The Axeman's Jazz

impotent before in your life.”
    “Di—I’m under stress. I’m really stressed out.” His voice sounded like it was coming from a tunnel. He knew he didn’t sound sincere. He didn’t sound anything. His voice had no expression at all.
    “You think I’m ugly.”
    “I think you’re beautiful.”
    He threw the sheet off, intending to go down on her again, to make her happy after all, to show her how much he cared. Along with the scar, there was an ugly lump on her abdomen. He sucked in his breath, touched it, felt its hardness, its wrongness.
    “What’s this?”
    “That’s what he did to me. He botched it. He destroyed my body.” She turned her head away, sunk in a sadness that seemed nearly as deep as his own, biting her lip.
    She meant her doctor, and she was right. He had most assuredly botched it, botched it horribly. In a way that almost made Sonny remember what he could be, what he could do, if he could just get past this damn ER rotation. He knew himself well enough to know that he would never in his life screw up a woman’s body like this. This gorgeous woman really thought she was ugly because of the butchery some amateur had performed on her. In a weird way this was giving him courage, making him want to finish what he’d started, to do his job properly.
    “He didn’t destroy your body,” he said. “There’s enough of it left to kiss.” In a few minutes she was moaning as if the unfortunate incident had never occurred, once more a goddess properly worshipped.

SIXTEEN
    “NOW, THAT ONE sounds interesting. I’ve always thought so.” Cindy Lou meant Alex.
    “Interesting how? Like he could be a murderer?” Skip had talked her into going to see Di’s mother and was grilling her on the way.
    “Lively but childish. Like he might be fun on a date. Except that I never go out with anyone in my field.”
    “Is there some special reason for that?”
    She thought about it. “Naah, I don’t think so. I think they just don’t like me.”
    Skip tried to take it in, found she didn’t know what to ask. Who wouldn’t like Cindy Lou?
    “I guess I’m too sharp-tongued,” Cindy Lou supplied.
    “I can see that. I’d say this was the kind of guy who went for bimbos if he didn’t seem to go for anything that walks.”
    “Yeah, that’s his rep.”
    “You mean you’ve heard of him?”
    “Oh, chile, everybody’s heard of him. The man’s a bestseller.”
    “He says not.”
    “He’s close enough so the nearest competition’s wild with jealousy—or was. Sounds like his career’s pretty much over, though. Burned-out case.”
    “But you don’t see him as a suspect.”
    “I didn’t say that. I just kind of like his style. The hog and all. You can still be a murderer and have a lot of testosterone.”
    “They usually do, right?”
    “It makes them aggressive.”
    But her tone was light. It seemed to Skip she was taking neither Alex nor the others very seriously as suspects. “So,” said Skip, “this is the official consultant’s view, as I understand it: Di, harmless crackpot; Missy, unmitigated wimp; Sonny, obsessive medical nerd; Abe, thoroughgoing asshole; and Alex, cute.”
    “No, no, no. You got it all wrong. That’s just gossip. Personally, I think they all sound dangerous. Di doesn’t sound like she’s got a real good grip on reality; Missy and Sonny are wound way too tight for comfort; and Abe and Alex are hostile as hell.”
    “I thought you wanted to date Alex.”
    “Yeah, but I have truly terrible taste.”
    Di’s mother lived in Kenner, just outside the city, in Jefferson Parish. It was a fairly nice bedroom community, if a little on the colorless side, the sort where families with children lived. It wasn’t especially where you’d expect to find an older woman living alone. And Mrs. Breaux wasn’t what Skip expected, seeming far too ordinary to have spawned so exotic a daughter.
    She had none of Di’s gypsy looks, just smallish brown eyes and brownish hair, lightly touched with gray. It was cut short and curled tightly around a face that wore a thousand and one wrinkles and a heavy coat of orangy powder. Her legs were paper-white beneath a pair of loose pink pants that stopped slightly below the knee. She looked like any old lady from a small Southern town.
    As arranged, Cindy Lou did the talking. She gave her real name and real credentials, claiming Di had applied to Tulane in some sort of therapist’s capacity and they were checking her out—the Rob