The Axeman's Jazz

she was home on those nights?”
    “Gosh.” She was quiet for a moment. “She’s almost never home—she’s got a boyfriend, and that’s not the half of it.”
    “Oh?”
    “She’s ‘in recovery.’ Or don’t you know the phrase? God, grant me the serenity to put up with it.”
    “You mean from drugs or something?”
    “No, no. That’s just a phrase they use in those damn meetings she goes to. She goes to at least one a day, can you fathom that? I mean, is there a group for meeting addiction? There’s one for everything else.” She snapped her fingers. “Wait a minute.”
    She left again, came back carrying schedules of several different meetings.
    “She’s had these tacked up on her bulletin board forever.”
    Some had been circled in red, presumably Missy’s favorites. “Tuesday and Thursday both. Well, she probably wasn’t home.”
    Skip wondered if Sally Enright had noticed what she had— that Missy apparently attended a group for incest survivors.
    Cappello caught her as she arrived back at the office: “Task force meeting in fifteen minutes. Assignments for the big night.”
    Everyone looked about as desperate as she felt. No one had come up with a single fact that pointed to one suspect over another. Except for Skip and Abasolo.
    Joe was in very nearly the worst shape of all. He seemed to be holding panic just below the surface. Something bad was bothering him. It was the pile of dead chickens. He turned to Skip. “How would you feel,” he blurted, “about being used as bait?”
    “You mean make myself an easy target for Alex?” She’d already thought of it.
    “Look, I’ll lay odds he’s it. We can put guys on him, but we just don’t know who might get in his path that can’t take care of themselves. You can.”
    “I was going to suggest it myself.”
If I managed to get up the nerve. I didn’t think you’d go for it.
    She had thought Joe would find her too inexperienced, might not quite trust her with something this big. “The only thing is, he probably hates me after last night.”
    “All the more reason to kill you. Okay, Langdon has an invitation to the party—the teddy bears’ picnic itself. It’s at Diamara Breaux’s house, starting at seven p.m. I want you all to be there. Langdon is specifically assigned to Alex. Abasolo, you take Di. These are still our best two suspects. Cappello and Hodges, play it by ear. O’Rourke, park outside and cover Langdon if she leaves with Alex. If he leaves alone, he’s your baby. Let him out of your sight and you’re dead. Langdon, what’s your plan?”
    She shrugged. “I guess I’ll call him and ask for a date. If he says no, I’ll try to cozy up to him at Di’s. If he doesn’t go for it…”
    “See that he does. Okay, everybody, I’ll be in the office, monitoring everyone’s whereabouts. You all have your assignments. I want you calling in every forty-five minutes.”
    They discussed a few more details, deciding on staggered call-in times, setting them for each officer. But they adjourned unsatisfied, still worried. It was a good plan as far as it went, but they all knew concentrating on Alex might be a mistake—there were about twenty other suspects that were nearly as good.
    Alex wasn’t home. Thanking her stars he didn’t share a machine with his dad, Skip left a message saying she was sorry they hadn’t had a chance to “really get together” the night before and asking to see him that night.
    The she consulted her twelve-step schedules. On the third try she found Alex hunkered down and looking bored at an Al-Anon meeting at a church on the river side of Magazine.
    He brightened and signaled when she walked in.
    Through the remaining half-hour of the meeting she sweated, wondering how the hell she, Skip Langdon, was going to be seductive enough to get him to forgive, forget, and agree to see her that night.
    In the end she relied on everything she’d ever seen in the movies. She stood very close to him, touching his arm, touching her thigh to his, as she apologized for her precipitous behavior the night before. She said she’d been thinking about him all day and she really wanted to see him that night; she felt she’d made a big mistake. She licked her lips, having read somewhere that men think that’s a seduction signal. She’d never felt like a bigger ass in her life.
    But it worked, after a fashion. At least the apology did— she wasn’t sure about the sexual grandstanding. Because Alex,