’s niece. LePointe talked about him like he was a horrible person, but he wasn’t. He’d ask about a person and he was asking because he wanted to know and not just to be polite. He was good-looking, but it was like he didn’t know it, or think he was better because he had money. He wrote plays, but I doubt they were as bad as Dr. LePointe said, though I never saw one. Casey is the same way, and she’s also a big-deal photographer. Her assistant is a bitch, always throwing her weight around, acting like she’s all that, when she just works for Casey West. She always goes, ‘Mrs. LePointe-West wants this,’ or ‘Mrs. LePointe-West wants that.’”

Alexa said, “That’s good. Just tell us what you know about Danielson, Dr. LePointe, and Fugate.”

Veronica Malouf told Alexa and Manseur that she knew someday the files could be crucial in establishing the truth about Dr. William LePointe and his reign over the patients and staff at River Run. She claimed she’d taken the files home with her months before in the hope that she could someday bring the whole stinking story into the cleansing spotlight of authoritative scrutiny. Veronica told Manseur and Alexa that she began watching and listening soon after she started working for Dr. LePointe as his executive assistant, which Alexa translated to mean poorly paid state employee who worked for one of the wealthiest men in America not named Gates, Buffet, or Walton.

“Dr. LePointe was difficult to work for. I never knew which Dr. LePointe would be my boss. He could be the mean arrogant ass, or he could be the sweetest thing, going out of to be thoughtful and helpful to me,” she said. “And he could change from one into the other several times a day sometimes. I’m not saying he used drugs or anything like that, but it sure would explain some one-eighties he subjected me to.”

Alexa nodded, content to let Veronica run on to fill the silence while she read through the files.

“About four years ago, Dr. LePointe called from outside and asked me to get a file from his personal file cabinet and read him something. He told me where the key was. I was putting the files back and opened the wrong drawer by accident and I saw her name on all these files. Well, you can just imagine that caused alarm bells to go off in my head. Sibby freaking Danielson! At that point I didn’t even know she was there. Not many people did.” Veronica sipped water from a bottle she had brought with her. “See, I figured that I might find myself with some legal complications, you know, down the road, so I decided to photocopy the files when the doctor wasn’t in the office, which was pretty often.”

“To protect yourself if any sort of charges were ever leveled,” Manseur said, sympathetically.

“You had a key to his personal files?” Alexa asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” Alexa prodded.

“Of course, I knew where he kept it,” Veronica said, “from that time.”

“These are all originals,” Alexa commented.

Veronica tried to act surprised, but her acting was not on par with her skills as a thief.

“That’s a mistake. I mean, I guess I was nervous about doing it, don’t you see?” Veronica said defensively. “I must have inadvertently swapped the copies I’d made for the originals.”

“How did you choose these files of all twenty-six years of her records?” Manseur asked.

Veronica stared silently, surely thinking how she should answer him.

“Why these specifically?” he pressed.

“Well, I couldn’t copy all of the files, because there were so many, thousands, like you said.”

“These were the most likely to keep you out of any potential accusations of complicity in malpractice suits,” Alexa offered. “Or criminal charges, of course,” she added.

“Of course,” Manseur said. Alexa could imagine Veronica reading through the volumes of accumulated paper to select the most incriminating, and therefore the most valuable, pages. And Alexa doubted she cared that photocopies were nonadmissible in legal proceedings, but she had known that they’d be useless as blackmail leverage.