John Miller - Too Far Gone

Leland looked up, to see Doc studying him from way up on the ladder.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Doc said.

“I don’t got no penny,” Leland told him.

“Leland,” Doc started. He opened his hooded sweatshirt, probably so Leland could see the handle of the little lady gun he had stuck in his pants. “I know this must be frustrating for you, that the sirens of the bayou are singing to you. I give you my word that as soon as you do your part this evening, you can head off to whatever scuzzy fishing hole your little heart desires and pull fish out of the scummy water with reckless abandon until you have filled up your boat to the gunwales.”

“Gun whales?”

“Fill to the top until you are knee-deep in eels, or whatever it is you collect out of the vast stagnant purgatory you inhabit.”

Leland didn’t know the words, but he didn’t like the whiny tone. He wondered if Doc was mocking him. “When do I get the papers?”

“What papers are you referring to?”

“The owning papers on the boat.”

Doc smiled. “You mean the pink slip? The registration?”

“Yeah, the paper saying it’s mine and nobody else’s.”

“Tonight when you drop me at my car, I will give you your just reward. Scout’s honor. You’ll drop me and I’ll drop you…the owning papers.”

Leland said, “I guess so, but dropping them to me right now would be better.”

“If I gave them to you now, you’d go out that door, get in the boat, and haul ass back to your little home in the sticks. For all I know, if you had the papers in your pocket, you might be tempted to keep time on my head with that pipe.”

“You give me the pink papers and I won’t do nothing but say good-bye-dee-by.”

“And I’ll never see you again, not even in the funny papers?”

Leland nodded his head slowly.

Doc closed his sweatshirt so the gun was hidden and he clapped his hands together. “Absolutely positively tonight. Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye. Guaranteed. Signed, sealed, and delivered, I’m yours.”

Doc made an X on his chest with his fingers. “Before the sun comes up in the morning, you will be hotfooting your way home to Valhalla aboard your new vessel. You have my most absolute disingenuous word of honor.”

“Okay, then,” Leland said, smiling. “Before the sun comes up again.”

There were so many calls made and received from the requested numbers that it was going to take hours to go through them all and cross-reference them. Alexa had Casey’s list of friends and acquaintances for cross-reference.

“How did you get the cellular records so fast? All the different providers-that takes us weeks and we have to raise hell.”

“There are advantages in being FBI. Especially when the director is running interference for you.”

“The Wests’ home phone and cells are clean,” Manseur said. “Calls to and from the friends on her list, stores, tradesmen, attorneys, accountants, LePointe, Grace. No surprises.”

Alexa was looking for specific calls that pointed to a conspiracy. “We’ve got Grace and Casey talking before eight and after nine on most days. Talking with Casey takes up the majority of Grace’s cell minutes. No surprise she doesn’t have much of a life aside from her employer. Through this morning is where the record ends. But in the past two weeks, Grace Smythe has been talking a lot to someone who’s using a paid-in-advance disposable unit. The disposable unit called her several times today. I’d love to know who that is. She probably won’t tell the truth unless we can confront her with evidence, and I don’t want to tip her just yet that we’re interested.”

“She won’t be hard to find,” Manseur said.

“Maybe this prepaid-phone owner is her outside man willing to do the heavy lifting. Who’s in a better position to plan the grab? Grace knows Gary’s schedule. Right after the grab, the prepaid unit calls Grace, and she calls it back a little while later. And several times after we left Casey’s last night they talked back and forth. And she called a travel agent three times; once before the grab, twice after.”

“Call the travel agency and find out if she bought tickets, how many, where and when they’re for. Now, what do you have on LePointe’s lines?”

“LePointe has talked to Decell a lot since the grab, but not once in the weeks before. That makes sense. But LePointe called Fugate scores of times: last call was an hour before you arrived at her house. After that call, LePointe called Decell. Decell called LePointe a few minutes after you got clobbered. Talked three minutes. Minutes after that, LePointe called the president of the bank Decell visited an hour later. Looks like maybe LePointe is going to pay somebody for something.”

“Could there be a ransom demand the doctor hasn’t mentioned?” Alexa asked.

“I don’t see Fugate tied in with Grace. Fugate didn’t make any calls to anyone else on the list, did she?”

“Fugate didn’t call anybody the month before the grab except LePointe. Short-duration calls. She’d been dead two days when Gary was taken. LePointe always called her. A lot of those calls from LePointe were immediate hang-ups. Eighteen ran thirty seconds or longer. It looks like LePointe didn’t know about Fugate’s death until after it happened. He didn’t start frantically calling Fugate until a few hours ago. What was the trigger?” Alexa wondered.

“If LePointe found out the media was hunting for Sibby, he could have started calling Fugate to tell her to circle the wagons. But she doesn’t answer. He panics. When LePointe can’t reach Fugate, Decell goes over to check on her for LePointe-see why she wasn’t taking his calls. Once he gets there he finds her dead and Sibby’s gone. He begins to sanitize the house, but you interrupt him. He pushed you down the stairs and ran away with all the evidence he could carry. Bond saw Decell twenty minutes later go to his office to ditch the evidence. It fits.”

“And then Decell goes to the bank when it’s closed to normal people,” Alexa said. “Decell went to the bank because he found something at Fugate’s house that LePointe needed money to deal with.”

“This is giving me a headache,” Manseur said.

“Or because LePointe got a ransom demand.”

“How do we find Gary West?”

Manseur’s cell phone rang and he answered it.

Alexa watched his face as he listened. “Good work. We need to put out a BOLO on him.” Manseur closed the phone. “Got a hit on a partial fingerprint taken from Gary West’s Volvo.”

“Leland Ticholet?” Alexa guessed.

Manseur nodded and smiled.

“If you can deal with the travel agency, I need to talk to Veronica Malouf.”

“Why?”

“After that, you join Bond watching LePointe’s. I’ll meet you there. We’re going to need some help staying with the money. Can you get GPS trackers?”

“I’ll see if I can. Finding help to follow money sounds easy enough.”

When Veronica Malouf answered her door and saw Alexa, her face crumpled.

“This isn’t a good time,” she said, after looking up and down the street.

Alexa heard the volume of the stereo drop and knew Veronica wasn’t alone. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“I have a friend here.”

“That’s fine. I don’t have time to come in.”

“What do you want?”

“A favor.”

“What kind?” Veronica pulled the door shut behind her.

“I want you to go to the hospital and get me a set of records.”

“I gave you everything I had.”

“On Sibby. But I need the records on another inmate.”

“Who?”