The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series) (6 page)

The distressing thing about the whole situation was that it shouldn’t be that big a deal—a cosmetic surgeon who lost patients wouldn’t be in practice for long. In other words, if he could just get through medical school, he was never going to have a problem with this. But pretty soon one of two things was going to happen. Someone would notice him turning pale, shaking—and it would all go up in smoke. Or worse, he would get worse.

“Room Four now!”

Sonny’s stomach did a quick flip, but stabilized. He felt okay, excited, the way you were supposed to feel. Anything could happen—they could save this one. What was he thinking of? They usually did. It was a Tuesday morning, so it probably wasn’t a gunshot wound—maybe an accident.

Gloves and goggles were going on.

The team was standing around the table, IV’s already hanging, each ready to take what he needed from the crash cart, to do his or her part, simple as ABC:

A. Airway—make sure he’s able to breathe.

B. Breathing and blood—if he’s not breathing, put a tube in and breathe for him; if he is, look for blood; get blood tests, dipstick his urine for blood.

C. Circulation—hook heart to monitor; shock chest if in fibrillation.

D. Disability—is he awake or comatose? Can he move his arms and legs?

They had it down not to a science, more like a recipe.

The paramedics wheeled the victim in. Sonny stood in the hall, watched with med students and others. A Room Four was a show.

It was an accident—he’d guessed right. A hit-and-run victim, a pedestrian, the paramedics said. She must have weighed three hundred pounds.

The team performed like the Moscow Ballet—stabilized her, patched her up, put her back together, working like a bunch of robots invented for the purpose. It made you proud to be a doctor.

The charge resident took off his goggles, stepped into the hall.

“Okay, Sonny, let’s take her up to seven.” For a CAT scan.

She was breathing okay, but still unconscious, just lying there sleeping like a baby.

Seven was the most cheerful floor in the hospital—tiled in midnight blue, all recently redone. It was cold here—had to be for the equipment—and very quiet. No one was around except for the C-T tech.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “Got one for me?”

“A big one.”

“Damn! I’ve got to go to the little girls’ room.”

“Go ahead,” said the resident. “Plenty of time.” He began to inject the dye for the CAT scan.

The patient’s chest heaved. She wheezed.

“Jesus! She’s allergic.”

Red blotches were popping out on her arms. Her mouth worked as she fought for breath, the terrible sounds of “strider” caught in her throat.

“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.

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 gerbil. 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.