The Axeman's Jazz

sucked in her breath. “My next door neighbor’s on here. Janet Acree. She’s got three out-of-control kids and a drunk for a husband. Works as a lab tech.”
    “Good,” said Joe. “That one’s yours. Anybody else know anybody?”
    No one spoke.
    “Okay, Cindy Lou. Any reason you can think of why a serial killer would be in a group like this inner-child thing?”
    “Only because he could be anonymous there. But that doesn’t narrow it down, does it?”
    O’Rourke snorted. “I just love psychologists.”
    “O’Rourke,” said Joe, “give us five minutes on the theory of the inner child.”
    “You gotta be kidding.”
    “Okay, Cindy Lou, you do it.”
    Inwardly, Skip cheered. She’d never known that Joe, usually such a placater, could cut through shit so cleanly.
    Well, he’s desperate. He’s got a serial killer on his hands.
    “Your inner child’s the part of you that’ll never grow up, and you don’t want it to. It’s your most playful, spontaneous, creative part—when it’s healthy,” said Cindy Lou. “But the theory is that if you didn’t get your needs met as a kid it may not be healthy. And so it’s the part of you that’s scared when there’s really no reason to be scared, or maybe tries to get attention when it’s inappropriate. In other words, as an adult you may act out like a kid that needs attention and security. The inner child may be more or less running your life. So now you’ve got to give it what it didn’t get.”
    Skip said, “They talk about talking to ‘my kid.’ ”
    “Yeah, they do that. They ask it what it wants and what they can do for it, even go out and buy it stuff—that’s partly what the teddy bears are about.”
    “More,” said Skip, “on the teddy bears.”
    “Well, when a little kid feels scared or anxious, it hugs its teddy bear. So if you’ve got a part of you that’s scared, you don’t deny it’s there, which is what most adults do. Right, O’Rourke?” She smiled at him, but didn’t wait for an answer. “You acknowledge it and let the kid in you hug the teddy bear.”
    Skip thought of Leon Wheatley stroking his bear.
    “Also, you’re actually comforting your inner child when you do that because the bear represents the child; it’s like an outer form of it.”
    O’Rourke said, “You really believe that crap?”
    “I’m giving you theory, man. That’s what I get paid for, okay?” She leaned across the table. “And by the way—in case you’ve forgotten, I get paid a lot more than you do.”
    O’Rourke mumbled something. “Cunt,” Skip thought.
    She said, “What’s wrong, you leave your teddy bear at home? Why don’t you just suck your thumb?”
    Joe said, “That’s enough, Langdon.”
    “Sorry.” In a way she was, but it had felt good to stand up to the creep, even though she knew it was unprofessional. Sure,
he
was unprofessional, but he was probably going nowhere. Every time the subject came up, she tried to remember that. It wasn’t easy.
    “Okay,” said Joe. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Langdon will try to make contact with everyone she can from the inner-child group. The rest of you will keep going to groups, and getting the phone lists. When we see duplications of names on the phone lists—between the inner-child group and others—we’ll pay particular attention to those meetings. In addition, we’re all going to split up the names on the phone lists and start on extensive background checks. What they’ve been doing all their lives, and particularly the days of the two murders.
    “And that’s just for openers. We’re getting big play in the national news, and frankly, the mayor’s breathing down my neck. This is still tourist central, you know. All we need’s a reputation for having a serial killer stalking the streets and we can kiss our pathetic little salaries good-bye because the tourists are going to stay away from here like it was San Francisco after the earthquake. And the clipboard’s going to be bare. Sure, this is only two murders and we’ve got a whole city out there, but this is big, guys. It’s the biggest thing we got going by far. This asshole’s not done and he’s going to have us looking like assholes if we don’t nail him.
    “So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to do everything I said and then I want you to pretend you’re not a cop. Just be Vic or Nat’ly watching the six o’clock news and saying, ‘If da cops was smart, here’s what dey’d