The Axeman's Jazz

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.
    It was answered by an answering shout, every bit as hard and ten times as ugly, for it had no anguish in it, nothing resembling innocence, but hatred instead. Evil. It was more a toxin than a sound; spewed slime. “Asshole!”
    Robson spewed it. “The A was for asshole, you asshole. You’ve always been an asshole, ever since the day you came naked into this world! And you’re still an asshole! No father deserves an asshole like you!”
    A sound like a sob came out of Sonny. Slowly, gradually, he lowered the arm around Alex’s neck, and then he let Alex’s hand go, the one he had held behind his back. As if on balloons, Alex started to walk. Sonny’s sobs did not tear the air as his shout had done, as Robson’s had. They were like a bass beat that lodged in Skip’s body, permeated to her toes. It was the deepest misery she had ever heard or felt.
    But Cindy Lou was deep in what she would probably have called denial if she’d had her wits about her. “That’s ironic as hell,” she said, and walked away.
    Skip had burned her uniform once, when she had felt overwhelmed at corruption she couldn’t attack; helpless. But that seemed a matter of petty bureaucracy now. This wasn’t the city or the state or the department; this was the race. The human animal; the beast. What was she supposed to do now, burn her skin?
    The answer came to her almost as quickly as the question. Yes, bum it. Burn it with passion. With love. If it’s human beings who disgust you, get as close as you can to one of them. Let the slime pour out of you as your head fills, your body fills, with life and hope. And starting over. And love.
    How could she think of love at a time like this? And yet she saw that it was the only sane thing she could think of. She phoned Steve and told him to come get her key, to wait for her. She told him she loved him.
    She still had a long night ahead.
    By the time she joined him, she knew one more thing she didn’t want to: why Sonny had framed Di, had found it so necessary to write the Axeman note that named her lipstick color, arrived so promptly because it was mailed so promptly; was written and mailed after strangling Jerilyn. Who had been carefully killed with Di’s scarf, after which the typewriter had been carefully planted.
    Such elaborate plans.
    Di was the only one of his victims for whom he had no compassion, whom he truly wanted to destroy. He had planned the frame in the half-hour between the time he realized he hated her and the time he killed Jerilyn. He had to go home for the scarf and lipstick, but the lost time was worth it. Di had committed an unpardonable sin. She had blown the whistle on his father.
    THE END

Acknowledgments
    Thanks, as usual, to Betsy Petersen and this time to William Petersen as well; also to Rhoda Faust, Becky Alexander, Chris O’Rourke, Carolyn Shaffer, Jon Carroll, Diane Angelico, and the knowledgeable staff in the accident room at Charity Hospital, especially Scott Slayden, Dr. Paul Brunik, and Dr. Eric Lucas. More thanks to John Taylor at Atascadero State Hospital, Bob Bunn and Belinda Maples of the FBI, Luisah Teish, author of
Jambalaya
, which I enjoyed and relied on, and to numbers of helpful if necessarily anonymous folk in various twelve-step programs. Special, extra thanks to Captain Linda Buczek of the New Orleans Police Department, who is exceedingly patient and prodigiously generous with her time and expertise. If I got things wrong, it certainly isn’t the fault of anyone whose name appears here.

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    The Skip Langdon Series
(in order of publication)
    NEW ORLEANS MOURNING (*Edgar-winner for Best Novel)
    THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ
    JAZZ FUNERAL
    DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK (formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)
    HOUSE OF BLUES
    THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
    CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION (formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)
    82 DESIRE
    MEAN WOMAN BLUES

Also by Julie Smith
    The Rebecca Schwartz Series
    DEATH TURNS A TRICK
    THE SOURDOUGH WARS
    TOURIST TRAP
    DEAD IN THE WATER
    OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS
    The Paul Macdonald Series
    TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE
    HUCKLEBERRY FIEND
    The Talba Wallis Series :
    LOUISIANA HOTSHOT
    LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
    LOUISIANA LAMENT
    P.I. ON A HOT TIN