“Whoa,” I said, holding my hand up. A middle-aged woman and a teenage girl were unloading packages from the trunk of their Toyota, simultaneously having a vigorous disagreement. The girl had been invited to an all-night party. No, her mother said.
She had to go, all her friends would be there. No, her mother said.
But Mom, everyone else’s mom was letting them go. No, her mother said.
“Please don’t decide to take the stairs,” I whispered.
But the argument raged on as they got in the elevator. I clearly heard the girl break her train of complaint long enough to say, “Ew, something smells in here!” before the doors closed.
“What’s happening?” Alcide whispered.
“Nothing. Let’s see if that lasts a minute longer.”
It did, and I stepped out of the door and over to Alcide’s truck, darting glances from side to side to make sure I was really alone. We weren’t quite in sight of the security guard, who was in his little glass hut up the slope of the ramp.
I unlocked the back of Alcide’s pickup; fortunately, his pickup bed had a cover. With one more comprehensive look around the garage, I hurried back to the stair door and rapped on it. After a second, I pulled it open.
Alcide shot out and over to his truck faster than I would have believed he could move, burdened as he was. We pushed as hard as we could, and the body slowly retreated into the truck bed. With tremendous relief, we slammed the tailgate shut and locked it.
“Phase two complete,” Alcide said with an air that I would have called giddy if he hadn’t been such a big man.
Driving through the streets of a city with a body in your vehicle is a terrifying exercise in paranoia.
“Obey every single traffic rule,” I reminded Alcide, unhappy with how tense my voice sounded.
“Okay, okay,” he growled, his voice equally tense.
“Do you think those people in that Jimmy are looking at us?”
“No.”
It would obviously be a good thing for me to keep quiet, so I did. We got back on I-20, the same way we’d entered Jackson, and drove until there was no city, only farmland.
When we got to the Bolton exit, Alcide said, “This looks good.”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t think I could stand driving around with the body any longer. The land between Jackson and Vicksburg is pretty low and flat, mostly open fields broken up by a few bayous, and this area was typical. We exited the interstate and headed north toward the woods. After a few miles Alcide took a right onto a road that had needed repaving for years. The trees grew up on either side of the much-patched strip of gray. The bleak winter sky didn’t stand a chance of giving much light with this kind of competition, and I shivered in the cab of the truck.
“Not too much longer,” Alcide said. I nodded jerkily.
A tiny thread of a road led off to the left, and I pointed. Alcide braked, and we examined the prospect. We gave each other a sharp nod of approval. Alcide backed in, which surprised me; but I decided that it was a good idea. The farther we went into the woods, the more I liked our choice of venue. The road had been graveled not too long ago, so we wouldn’t leave tire tracks, for one thing. And I thought the chances were good that this rudimentary road led to a hunting camp, which wouldn’t be in much use now that deer season was over.
Sure enough, after we’d crunched a few yards down the track, I spotted a sign nailed to a tree. It proclaimed, “Kiley-Odum Hunt Club private property—KEEP OUT.”
We proceeded down the track, Alcide backing slowly and carefully.
“Here,” he said, when we’d gone far enough into the woods that it was almost certain we couldn’t be seen from the road. He put the truck into Park. “Listen, Sookie, you don’t have to get out.”
“It’ll be quicker if we work together.”
He tried to give me a menacing glare, but I gave him a stone face right back, and finally, he sighed. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” he said.
The air was cold and wet, and if you stood still for a moment the chilling damp would creep into your bones. I could tell the temperature was taking a dive, and the bright sky of the morning was a fond memory. It was an appropriate day to dump a body. Alcide opened the back of the truck, we both pulled on gloves, and we grasped the bright blue-and-green bundle. The cheerful yellow fish looked almost obscene out here in the freezing woods.
“Give it everything you got,” Alcide advised me, and on a count of three, we yanked with all our might. That got the bundle half out, and the end of it protruded over the tailgate in a nasty way. “Ready? Let’s go again. One, two, three!” Again I yanked, and the body’s own gravity shot it out of the truck and onto the road.
If we could have driven off then and there, I would have been much happier; but we had decided we had to take the shower curtain with us. Who was to say what fingerprints might be found somewhere on the duct tape or the curtain itself? There was sure to be other, microscopic evidence that I couldn’t even imagine.
I don’t watch the Discovery Channel for nothing.
Alcide had a utility knife, and I did let him have the honor of this particular task. I held open a garbage bag while he cut the plastic away and stuffed it into the opening. I tried not to look, but of course I did.
The body’s appearance had not improved.
That job, too, was finished sooner than I expected. I half turned to get back in the truck, but Alcide stood, his face raised to the sky. He looked as if he was smelling the forest.
“Tonight’s the full moon,” he said. His whole body seemed to quiver. When he looked at me, his eyes looked alien. I couldn’t say that they had changed in color or contour, but it was as if a different person was looking out of them.
I was very alone in the woods with a comrade who had suddenly taken on a whole new dimension. I fought conflicting impulses to scream, burst into tears, or run. I smiled brightly at him and waited. After a long, fraught pause, Alcide said, “Let’s get back in the truck.”
I was only too glad to scramble up into the seat.
“What do you think killed him?” I asked, when it seemed to me Alcide had had time to return to normal.
“I think someone gave his neck a big twist,” Alcide said. “I can’t figure out how he got into the apartment. I know I locked the door last night. I’m sure of it. And this morning it was locked again.”
I tried to figure that out for a while, but I couldn’t. Then I wondered what actually killed you if your neck was broken. But I decided that wasn’t really a great thing to think about.
En route to the apartment, we made a stop at Wal-Mart. On a weekend this close to Christmas, it was swarming with shoppers. Once again, I thought, I haven’t gotten anything for Bill.
And I felt a sharp pain in my heart as I realized that I might never buy Bill a Christmas present, not now, not ever.
We needed air fresheners, Resolve (to clean the carpet), and a new shower curtain. I packed my misery away and walked a little more briskly. Alcide let me pick out the shower curtain, which I actually enjoyed. He paid cash, so there wouldn’t be any record of our visit.
I checked out my nails after we had climbed back in the truck. They were fine. Then I thought of how callous I must be, worrying about my fingernails. I’d just finished disposing of a dead man. For several minutes, I sat there feeling mighty unhappy about myself.
I relayed this to Alcide, who seemed more approachable now that we were back in civilization minus our silent passenger.
“Well, you didn’t kill him,” he pointed out. “Ah—did you?”
I met his green eyes, feeling only a little surprise. “No, I certainly did not. Did you?”
“No,” he said, and from his expression I could tell he’d been waiting for me to ask him. It had never occurred to me to do so.
While I’d never suspected Alcide, of course someone had made the Were into a body. For the first time I tried to figure who could have stuffed the body in the closet. Up until this
point, I’d just been busy trying to make the body go away.
“Who has keys?” I asked.
“Just Dad and me, and the cleaning woman who does most of the apartments in the building. She doesn’t keep a key of her own. The building manager gives her one.” We pulled around behind the row of stores, and Alcide tossed in the garbage bag containing the old shower curtain.
“That’s a pretty short list.”
“Yes,” Alcide said slowly. “Yes, it is. But I know my dad’s in Jackson. I talked to him on the phone this morning, right after I got up. The cleaning woman only comes in when we leave a message with the building manager. He keeps a copy of our key, hands it to her when she needs it, and she returns it to him.”
“What about the security guard in the garage? Is he on duty all night?”
“Yes, because he’s the only line of defense between people sneaking into the garage and taking the elevator. You’ve always come in that way, but there are actually front doors to the building that face onto the major street. Those front doors are locked all the time. There’s no guard there, but you do have to have a key to get in.”
“So if someone could sneak past the guard, they could ride up in the elevator to your floor, without being stopped.”
“Oh, sure.”
“And that someone would have to pick the lock to the door.”
“Yes, and carry in a body, and stuff it in the closet. That sounds pretty unlikely,” said Alcide.
“But that’s apparently what happened. Oh, um . . . did you ever give Debbie a key? Maybe someone borrowed hers?” I tried hard to sound totally neutral. That probably didn’t work too well.
Long pause.
“Yes, she had a key,” Alcide said stiffly.
I bit down on my lips so I wouldn’t ask the next question.
“No, I didn’t get it back from her.”
I hadn’t even needed to ask.
Breaking a somewhat charged silence, Alcide suggested we eat a late lunch. Oddly enough, I found I was really hungry.
We ate at Hal and Mal’s, a restaurant close to downtown. It was in an old warehouse, and the tables were just far enough apart to make our conversation possible without anyone calling the police.
“I don’t think,” I murmured, “that anyone could walk around your building with a body over his shoulder, no matter what the hour.”
“We just did,” he said, unanswerably. “I figure it had to have happened between, say, two a.m. and seven. We were asleep by two, right?”
“More like three, considering Eric’s little visit.”
Our eyes met. Eric. Eureka!
“But why would he have done that? Is he nuts about you?” Alcide asked bluntly.
“Not so much nuts,” I muttered, embarrassed.
“Oh, wants to get in your pants.”
I nodded, not meeting his eyes.
“Lot of that going around,” Alcide said, under his breath.
“Huh,” I said dismissively. “You’re still hung up on that Debbie, and you know it.”
We looked right at each other. Better to haul this out of the shadows now, and put it to rest.
“You can read my mind better than I thought,” Alcide said. His broad face looked unhappy. “But she’s not . . . Why do I care about her? I’m not sure I even like her. I like the hell out of you.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling from my heart. “I like the hell out of you, too.”
“We’re obviously better for each other than either of the people we’re dating are for us,” he said.
Undeniably true. “Yes, and I would be happy with you.”
“And I’d enjoy sharing my day with you.”
“But it looks like we’re not going to get there.”
“No.” He sighed heavily. “I guess not.”
The young waitress beamed at us as we left, making sure Alcide noticed how well packed into her jeans she was.
“What I think I’ll do,” Alcide said, “is I’ll do my best to yank Debbie out of me by the roots. And then I’ll turn up on your doorstep, one day when you least expect it, and I’ll hope by then you will have given up on your vampire.”
“And then we’ll be happy ever after?” I smiled.
He nodded.
“Well, that’ll be something to look forward to,” I told him.
Chapter Eight
I WAS SO tired by the time we entered Alcide’s apartment that I was sure all I was good for was a nap. It had been one of the longest days of my life, and it was only the middle of the afternoon.
But we had some housekeeping chores to do first. While Alcide hung the new shower curtain, I cleaned the carpet in the closet with Resolve, and opened one of the air fresheners and placed it on the shelf. We closed all the windows, turned on the heat, and breathed experimentally, our eyes locked on each other’s.
The apartment smelled okay. We simultaneously breathed out a sigh of relief.
“We just did something really illegal,” I said, still uneasy about my own immorality. “But all I really feel is happy we got away with it.”
“Don’t worry about not feeling guilty,” Alcide said. “Something’ll come along pretty soon that you’ll feel guilty about. Save it up.”
This was such good advice that I decided to try it. “I’m going to take a nap,” I said, “so I’ll be at least a little alert tonight.” You didn’t want to be slow on the uptake around vampires.
“Good idea,” Alcide said. He cocked an eyebrow at me, and I laughed, shaking my head. I went in the smaller bedroom and shut the door, taking off my shoes and falling onto the bed with a feeling of quiet delight. I reached over the side of the bed after a moment, grabbed the fringe of the chenille bedspread, and wrapped it around me. In the quiet apartment, with the heating system blowing a steady stream of warm air into the bedroom, it took only a few minutes to fall asleep.
I woke all of a sudden, and I was completely awake. I knew there was someone else in the apartment. Maybe on some level I’d heard a knock on the front door; or maybe I’d registered the rumble of voices in the living room. I swung silently off the bed and padded to the door, my socks making no noise at all on the beige carpet. I had pushed my door to, but not latched it, and now I turned my head to position my ear at the crack.
A deep, gravelly voice said, “Jerry Falcon came to my apartment last night.”
“I don’t know him,” Alcide replied. He sounded calm, but wary.
“He says you got him into trouble at Josephine’s last night.”
“I got him into trouble? If he’s the guy who grabbed my date, he got himself into trouble!”
“Tell me what happened.”
“He made a pass at my date while I was in the men’s room. When she protested, he started manhandling her, and she drew attention to the situation.”
“He hurt her?”
“Shook her up. And he drew some blood on her shoulder.”
“A blood offense.” The voice had become deadly serious.
“Yes.”
So the fingernail gouges on my shoulder constituted a blood offense, whatever that was.
“And then?”
“I came out of the men’s room, hauled him off of her. Then Mr. Hob stepped in.”
“That explains the burns.”
“Yes. Hob threw him out the back door. And that was the last I saw of him. You say his name is Jerry Falcon?”
“Yeah. He came right to my house then, after the rest of the boys left the bar.”
“Edgington intervened. They were about to jump us.”
“Edgington was there?” The deep voice sounded very unhappy.
“Oh, yes, with his boyfriend.”
“How did Edgington get involved?”
“He told them to leave. Since he’s the king, and they work for him from time to time, he expected obedience. But a pup gave him some trouble, so Edgington broke his knee, made the others carry the guy out. I’m sorry there was trouble in your city, Terence. But it was n
one of our doing.”
“You’ve got guest privileges with our pack, Alcide. We respect you. And those of us who work for the vampires, well, what can I say? Not the best element. But Jerry is their leader, and he was shamed in front of his people last night. How much longer you going to be in our city?”
“Just one more night.”
“And it’s a full moon.”
“Yeah, I know, I’ll try to keep a low profile.”
“What are you going to do tonight? Try to avoid the change, or come out to my hunting land with me?”
“I’ll try to stay out of the moon, try to avoid stress.”
“Then you’ll keep out of Josephine’s.”
“Unfortunately, Russell pretty much demanded that we come back tonight. He felt apologetic that my date went through so much aggravation. He made a point of insisting she come back.”
“Club Dead on a full-moon night, Alcide. This isn’t wise.”
“What am I gonna do? Russell calls the shots in Mississippi.”
“I can understand. But watch out, and if you see Jerry Falcon there, you turn the other way. This is my city.” The deep voice was heavy with authority.
“I understand, Packmaster.”
“Good. Now that you and Debbie Pelt have broken up, I hope it’s a while before we see you back here, Alcide. Give things a chance to settle down. Jerry’s a vindictive son of a bitch. He’ll do you an injury if he can, without starting a feud.”
“He was the one who caused a blood offense.”
“I know, but because of his long association with the vampires, Jerry has too good an opinion of himself. He doesn’t always follow the pack traditions. He only came to me, as he should, because Edgington backed the other side.”
Jerry wasn’t going to be following any tradition anymore. Jerry was lying in the woods to the west.
While I’d napped, it had gotten dark outside. I heard a tap on the glass of the window. I jumped, of course, but then I padded across as quietly as I could. I opened the curtain and held a finger across my lips. It was Eric. I hoped no one on the street outside looked up. He smiled at me and motioned me to open the window. I shook my head vehemently and held my finger across my lips again. If I let Eric in now, Terence would hear, and my presence would be discovered. Terence, I knew instinctively, would not like to find he had been overheard. I tiptoed back to the door and listened. Good-byes were being said. I glanced back at the window, to see that Eric was watching me with great interest. I held up one finger to indicate it would just be a minute.
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