The Axeman's Jazz

overwhelming urge to trust her. She fought it hard.
    Abe said, “Can I walk you ladies to your cars? Somebody got murdered in the Quarter a couple of weeks ago.”
    “Oh, the Axeman. That’s a weird one.”
    But no one took the bait.
    “I’ve got a seat on the back of my hog,” said Alex.
    “Macho man,” said Di.
    And as Skip walked to her car with Abe, Di, and Missy, Alex sailed by on a Harley-Davidson, the redhead on the back, holding on to his middle. Skip was glad it wasn’t she. Touching Alex wouldn’t be a good idea at all.
    Di pulled out right in front of her. Skip, who’d started to fret about how to find out people’s last names, quickly jotted down her license number.
    At home, she took a cursory look at the phone list. There was no Linda Lee on it, but there were two Toms. Excited, remembering the teddy bear, she looked up Tom Mabus’s number—sure enough, she had a match.

TEN
    THE NEXT MORNING she told Joe about the teddy-bear meeting and could have sworn she saw a fleeting pleased look in his eye. Especially when she told him Tom had been there. Then she got busy with the list.
    Di first. Her car was registered to a Jacqueline Breaux, but the phone book showed a D. Breaux at Di’s address. Skip called with a phony accent and a story about an amazing windfall prize for Jacqueline. Chatty as any other Southerner, Di confided that she’d recently opted for Diamara.
    One down. A satisfied feeling.
    Going down the list, she found some people had last names on their message-machine tapes. For some, she simply said, “Is this the Smith residence?” and they’d answer with the right name. Some she had to call back with more complicated ruses. There were twenty-three people on the list—almost certainly not all the people who’d been to the meeting and probably not all the people who usually came, but the murders had been in the last week. The list might mean something.
    Soon she had sixteen full names. She ran them through the computer, and two had sheets. They were two she’d already met—Jacqueline (a.k.a. Diamara) Breaux and Alexander Bignell. Di and Alex. Di had a conviction for child abuse and Alex had once been arrested for assault, but the case had never come to trial.
    Hardly able to walk fast enough, she went to the records room to pull the report on Di. The case was eighteen years old—a generation ago. But Jimmy Comer, the deputy D.A. who’d handled it, was still around. Still around and still mad about it, once he refreshed his recollection. “Nice woman,” he said. “Oh, yeah, real nice woman. Married to a rich guy too. Walt Hindman.” He paused.
    “Hindman Construction,” said Skip.
    “Yeah. Can you beat that? Family like that, I just don’t get it. What happened, kid got out of line and she beat him. He started yelling, she couldn’t stand the noise—so she choked him till he shut up.”
    “Choked him?”
    “A neighbor saw the marks on his neck.”
    The Axeman team met at one o’clock.
    O’Rourke had been to meetings for “One-armed blind people, survivors of junkie parents, and impotent dwarves with personality problems,” and thought the whole thing was a crock.
    “I think you ought to try that last one again,” said Cindy Lou, cracking everyone up and once again causing Skip to turn purple with envy. O’Rourke was so much easier to take with Cindy Lou around to put him in his place, but why couldn’t she do it herself? She didn’t think of herself as timid, but she couldn’t bring herself to come down hard, even on creeps who deserved it.
    “Okay,” said Joe. “Let’s cut to the chase. Langdon’s onto something. Anybody else got something that looks good?”
    “I found Jesus at Al-Anon,” said Hodges. “Does that count?”
    “Not unless you think you’re him. Hit it, Skip.”
    “Remember Mabus’s teddy bear? I went to this group where a bunch of adults were sitting around holding teddy bears and dolls.”
    “Ah,” said Cindy Lou. “Nurturing their inner child.”
    “Bull!” said O’Rourke.
    “In your case, it’d be more like an outer child.”
    O’Rourke was really taking it on the nose. When the chuckles had subsided, Skip said, “Mabus was at the meeting last week, but we don’t know about Linda Lee. Two people who appear to attend regularly have very interesting records. I’ve Xeroxed the phone list from last week, and written in as many last names as I could get.” She passed out copies.
    “Oh, my God!” Cappello