The Axeman's Jazz

Abasolo. “Recovery spillover, I call it. AA meetings are getting so they’re full of assholes mouthing all that garbage, nattering on about their fathers and mothers, telling their boring dreams, carrying on about their damn ‘recovery’—I hate that word, ‘recovery.’ I’m a drunk, I’m not a recovering drunk, and I’m goddamn sick and tired of having my meetings co-opted. See, they come from all these other programs for any goddamn thing you’re ‘addicted’ to. Sex Anonymous; Emotions Anonymous. Jesus! I almost died of my addiction and it pisses me off to hear the word trivialized.”
    “A not uncommon AA view,” said Cindy Lou, completely unfazed. “The steps were formed for dealing with substance addiction and are now being applied to the theory I was just describing, plus a lot of ifly-sounding non-substance ‘addictions,’ like work, shopping, and food. Can you be addicted to food? AA people have their doubts it’s the same thing. However, like it or not, some two hundred other groups have adopted the AA model. Nationwide, there are from two million to twenty million people in the recovery movement, depending on how you count.”
    “Well, look, Dr. Wootten,” said O’Rourke. “I’m sure this is all very interesting, but aren’t you here to advise us about the Axeman? Are you saying his psychological profile’s ‘codependent’? If ninety-six percent of the population’s codependent, do we really need an ‘expert’ to come in here and tell us he’s just like everybody else?”
    “Oh, that wasn’t about the Axeman. That was about communication. I just taught you people a new language you’re going to be needing. Now I’m going to teach you one more thing. You go into a twelve-step program, you better be ready to turn over your problems to a higher power. And that’s what I’m going to do now.”
    Joe laughed. “I don’t think they mean lieutenants, Cindy Lou.”
    “Well, I do. And when you’re done with my problems, you can do my laundry.”
    He turned to the others. “Okay, we’ve finally got a link between the two victims, and frankly, we haven’t got another damn thing. Officer Langdon’s been on the phone all afternoon and here’s the deal. There are at least thirteen twelve-step programs in this town and hundreds of meetings—well over five hundred, maybe more like a thousand. Only one member from each meeting—the intergroup representative— is known to the larger organization. And because of the tradition of anonymity, the program people won’t tell us who any of them are. Even if we could get a court order for the information, we’d then have several hundred people to interview who would know only the people in their own groups by first names and wouldn’t even tell us those.”
    “Because of the tradition of anonymity,” said O’Rourke, sounding disgusted.
    “So we’re going to go to the meetings and look at the phone lists for any Toms and Linda Lees.”
    “You gotta be kidding!”
    “Right, Frank, I’m making a great big joke. Now tell me what you want to do instead.”
    O’Rourke said nothing.
    “Anybody else got any better ideas?”
    “Okay, I appreciate the fact that it’s going to be time-consuming and may lead nowhere, but it’s the only place we’ve got to go and we’re going there.” He went back to his original lecture. “So far as Langdon can tell, neither Mabus nor Strickland was a drinker. And Mary Shoemaker doesn’t go to AA, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, or Gamblers Anonymous. She does go to Tough Love, which is a parents’ group, but neither Tom nor Linda Lee had children or teenagers. So for now, we’re going to skip those programs and concentrate on the others.
    “We’ve got a list of the ones Shoemaker likes and a promise from her not to blow anyone’s cover, so we’re going to start out with Mary’s Greatest Hits. And Langdon found out Mabus was off only on Thursday and Friday nights. So we’re going to concentrate specially on the Thursday and Friday meetings. But we know he went to daytime ones as well, and Strickland could have gone any night of the week, so we’ll try to cover everything we can.
    “This is Thursday and it’s four o’clock. Some meetings are right after work and some are later—I want everybody in here to go to two tonight, and then we’ll see where we are. Here are the lists and the assignments.”
    O’Rourke said, “Are we undercover, or what?”
    “To the extent