The Axeman's Jazz

for what you just did.”
    “I thought it was what you wanted.”
    She bit down the next thing it came to her to call him— “sicko”—and settled for “Sorry, I don’t have sex on the first date.” The words echoed in the dark.
    “Well, why didn’t you tell me?” Once again his voice was petulant.
    She didn’t answer.
    “How about the second date?”
    She started running toward the main road, knowing he couldn’t follow before he’d turned out the lights and locked up. But something crashed out of the brush, nearly sending her up the nearest tree.

EIGHTEEN
    “SKIP!”
    “Adam.” She stopped, panting, heart in throat. “Let’s get out of here before he sees us together.”
    When she had recovered her breath, she thanked Abasolo for sticking close to her, and for giving her a chance to handle it when Alex jumped her.
    “That wasn’t exactly on purpose.” He was smiling; his fine teeth gleamed in the dark. “I was just about on him when you yelled—scared me as much as you did him. I mean when you said, ‘knee you in the balls,’ I paid attention.”
    Knowing it was a compliment, that he was saying he knew she hadn’t needed him, Skip gave him a friendly cuff. “Oh, shut up.”
    “You saw the chickens?” she said.
    “Yeah. Ugly.”
    “What do you think of him—Alex?”
    “The guy’s not normal.”
    “But is he the Axeman?”
    “Well, he didn’t try to kill you.”
    “Come on, I’m almost as big as he is. Maybe he was working up to it.”
    “Maybe.”
    The Covington police were incredulous. They said there were a lot of perverts around, but “ain’t nobody in St. Tammany Parish mean enough to murder a flock of innocent chickens.” They said, sure, the New Orleans crime lab people could come collect the chickens, they’d be happy about that. But were things so quiet the New Orleans department had nothing better to do than investigate fowl deeds in another parish?
    Neighbors confirmed that the Campbells were in Europe and that they’d been told an Alex Bignell would be in and out. Some had heard his hog, but no one had seen him or anyone else on the property. No one had heard the hog—or any vehicle—earlier that day. A careful inspection of the chicken graveyard failed to turn up a scarlet A.
    Skip was feeling let down when Abasolo finally dropped her off at home.
    She played her messages. Her old friend Cookie Lamoreaux had phoned, asking her to an Axeman party the next night; and so had Di, which surprised her. She hadn’t thought of twelve-steppers as raging party animals.
    She checked her inner-child phone lists, old ones she’d gotten from Di. They showed that the Campbells were indeed regulars at the meetings.
    What did it all mean? Heedless of the hour—it was now after one—she phoned Cindy Lou and asked.
    “Chickens?” squealed the woman she admired most in the world. “You’re calling me about chickens?”
    “Serial murderers kill animals, don’t they?”
    “Yes, or they’re cruel to them. That’s part of the profile, both as children and adults.”
    “Well, at the risk of repeating myself, what do you think it means?”
    Fully awake now, Cindy Lou sounded serious. “I hate to say it, babe, but realistically speaking, I think it’s got to be the Axeman, and I think it confirms he’s in the group—or she is, if you want to be picky about it. One of the victims came out of the group, the owners of the house are big in the group, they’ve had parties for the group at the house, and the whole group probably knows they’re not at home. Now what does that add up to?”
    “Exactly what we were thinking. But why kill chickens?”
    “Listen, Skip, I know you don’t want to hear this, but that could be pre-crime behavior. We know about one guy that knocked off neighborhood dogs before committing murder.”
    “But why now? After he’s already killed two people?”
    “Hell if I know.”
    “Well, sorry I woke you up.”
    “But I’ve sure as hell got an opinion on who it is.”
    She had given Cindy Lou an account of the whole evening, including some parts left out of her report to Cappello. “Alex, by any chance?”
    “Yeah, but there’s one thing that doesn’t make sense if he’s it. Why aren’t you dead?”
    But she knew the answer; must have known it intuitively all the time she was with him. Because the Axeman was smart. He wouldn’t kill her at a house to which he was known to have the key. Maybe he liked to play with his victims