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

by Julie Smith

  “So she couldn’t be the Axeman?”

  “Sure she could. Good combination of organized and disorganized characteristics. But personally I like Abe, just because he’s the biggest creep of all. Don’t you love the way everything’s always everybody else’s fault?”

  O’Rourke asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Murderers justify their acts. That’s easy to do if everybody else is in the wrong. Now Alex. He’s a kind of a mirror image of Di. She’s got to have men, he’s got to have women. He’s emotionally about five years old, and anybody here who has kids knows I’m talking seriously dangerous. I’m tempted to say his attention span’s probably too short to kill three people, but you never know—I once saw the damage after a five-year-old took a whole house apart.

  “Sonny’s so screwed up he’s not even going to figure out how bad it is till he’s forty-five or fifty, and by then he’ll probably be a drunk. Killers don’t usually look quite so nicey-nice, but trust me—there’s some real turbulence under that bland facade. Skip’s told me about her interview with his brother—he had an early family life consistent with a killer’s, but so did nearly all of them.

  “Missy, for instance. History of abuse. On the surface she looks like a victim rather than a criminal, but you know how much rage you’d have if you’d been through what she has?”

  “Is that fair?” said Cappello. “The average incest survivor isn’t a killer.”

  “The average person who fits any of the profiles may not be a killer. A killer identifies with the aggressor and—oh, hell, who knows what turns them? That’s what we don’t know. Why two people can have parallel experiences and one’s a serial murderer, the other’s a psychologist.”

  “What,” said O’Rourke, “are you getting at?”

  “I’m just making a few observations, that’s all. Just noticing that everybody who shared last night looks normal, looks good if you just know them casually, meet them on the street or something. Interview them in the course of an investigation. But every one of ’em’s crazy as a bedbug.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Hodges. “I saw ’em too, you know. We all did. They’re no crazier than anybody else.”

  “I didn’t say they were.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  SINCE DI LIVED near Skip, she figured she might as well have breakfast at home. And besides, she had some unfinished business with Steve.

  He was dressed and making coffee. “Hi, gorgeous. Catch him yet?”

  “Don’t gorgeous me. You’re not just a witness anymore. You’re an alibi.”

  “Whose?” He handed her a full mug.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t even know.”

  “Well, I could sure take a guess. One of your suspects did happen to say she was really enjoying talking to me and even invited me home for a cup of herb tea. And I did happen to go.”

  “You didn’t mention that last night.”

  “I just didn’t get to it, that’s all. I said I walked Di to her car. I didn’t say what I did then.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  “Twenty minutes max. I don’t even know why I went except for maybe some crazy idea about getting closer to the whole scene. Anyway, it was coltsfoot tea or some damn thing that tasted like poison, and I found I couldn’t hack more than fifty or sixty preposterous misstatements to the quarter-hour. I thought I was tough, but forget it. I’ve got a new respect for you girls in blue.

  “I would say ‘women in blue,’ but you’d say if you’ve got ‘boys in blue,’ why not ‘girls,’ and the whole thing would just get stupid and predictable.”

  But Steve was warming up to full-tilt rant and couldn’t be stopped: “What planet is that woman from? I didn’t come all the way here from California just to meet someone dippier than my next-door neighbor, Rainbow Circle Melamed-Gutierrez, who is not, no matter what you’re thinking, the unfortunate offspring of two unacquainted burnouts who got it on at Altamont and never saw each other again, but a plump, cheerful fifty-five-year-old with hair three feet out on all sides, talons from acrylic heaven, four inches of makeup, and crystals down to her knees. She’s a ‘personal effectiveness coach’ who never eats anything with eyes and also happens to channel the entity Michael. Do you know what she told me?”

  “Rainbow?”

  “No, Di. I complimented her driving and she said she was a race car driver in another life. So I mentioned that if she was, her career must have gone up in flames, so to speak, since she’d have to have died about the time cars were invented in order to have time to get reincarnated and live to whatever age she is now. You know what she said to that?”

  “Something about linear time and real time, I bet.”

  “You got it. She could be a race car driver right now, as a matter of fact, and probably is. It’s just in a parallel universe.” He shook his head like a wet dog. “So how long does she say I stayed?”

  “She was having so much fun she lost track of time.”

  “If she really meant to go out and murder that girl, why didn’t she just go do it? She saw Abe staying with Nini, she knew the coast was clear then—why ask me over for tea?”

  “How do I know? Maybe coltsfoot tea makes her homicidal. Maybe she only kills when she’s sexually frustrated. Cindy Lou’s the motive expert, not me.”

  “Cindy Lou? The smart woman who came to coffee?”

  “I love you. You know that?” Okay, I’ve done it. I’ve said the L word.

  “Huh? Isn’t this a weird time to be getting romantic?”

  “You didn’t say ‘the beautiful woman who came to coffee.’ ”

  “Oh, is that all? What about the multifaceted Cindy Lou?”

  “I said she’s the motive expert—she’s a psychologist working on the case with us.”

  “Hey, come to think of it, something weird happened—Cindy Lou’s name just reminded me. I got to Di’s house first. I had to wait for fifteen minutes, and when she did show up, she was driving like the proverbial bat. That’s how the race car thing came up. She said Cindy Lou yelled at her and asked directions, and they got to talking and she couldn’t get away. I thought it sounded kind of thin.”

  “Oh, brother. First she strangles a kid and then she makes herself a nice cup of tea.”

  “A revolting cup of tea.”

  “Well, we can’t rule her out. She’s got—”

  “She’s got what?”

  Skip had almost said she had a criminal record, but remembered in time that it was none of Steve’s business. “She’s got my full attention, I’m afraid. Anyway, we can ask Cindy Lou if that happened.”

  First she canvassed Di’s neighbors, in case there was someone nosy in the building. Sure enough, Rosemary Scariano upstairs had heard Di come home with someone, had heard that person leave a few minutes later (had even taken a peek to see if he was cute), and in another few minutes had heard Di leave. But she’d turned on her TV after that and had no idea when Di came back.

  So Di had lied. She’s said she hadn’t gone out after she got back from PJ’s.

  Skip wondered how the killer had gotten in. It would have been easier for a woman. Much easier. What young girl would open the door to a man she didn’t know? But how about if a pretty woman showed up and said, “I’m Abe’s friend Wanda Jo and he’s right behind me in his car”? Who wouldn’t let her in?

  Miraculously, there was a bar across the street from Di’s apartment. Not that there weren’t bars on every corner, but this one, in view of the stifling weather, had its door flung open so that a person inside could sit at a comfortable table nursing a Diet Coke and stare at Di’s doorway till closing time. Which in New Orleans was never.

  Di apparently had a rented parking space at the hotel next door to her building. She had to go there and wait for the attendant to bring her car, which would give Skip plenty of time to get hers. She came out shortly before noon and went to the Perrier Club. Then she had lunch alone, went shopping for T-shirts, and drove to Merc
y Hospital.

  Skip consulted her twelve-step schedules and noted there was a meeting there, which meant Di wouldn’t be out for a good hour. She phoned Cindy Lou.

  “Di told Steve she was late getting home last night because you asked for directions.”

  “Di lied,” said Cindy Lou.

  Di lied and Di was late. Possibly just late enough.

  When the meeting was over Di went home, stayed there about half an hour, and came out wearing white pants and the peacock-blue T-shirt she’d just bought. She had on canvas shoes that matched the T-shirt. Dressed for a casual dinner perhaps, maybe even a date.

  Di couldn’t understand why she hadn’t heard from him; why he hadn’t shown up, hadn’t answered his phone. She couldn’t stand it. She had to see him, make sure he was all right, that they were all right. If Missy was there, so be it.

  In answer to her ring, he came out on his balcony. “Di! What’s up?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.” Shrugging. Not overjoyed.

  She had been to his place only once before, and was taken aback once again at how spartan it was. Again she remembered similar apartments from her own children’s student days and felt momentarily disoriented. But he’s not a student student, she told herself. He’s a medical student.

  Sonny answered his door wearing pants with the belt unbuckled and a half-buttoned white Oxford cloth shirt. “What is it, Di?”

  He really didn’t know, he’d completely forgotten.

  He stood aside for her, closed the door when she stepped in, and turned immediately on his heel, buckling his belt as he went, heading back to the bedroom, his new puppy at his heels. She stared after him a moment, then decided he meant her to heel as well.

  He was putting on a tie.

  “Isn’t it hot for that?”

  He shrugged.

  “You must be going someplace special.”

  “Dinner with my parents.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you’re all right. I mean, you’re usually so reliable. It’s so unusual for you to say you’ll do something you don’t.”

  He wasn’t himself at all, the sunny Sonny she knew, who loved to be with her, whom she inspired; she knew it. He was cold, rejecting, seemed to want her to leave. But his eye lit on something on his dresser, a piece of paper, and his face cleared like the sky after a storm. “Di, remember when you thought I was a poet? Well, I’m doing it. I’m writing a poem.”

  “Sonny, did you remember we had a date last night?”

  “Last night was the inner-child meeting.”

  “You were going to come over afterward.”

  He started, jumped as if icy fingers had touched him or she had shouted, “Boo!”

  “Don’t you know why I didn’t come, Di? Couldn’t you guess?”

  “Sure. You forgot.”

  “I had to take care of Missy! Didn’t you see the way she was at that meeting? Do you think I could just leave her off at home?” He turned to face her, his face red, his voice furious.

  “But you came back.”

  “What?”

  “You came back to PJ’s after you dropped her off.”

  “Well, I went right back when I didn’t find her keys.”

  Had she had some kind of giant failure of compassion? Missy had seemed okay at PJ’s.

  “Sonny, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize.”

  “And then I came home and worked on the poem. I’d think you’d be glad about that. It was your idea.”

  His face was still red, his voice still angry. He couldn’t seem to shake whatever was bothering him.

  Idly, she picked up the piece of paper. The poem was titled “The Physician.”

  Smooth cuts the knife

  and a life is ruined. He is at the end

  of his path:

  His path of destruction.

  The metaphor is complete now;

  He has a lump he can palpate,

  a scar he can fondle.

  The healer as evil twin:

  Nelag, Galen backward.

  He lives on the edge, on the precipice,

  (though some would say on the cutting edge

  and perhaps he would say it himself).

  But she is destroyed.

  So smooth cuts the knife.

  Di said, “It’s about me!”

  “No it’s not. Look at the title.”

  “Well, it’s still about me.”

  “Di, do you know who I am?”

  Was he losing his marbles? What was she supposed to say to that? “You don’t seem yourself, that’s for sure.”

  “You know, don’t you?”

  She’d never seen him like this, his beautiful, bland face distorted with anger and pain. Pain.

  She hadn’t seen that before, but suddenly she knew it had always been there, only slightly below the surface. It was there if you looked hard enough, and she never had; probably nobody ever did. She was sorry she’d seen it.

  She hated him like this, wanted the old Sonny back. She tried for levity: “You look like the Axeman right now.”

  She came closer to him, dared, despite the psychic shield around him, to reach out and stroke his hair. Childlike frustration, utter unbelieving misery replaced his anger. “What are you trying to do to me?”

  How dare she come to his house? And why? What was wrong with this woman? It was getting to be like “Play Misty for Me,” except that in the movie, the crazy woman had been in love.

  How dare she come to his house? And why? Did she know who he was? Maybe she was playing out some kind of drama with him, watching him dangle.

  I could ask her.

  But he knew he wouldn’t. Because maybe she didn’t know, and if she didn’t, he didn’t want her to find out. He hadn’t yet gotten over the shock of hearing his father described as a butcher, wouldn’t have given it the slightest credence if he hadn’t seen her body himself.

  It was such an odd turn of fate, his meeting her, making love to her, and then her saying all that. Publicly. So that he would be sure to hear it, to feel the knife twisting.

  It was too odd. Had she somehow found out his last name, had Missy told it perhaps? Had he slipped up, phoning about one of those group parties? “This is Sonny Gerard and I’d love to come on Saturday.” Forgetting he meant to be anonymous.

  At first he had taken the anonymity so seriously simply because he was embarrassed. Embarrassed to be going to some stupid meeting where adults played with teddy bears. Embarrassed to be pushed around by his girlfriend. Embarrassed that he didn’t have the balls to say no. And really, really deeply embarrassed that he actually liked the meetings, felt purged when he’d been to one, the way church was supposed to make you feel.

  That was the original reason he’d so guarded his identity. But now he saw how vulnerable he was. And he still didn’t know what had happened. Had she singled him out to toy with as some sort of bizarre revenge on his father, or had the whole thing been coincidental? And if it was a revenge, was this all? Or was there more?

  He was afraid of her. She looked like some mythical beast to him now, half snake and half woman, some creature who came in the night to steal splinters of his soul. Look at her, reading his poem. “It’s about me!”

  Could she possibly be so narcissistic?

  Could and was. The universe centered around her.

  The laugh he had thought so charming seemed now a cackle, the frivolous wrongheadedness that had so delighted him now seemed her attempt to twist the laws of nature to Di’s Law.

  Nothing about her behavior made sense. What was she doing here? Either she was evil and she was continuing her plan to hurt him because his father had hurt her, or she was forming an obsession with him like the woman in the movie. But he was still nagged by the fundamental difference—the woman in the movie believed she was in love. With Di it was nothing like that.

  If she formed an obsession with a man, it would be no different from one she might form with a red fox co
at or a ruby bracelet—when she saw something she wanted, she was ruthless. He knew that. When she seduced him, she cared nothing for Missy, didn’t even pretend, just took what she wanted. He had a feeling there’d be trouble if it was withheld from her.

  There was already trouble. She was right here in his house, uninvited, and saying he’d stood her up.

  But he hadn’t stood her up. He had absolutely no recollection of making a date with her for last night.

  Perhaps she was crazy. Maybe it was just that simple.

  He heard his own voice ask, “What are you trying to do to me?”

  She said, “Sonny? Sonny, are you all right?”

  Now what? What did she mean, was he all right? Was this some kind of Gaslight scheme?

  The longer she stayed, the more confused he got; therefore there could be but one solution. He had to get rid of her.

  He used a line he had learned from Missy, who had gotten it from her therapist: “This isn’t a good time.” He turned away from her and began tying his tie, feeling her presence, her body heat, more than seeing what she was doing. It was like staring someone down, only the object was the opposite—to avoid eye contact. She stayed awhile, and then she left.

  Missy arrived almost immediately. Thinking she might have seen Di leaving, he told her Di had been there.

  “What did she want?”

  “Me. I think.”

  “What! She’s probably over forty!”

  More likely over fifty. “Maybe it wasn’t that,” he said. “She was acting weird. Like she was here to help me with something. Like there was something wrong with me.”

  “She says she used to be a shrink, you know.”

  “Does she?”

  “Should we tell Skip about her? Is she acting that weird?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t know if she’d really been out of line or if his growing revulsion for her only made it seem so.