The Axeman's Jazz

anything.”
    “You’re an alibi witness.”
    “Oh. I guess I am.”
    “What happened at PJ’s after I left?”
    “Sonny and Missy were gone by the time I got back from Bruno’s. No problem about covering you, by the way. You’re certainly welcome.”
    “Sorry. Thanks.”
    “Sonny came back in a few minutes. He said Missy’d lost her keys—he’d had to let her in with his. He didn’t find them, but he stuck around. After a while Alex left with Peggy. Then Sonny left again. And finally Di and me and Cindy Lou. I’d say we were all out of there within half an hour.”
    “What about Abe and Nini?”
    “Nini? Oh, the one with the red fingernails. I forgot about those two. They got into a conversation and probably never noticed we were gone. Come to think of it, it was a really intense conversation. Like when people are really attracted to each other. You know, like they don’t notice when they’ve finished their drinks and kind of just sit there running their mouths until closing time? And the next day can’t remember a damn thing they said, but still can’t wait to see the person again.”
    “Come on. How do you know he wasn’t trying to recruit her as a client or something?”
    “They kept leaning toward each other and touching. Making a lot of eye contact.”
    “What time would you say you left?”
    “About ten-thirty, I guess.” Abe and Nini had been gone when Skip returned after seeing Alex home. It was after midnight now.
    “Do you mind telling me who’s dead? I’m getting a little tense.”
    “Abe Morrison’s baby-sitter.”
    Depression hovered like a black and smothering air mass, something like smog, but thicker, almost vaporous. Tendrils of it had wafted into Skip’s car, and pillowy cushions of it that would engulf and swallow her seemed poised for ambush in the heavy night outside.
    On the way to the scene she had to fight to stay centered, not to give in to despair and fall asleep or cry, maybe scream. She focused on the task ahead, tried not to blame herself for the murder of a teenager, not to wonder what she could have done to prevent it. Stayed at Alex’s all night?
    Asking herself the question, straight out like that, she realized that right now she didn’t have much confidence in him as a suspect. If he knew she was a police officer and he was the Axeman, surely he wouldn’t have confronted her about it; it just wasn’t wily.
    But who knew what a crazy person would do?
    That wasn’t the point. The point was whether she’d given it her best shot or not. She remembered going back to PJ’s, how worried she’d been about the others—damn! She just hadn’t felt she could baby-sit Alex when there were so many other suspects. And then she’d lost them all. They’d scattered before she could get to them.
    The thing that bothered her most was that Abe had announced at the meeting that he had a baby-sitter that night—that a teenage girl was alone at his house. Should they have made their investigation public? Would that have made people more cautious? Maybe. Maybe someone like Nini, for instance, wouldn’t have wanted to be alone with a man from the group. Maybe Abe would have worried more about his children, wouldn’t have said that, would have gone home earlier.
    But they hadn’t really been sure….
    Anyway, it was Joe’s decision, not hers.
    She knew nothing could be done, that all the hindsight in the world wouldn’t bring the girl back to life. But she couldn’t shake this heartbroken feeling she had, this sense of inadequacy, as if for once she’d had something really important to protect and she’d blown it.
    She wasn’t normally squeamish, but she dreaded seeing the body.
    Abe lived in an old-fashioned white-frame raised bungalow on Hampson Street in the Carrollton section. It wasn’t a great house, probably a rental, but it had a small porch and a small yard, and it was a pretty good neighborhood. In fact, it was a gorgeous street. But plenty of middle-class white people—lawyers, professional people of Abe’s ilk—thought nothing Uptown was safe anymore and would no sooner have their kids grow up here than send them to public school. Abe, being “from away” as New Orleanians said, might not know about that.
    Joe and Cappello were at the scene. It was Cappello who had called, and she looked almost as pale as Skip. Joe wasn’t much better.
    The victim, Jerilyn Jordan, was lying on the couch, the scarlet A above her, written in lipstick this