The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  “Sonny! Get the epinephrine!”

  “Where do they keep it?”

  “Just find it, goddammit! And get us some help.”

  Sonny started rummaging. There had to be a kit somewhere.

  “Where the hell is that tech?”

  The resident had started CPR. It would keep her breathing, but they could stop the thing if Sonny could find the epinephrine.

  “Get us some help, dammit!”

  Sonny picked up the phone. “Code Thirty-three,” he said. “Seventh floor.”

  He looked some more for the kit. Where the hell was that tech?

  “How’re we doing?” The tech was back, smiling.

  “She’s gone into anaphylactic shock. Where’s the epinephrine?”

  Her smile faded along with her languor. She moved quickly, had the epinephrine kit in hand in five seconds, maybe less. “Put it in her IV,” said the resident.

  “It’s fallen out.”

  “What?”

  “This lady weighs about half a ton, and you’re doing chest compressions—what do you expect?”

  There wasn’t time to start sticking her arm experimentally. Three minutes must have passed already.

  “Goddamn! Jesus shit!” The resident was falling apart.

  Sonny said, “Under her tongue.”

  The resident gave him a look of pure hate, as if he’d killed the patient. But he opened her mouth and lifted her tongue, where he knew he’d find a vein. It was too late; her body shuddered and gave up.

  He refused to accept it, injected the stuff anyway. Sonny knew he would have done the same thing. “Sonny. Chest compressions.” He and the resident did them together. And that was how they found them when they answered the code, still pumping rhythmically, the resident pale but resigned, Sonny’s face fierce in its desperation.

  Later on the roof, gulping air he could practically drink, it was so humid, that fairly burned as it entered his lungs, Sonny thought of gentle hands smoothing out the furrow between his eyes, massaging the muscles of his face, making it all go away. Not Missy’s. Missy’s ministrations would come with a thousand kisses, a thousand words of praise and admonitions that it wasn’t his fault, a thousand suggestions on how to handle it in life, in his profession, in his heart of hearts. Missy would not rest until she had split every atom of his psyche, pieced each one back together, and re-arranged them to make a rosy new picture.

  All he wanted was the fingers.

  FIVE

  SKIP HADN’T CLOSED the Goodwill sofa she slept on, instead had made it up as if it were a real bed in an actual bedroom instead of nearly the only thing in her studio apartment. She needed the surface for packing, and for Jimmy Dee Scoggin, her neighbor and landlord, who reclined as she worked.

  The air was scented with pot smoke, Skip abstaining but getting an atmospheric high. “Officer Darlin’, it doesn’t have to be like this, you know. Some squalid apartment out of The Day of the Locust, that bear of a human crawling all over your petite little person…”

  “Dee-Dee, what is it with you and Steve?” Frustrated, she threw her hair-dryer so hard it thumped against the suitcase. “You’ve never asked me to travel with you before.”

  He bestirred himself to grab her wrist, bring it to his lips, and nibble. “I’m in love with your itsy-bitsy bone structure.”

  She jerked away. “Oh, cut it out.”

  “Do I detect a note of genuine irritation? Darling, is it our first fight?”

  “Dammit, yes. I could have taken two vacations. I’d love to have gone diving with you, no matter if I didn’t have your full and complete attention. I’d especially love it at your expense. You invited me just to tease me.”

  “True. True, I did.”

  She faced him. “And to keep me from seeing Steve.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” But he rolled off the bed and went to the kitchen, anything so he didn’t have to look her in the eye. She couldn’t understand why Jimmy Dee hated Steve so much. For months he’d been telling her she had to get out, trying to get her to buy clothes she could wear on dates, even introducing her once to one of his straight friends, and the minute she took his advice he got huffy about it.

  “Dixie?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She heard the top pop open. “I just think you could have found somebody more…”

  “More what? Go ahead and say it.”

  “Okay. More your own size.”

  “Oh, can it, Dee-Dee—if you and I made love, I’d crush you.”

  “Yeah, but I’d love it so much.”

  “More what else, landlord?”

  “More local.”

  “Oh, pish-tush—you’d really hate that.”

  Not only was the conversation inane, they’d had it about fifty times lately. She needed it and she knew Dee-Dee did too. She’d realized, once she caught on to how jealous he was of Steve, that Jimmy Dee really loved her. She was half his age, twice his size, and not his type—he preferred men—but something in her had touched him. They had both been depressed when she moved in—Skip for so many reasons she kept losing track of them, Jimmy Dee because he’d lost friends and knew he’d lose more, because he’d taken a vow of celibacy, because he’d seen his whole world come apart with the AIDS epidemic. He had taken Skip on as a project.

  Now that she had Steve, they spoke this way to each other—it was easier on both of them than spewing mush, gave them a vocabulary they hadn’t previously had for expressing affection.

  “I just want you to be happy,” he said.

  Skip feigned vomiting and Jimmy Dee changed the subject. “So how come Joe’s letting you go in the middle of a case?”

  “I got down on my knees and begged.”

  “Is that all you did down there?”

  “No. I unzipped his fly and…” She stopped, licking her lips. “…and then…”

  “Yes?”

  “I slipped my hand in…”

  “Go on.”

  “…and let go of the stack of bills I was holding.”

  “You disappoint me, Tiny One.”

  “I know. I should have gone to law school—I’d be a much better liar today.”

  “Now if I’d told that one…”

  “Spare me, Counselor.” She shrugged, returning to Jimmy Dee’s nearly forgotten question. “He let me make the choice. Three days and three nights—”

  “I notice you’re looking a little wan.”

  “—and I haven’t gotten diddly. He doesn’t think I’m going to get anything, and neither do I.” She sighed and held up a pair of walking shorts. “Okay for L.A.?”

  “If you wear them with some kind of metallic-spattered T-shirt.”

  “I’m pretty upset about it, to tell you the truth.”

  “But it’s nothing a bear of a man can’t fix.”

  “I’m not kidding, Dee-Dee. It’s a professional failure. Not a trace. Not lead one. Every idea exhausted and nowhere else to go. It was such a nasty murder, too.”

  “Don’t think about it, Snookums. Think about hard cocks and firm asses.”

  “Obviously you don’t understand the spiritual nature of my relationship.”

  Jimmy Dee took a deep drag on his joint, held the smoke, and said: “How was she killed?”

  “Strangled bare-handed. By somebody who probably wore gloves.”

  “Was she raped?”

  “I thought you said not to think about it.”

  “I changed my mind. You need to talk.” He touched her wrist.

  Without knowing she was going to, she sat on the bed, her packing forgotten. “I do. You’re right, I do.” The words poured out. “Dee-Dee, it’s the weirdest thing. There was no evidence of sexual assault, no sign of a struggle, no trace of drugs or alcohol. Not a thing in her stomach but coffee. No pregnancy. Nothing! And she doesn’t know a soul in town except her landlord and the people at the office.”

  “Gotta watch those landlords.”

  “Hers couldn’t strangle a ge
rbil. And let me tell you something else. There wasn’t any physical evidence either. Like the guy wasn’t even there long enough to leave hairs or fibers.”

  “And no prints, of course.”

  “Not only no prints, but no surfaces had been obviously wiped. Like he’d worn gloves. And it’s August, Dee-Dee.”

  “In other words, we’re talking premeditation.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “I wonder if she had a date with him. You have coffee on a first date, don’t you?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “They had coffee, he brought her home, and then he strangled her.”

  “If I were heterosexual, I guess I’d say, ‘I’ve had those kinds of dates.’ ”

  “Right. Everybody jokes about it. Nobody does it. You don’t strangle someone you don’t know.”

  “Unless you’re crazy.”

  “Nobody she knows got her a blind date, so where’d she meet the guy?”

  “Maybe she advertised—or answered an ad.”

  Skip shrugged. “No rough drafts of ads lying around; no copies of Gambit; no receipts, bills, telephone messages, or any other kinds of notes that might indicate that. She could have run into a stranger on the street who said, ‘You’re gorgeous; let’s have coffee.’ ”

  For once in his life, Dee-Dee looked grave. “That’s probably what happened.”

  “Well, how the hell am I supposed to track the guy down?”

  “Maybe she belonged to a church group. Or a singles club.”

  Skip stood in frustration and started throwing panties and nylons into her bag. “For Christ’s sake, Dee-Dee. I’ve been working on this thing for three days—don’t you think I thought of that?”

  “My. Aren’t we touchy.”

  “Sorry. I feel like a failure, that’s all.”

  He rolled over on his stomach. “Guess you need a vacation.”

  “I feel weird about that—I don’t even know if I can enjoy it.”

  The phone rang. Jimmy Dee answered and handed it over.

  It was Jim Hodges, another Homicide detective. “Bad news. Real bad news.”

  “Oh, shit. Another scarlet A.”

  “I just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Are you there now? I’m coming.”

  “Forget it, Skip. I got it handled.”

  “I’m not going to L.A.”

  “Hey, don’t be a martyr. I wouldn’t have called if I thought you were going to act crazy.”

  “Jim, you’ve got to give it to me, you owe me—I took one for you when your wife was in the hospital.”

  “Aren’t you looking at things a little bit backwards?” Nevertheless he gave her the address.

  “You didn’t want to go anyway,” said Jimmy Dee when she had hung up. He ruffled her hair and left with the slightly smug expression he got after smoking half a joint by himself.

  Steve hadn’t been home when she called, a good thing in a way—there wasn’t time to talk—but she ached to hear his voice even for a moment, to be reassured he’d be there when she could come.

  As she drove, she found him more and more on her mind. It was odd, she thought, that when she was on her way to him, all but on the plane, all she could think about was Linda Lee, and now that she had work to do, he wouldn’t leave her alone.

  Two patrol cars were parked in front of the tiny house off Elysian Fields, a house so badly in need of paint you could tell it in the dark.

  Every light in the living room was on, and Skip saw that Gottschalk from the crime lab was already at work. Hodges, a sad-looking black man, was shaking his head, looking even more miserable than usual. Skip had noticed that no matter how long some officers worked Homicide, they never got hardened. “The day I get used to it,” Joe had told her, “is the day I quit the department.”

  The corpse was crumpled near the far end of the room, not barely inside the door as before. There were two other important differences, the first almost mind-boggling, it seemed to Skip—the victim was a man.

  Even without sexual assault, she’d been so sure the killer was the sort of lunatic who preyed on women. And now she knew why she’d been reluctant to take her vacation—she’d known, deep down, that he’d do it again. But she’d imagined a kind of slaughter of the innocents—young women victims like Linda Lee without enough street-smarts not to talk to strangers.

  She was looking now at a man in his late fifties, maybe early sixties. Like Linda Lee, he’d been dead awhile. He had strangulation marks on his neck and a jagged cut on his arm. A knife lay on the living room floor, a brown stain on the blade. The second difference was the A on the wall—it wasn’t scarlet at all, but matched the stain on the knife.

  Even that wasn’t the weirdest part of the scene. Beside the body, as if the victim had dropped it when he was attacked, was a child’s teddy bear.

  That alarmed her. “Is there a kid here?” she blurted. Hodges said, “I had the same thought. Nobody home but Tom.”

  “Tom?”

  He inclined his head toward the floor. “That’s Tom Mabus, a waiter at the Orleans House. Had the same job for fifteen years, never missed a day.”

  “You know him?”

  “No, but I got you a witness. I had a bet with Cappello—she said you were going to want this one. So, okay, it’s yours. Since I owe you one. You must have some understanding boyfriend.”

  “Thanks, Jim.”

  He gave her an avuncular look: You’l1 outgrow this eager-beaver stuff.

  “Where’s my witness?”

  “In one of the patrol cars, not feeling too good. He’s Tom’s boss.” He looked at his notes. “A Mr. Derek Brown. Tom didn’t show up for work; he investigated—found the body.” He laughed. “Don’t think he’s ever seen one before.”

  “Okay. Let me look around and then I’ll get to him. Are you out of here?”

  He looked almost regretful. “If you really want this turkey.”

  The furniture was old and dusty, smelled mildewy. Everything was shabby, poorly kept. The sheets on the unmade bed were gray. It looked like the house of a man who didn’t know how to take care of it, perhaps a man whose wife had recently died. Alternatively, maybe it was the home of a depressed person, someone with barely enough energy to go to work, come home, turn on the TV. Or maybe an alcoholic. No one very happy.

  Derek Brown, sweating and mopping his face every few seconds, was ten or twenty years Tom’s junior, with thinning blond hair and a narrow strip of mustache. His breath was coming in gulps and he was pale.

  “You need air,” said Skip. “Want to come out and talk to me?”

  He shook his head. “I need to sit down.”

  “I’ll get you a chair.” She went inside and brought out two straight-backed dining room chairs. “You can’t stay in there. It’s like a sauna.”

  It wasn’t unlike a sauna in the evening air. Brown’s light blue suit was damp and limp. “I should have got somebody to come with me,” he said. “I knew when Tom didn’t answer the phone it was bad. Real bad. I’m not saying I didn’t half-expect to find him dead, but not like this.” He shook his head, willing away the grisly spectacle.

  “Had he been ill?”

  “It’s not that. It’s that he never misses work.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Tom? There’s not much to tell, I guess.” Again, he shook his head. “He was a sports fan.”

  “That’s what he talked about? Sports?”

  “Yeah. Loved to keep up.”

  “What about his personal life?”

  “He lived alone, we all knew that. Last year when he got the flu, we were all worried about him, I remember that.” He brightened. “But he had a daughter. She came and took care of him.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Yeah. Just can’t call it to mind, that’s all. Give me a minute.”

  “Okay. Do you know who his friends were? Did he belong to any social groups? Church?”

  He shook his head.
“Edna! That’s his daughter. Edna. I know it because it’s the only name he ever mentioned. He talked about her a little, but nobody else.”

  “Grandchildren?”

  Brown looked puzzled. “I don’t know. Seems like he would have said if he had any. Shown pictures and all.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “Did you notice the teddy bear in there?”

  “Yeah. What do you think that’s about?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you.”

  “Do you know if he knew a woman named Linda Lee Strickland? Young woman, pretty. Blond. Did you ever see him with anyone like that?”

  “Are you kidding? Tom Mabus?”

  Later, she found the neighbors were pretty much of the same mind—Tom Mabus was the last person in the world anyone would want to know, much less murder. He offended no one and apparently interested no one. He was a nice man, a quiet man, never had friends over, didn’t go out much, watched television a lot. No one had seen anyone with him the day before—or ever—except for his daughter.

  There was an Edna Purcell in his address book who lived on the West Bank, in Marrero.

  It was a modest neighborhood, a modest house, but still better than the one she’d grown up in if she’d been raised in Tom Mabus’s.

  She was overweight, plain, tired-looking. She had on no makeup and wore a pink quilted robe, though the suffocating mugginess still hung in the air.

  Inside, a massive man with heavy eyebrows sat in front of a TV, a Dixie beer in his hand. True to stereotype, he wore a T-shirt stretched over his belly, thick chest hair escaping at the top. His forehead protruded.

  The house was like a refrigerator; Skip marveled to think of the Purcells’ electric bills.

  “Darryl, Daddy’s dead.” Her face was a mask; she hadn’t taken it in yet.

  Her husband looked at her with such sudden and unexpected tenderness it tore at Skip’s heart. “Oh, honey.”

  The look on her husband’s face was enough; Edna got it, and fell into his outstretched arms, belated sobs escaping her. Skip stood awkwardly in the background.

  Finally, Darryl Purcell said, “Edna, I think this lady wants to talk to you,” and the Southerner in Edna, the perfect-hostess-in-any-circumstances, dried her eyes and turned to her guest.