toward the kitchen. The man scrambled backward frantically, turned, and ran outside.
Casey fired several more rounds, then stopped.
Outside, a boat motor roared to life.
“Gary!” Casey yelled. She ran to him, dropping the weapon as she reached to hug him.
“Casey, get back!” Alexa yelled. “There’s a booby trap. Get the cuff keys from my jacket!”
Kneeling, a fumbling and shaking Casey located the key and unlocked the handcuffs.
Alexa stood. She could see the cables to the apparatus losing their slack-tightening.
Casey was staring at the shotgun in the rafters. “Do something! Alexa, help him!”
Alexa’s mind raced. The shotgun was not only bolted to the rafter using U-bolts so it couldn’t be moved at all without tools, a steel plate had been placed over the receiver to keep anything from being placed behind the trigger to prevent its discharge. The cables were comprised of plastic-coated, twisted steel strands, which couldn’t be cut without bolt cutters, and they were thin enough to make shooting them in half out of the region of normal marksmanship. Shooting the sandbag, perched near the peak, would only add to the speed the sand was flowing into the bowl, and hasten the inevitable.
Casey began clawing at the duct tape, hoping to free the chair from the column. It was clearly a futile effort, given the speed with which the bag was draining. The bastard had designed his device well; disarming it quickly was impossible.
The gun was going to go off.
Gary West was going to be killed by the blast.
Alexa hurriedly removed her ballistic vest and draped it over Gary’s chest.
Almost before she got her hands clear, the shotgun exploded, the lead’s off-center impact causing the vest to fly off, hitting the floor six feet away. She heard the wind rush out of Gary West’s open mouth; smoke curled between the shotgun and its target.
Casey stood frozen, crying hysterically.
The buckshot hadn’t penetrated the Kevlar vest. Alexa pressed her hand against Gary’s neck and her heart leapt when she felt a weak but steady pulse under her fingers. “He’s okay,” she said.
Casey wrapped her arms around Gary and kissed him frantically. “Oh, my poor, poor, darling Gary,” she sobbed. “We’ll get you to the hospital.”
Alexa ran to the Bucar for her purse, which held her folding knife. She found her phone on the seat, pressed the CALL button to reach Manseur, and ran back inside the cabin. Quickly, she began cutting away the tape.
“Manseur and Bond are on the way,” she told Casey.
“Thank God,” the other woman said.
Casey peeled the tape from her husband as Alexa made the incisions. When the tape was removed, they lowered Gary to the floor.
Next, Alexa moved over to LePointe, and as she removed his hat, his hair came off with it. When the wig fell to the floor she saw the bright red hair and the unmistakable features of the dead man.
“Poor Unko,” Casey sobbed.
“Your uncle’s still alive. It’s Decell.”
The steady whooping of sirens and bright headlights burned through the window sheets as cars swept into the driveway.
Alexa’s eyes came to rest on the notebook on the floor. She picked it up and folded it, putting it into her purse.
“Is that the diary?” Casey asked.
“I won’t know until I’ve read it,” she answered. Pandora’s book, she thought. Technically the notebook was evidence and she was collecting it for the investigation-albeit surreptitiously. She intended to see for herself what Fugate had written before deciding how she was going to proceed.
“I want to make sure it gets read. Just between us, for the time being, okay, Casey? Your uncle can’t know I have it.”
Casey nodded once and turned her attention back to her husband.
65
Manseur exploded into the cabin, gun in hand, the sirens outside still blasting. “Clear!” he yelled.
Bond came through the back door, holstering his gun. “Back’s clear.”
“EMS’s ETA is thirty minutes,” Manseur told Alexa as he squatted beside her, looked at Decell’s corpse. “You’re all right?”
“Fine. Gary’s pulse is steady, but weak,” she said.
“Should we take him to the hospital in your car?” Casey asked. “Wouldn’t it be faster?”
“No,” Manseur said. “There’s a life-flight helicopter en route. The techs will get him ready for the ride, and see what he needs. We’d do more harm than good if we moved him, Mrs. West.”
“I shot the kidnapper,” Casey murmured. “I can’t believe I actually shot someone.”
“If you hadn’t, Gary and I would both be dead,” Alexa said. “I saw his and Leland’s faces…” Like avillain in some James Bond film, Doc had wanted to make sure Alexa appreciated his genius by setting his killing mechanism in operation before he killed her. Egotistical people were unpredictable criminals, and the smarter they thought they were, the dumber they thought everybody else was.
“So this kidnapper shot Decell for Dr. LePointe? Decell’s almost a foot taller than LePointe. Maybe the shooter had never seen Dr. LePointe in person,” Manseur said.
Alexa said, “Between the shadows, him expecting LePointe, not Decell, I can see it. And Decell was drawing a gun. We should make sure the rear is secure,” Alexa said, standing.
“Larry, could you kill those sirens?” Manseur said.
Manseur followed Alexa out the back door. Flipping on his flashlight, he ran the beam over the truck, the sloping yard, the small dock. “Cooley at the lab sure nailed that truck.”
“I have the diary,” Alexa said in a low voice.
“What’s in it?” he asked her.
“I’d like to examine it in private. Casey saw me pick it up. I told her to forget she did.”
“What about fingerprints?”
“Leland took me by complete surprise. I never saw him until he had my gun. The guy Casey shot is the one in the pictures from Fugate’s. Doc, Leland called him. He had gloves on, so I bet he didn’t leave his prints. I’ll wear gloves to preserve any other prints on the book.”
“And then you’re going to give it to me, right?” he asked. “The diary is part of the Fugate homicide.”
“It’s also part of the West kidnapping. I’ll pass the book to you after I’ve seen if it is relevant to any federal crimes. I want to know why Dr. LePointe was willing to go to so much trouble to get his hands on it, but I don’t want anybody else knowing I have it. Nobody else.”
“When can I read it?”
“Tomorrow.”
“First thing?” Manseur’s expression reflected suspicion.
Alexa smiled. “Relax. You’ll get your fair share of the credit.”
“It’ll be nice, having credit,” he said. “Maybe the federal prosecutors won’t be as easy for the good doctor to influence.”
“You think?” Alexa said, frowning.
Twenty minutes later, sirens announced the arrival of an EMS ambulance. After checking Gary West’s vitals, the techs placed him into the vehicle and it raced off to meet a helicopter being sent from New Orleans. Parish deputies had popped flares to guide the life-flight chopper to the closest paved road. After hugging Alexa tightly for a few long seconds, Casey accompanied her husband in the ambulance.
“Michael has to keep your gun for ballistics,” Alexa told Casey.
Casey said, “I don’t expect I’ll be needing it again.”
While Alexa and Manseur were standing beside the Mercedes, a Crown Victoria pulled into the driveway.
