The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series) (8 page)

I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain, and that is that some of those people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.

Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and as it is about time that I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed in either fact or realm of fancy.

THE AXEMAN

* * *

“This is ringing a bell.” Skip put her hand to her head and thought. “Eugenie Viguerie’s sixth-grade history project.”

“That’s got to be right. I don’t think I heard about it till eighth grade, but you went to a better school than I did.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” she said as she understood what the first letter was all about.

“So, Langdon.” Joe looked weary. “You wouldn’t remember any details, would you?”

“He was a serial killer. I never put that together before. A serial killer before there were any.”

“Either that or the bogeyman. Look, somebody at one of the stations already researched it and I promised him a press conference if he clued me in.” He looked sheepish. “I have to do one anyway—look at that pack of wolves out there. Here are the relevant facts. In 1918 somebody started breaking into people’s houses and axing them—some lived, some died, but nobody could identify him. The cops looked back into the records and found there’d been some similar cases in 1911, but I guess they didn’t catch on. These did.”

“Citizen panic attack?”

“More or less, but the weird thing was, most of the victims seemed to be Italian grocers. They never caught the guy—the murders stopped about eighteen months after they started. But later the widow of one of the victims killed somebody who might have been him—somebody who’d been blackmailing Italians, went to jail in 1911, got paroled in 1918.”

“So how about the letter—was anyone killed on party night?”

“No.” Joe sighed. “But some composer did write a piece about the whole deal—like it says in the new letter. And a good time was had by all, of course. A real good time. Langdon, you ever been to a hurricane party?”

“Sure. Hasn’t everyone?”

“You, Cappello?”

She shrugged. “Of course.”

“You two see what I’m getting at? This is the kind of town where people think it’s a real good idea to blow it all out just because a storm’s on the way. Can you imagine what next Tuesday’s gonna be like?”

“Murder.”

“Yeah. Unless we get him by then.”

“How about our letter?”

He shrugged, knowing what she meant but obviously wanting to hedge his answer. “I hate to say it, but I guess it’s got to be him. Nobody else knows about the scarlet A’s. A little piece about Linda Lee ran in the paper, but nobody knows about Tom Mabus. He had to have mailed it day before yesterday, before Tom’s body was even discovered.”

Skip’s scalp prickled. “This guy’s really crazy.”

But unexpectedly, Joe grinned. “I like the spaceman angle. Do me a favor, okay? Put out a bulletin on a little blue guy.”

She wasn’t in the mood. The reality of the situation was still sinking in—she hadn’t yet had time to assimilate it and wall off a piece of herself. “What are we really going to do?”

“Well, Skip, I think I might have to give you some help.” She noticed he’d dropped “Langdon” and gone back to his normal form of address. Curious, she thought. As she got more stressed out, he was getting more relaxed.

I guess that’s what good lieutenants do—take the pressure off the generals.

“The national media are going to be all over this thing, you realize that? Like stink on—”

“Shrimp,” said Cappello quickly.

“Maggots on garbage,” Joe said. “And I gotta tell you something else—I’m worried about this asshole. We got a major-league problem on our hands and I got a feeling it’s going to get worse before it gets better. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m assigning a five-person team to this deal— not counting the consultant.”

“Who’s the consultant?”

“Later,” he said. “Ten-thirty in the conference room.”

As she was leaving, he said, “Oh, Langdon, one more thing. Can you work with Frank O’Rourke?”

“No problem.” She heard the chill in her own voice.

She was third in the conference room. O’Rourke was there already—handsome, nasty Frank O’Rourke, who delighted, it seemed, in sabotaging Skip. He was a veteran Homicide detective and a natural for the Axeman team—much more so than Skip.

Jim Hodges sat with him—a solid guy who might have regretted giving his case away. But that probably wasn’t why Joe had picked him. He was a hard worker and a team player—everybody liked to work with him.

The others filed in in a minute—Cappello and Sergeant Adam Abasolo, apparently detailed to Homicide for the biggie. He was known as a whiz, soon to take the lieutenant’s test and certain to be promoted to head of his division, which was sex crimes. Abasolo—tall, slender, and wiry, with dark hair and blue eyes—looked a little like a thug and a little like a movie star. He was single and known to fancy the ladies—thin blond ones, usually from good families.

Joe arrived looking pale and harried. Briefly, he outlined the case, describing the two murders and the letter. “As you know,” he said, “we’ve never had a case like this in New Orleans.”

“Yes we have,” said Cappello. “The original Axeman.”

“What, you don’t think it’s the same guy?” asked Hodges. “Funny-looking little dude with great big Bambi eyes?”

O’Rourke said, “That’s Abasolo. He’s supposed to be on our side.”

Joe wasn’t in the mood for banter. He spoke as if no one else had. “I’ve brought in some outside help on this—a consultant working at Tulane right now. Someone we were very lucky to get—an expert in forensic psychology. In fact, a nationally known expert on serial killers.”

“You talkin’ a shrink, Joe?” asked Hodges.

Joe nodded, looking a little guilty, as if he’d betrayed the police code of ethics. “I think she’s going to be a tremendous help to us, and I want you all to listen carefully to what she has to say, and to utilize her services to the maximum.”

“Man, you must really be desperate.” By virtue of his age, Hodges could get away with remarks others couldn’t.

Nervously, Joe glanced at his watch. “She ought to be here now.” He left the room.

O’Rourke said, “This ought to be right up your alley, Langdon. Everybody Uptown goes to shrinks, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know, Frank; I don’t live Uptown.”

Joe returned with Dr. Cindy Lou Wootten, possibly the only non-blonde in the Western hemisphere who could make Abasolo’s eyes go dark with lust at a second’s viewing. Skip thought she’d never seen such a naked statement on a man’s face. In spite of herself, she found it sexy.

Dr. Wootten (“Call me Cindy Lou, I’m just a psychologist”) was easily the best-looking woman Skip had personally seen (not counting the likes of Meryl Streep and Kim Basinger), and Skip had gone to Ole Miss, where everyone looked like a Streep or a Basinger. Wootten was spectacular, and it wasn’t only her beauty—Skip was willing to bet she wasn’t “just” anything, despite her self-deprecation.

She was about five feet ten, thin, willowy, with straight Lauren Bacall hair, high cheekbones, and clothes that managed to be both crisp and fashionable; also to look like a million dollars. Her jewelry was tasteful and expensive; even in the heat, her makeup was perfection.

She was black.

She carried herself like the first woman president, exuded a confidence that made Skip squirm with envy. She talked like an actress portraying a tough public defender given to street slang to get through to her clients. Or so it seemed to Skip, so incongruous was her earthy speech with her sophisticated appearance.

“Anybody here thinking, ‘This broad’s no expert on crime, I know as much about crime as she does,’ has got another thing coming. I grew up in Detroit, ladies and gentlemen, I was an expert before I was two and a half; and you could say I had some hands-on expertise by the time I was fourteen.

“But just in case you think that’s all, I’ve got a few meaningless graduate degrees in psychology, I did my clinical internship in a federal prison, I’m well-published in the forensic end of the field, and I’ve consulted for the FBI. You wonder what I’m doing here, I got a grant; we academics’ll go anywhere for a free ride, or anyway, I used to think that before I experienced the Crescent City in August. Whoo-ee, never again. Now let’s talk about the Axeman.” She took a breath.

“This guy doesn’t look like a sex killer. He kills men, he kills women, he doesn’t care; and he leaves their clothes on. So right away we got a little problem. Most of what we know about serial killers comes from an FBI study of thirty-six convicted sexual murderers. Although they were all sexual killers, and we think our man isn’t—or our woman, if that’s the case—all we can do is use what we’ve got.

“Okay now. I don’t mind telling you up front, the FBI looks at things a little differently from the way a psychologist might. They’re not so much interested in why a person murders as how he does it. So the data we’ve got is descriptive. Only problem is, when I give you the lists of characteristics the study isolated, some of you are going to see yourselves in there. A lot of the responding murderers were daydreamers and compulsive masturbators as children, for instance. Anybody like that here?”

An uncomfortable titter riffled through the room.

“But then they were bed-wetters and fire-setters, too. They destroyed property, some of them, and engaged in self-mutilation. You don’t see all that every day.”

“Hold it a minute,” said Hodges. “When we get a suspect, how’re we supposed to know in advance if he liked to masturbate when he was a kid?”

“Easy,” said O’Rourke. “Forget the ones who spent their childhood in a coma.”

This time the laughter was more of a catharsis—for some of the officers. Skip and Cappello weren’t among them.

“Well, you’ve got a point there,” said Cindy Lou. “What you can look for are things like psychiatric problems, substance abuse, criminality, maybe a sporadic work record.”

“Give me a break,” said O’Rourke. “Whose brother-in-law doesn’t have a sporadic work record?”

Cindy Lou shrugged. “Your best bet’s classic police work—checking criminal records.”

“Thanks a lot.”

She ignored him. “Okay, there’s something we need to look at right off the bat. Your crime scenes. The FBI classifies offenders as organized and disorganized.

“The organized offender plans. If he’s a rapist, maybe he uses a condom so the police can’t analyze his sperm. He’s going to wear gloves, maybe, or wipe off his fingerprints. Maybe he takes the body away from the crime scene. The important thing is this: He plans the crime in such a way as to avoid getting caught. He’s usually smart.

“The disorganized offender maybe isn’t so bright. He leaves a sloppy crime scene—fingerprints, footprints, every kind of thing. Sometimes he can’t resist keeping the bodies. One guy made drums and seat covers out of two women he kept around for eight years. After killing them, of course.”

The requisite groan rose.

“This kind of killer might use a weapon found at the scene and left there. Now, your guy brought his weapon—his hands—and probably wore gloves. But he did use available materials for his A—a lipstick in one case, and blood in another, obtained with a knife he found at the scene. So what does that suggest to you?”

Cappello said, “Can you have a combination?”

“Good. You sure can and in fact it’s pretty common. We’d know more about the Axeman if we knew how he was getting his victims, but just from the simple, clean crime scenes he left, I’d say he seems more like the organized type. Would you agree? Especially the officers who were there—Langdon? Hodges?”

Both nodded. Hodges said, “I don’t know how much planning went into it, but it definitely didn’t look like any maniac had been there. More like an executioner. Did his job, did it well, and split.”

“Okay. Leaning toward organized then. Unfortunately, a disorganized killer might be easier to spot—might look a little crazier if you want to use that term. Your organized killer is usually intelligent, socially and sexually competent, has a car in good condition, and does some kind of skilled work.”

O’Rourke said, “Shee-it. How do you know that?”

Cindy Lou smiled. “That’s the profile. But remember, the Axeman’s probably a combination. When you get to know him a little better, you might find out he’s high in the birth order, his father has a stable work history, he uses alcohol when he kills, he lives with a partner, he kills when he’s under precipitating stress, and he follows the crime in the news media.” She smiled. “Or you might not. The main thing is, I probably wouldn’t look for somebody on the fringes, a social outcast type. This person probably functions pretty well in the world.

“Even if the profile didn’t say he was bright, I think the letter would indicate that. He’s got enough education to know about the original Axeman and enough brains to haul the story out again.”

Skip said, “What about the E.T. thing?”

“Two possibilities that I can see. First of all, he might believe it. But I don’t think so. These weirdos don’t usually become spacemen—more likely they see them or hear them. And this one doesn’t seem the type for that—that would be more the disorganized profile. The other thought is that it’s just a clever update of the original. Which fits with the organized profile. But you know what I don’t like? All that extremely childish stuff—’I’m baaack’ and that kind of crap. We’re talking a case of very arrested development here.”

“I thought it was funny,” said O’Rourke.

“We’re talking two cases.”

Joe said quickly, “What about the A?”

“The A suggests a need to be recognized and the letter confirms that. But this dude’s wily. Maybe he’s lying about it standing for ‘Axeman.’ It’s funny he picked that name when he doesn’t use an axe.”