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corrected.
    â€œWe need the make and model of the car he was driving and the license number,” Alexa said.
    Casey handed Alexa a sheet of paper she’d made up with that information on it, as well as Gary’s description.
    â€œWe’ll show ourselves to the door,” Kennedy said. “If you think of anything…” He placed his card on the table. “Twenty-four hours a day.”
    â€œI want to go on, if you need more information,” Casey said.
    â€œThe picture,” Kennedy said as he stood.
    â€œI’ll send it in the morning,” LePointe said. “Now, my niece needs to get some rest.”
    â€œBut—” Casey protested.
    â€œIt’s settled,” LePointe said authoritatively. “I’m the doctor. I’ll have the picture dropped off at your office, Detective. If that’s acceptable?”
    â€œCertainly, sir,” Kennedy said.
    â€œWill you be working on finding Gary, Agent Keen?” Casey asked.
    â€œI’m due to leave in the morning,” Alexa said. “Actually, I should get back to the Marriott.”
    Casey crossed the room, took a framed picture from the shelves, slipped it out of the frame, and handed Kennedy the picture, at an angle that precluded Alexa from seeing it.
    â€œYou are in good hands, Mrs. West,” Alexa said, and left Casey, LePointe, and Kennedy in the kitchen. As she strode up the hallway toward the front door, her footsteps muted by the Oriental runners, she looked at the art on the walls for the first time. She loved art and had taken an advanced art appreciation class in college, so she knew that the paintings she saw were very valuable. Out of the ten paintings she saw on her way out, she recognized a Joan Miró oil she had seen in a book of his work, and a Marc Chagall. There was a large Rothko oil in the dining room. In a den she saw several framed Avedon photographs, including an incredibly large picture of Andy Warhol’s wounded torso. The mantel in that room held dozens of framed pictures, most of which included Gary West. He was a strikingly handsome man.
    When Alexa exited the house, Manseur was walking back from the street. The superintendent and the other detectives had left or were driving away.
    â€œSo, what you think?” he asked her.
    â€œI think I need to go back to the hotel.”
    â€œSo, you think there’s anything to this?” he asked her as they walked toward the gate. “Do you think he could have been abducted?”
    â€œI think you have a D11 on your hands.”
    â€œThat FBI jargon for something?”
    â€œIt’s a model of a bulldozer,” Alexa said. “I’m referring to Dr. LePointe. I suspect he’s right that Gary West will come home. If not, maybe Dr. LePointe will allow your Detective Kennedy to start some sort of investigation. Two things I can tell you for certain.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œCasey West worships her husband, and Dr. LePointe is accustomed to calling the tunes.”

7
    Elliot Parnell, as a Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries enforcement officer, was keeping his eye on the hurricane because it could affect his beat adversely. If there was a mandatory evacuation, he would have to run all over the lakes and channels making residents leave. Most of the people who lived in his district were dumb as snakes, and he’d have his work cut out for him. He hoped the storm turned: he had a lot more important job to do than shooing cow-brained swampers from their hovels.
    Parnell was a patient man. He had been employed as an enforcement officer for the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission for eighteen years. For each of those years—night and day in every kind of weather condition—he had been outrunning scofflaws when necessary, outsmarting them when possible. His job was to catch offenders who dared to take more game or fish than the laws of Louisiana allowed, hunt or fish without