The Axeman's Jazz

trying to find another speaker, but hadn’t succeeded. She probably could have gotten Abe, or maybe Alex, but somehow she didn’t trust either of them—they were given to grandstanding. And Sonny and Missy were too green. So she’d have to do it herself.
    She had made the circle, taken the power bath, because she wanted to meditate, to feel her inner rhythms, listen to her inner voice, really know what she was supposed to talk about, what the universe wanted. She knew she was powerful today. She had proof. She had started to feel sexual and a man had appeared to answer her needs. But she had conserved that energy, put it instead to sacred use.
    The subject came as soon as she went into a trance, perhaps brought by Alex, who had in turn been brought by the powers of air, the spirits of the East that had come when she called. There were no coincidences; Di knew that.
    The subject was disappointment, betrayal; loss of innocence.

TWENTY-TWO
    EVERYONE ON THE task force was at the inner-child meeting. Cindy Lou was there as well, already drawing glances from Alex and Abe. To Skip’s horror, Steve Steinman was sitting next to Missy McClellan.
    It was just like Steve to come. She’d long since decided it was really she who interested him, that he wasn’t just a cop groupie, but he wouldn’t have been a filmmaker if he hadn’t been a voyeur at heart. Except that Steve wasn’t the kind of voyeur who watched other people having sex. It wasn’t even violence that especially interested him. It was adventure, the thrill of an unfolding tale. He had probably been serious about buying Skip’s story if she solved the case.
    She tried not to be annoyed. It was a free country and the twelve-step programs were open to anyone. He had as much right to be there as she did. But he knew what she was doing there, knew the Axeman was probably in the room, probably guessed that others in the room were also officers. There was something about it that she didn’t like, that made her feel as if she were onstage. And there was something else—fear that he’d somehow give the police away.
    What if he did? She shrugged mental shoulders. Maybe it was time they made themselves known, got people nervous and talking. Anyway, thanks to her “creative” police work, the one person who mattered might already know Skip was dangerous.
    They had already said the Serenity Prayer and now Di was going through the opening rituals—the twelve steps, the twelve promises, the twelve traditions, a dozen of this, a dozen of that. She was having different people read selected bits, people she’d pre-chosen rather than simply passing the materials around, letting people read at random. Di was very precise, very controlling, Skip realized.
    When the boring part, as Skip thought of the opening, had ended, Di said she would be the speaker that night because Leon couldn’t make it. Convenient, Skip thought, since the speaker, she’d noticed, got to speak longer than others who shared. Di seemed a fan of the spotlight. Tonight she’d brought a baby doll, a toy about the size of a real baby, in a little white dress and cap. She was holding it in the burp position, stroking its back, symbolically comforting her inner child.
    “I learned about betrayal early,” she said, “when I lost my parents. My father simply left home whenever he felt like it; we never knew when he was going to go again or whether he was ever going to come back. And finally he didn’t come back. When I was a teenager. He’d been gone three years before my mother mentioned it.”
    She went on for a while about the pain of being left by her father and then she started in on her mother: “She felt she had to work. I don’t know if this was true. I don’t know if my father sent money or not. All I know is I felt rejected. I thought it was a choice she made to get away from me, to get out of the house so she wouldn’t have to be around me. But maybe she really needed to. She could have; I don’t know.
    “What I do know is that she could have been more careful about the places she left me. It wasn’t called ‘day-care’ in those days, but there were places where kids went after school if their parents worked.” She started to tear up. “I don’t know if they were all bad, but I was beaten at three out of the four I was sent to. Once with a belt, once with a shoe; once I was turned over a man’s lap and spanked. I was nine at the time. He did it in front of all the other