“Casey West told them.”
“Casey? You sure?”
“Saw her on the TV myself just before I called you. Announced that she’s just learned about the diary from an FBI agent, who told her it was authentic. Said she’s crushed by LePointe’s actions, but says her uncle should have a chance to explain everything to her and to the public before he’s judged. No matter how scandalous and despicable his actions were, or what actual crimes he committed, he has been a friend of this community, or some such happy crap. Woman threw the old goat to the wolves.”
“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving individual,” Alexa said. She certainly couldn’t blame Casey for reacting as she had, but she hadn’t expected Casey to go public.
Usually people like the LePointes played things close to their vests and the public arena wasn’t the place for washing their dirty laundry. But Casey had certainly earned the right to change the LePointe family handbook.
Alexa almost felt sorry for LePointe. Almost.
78
Alexa and Manseur listened in silence as the car’s radio informed them that refugees from Katrina, using everything from motorcycles to bus-sized RVs, were leaving New Orleans. All of the lanes of the major roads leaving the city were handling one-way traffic only, and the vehicles on the main roads were leaving at a crawl. Vehicles of every description littered the sides of the roadways, some with hoods raised, their occupants waving desperately at passing cars. Even the back roads were bumper-to-bumper. Gasoline stations were mobbed by desperate motorists or people wanting gas for generators, or the stations had run out of fuel.
Mayor Ray Nagin’s strong voice came over the airwaves, pleading. “…believe that. People, the plain fact is that Hurricane Katrina is going to be the most powerful hurricane ever to make landfall in the history of the United States, and it is coming in right here this evening. The water surge, a wall of water twenty feet high, is going to be pushed by two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds up the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain, and it is going overtop the levees. It is suicide to remain in the city, because your homes are going to be flooded. The police are going door to door with orders to forcefully remove everybody found in any home or apartment, and those people are going to be taken to the Superdome, which is twenty feet above sea level. I urge you all to heed this warning and get out of your homes and businesses and remain out of the area until we give an all-clear to return. The police and National Guard will deal with any looters, using all necessary force. If you cannot get out of the city, go to the Superdome now. This is going to be the worst-possible-case scenario storm. I can’t say this any stronger. There are going to be bodies floating in the streets.”
The governor spoke about coordinating state and federal agencies. But a new voice had been added to the dire warnings. President George Bush talked about which federal agencies he was sending and finished his message with “I have just three words to say to the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Get. Out. Now.”
“I guess he’s made himself clear,” Manseur said.
“It’s mind-blowing that people think they can ride this one out,” Alexa said.
“This is New Orleans, Alexa. Where fantasy and denial meet over drinks from sundown to sundown.”
“We need a helicopter to get us around this,” Alexa said.
“I tried to get one. There wasn’t any to be had for two hours.”
“Maybe we should have waited.”
“Look,” Manseur said. “We caught up to Bond and Kennedy’s car.” When Bond saw the blue lights coming up behind his Crown Vic, he slowed and let his ex-partner pass him. Seconds later Bond’s car was riding right behind Manseur’s bumper.
With sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, it took an hour and a half of hard driving on rural highways and snaking parish back roads to get to their destination.
The two-car caravan got to Moody’s landing, where Buddy Lee Tolliver’s sheriff’s department boat had just been unloaded from its trailer and now waited, moored to a dock beside a bait and tackle store. There was a cluster of small boats-a redneck armada-waiting their turn in the channel to be loaded onto trailers, one of which, behind a ratty pickup, was submerged to allow a young boy to drive his boat onto it. One of two deputies dressed in a brown-and-tan uniform stood at the vessel’s center console. He waved at Manseur when he saw him.
“Must be our guide,” Manseur explained to Alexa.
Larry Bond slid out of the other car, wearing hunting boots and camouflage pants like a deer hunter. Detective Kyler Kennedy was dressed the same way.
One of the deputies stood smoking a cigarette beside the truck that had pulled the boat’s trailer, looking up at the fast-moving clouds above him-the early feeder-band edge of a doomsday, two-hundred-mile-per-hour grass- skinner. As he made his way over to the arriving Crown Vics, Alexa noticed the large deputy’s shirt was darkly wet where it stuck to his torso.
“Detective Manseur?” the man asked, looking at the two detectives in camouflage at the second car.
“I’m Manseur.”
The deputy turned to the source of the voice. “Sheriff sends his regards, sir. Kip Boudreaux is going to take you back in there. Kip’s been fishing around here all his life. He’s the sheriff’s cousin by marriage. Going back in there without an experienced man is asking for trouble. Going in after Leland Ticholet anytime is looking hard for trouble. Sheriff said if you need any more men, he’ll try to send a couple. But you know what it’s like right now.”
“How will they find us?” Manseur asked.
“Boudreaux is going to leave markers floating so we can find y’all in case you need us. He was in on arresting Leland a few years back, and he can advise you some on him. Only thing for sure is, he’s one badass sombitch, and pepper spray don’t bother him any more’n a cat fart would. Most people live back in here are tough customers or they don’t make it, but people here go miles out of their way to avoid Leland.”
The deputy reached into his back pocket for an envelope. “It’s his mug shot. He’s six three, weighs two-sixty and he ain’t got a inch to pinch on him. If he decides to fight it out, I’d just go on and shoot him like a hog. Won’t nobody miss him. Y’all best be back out before two o’clock with or without him. Wind is going to be picking up by then and the water is going to get choppy.”
Alexa took the envelope, slipped out the picture, and studied the shirtless, wild-eyed young man with a full head of Medusa-like hair and a wild beard specked with twigs and a forehead marked with small crisscrossing scars. His chest and arm muscles looked like they’d been machined from surgical steel and covered with wet nylon. “His hair is short now,” Alexa said, handing the picture to Manseur. “No beard.”
“How’s radio reception out there?” Manseur asked.
“Real good. There’s repeater towers all over, and you can use cell phones most everywhere in the parish these days. Most of that is on account of the oil companies.”
“Okay, then we’ll advise the sheriff when we make the arrest,” Manseur said.
“I guess I could go along if you want extra help,” the fat deputy offered.
“Thanks anyway. You’ve got your hands full with Katrina. I think we can handle this.”
Alexa saw a flood of relief wash over the deputy’s reddened baby-face. He waddled back over to the truck at twice the speed with which he had approached, lighting another cigarette as he went.
Manseur popped the trunk of his car, picked up a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun. He loaded the magazine with 12-gauge buckshot rounds. He did the same with a second shotgun. Alexa took a ballistic vest from the trunk and slipped it on. Manseur put his on, then pulled on a black baseball cap with NOPD emblazoned in gold. He handed Alexa a plain dark blue ball cap and a windbreaker with POLICE in three-inch letters across the shoulders in the rear and the same word in smaller letters over the left breast.
Alexa looked down and noticed that Manseur was wearing his brown wingtips. “Don’t you have any other shoes?”
“These are very comfortable,” he said. “I don’t own any Keds.”
“Keds?” Alexa laughed. “Do they still sell Keds?”
A sudden hissing made Alexa turn. Bond was spraying his ankles with repellant from a green aerosol can.
