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

by Julie Smith

  “I need professional help.”

  “My meter’s running.”

  “How can I find out if somebody who says she’s a therapist really is?”

  “Look in the phone book, maybe?”

  “Oh, shit.” She hadn’t looked, somehow assuming that wasn’t Di’s style. “Hold on a minute.” As she checked, she filled Cindy Lou in on Di and her two peculiar last-minute statements of the night before. “Anyway,” she finished, “the voodoo folks don’t know her. And now I’ve checked the phone book. She’s not under ‘psychotherapists.’ Are there organizations she ought to belong to? She says she does hypnotism—does she have to have some kind of certificate for that?”

  “So far as I know, in Louisiana anybody can hang out their shingle and say they’re a hypnotherapist. But most of them know each other—you could see if they know her. And yes, there are organizations she might join. If she’s a therapist who happens to know hypnotism, she’d have to be licensed to be in private practice.”

  Skip asked who did the licensing and made a note to follow up first thing Monday morning.

  Cindy Lou said, “Listen, you get into anything interesting, call me up. You know what? I like working with you. There’s not that many people appreciate my sense of humor. You always laugh in meetings.”

  Skip couldn’t stifle a smile, though no one could see it. Cindy Lou liked working with her. Cindy Lou had specifically asked to work with her. Her hero had spoken kindly.

  “Hey, girl, I’ve got an idea. I guess I can’t do it, but you can. Or maybe it’s routine—I don’t know. I was thinking about not just asking people’s neighbors about them or whatever you do, but visiting their families. Seeing where they come from.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You could use some kind of ruse. Just kind of check out the scene.”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “Well, if you run into something really ugly, you could concentrate on that person. A serial killer doesn’t just come out of nowhere—he comes out of hatred and meanness. You know that FBI study? They put together a chart of family background characteristics based on their interviews. The stuff they found the killers had in common varied from thirty-three percent to seventy-four percent. Guess what was seventy-four? History of psychological abuse. Next was seventy-two percent—’negative relationship with male caretaker figures.’ You could look for that kind of stuff. You might get a feeling about someone.”

  “Police work—” She stopped. She’d almost said, “Police work isn’t about feelings,” but she knew better than to speak that way to a psychologist; she’d probably be told it ought to be. There was something else as well—intuition did play a part in police work; a big part. If you had a feeling somebody with a gun was behind you, you’d better duck first and then turn around. She said, “I’ll think about it, Cindy Lou.”

  She sat by the cradled phone awhile and tried to get the idea out of her mind. It was preposterous. It could very well be a waste of time….

  That one didn’t fly. What else was she going to do with her time?

  … And it wasn’t sound police work. That was the important one. You didn’t go around questioning a suspect’s intimates unless they were mad at him; if they were on speaking terms, word would get back. But in this case, what if word did get back? Did that mean he’d stop killing? Would that be so bad?

  Somehow it didn’t strike her that forebearing to talk to people’s relatives at this point was going to make or break the case. And she liked the idea. She really liked the idea. She didn’t have the least sense of what made some of these people tick. Especially Di.

  And Joe had said to be creative.

  She attacked the phone book.

  There were enough Breauxs in it to populate the state of Rhode Island, and she didn’t even know if Breaux was Di’s married or maiden name, or one she’d taken for good luck. But one thing was sure—there couldn’t be more than one Diamara Breaux in town. If anybody was related to her, they’d know who she was talking about.

  She put on a pair of shorts and got a glass of instant iced tea. And in a scant hour and fifteen minutes had located Diamara’s mother. She’d said only that she was a friend who was looking for Di. Next she’d have to think of an excuse to ask impertinent questions—if she decided to get creative.

  She sat on the floor and tried to meditate. She did this a couple of times a week, often more, and hadn’t yet succeeded. Today she lasted eight minutes, most of it spent trying to keep from thinking about what made Di tick.

  If it was supposed to relax her, it didn’t. But if she was getting in touch with her feelings, she made progress, though of a sort she didn’t need. In the tiny mind-clearing interval—maybe thirty scattered seconds—she became aware of how tired she was, how much effort it took to pretend she was someone she wasn’t.

  Only the thought of the two victims made her get dressed and keep her coffee date with Missy and Sonny. Missy had said they worked at Charity Hospital, asked to meet her in the lobby.

  She wore shorts and a T-shirt. “Hi, Skip. This is gon’ have to be real informal. Sonny’s on duty in the emergency room. Nothing much is going on this afternoon, but he can’t really go too far. Maybe just the coffee room inside?”

  Skip hesitated. Most Homicide detectives spent a lot of time in Charity’s accident room. If she saw someone she knew, her cover was blown. On the other hand, if she refused, she’d draw attention to herself. “Sure,” she said finally, and hoped for the best.

  As they headed down the corridor, she said, “Is Sonny a doctor?”

  “Second-year medical student.”

  Skip came back quickly before Missy could ask what she did. “Are you two married?”

  Missy gave her a shy smile and held up her left hand. “Not quite yet.”

  Skip took her hand and examined the diamond. “What a lovely ring.”

  “I’m a real, real lucky girl. Sometimes I can’t even believe a great guy like Sonny could love me.” A look flitted on and off her face, a look so sad Skip nearly winced. “This way.”

  Sonny was sitting on a bench in the hallway of the Accident Room, actually a complex of small treatment rooms that Skip knew only too well, as did most cops in the city. He was reading a newspaper, waiting for them.

  “Honey, you remember Skip? From Thursday night?”

  “I don’t think we actually got introduced.” He held out his hand. She was sure he hadn’t the slightest recollection of her.

  “I saw you two and I thought how nice you looked.”

  “That just shows how deceiving appearances can be.” With his words came the disarming smile that had probably been automatic for him since he was two and a half. Or did they teach it to fraternity pledges the way medical schools taught doctors who God was? She wondered if he’d learned that lesson yet, and for the first time thought about whether or not it came easy.

  Sonny led them to a closet of a coffee room with a Chez Panisse poster on the wall. What a weird thing, Skip thought, with all the great restaurants in New Orleans.

  Missy had brought cups of good coffee from somewhere and served them up, saying she was sorry about the Styrofoam. She’d also picked up a bag of bakery cookies. This was a girl who had raised “nice” to a fine and delicate art. A Southern girl. Skip caught herself thinking “girl” instead of “woman” and considered the implications; she decided the judgment was right.

  She thought it must be a measure of spiritual growth that at the moment she no longer felt either intimidated by these two or contemptuous of them because they were perfect. They understood the rules, had been born knowing how to be Southerners, how to fit in, how to be properly female in Missy’s case, male in Sonny’s, how to be homecoming queen or captain of the football team. They were golden, they were sun-kissed.

  They were from Mars.

  Or that was her feeling some of the time about the Missys and Sonnys of the world. That was when she felt contemptuous.
She knew, of course, that she was actually the Martian; when that bothered her, she felt intimidated. At the moment, she merely admired them. Plato would have, she felt sure—would have known them for the ideal they were.

  There was only one thing wrong with this perfect picture—she’d met them in a twelve-step program, the first step being an admission that your life was out of control. Obviously they weren’t there to meet people; even if they hadn’t had each other, these two didn’t need mixers. Of course they were codependent—Missy noticeably so, and Sonny on the grounds that nearly everyone was, according to the experts. But the fact that they’d noticed it made them different from the usual run of perfect couples.

  She decided to come out with it. “You two look so well-adjusted—I was really amazed to see you in the meeting.”

  Missy shook her head, smiling a little wistfully. “I wonder what ‘well-adjusted’ is.”

  Sonny said, “Well-adjusted, hell. How about sane? Who do you know who’s even sane?”

  “You look sane as anything to me.”

  Missy rested an elbow on his shoulder. “Oh, he is. You wouldn’t believe how sane he is, and I don’t know what on earth I’d do without him.”

  He gave her an uncomprehending look—one of those unbelieving looks half a couple gives when the other half has just said something along the lines of the earth being flat. “Well, what the hell do you drag me to those meetings for?”

  “Honey, you might have a little bitty problem or two, but that doesn’t mean you’re not sane—one of us has to be.”

  Sonny gave Skip a self-deprecating smile, showing teeth Paul Newman might have envied. “Well, I guess you know the country song: ‘I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from goin’ insane.’ “ He spoke in a drawl that had probably caused death by melting in more than one sorority house.

  But Skip failed to melt, in fact hardly noticed. Her mind was on something Missy had said, something she couldn’t put her finger on….

  “Sonny, Skip’s going to think you actually listen to that or stuff.”

  She had it—the italics, the easy endearments, the slightly-too-niceness that sometimes seemed like bossiness. It wasn’t New Orleans, it was the trademark of every girl at Ole Miss. She said, “Missy! I just caught your accent. You’re from Mississippi, aren’t you?”

  “Now, how’d you do that? I thought I talked like everybody else.”

  “I went to Ole Miss for a little while. Where are you from?”

  “Hattiesburg. Near Hattiesburg, I mean. In the sticks, really. I went to Ole Miss too.”

  “Not LSU? I figured both of you did and you met at a pep rally.”

  “Gosh, no. We met right here. We’ve only been together a year.”

  She turned her warm, loving gaze on Sonny, only to find him staring into space, eyes glazed. Skip brought him out of it. “Sonny, do you come from a medical family?”

  “My dad’s a doctor and my grandfather before him and my uncle, and I think my great-grandfather was one too. Anyway, as you can guess, there wasn’t much choice about it.” Skip thought he spoke ruefully.

  “You’re not enjoying med school?”

  “Oh, med school’s fine. Grades are what the problem is.”

  “Oh, Sonny! You’re doing great and you know it.”

  He pointed a playful thumb at her. “My coach says I’m doing great.”

  When they asked what she did, she gave them the civil-service routine that she hoped made her sound like a postal cleric and said she hadn’t made many friends at work.

  Missy covered Skip’s hand with hers. “You’re gon’ just love Coda! There’s so many nice people in there.”

  “There certainly seem to be. Di seems very nice—the one in charge of the meeting last night.”

  “Oh, she’s a peach.”

  “Do you know her very well?”

  “I don’t think Sonny does, ’cause he doesn’t always go to coffee and I usually do. But I think she’s a doll—she’s my sponsor. Goin’ to coffee’s the whole key, Skip. That’s how you really get to know people.”

  “I knew a man who used to go—named Tom. Did either of you know him?”

  Missy shook her head, but Sonny seemed to have drifted off again. He was preoccupied perhaps, or a little depressed.

  Or maybe he just resents having me horn in.

  FOURTEEN

  “MARGARET! MARGRIIIIIIT!”

  Only one person called her Margaret and only one person stood outside her door and yelled as loud as he pleased.

  She answered the door in a towel, having just stepped from the shower.

  “Oh me-oh my-oh,” said her guest. “It’s Venus of de bayou.”

  “As a matter of fact, Dee-Dee, it’s the second time I’ve been called a goddess in twenty-four hours.”

  “Do tell.” He offered his early evening joint, which she waved away, and strode in, closing the door.

  “Your version was better. The other person said all women were goddesses.”

  “Well, some are more so. May I nuzzle your neck?”

  “By all means.”

  After a brief caress, he said, “What news of your oafish swain?”

  “I’m cheating on him tonight.”

  “With me, you mean? I don’t recall asking.”

  “I wish, Dee-Dee; don’t I wish. I’ve got a date with a character named Abe.”

  “Abe what?”

  “I don’t know. I met him in a twelve-step program. First names only.”

  “My dainty darling, no! You can’t be going out with some anonymous meeting-cruiser! There’s a killer on the loose, or haven’t you heard?”

  “Worse news, he’s not only a suspect, he’s a creep.”

  “Oh, Jesus, I just had a flash. A truly horrible thought came over me. You’re absolutely sure you don’t know this man’s name?”

  “Actually, I think I do. He left it on the machine when he called to confirm.” She thought back. “It’s Morrison.”

  “Oh, no! Worst fears confirmed. Abe Morrison. Awful Abe to everybody on Gravier Street.”

  “You know him?”

  “This is for your job? Is that what this is about?”

  “It’s not for my health, Dee-Dee. Dress me, will you?”

  He flung open her closet. “Black,” he pronounced. “For deepest mourning.”

  “Dee-Dee, it’s the middle of summer.”

  “This!” He pulled out a calf-length sundress, khaki green with a dropped waist.

  “Why this?”

  “It’s olive drab. The color of his personality.”

  She went in the bathroom to slip it on. “Okay, Dee-Dee, I’ve got five minutes. Tell me who the hell he is.”

  “In my opinion,” he shouted through the closed door, “he’s quite capable of serial murder. Even mass murder. Easily capable.”

  Oh, shit. Abasolo would be covering her, but they both could have used a little advance warning.

  “What the hell do you mean?” She burst out the door, ready to pick him up and shake the information out of him.

  But he burst out laughing. “Officer Darling, you’re so cute when you’re terrified.”

  “I mean it, Jimmy Dee.”

  “My, my, she means it. Okay then. Maybe I overstated the case a tiny little bit. Maybe the world’s primo pompous bore isn’t necessarily a killer. But I’ll tell you one damn thing—forced to remain in his company for long, you might become one.”

  She’d agreed to meet Abe at the bar in the Monteleone. Back in the shadows, she could make out Abasolo, sipping a Coke. And there was Abe—in a sport coat over an open-necked shirt.

  She’d never have thought to wear a dress, would have automatically thrown on some sort of summer pants outfit if Jimmy Dee hadn’t been clowning, but the dress was the right thing, she saw. Abe not only smiled when he saw her, he nodded—nodded several times, almost imperceptibly, but he very definitely did it. She felt like a blue-ribbon heifer at a 4-H show and reflected that it was
a new experience—no man had done this to her before.

  Probably because I haven’t dated that much.

  He said, “You look perfect. I like a skirt that swirls.”

  It was weird, but better swirling skirts than leather dog collars. And it was soon explained. He was into Cajun dancing.

  They went to Michaul’s, a warehouse of a restaurant with a live Cajun band and a dance floor as big as a bistro plunked down in the middle. The band was hot and skirts were aswirl. A mural of bayou scenes surrounded communal tables spread with blue-and-white checked cloths. Ceiling fans turned, though the AC was blasting. Bales of cotton hung from the ceiling, along with an authentic pirogue. A portrait of a rare swamp animal—an “Ali-posa-fisha-coona”—seemed perfectly plausible at a place that offered drinks like a “nutty Cajun (Amaretto daiquiri).”

  “Trust me,” said Abe. “The food’s great. Women always get that look when they first walk in here—like maybe it’s a place for the LSU-Ole Miss crowd.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yeah, but they end up loving it.”

  “A funny thing. I’m getting the feeling I’m part of a mile-long parade.”

  “Hey, we’re adults.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Why pretend we’re kids on our first date?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Why not now?”

  “I have to wait for the right moment.”

  She found herself eager for a drink before dinner, something she usually declined, preferring wine later. There was something about the situation—and not just the fact that she was a fraud—that was making her nervous. It was a weird sense that she had to perform, had to please Abe, had to make him like her whether she liked him or not. Those women who loved the place—had they lied to please him? What was it about him? Something intangible; demanding; something oddly controlling yet needy.

  “Want to dance?”

  “Not yet. Later maybe.”

  “Now, baby.” He got up and pulled her to her feet.

  “But I don’t know how.”

  “Skip, you gotta get with it. Everybody’s into Cajun dancing.”