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

by Julie Smith

  Stunned, Missy turned toward him. “Sonny!”

  Not the most brilliant comeback of the century, but Skip winced at the raw emotion of it. It was in her eyes too. She loved him. Even knowing what she knew, she loved him.

  “I want to tell you what happened. Nobody ever believed me. I want to tell you. I want to tell everybody here. Is everybody listening?”

  Missy said, “I’m listening, Sonny.”

  Other than that, the quiet was impenetrable.

  “Gan-Gan told me I was the only one who could save him. He said he was going to die if he didn’t get the medicine. He said all the doctors were wrong—he was the only one who knew what could save him and they wouldn’t give him enough of the medicine. But if I gave it to him, he’d get well.”

  At Skip’s ear, his dad said, “Bullshit!”

  She said, “What really happened?”

  “The boy was just careless, that’s all. He gave his granddad his medication—that was one of his jobs. It was how we got him to learn how to tell time. He’d wait for the time for the medicine, and get it, and give the dose, and then take it back.”

  “Pretty big responsibility for a little kid.”

  “He comes from a medical family, Officer.”

  “Well, I still don’t understand what happened.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? He forgot to put it back; the next time my father was in pain, he got confused and took too many. That’s why we never left it near him.”

  “He was in very bad pain?”

  “Terrible. Nobody should ever have to see their father suffer the way I saw mine suffer.”

  “How do you know he didn’t say that to the boy? That he’d be cured if he took it all?”

  Robson answered angrily, a doctor snapping at a stupid nurse, “Because he wouldn’t, that’s why.”

  Skip’s guts twisted. If I feel like this, how could Missy feel?

  Uneasily, she looked to see how Missy was, and was later grateful for the instinct that made her do it. “Sonny! Oh, Sonny!” Missy started to run toward him.

  Skip grabbed her around the waist. “No, Missy.”

  Sonny shouted, “Stay where you are, Missy! You can’t help me and you can’t help Alex. I just wanted you to know. I know what my father told you.”

  Skip still held her, and she was shaking now, her body about to crumple. “Missy, try to hold it together, okay? Can you stand up by yourself? Try.”

  Obediently, Missy pulled her body up. “Shall I let you go?” Missy nodded.

  “Cindy Lou, what if she talks to him, tells him to let Alex go, that we’ll give him some help—stuff like that?”

  She shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Sure,” said Joe.

  “Missy, are you willing?”

  Missy looked unhappy. “But you won’t get him help, will you? You’ll send him to the electric chair.”

  “The law’s not going to change for him. He’ll have to stand trial and he may or may not be convicted, but that’ll happen in any case—whether he kills Alex or not. Do you really want him to have another death on his conscience?” She felt a little twinge for manipulating her, but decided to ignore it. She could worry about that later; the point now was to save Alex’s life.

  Missy nodded, not in answer to the question but in assent. “You’re right.”

  “Sonny!” she yelled. “Sonny, I love you and I want to help you.”

  Sonny didn’t answer.

  “Sonny, you have to let Alex go. It won’t solve anything to hurt Alex.”

  Alex jumped and emitted a little cry. A trickle of blood ran down his neck.

  Skip hadn’t seen Sonny move. From the gasps around her, she gathered no one else had either.

  “Oh, God!” said Missy.

  “Let’s go in,” said Cindy Lou. “Let’s go in right now. We’ve got to talk.”

  As Skip and Missy turned to join her, she said to Robson, “You too.”

  Missy, even in her despair, went automatically to get them some iced tea, and Skip was glad to have her out of the room. She had a feeling Cindy Lou wanted to get into some things with Robson that wouldn’t hurt Missy not to know about.

  She said what was plaguing Skip as well. “Dr. Gerard, somehow I don’t think Sonny’s told us the whole story, because I don’t think he knows it. Or at least he doesn’t know why it’s important. What I’m wondering is what happened after his grandfather died.”

  “What happened? We buried him, what do you think?”

  Skip found it hard to believe he could be so unpleasant even with his son surrounded by cops with guns.

  “I mean, what happened to Sonny? Surely you didn’t let him get away with what he did.”

  “Of course I didn’t. What kind of parent do you think I am? The boy was punished, of course. Do I honestly seem like a neglectful father?”

  “Not at all.” Cindy Lou showed him a mouthful of teeth you could have used for piano keys. “I just wondered.” She paused. “Something that serious … how do you make the punishment fit the crime?”

  “Fit the crime is right. I said to him, ‘When I get done with you, you’re going to know what a serious thing you did; I’m going to teach you what death is all about.’ And when I got through with him, he did.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “Well, first I whaled the living tar out of him, of course. And then I made him go with me to take his dog to the pound. Had this old dog named Zeke we’d had since right after Sonny was born. I said to Sonny, ‘Dead means they don’t come back. When they’re gone, they’re gone. And I’m going to show you what I mean.’ So we got old Zeke, and on the way there I explained how they kill the dogs—you know how they do it, right?”

  “Right,” said Cindy Lou hastily. “It’s not pretty.”

  “Damn betcha it’s not pretty, and I wanted that kid to know about it. We got there and I made him take that dog up to the attendant and say, ‘I made a mistake that killed my grandfather and I want you to kill my dog, please.’ ”

  Skip gripped the edges of her chair, her palms wet, a knot of despair lodged in her belly, her throat tight with misery. In a way this was almost worse than listening at the door had been as Sonny confessed to three murders. She hoped Missy didn’t come back before Cindy Lou was done, half-wanted to join her herself.

  “Was that all?”

  “Hell, no. I wanted him to feel it, see it, touch it, smell it. I wanted ‘dead’ to be more than a word to that kid. I wanted to make sure he’d never forget for one minute what he could do if he wasn’t careful. I knew he’d be a doctor one day and how important it was going to be to know that relaxing his vigilance for one second, even one instant, could mean somebody’s life. I just wanted him to know what ‘dead’ meant.

  “So what I did was I went out and got a live chicken; I got two, just in case. And don’t think it was easy finding them, either. Then I took him out in the back yard and I made him strangle one. Well, it didn’t work. Kid went squeamish on me, nearly killed the first chicken, but didn’t manage to twist its neck quite enough. I don’t know what happened—he paralyzed it, I guess. Just lay there with its eyes open, making terrible noises. I finally had to make him step on its head.”

  Skip put her hand firmly over her mouth. What I say three times is true: Police officers do not puke in public. She said the last part two more times, like a mantra.

  “Flat? I mean road kill. Kid started screaming like there was no tomorrow and running around the yard like—you know—a chicken with its head cut off. I thought, ‘Good; kid’s getting the idea.’ Finally had to beat him to get him to shut up.”

  Missy came in with a tray of drinks.

  “You know what?” said Cindy Lou. “I know it sounds crazy, but I drink milk in iced tea. Would you mind … ?”

  “Of course not.” She set the tray down and was gone, the perfect little hostess. “Threatened to beat him some more if he didn’t get the second on
e right.”

  “The second chicken?”

  “Oh yeah, the second chicken. He got it right. Screamed the whole time he was doing it, but he did it.” Robson’s face was set in a thin, grim line: It hurt me more than it hurt him.

  “Then when those chickens were stiff, I made him go feel ’em, see what that was like. Then I let ’em stay there a couple days till they started to smell, so he’d get that part too. Then I made him bury ’em.”

  Skip went into the bathroom and washed her face in cold water. It helped some with the nausea, but her throat remained tight as a lock. She realized she wanted to cry even more than she wanted to vomit, and that that would be even less helpful. She took in a deep breath, then another, sat on the floor, and kept breathing. Finally Cindy Lou came and banged on the door.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “YOU OKAY?”

  Skip opened the door. “I’m great.”

  “Sure you are. You’re the color of that sink. Well, listen, I’d turn pale too if I could. Black’s a really good color for a police shrink.”

  Skip knew Cindy Lou was trying to distract her with banter, but she was too depressed. “I hope to God if I’m a cop for the next nine thousand years, I never hear anything like that again.”

  Cindy Lou whistled. “This from a woman who sees dead bodies all the time.”

  “What are we going to do, Cindy Lou?”

  “You think the SWAT team’ll let me talk to him?”

  “Are you kidding? They’ll try anything at this point.”

  Missy and Robson had gone back downstairs. “Damn,” said Cindy Lou. “I don’t want that animal anywhere near him.”

  “Sonny probably doesn’t remember half that stuff.”

  “The hell he doesn’t! And anyway, it doesn’t matter. His unconscious knows, and what do you think’s been going around killing people? Not sunny Sonny the cute WASP medical student.”

  “Are you saying he’s a multiple personality?”

  “Nothing that weird, although it’s a miracle he didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces after what that child went through.” Cindy Lou shook her head in disapproval. “People are so damn mean down here.”

  “Like you don’t come from Detroit.”

  “I swear I think you people are meaner.”

  Under the circumstances Skip couldn’t come up with a rebuttal. Cindy Lou said, “I’ll tell you something about that kid. I think he got the message right from the start—that it wasn’t his grandfather who should have died, it was Sonny all along. If he’d killed Missy, I think he’d have been his own next victim.”

  “Well, why the hell is he holding Alex, then? He can’t expect to get out of this, and if what you’re saying’s right, he doesn’t even want to.”

  “You can be homicidal and suicidal at the same time. And you can be ambivalent even if you’re crazy and a murderer. My guess is he doesn’t even know himself why he’s doing it. It’s a safe bet he’s terrified and not thinking clearly—after all, when he grabbed Alex, a six-foot cop with a gun was chasing him. But there’s a thread of rationality here too—you have to admit it’s his only bargaining chip.”

  “He can’t expect to get anything. How can he bargain?”

  “I’ll bet he’s trying to figure that out right now.”

  “Wait a minute, let me make sure I get this. Could you possibly be saying what I think you’re saying—that Alex really isn’t in much danger?”

  “Au contraire. “ Cindy Lou’s voice rose for emphasis. “I think he’s in a hell of a lot of danger. Especially if anything changes, messes up the status quo. Sonny might just panic and start slashing.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Well, let’s try to talk to him. There’s a couple of pieces of this that don’t make any sense at all. Maybe he’ll talk about those.”

  “The A’s and the letters, you mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  Skip fixed it for Cindy Lou to take over from the hostage negotiator (who seemed delighted with the break), and took the megaphone first. “Sonny, this is a good friend of mine—Cindy Lou Wootten. She’s a psychologist and she wants to help you.”

  “Tell her to stick it where the sun don’t shine.” Skip almost smiled, it was so Sonny-like—anyone else would have said “up her ass.”

  Cindy Lou whispered, “He hasn’t been answering most stuff, right? We got a sign of life here.”

  “Oh, terrific.”

  “I think he’s ready to talk. No shit. If we can just keep his goddamn dad quiet.”

  “So why’s he talking now when he wouldn’t talk before?”

  “You know what I think? Know what I really think? He likes you. Ask him if he’ll talk to you.”

  “Sonny! How about talking to me?”

  “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  Cindy Lou said, “Okay, good. You’ve got a great rapport going. Go to it.”

  Skip took a deep breath, aware of lepidoptera in the intestines. “Sonny, you know what I don’t get? You did everything perfectly. We’d have never narrowed it down to the twelve-step programs if you hadn’t sent that letter to the TV stations. Why on earth did you do that?”

  Sonny said, “You know, Skip, I’m getting pretty damn tired of this.”

  She could have sworn that Alex, even held as tightly as he was, winced slightly. Perhaps Sonny had gripped him harder, or nicked him. She was getting ready to continue when Robson shouted, “Sonny, don’t say anything! They can use it against you later.”

  “They can’t touch me. I’m a doctor.”

  Oh, brother. “Cindy Lou, what’s going on? That doesn’t sound like Sonny at all. Are you sure he isn’t a multiple?”

  “He’s starting to break.”

  “What makes you say that? He sounds like some other person—like…”

  “His dad.”

  It dawned on her that that was right. “Yeah.”

  Cindy Lou shrugged. “Well, why not. His dad’s an asshole. Come to think of it, all doctors are assholes. Now that you mention it, we’ve all got a little asshole in us. Why not Sonny? Damn right it’s not like him. That’s what he keeps under that golden-boy routine of his. If he’d let it out more…”

  “Oh, don’t say it.” She was getting cross.

  Into the megaphone she said, “Sonny, I feel like you need to talk. I promise I’ll get all the help I can for you when this is over.”

  “Skip, you know this is no way to treat a doctor. Get me out of here now. Get me a limousine to the airport and a ticket out of here.” He paused, thinking. “To the Bahamas.”

  “Let Alex go.”

  “You know I can’t let Alex go.”

  “Sonny, why’d you write the letter?”

  “I wish to God I’d never written the damn letter! Jesus, I wish I’d never done it!” The arrogant Sonny was gone.

  “Why’d you do it, Sonny?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cindy Lou pinched Skip. “Don’t answer. Let him think about it a little bit.”

  The quiet was killing. The air was thick enough to squeeze.

  Finally Sonny said, “I thought I ought to.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Cindy Lou. “Let him think about what that means.”

  Skip didn’t know much about Cindy Lou’s fancy theories of “splits” in non-split personalities, but this was familiar ground, this she had seen before. And it did seem like something split, every time she saw it. It was a more elaborate version of that weird thing that made experienced criminals forget to wear gloves, brag in bars about wasting somebody, tell you they didn’t mean to do it before you ever accused them. And half the time the thing they didn’t mean to do, the crime they described in detail, wasn’t the one they were being questioned about.

  It was the mechanism that makes a man park his car outside his girlfriend’s house on a day he knows his wife’s going to be in the neighborhood. It was the urge to confess, the part of not just every criminal, but every human being, that wants to be caught.
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br />   In a few minutes, Cindy Lou said, “Ask him about the Axeman.”

  Skip said, “Why the Axeman, Sonny? You could have written some other kind of letter.”

  “I grew up with the Axeman.” His voice was very soft. “My grandfather told me about him. It was like the bogeyman. He’d say, ‘If you don’t be good, the Axeman’ll get you.’ And sometimes … sometimes when I wouldn’t go to bed he’d put a sheet over his head and say, ‘The Axeman cometh!’ ”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we’d roughhouse. He’d tickle me and I’d laugh a lot.”

  “It was true, wasn’t it, Sonny?”

  “What?”

  “The Axeman got you.”

  Sonny didn’t answer. They waited about ten minutes. Finally Skip said, “Did the A stand for Axeman?”

  He said something she couldn’t hear, that no one could hear.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t mean to do it that way. That wasn’t what I wanted. But it happened the first time and I had no choice. Do you understand what I’m saying? After that the Axeman existed. I had to let—”

  “You had to what?”

  Once again he didn’t answer.

  “Why did it happen that way the first time? If you didn’t want to do it, why did you?”

  “The goddamn lipstick broke!” He sounded furious, and once again Alex made some kind of involuntary movement.

  “The lipstick broke? You meant to write something else?”

  “I already told you.” This time he spoke in a conversational tone, not trying to be heard; sounding sullen.

  “No you didn’t.”

  “I told Missy.”

  Skip looked at Missy. She shrugged, obviously had no idea what he meant.

  “She doesn’t remember.”

  “I told her.”

  “Tell her again.”

  He shouted the word as if to be heard in Baton Rouge, and the anguish in it seemed that of every lost soul since the dawn of madness. “Atonement!”

  The sound was like a diamond rubbing against a diamond, harder on the soft evening than a footfall on a flower; primitive and ugly and inevitable. Yet the feeling of that tiny terrified child so many years ago was so naked in the shout, it had an underlying innocence, almost a bewildered sweetness, so much did it express about the wish to undo what is done.