“We get mostly heart attacks, cancers, and strokes in this neighborhood. Mrs. Childs caught her robe on fire once. She has scars all over her legs and arms, poor thing. You were to see it, you’d just cry. All that exercising she has to do, but she never complains.”
“Can you remember when you last saw her?”
“Day before yesterday morning. I took her over some sugar cookies. She says I could sell them in grocery stores. I couldn’t make enough to do that.”
Alexa was confused. “You saw Dorothy Fugate day before yesterday morning?”
“Oh, no. I thought we were discussing Mrs. Childs. She doesn’t get out much, she’s eighty-one. All of her family’s left the area. My son offered to take her out of here, because of the hurricane, you know. She might go, but she’s stubborn.”
“When was the last time you saw Ms. Fugate?”
“Maybe Sunday. It was a few days back I saw her when she was taking groceries inside. Didn’t see her after that.” She shook her head. “Most of us are retired. Some young people have started moving in as some started dying or going to nursing homes.” Sadness crossed her eyes. “It’s not a real official neighborhood watch or anything. I had my lawn mower stolen and Mr. Hamilton saw the man and called the police. That was last summer. No, the summer before. He was a black man with pants falling down so his shorts showed plain as day. The police didn’t catch him, said he probably sold it and bought crack to put up his nose. I had a nephew who crushed up his father’s medicines and sniffed them. The police that took the report said I probably wouldn’t get the mower back and I didn’t. Then Mr. Hamilton had a big hanging plant taken right off his porch in broad daylight. A plant, can you imagine that? Why would anyone steal a fern and leave two beefsteak begonias sitting right there. He collects coins. His son’s a plumber, but I don’t use him because he charges way too much and gets the floor dirty and doesn’t clean up behind himself.”
Alexa had to let Ms. Cline talk because the woman might tell her something useful, but now she interrupted since she didn’t have time for the grand tour of the neighbors. “Nobody else coming or going lately?”
“Just you and the salesman this morning, and I thought how unusual it was to see visitors there in the daytime.”
“Salesman?”
“I was waiting on the mailman and I looked out the window and saw the salesman going to the door. That was a little while before you got there.”
“How long?”
Ms. Cline looked at Alexa as though she were an idiot. “Well, you two were inside together. He got there twenty minutes or so before you and came out after you were in there a few minutes.”
“How do you know he was a salesman?”
“Because he was carrying one of those little suitcases.”
“What did he look like?”
“Well, not that I was paying attention or anything, but I noticed the suitcase. He was white. He seemed tall, but I’m not sure. He might have had a sports jacket on, or not. He didn’t look suspicious, so I didn’t look for specifics. You had to see him in there.”
“Did you see his car?” Alexa pressed.
“Come to think of it, he parked down the street. Salesmen do that, going from one house to the next. Like I said, I don’t know kinds of cars, but his looked new and was gray, or silver.”
“Can you remember anything else about him?”
Ms. Cline gazed at Alexa over her glasses. “I’d guess older than you. Are you sure you’re an FBI agent? You’re awfully young and pretty to be one.” She smiled, trying to please the agent.
“Did you see his hair?”
“Red. Oh! I forgot about my cookies!”
“Thank you,” Alexa began, but Ms. Cline had already locked the dead bolt and disappeared. Through the sheers she looked like a body sinking in water.
Kenneth Decell, Alexa thought. That son of a bitch could have broken my neck.
She strode to her car, dialing Manseur as she went.
50
Alexa parked on Broad Street and hurried toward the front of the headquarters building. She was approaching the glass front entrance when someone yelled out her name. She turned to see Veronica Malouf carrying a briefcase hugged to her chest as though it were a baby in distress and she was trying to get it to the emergency room.
“Ms. Malouf,” Alexa said. “I tried to call you a few minutes ago to see what you’d come up with.”
“I couldn’t leave because Dr. Whitfield was closing the office early. So nonessential personnel could evacuate and I had to finish up. My phone battery was dead and I forgot my car charger, which I couldn’t find when I went home for these. Sorry.”
“The files I asked for?”
Veronica ignored the question. “They’re the ones you want. Call if you have any questions.”
Alexa took the valise and said, “If I have any questions, you’re going to answer them in person. After you.”
“But I need to get packed.”
They rode the elevator up in silence. Manseur looked from the papers he was reading as Alexa and Veronica walked into his office. “Agent Keen. Ms. Malouf,” he said.
“Veronica has something for us,” Alexa said, hanging her heavy purse on a chair.
“I hope you brought us a recent picture of Sibby Danielson.”
Veronica Malouf shook her head. “There isn’t one. I looked.”
“Let’s have a look at what you do have,” he said.
51
Alexa was amazed by what she read in the files, but Manseur might have been reading the phone book for all the reaction he showed. Veronica Malouf sat at the end of the conference table, looking into her lap-Marie Antoinette sitting in the ox-drawn cart being delivered to the Place de la Revolution, where a masked executioner with blood-spattered hands awaited her arrival.
“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.