safely? Doesn’t want us in the way. How he accomplishes getting Gary back-whatever deception or ruse he employs-becomes irrelevant then because everybody’s happy and Gary’s back and nobody is going to look too closely at anything else. So Sibby stays hidden, which has been undone, but he wouldn’t have known that would happen at the time he was pulling the plan together.”
“Makes sense,” Manseur said.
“Although I can’t prove it yet, Sibby’s vanishing act from the hospital, Gary’s abduction, and the Fugate murder are directly related,” Alexa said. “The tipping of the press at this moment is too coincidental. The same people are behind the grab and tipping the press to Sibby’s exit from River Run. I have a feeling that they knew about Sibby before they grabbed Gary, and they may have killed Fugate and framed Sibby. Maybe she didn’t leave earlier because she hadn’t done anything-didn’t know Dorothy was in the basement.”
“That’s a stretch. I mean, it might be true, but there’s nothing to support it but your hunch. And the press might have been snooping on their own.”
Alexa nodded. “LePointe and Fugate were much more than coworkers. It’s just my gut talking, but I think that not only did LePointe know Sibby was at Fugate’s, but he knew Fugate was dead, and was only surprised that I brought it up. I’d bet his and Fugate’s phone records will tie him to her.”
“He’ll have plausible denial. You may well be right about the ransom,” Manseur said. “It would explain one thing.”
“What?”
“Why Kenneth Decell arrived at his office two hours ago, picked up a briefcase, and then went to a bank. He left the bank twenty minutes ago carrying said valise and proceeded directly to Dr. LePointe’s house, arriving there twenty minutes after you and Casey West left.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because my old partner Larry Bond staked out Decell’s office.”
“Your partner’s working on this case?” Alexa asked.
“My former partner. We worked together for six years.”
“You failed to mention to me that you brought him in,” Alexa said.
“I just told you.”
“I’m not always good with time lines, but you mean to tell me your ex- partner wasn’t already watching Decell’s house when we were at River Run?”
“You think I’d keep information from you on purpose? I didn’t think it was important, I guess. I didn’t know for sure how Decell was involved.”
“Gosh, Michael, I sure hope not. If I thought I couldn’t trust you, I’d be really upset. You are the one who pulled me into this mess,” she said, anger rising.
“Casey West did that,” he protested.
“If I hadn’t been in Casey West’s kitchen, she would never have asked for me. Who was it that woke me in the middle of the night, and placed me there?”
“Not like you were asleep.”
“Is this about who gets the credit?”
“No! Look, I wanted to compile more before we had a meeting to assimilate our separate findings and make a plan for bringing this to a joint close. Sometimes I play things close to the chest. Habit. I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Alexa said. “Clean slate. So what have you compiled so far from Fugate’s?”
46
Leland’s mouth was packed with a large wad of Juicy Fruit and he was humming a song his daddy used to sing all the time. Something about me ho my toe down the bayou. Leland’s boat pulled the wardens’ piece of crap flat-bottom easily. Leland’s father had said his son had eyes like razor blades. That morning when he was leaving to check lines and get gas, he had spotted the tree camera because the sun made the thing cast a shadow where he’d never seen one. He had searched the bank and found the place where a boat’s hull had pressed reeds down and left the impression of its bow in the mud, so he followed the boot prints across the peninsula to the suspect tree and looked at the camera from the side.
He had known that whoever had put it there would come back for it, and when they did, he’d make sure they paid for invading his place and spying on him. He remembered now that he had spotted the game wardens several times in the past two weeks, far more often than he usually saw wardens. One had been the bastard whose name was something that sounded like pump handle. The bastard had ticketed Leland more than a few times over the years, so he knew him.
Nobody liked them wardens.
Nobody would miss them.
Even if one was a woman.
He had never made a woman disappear before.
Their boat was aluminum.
Leland truly loved his boat’s shallow-draft fiberglass hull, but he was suspicious that Doc was going to try to pull a take-back deal. Doc had told Leland not to tell anybody he owned the boat or where he’d gotten it. He couldn’t see why he should tell a lie about it, so he’d told Moody it was his on account he did a job to get it. Leland didn’t like liars. Well, you could lie to wardens, because they were sneaky bastards that thought they owned the birds, the fish, and everything else God put around the world.
Most people couldn’t be trusted to do what they said. They’d say they just wanted to talk to you, then they’d handcuff you, lock you up, and stick needles in you and say you were crazy.
Leland knew that he was only safe from being monitored deep in the swamp, because they wouldn’t ever dare come in here. He had fixed it so if they ever did somehow track him to his cabin, they’d never get a chance to tell any of the others about it.
The boat was his because he had done everything Doc and the woman with the dark hair told him he had to do for it. If they kept adding things onto the list as long as they felt like it, Leland would have no choice but to fix them both good.
Every time Leland turned around and finished one thing, they had this next thing that needed to be done, and Doc went on about how they only trusted Leland to do it right, and how much the boat was worth, like he wasn’t close to being even.
Doc said an FBI lady was fixing to make trouble, and what they might need to do about that, which meant what Leland might need to do. Doc said she could put Leland back in the hospital for keeps. Okay, if the FBI lady really had a mind to put Leland back in there and let them bastards shoot electricity into his head and all that, he’d knock her in the head. If need be, he would.
Well, maybe he could do one or two more things. It was a nice boat.
47
Grace Smythe unlocked her door and entered carrying packages containing clothes and things she’d be needing. She was surprised to see a paper bag and a bottle of wine and a glass on her kitchen table. Inside the sack were several stacks of new currency.
Grace smiled. She had expected the money, but the wine was unexpected lagniappe — a little something extra.
She picked up the stacks of new one-hundred-dollar bills. It would be fifty thousand dollars-traveling money.
She went into the bedroom and dropped the bags she’d brought in, as well as the sack of cash. She rushed into the bathroom and started hot water running into the tub.
Back in the kitchen, she opened the wine. Grace took the bottle and the glass with her to the bathroom,
