The Axeman's Jazz

please?”
    “Oh, man, wait till I tell my agent.” His voice was positively gleeful. “This is great. This sheds a whole new light on things.”
    “Are you going to cooperate with the police or not?”
    He put on a good-boy look. “I arrived home about ten-thirty. I watched television till eleven-thirty or twelve and then I went to bed. I was awakened from a good night’s sleep by a police officer at approximately two fifty-two a.m.”
    Lamar said, “That’s a bald-faced lie.”
    “What’s a bald-faced lie?”
    “You went out again. I heard you on your little scooter.”
    Alex turned back to Skip. “That’s right, I did. I went out to get some beer about fifteen minutes after I got home. Say about ten forty-five.”
    “And you came right back?”
    “Yes.”
    “No, you didn’t.”
    “Dad, who’s telling this story?”
    “I never heard you come back.”
    “Well, I had to have come back sometime or I wouldn’t be here now.”
    “Well, I didn’t hear you.”
    “I can’t help what you heard or didn’t hear in that drunken haze of yours. I went out to get some beer and I came right back.”
    “I was still awake at eleven-thirty because I was watching television. You weren’t home then.”
    “Dad, you weren’t even awake when I got home the first time.”
    “I know, but you woke me up with that dadgum scooter of yours and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
    “Listen to him,” said Alex. “Will you listen to him? You know what it’s like to live with a seventy-five-year-old six-year-old?”
    Rummaging quickly, Skip produced a picture of Tom Mabus. “Have you ever seen this man?”
    “He’s the other victim, isn’t he? I only saw the woman.”
    “Often?”
    “No. Just the once. A couple of weeks ago, maybe three.”
    “Try to remember.”
    “Well, it wasn’t last week. You were there. The week before that. That’s when it was. Three meetings ago.”
    The night she died? Either that or the night before. Skip’s stomach felt slightly queasy. “Do you remember what she was wearing?”
    He shrugged. “No. Pants maybe. Yeah. Not shorts or a dress. Because I noticed she could ride the motorcycle if she wanted to. One of those subliminal things.”
    “Do you remember what color?”
    “Are you taking a fashion survey, or what?”
    She summoned a smile. “I guess not. Good night, boys.” She sincerely meant the last word.
    Sonny met her in running shorts and T-shirt, apparently hastily pulled on, not stopping for undergarments. She could see the well-defined outline of his substantial equipment through the shorts. A puppy shot out the door when he opened it. But its legs were too short for the stairs—Skip caught it while Sonny blinked in the light.
    “That’s Zeke,” he said.
    He seemed so groggy she wondered if he’d taken a sleeping pill. When she got to the part about being a police officer, he said, “Missy! Something’s happened to Missy.”
    “No, don’t worry. Missy’s fine. But we do have a problem and I need to ask you some questions.”
    “A problem?”
    Skip decided to ignore the question. Sonny was so absurdly Southern-polite he wouldn’t be so crude as to press her. “May I sit down?”
    His apartment was a typical student’s. Not much furniture and what there was was covered with debris. But top-of-the-line stereo equipment, hundreds of dollars’ worth of compact discs. Some workout equipment, one painting that had be to a Rob Gerard.
    “Sonny, I need to ask what you did tonight after you left PJ’s.”
    “I took Missy home. And then I came home and tried to study. But I couldn’t. I was just too tired. I fell asleep with the lights on.”
    “Did you call anyone? Or did anyone call you?”
    “No. I was dead to the world. I woke up sometime and pulled my clothes off. That’s all I remember.” He patted Zeke and lifted him up to his lap. He was a golden puppy, a lab or a retriever, with the requisite cute floppy ears and nippy little teeth.
    “Such a sweet puppy.”
    “I just got him. I think that’s why I talked about my grandfather tonight. My first dog died right after my grandfather did.”
    “How sad, both things at once.”
    Sonny forced a smile. “But I have Zeke now.”
    “How did your other dog die?”
Did you strangle him, by any chance?
    He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I was so little…”
    The shrug had been too nervous, the answer a little too quick. Skip sensed bravado rather than truth. She pulled out her photo of Tom Mabus.