97

At five o’clock, under fast-moving clouds, Alexa parked on the street in front of the Tulane Medical Center. As she climbed from the Bucar, a powerful gust of wind that peppered her face with dust also snatched the door from her grasp, slammed it, and, lifting her all-weather coat, flapped it behind her like a flag. A second later, just as abruptly as it had struck, the demon windblast was gone.

With so much on her mind, Alexa had not been monitoring the approaching hurricane. According to the last report she’d heard, it was still six or seven hours away. Now with the leading edges of the feeder bands ruling the skies, it was easy to believe the monster storm was coming.

Alexa knew that she’d better start making a serious effort to wind things up and get out of the city before Katrina came roaring up the Mississippi River. The idea of being trapped in a geographic bowl as it filled with dark water was a sobering thought.

Alexa entered the hospital room where a cleaned-up Sibby Danielson lay in a bed, her wrists and ankles secured with fleece-lined leather restraints. Her long gray hair had dried and had been combed. And she was smiling like a sleeping child.

A young doctor entered and hung a chart off the end of the bed. “She doesn’t look like a killer,” he remarked.

“No, she doesn’t,” Alexa said. “Did she say anything?”

“Talked total nonsense nonstop until we sedated her. Yakata, yakata, yakata. Took enough happy juice to knock out an elephant. She’s built up quite a resistance to it.”

You don’t know the half of it. “What sort of nonsense?” Alexa asked him.

“Gibberish. Rhyming nonsense. A few choice vulgarities peppered in.”

The doctor left the room and Alexa drew close to the bed and stared down at the woman, who looked like a heavier and older version of her daughter, one of New Orleans’s wealthiest citizens. Alexa’s heart went out to the woman who had spent the past three decades wrapped up in a cocoon of illness. She couldn’t imagine the torture this creature had suffered at the hands of the powerful for one night’s actions she hadn’t been capable of preventing herself from doing. Sibby wasn’t evil, but as pure a victim as there was. Alexa felt herself close to tears.

“Sleep, Sibby,” Alexa said, close to tears. “You’ve earned it.” She picked up her purse, and when she looked back at Sibby, the woman’s eyes were open and searching the room wildly.

“Sibby?” Alexa said.

“Sibhon. Sibby. Sibhon.” Her intonation was as flat as a tabletop.

“Sibhon.” Alexa smiled down at her.

Sibby’s eyes darted around as though she were looking for someone else, perhaps a point of reference.

Suddenly she fixed Alexa in her gaze. Her lips curled back from her yellowed teeth. “Sibhon. Remember. Never forget.”

Alexa nodded. “Are you comfortable?”

“Cut the cop. Cut the fog. Sibby. Sibby. Sibby. Here I am. Don’t forget. Never quit. Tell the lies. Find them always where they hide. Say the poems. Say the poems. Find the poems.”

“You know a poem?”

Sibby smiled and nodded rapidly. She closed her eyes. “Stop saying I did it. Tell a lie. Stick a needle in Sibby’s eye. Fucker man, the fucker man. Put the chopper in my hand. Windy rain. Windy rain. The stinky nurse is here again. Lie bitch, lie bitch, I know the trues. I never lose if I still can choose. The baby comes, the liars go. The smiling cop deserves a blow. Tell the people what you know. Fucker man, the fucker man. Put the chopper in my hand.”

“Sibby, what does that mean?” Alexa asked.

“God is love. Love is God. The Trinity. Heaven is the carrot on the stick. Hell is the bullwhip to keep you straight. The Mother Church is the name brand.”

“Sibby, do you know who put you in the motel?”

“Stop saying she did it. Tell that lie. Stick a needle in Sibby’s eye. Fucker man, the fucker man. Put the chopper in my hand. Windy rain. Windy rain. The stinky nurse is here again. Lie bitch, lie bitch, I know the trues. I never lose while I still can choose. The baby comes, the liars go. The smiling cop deserves a blow. Tell the people what you know.”

“Do you remember Dr. LePointe and Nurse Fugate?”

Sibby closed her eyes. “Fucker man, fucker man…”

Alexa felt a surge of excitement shoot through her. She dug into her purse for the mini tape recorder.