The Axeman's Jazz

day.”
    Joe couldn’t control a snort. “Two or three a day! What else do you do?”
    The heretofore meek Mary Shoemaker straightened her back and said with dignity, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
    “Oh. Sorry. I was just surprised, that’s all. Do you know of any other friends Tom had?”
    She thought for a moment. “No, I really don’t. When I said I saw him a lot, I didn’t mean I talked to him a lot. But one day I was really impressed with his share and I told him so. And that’s how we ended up having lunch. I kind of think he was a loner. A real nice man, though.”
    “And you’re sure the program was where you saw Linda Lee?”
    Once again she gave it her full attention. Finally, she said, “I don’t go anywhere else except the grocery store and to take my kids to school.”
    Before she left she gave them a list of her favorite meetings and past favorites—eleven in all.
    And then Skip got on the phone.
    In an hour, after many misunderstandings, well-meanings, and speakings at cross-purposes, she had information that made her heart sink. She watched Cappello’s face fall as she reported.
    “These things are called anonymous because they are. You don’t sign up for membership, you don’t pay dues, and as Shoemaker said, you use only your first name. Needless to say, they don’t exactly call the roll. They do pass around a phone list, so you can get in touch with Susie Q. across the room if you need someone to talk to. But of course that’s voluntary, like everything else. Nobody has to get on it.”
    “Murder Anonymous,” said Cappello, looking as if her mother’d just died.
    “Yeah. You just walk in and you say ‘I’m John and I’m codependent,’ or maybe you don’t. Some people never share at all.” Seeing her puzzled look, Skip said, “Sharing means talking. But you don’t have to do it. So say you want to find some lonely people to kill. You saw Mary Shoemaker. From what I gather, these things are full of people like her—nothing and nobody in their lives, and nothing to do except go to meetings. They’re like churches used to be; or market day in small towns. I don’t know—they’re a whole social phenomenon.
    “So say you want a good place to find somebody to kill—somebody who couldn’t be connected with you because you don’t even know their last name, and nobody knows your name at all. Do you walk in and say, ‘I’m the Axeman and I’m homicidal’? What you do is walk in on a roomful of sitting ducks. And then you walk in on another roomful of them. I hate to say it, Sylvia, but you know how many of these things there are in New Orleans? Hundreds. There’s more than a hundred Al-Anon meetings and four hundred and five AA meetings alone. So that’s about five hundred. So far I’ve unearthed eleven programs besides those two main ones, but there may be more. Lots of the programs don’t even have permanent phone numbers, so I couldn’t find out yet how many there are.”
    Cappello sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “I’ve got more bad news. I sort of remember a long time ago my friend Alison Gaillard advised me once to go to AA because that’s where you met all the best guys. I thought she was kidding.”
    “Shit!”
    “Well, I called her back.”
    Alison had said, “Skippy, honey, that was years ago. You don’t have to go to AA to meet guys. Everybody’s doing Coda this year.”
    “Including you?”
    “Why should I? I’m married.”
    Cappello said “Shit!” again. “You mean we’re talking about a bunch of neurotics cruising each other?”
    “Hey,” said Skip, “our first thought was a bar, remember?”
    “Yeah, but if it’s that kind of deal, how do you explain Tom Mabus?”
    “Maybe he saw something—like Linda Lee with the Axeman. Anyway, yes to cruising, but that’s not exactly the whole story. I gave Cindy Lou a call too. Want to know what she said?”
    “Yeah, from the horse’s mouth—in half an hour. Get the whole team together.”
    Cindy Lou brought books with her—books with names like
Codependent No More
! and
Beyond Codependency.
She also brought some by John Bradshaw, including the ones Skip had seen in Linda Lee’s apartment.
    When Joe had brought everyone up to date on Mary Shoemaker, he let Skip take over.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking large. We are talking the biggest thing since VCRs—maybe since the great god television itself. If you aren’t addictive, then you’re