Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set

by Charlaine Harris

  I came up with these scenarios.

  One. (This was my favorite.) Somewhere between my house and his house, my brother had met up with a woman and fallen in love so instantly and completely that he had abandoned his habit of years and forgotten all about work. At this moment, they were in a bed somewhere, having great sex.

  Two. The witches, or whatever the hell they were, had somehow found out that Jason knew where Eric was, and they’d abducted him to force the information from him. (I made a mental note to learn more about witches.) How long could Jason keep the secret of Eric’s location? My brother had lots of attitude, but he actually is a brave man—or maybe stubborn is a little more accurate. He wouldn’t talk easily. Maybe a witch could spell him into talking? If the witches had him, he might be dead already, since they’d had him for hours. And if he’d talked, I was in danger and Eric was doomed. They could be coming at any minute, since witches are not bound by darkness. Eric was dead for the day, defenseless. This was definitely the worst-case scenario.

  Three. Jason had returned to Shreveport with Pam and Chow. Maybe they’d decided to pay him some up-front money, or maybe Jason just wanted to visit Fangtasia because it was a popular nightspot. Once there, he could have been seduced by some vamp girl and stayed up all night with her, since Jason was like Eric in that women really, really took a shine to him. If she’d taken a little too much blood, Jason could be sleeping it off. I guess number three was really a variation on number one.

  If Pam and Chow knew where Jason was but hadn’t phoned before they died for the day, I was real mad. My gut instinct was to go get the hatchet and start chopping some stakes.

  Then I remembered what I was trying so hard to forget: how it had felt when the stake pushed into Lorena’s body, the expression on her face when she’d realized her long, long life was over. I shoved that thought away as hard as I could. You didn’t kill someone (even an evil vampire) without it affecting you sooner or later: at least not unless you were a complete sociopath, which I wasn’t.

  Lorena would have killed me without blinking. In fact, she would have positively enjoyed it. But then, she was a vampire, and Bill never tired of telling me that vampires were different; that though they retained their human appearance (more or less), their internal functions and their personalities underwent a radical change. I believed him and took his warnings to heart, for the most part. It was just that they looked so human; it was so very easy to attribute normal human reactions and feelings to them.

  The frustrating thing was, Chow and Pam wouldn’t be up until dark, and I didn’t know who—or what—I’d raise if I called Fangtasia during the day. I didn’t think the two lived at the club. I’d gotten the impression that Pam and Chow shared a house . . . or a mausoleum . . . somewhere in Shreveport.

  I was fairly sure that human employees came into the club during the day to clean, but of course a human wouldn’t (couldn’t) tell me anything about vampire affairs. Humans who worked for vampires learned pretty quick to keep their mouths shut, as I could attest.

  On the other hand, if I went to the club I’d have a chance to talk to someone face-to-face. I’d have a chance to read a human mind. I couldn’t read vampire minds, which had led to my initial attraction to Bill. Imagine the relief of silence after a lifetime of elevator music. (Now, why couldn’t I hear vampire thoughts? Here’s my big theory about that. I’m about as scientific as a Saltine, but I have read about neurons, which fire in your brain, right? When you’re thinking? Since it’s magic that animates vampires, not normal life force, their brains don’t fire. So, nothing for me to pick up—except about once every three months, I’d get a flash from a vampire. And I took great care to conceal that, because that was a sure way to court instant death.)

  Oddly enough, the only vampire I’d ever “heard” twice was—you guessed it—Eric.

  I’d been enjoying Eric’s recent company so much for the same reason I’d enjoyed Bill’s, quite apart from the romantic component I’d had with Bill. Even Arlene had a tendency to stop listening to me when I was talking, if she thought of something more interesting, like her children’s grades or cute things they’d said. But with Eric, he could be thinking about his car needing new windshield wipers while I was pouring my heart out, and I was none the wiser.

  The hour I’d asked Catfish to give me was almost up, and all my constructive thought had dwindled into the same murky maundering I’d gone through several times. Blah blah blah. This is what happens when you talk to yourself a lot.

  Okay, action time.

  The phone rang right at the hour, and Catfish admitted he had no news. No one had heard from Jason or seen him; but on the other hand, Dago hadn’t seen anything suspicious at Jason’s place except the truck’s open door.

  I was still reluctant to call the sheriff, but I didn’t see that I had much choice. At this point, it would seem peculiar to skip calling him.

  I expected a lot of hubbub and alarm, but what I got was even worse: I got benevolent indifference. Sheriff Bud Dearborn actually laughed.

  “You callin’ me because your tomcat of a brother is missing a day of work? Sookie Stackhouse, I’m surprised at you.” Bud Dearborn had a slow voice and the mashed-in face of a Pekinese, and it was all too easy to picture him snuffling into the phone.

  “He never misses work, and his truck is at his house. The door was open,” I said.

  He did grasp that significance, because Bud Dearborn is a man who knows how to appreciate a fine pickup.

  “That does sound a little funny, but still, Jason is way over twenty-one and he has a reputation for . . .” (Drilling anything that stands still, I thought.) “. . . being real popular with the ladies,” Bud concluded carefully. “I bet he’s all shacked up with someone new, and he’ll be real sorry to have caused you any worry. You call me back if you haven’t heard from him by tomorrow afternoon, you hear?”

  “Right,” I said in my most frozen voice.

  “Now, Sookie, don’t you go getting all mad at me, I’m just telling you what any lawman would tell you,” he said.

  I thought, Any lawman with lead in his butt. But I didn’t say it out loud. Bud was what I had to work with, and I had to stay on his good side, as much as possible.

  I muttered something that was vaguely polite and got off the phone. After reporting back to Catfish, I decided my only course of action was to go to Shreveport. I started to call Arlene, but I remembered she’d have the kids at home since it was still the school holiday. I thought of calling Sam, but I figured he might feel like he ought to do something, and I couldn’t figure out what that would be. I just wanted to share my worries with someone. I knew that wasn’t right. No one could help me, but me. Having made up my mind to be brave and independent, I almost phoned Alcide Herveaux, who is a well-to-do and hardworking guy based in Shreveport. Alcide’s dad runs a surveying firm that contracts for jobs in three states, and Alcide travels a lot among the various offices. I’d mentioned him the night before to Eric; Eric had sent Alcide to Jackson with me. But Alcide and I had some man-woman issues that were still unresolved, and it would be cheating to call him when I only wanted help he couldn’t give. At least, that was how I felt.

  I was scared to leave the house in case there might be news of Jason, but since the sheriff wasn’t looking for him, I hardly thought there would be any word soon.

  Before I left, I made sure I’d arranged the closet in the smaller bedroom so that it looked natural. It would be a little harder for Eric to get out when the sun went down, but it wouldn’t be extremely difficult. Leaving him a note would be a dead giveaway if someone broke in, and he was too smart to answer the phone if I called just after dark had fallen. But he was so discombobulated by his amnesia, he might be scared to wake all by himself with no explanation of my absence, I thought.

  I had a brainwave. Grabbing a little square piece of paper from last year’s Word of the Day calendar (“enthrallment”), I wrote: Jason, if you should happen to drop by, call me! I a
m very worried about you. No one knows where you are. I’ll be back this afternoon or evening. I’m going to drop by your house, and then I’ll check to see if you went to Shreveport. Then, back here. Love, Sookie. I got some tape and stuck the note to the refrigerator, just where a sister might expect her brother to head if he stopped by.

  There. Eric was plenty smart enough to read between the lines. And yet every word of it was feasible, so if anyone did break in to search the house, they’d think I was taking a smart precaution.

  But still, I was frightened of leaving the sleeping Eric so vulnerable. What if the witches came looking?

  But why should they?

  If they could have tracked Eric, they’d have been here by now, right? At least, that was the way I was reasoning. I thought of calling someone like Terry Bellefleur, who was plenty tough, to come sit in my house—I could use waiting on a call about Jason as my pretext—but it wasn’t right to endanger anyone else in Eric’s defense.

  I called all the hospitals in the area, feeling all the while that the sheriff should be doing this little job for me. The hospitals knew the name of everyone admitted, and none of them was Jason. I called the highway patrol to ask about accidents the night before and found there had been none in the vicinity. I called a few women Jason had dated, and I received a lot of negative responses, some of them obscene.

  I thought I’d covered all the bases. I was ready to go to Jason’s house, and I remember I was feeling pretty proud of myself as I drove north on Hummingbird Road and then took a left onto the highway. As I headed west to the house where I’d spent my first seven years, I drove past Merlotte’s to my right and then past the main turnoff into Bon Temps. I negotiated the left turn and I could see our old home, sure enough with Jason’s pickup parked in front of it. There was another pickup, equally shiny, parked about twenty feet away from Jason’s.

  When I got out of my car, a very black man was examining the ground around the truck. I was surprised to discover that the second pickup belonged to Alcee Beck, the only African-American detective on the parish force. Alcee’s presence was both reassuring and disturbing.

  “Miss Stackhouse,” he said gravely. Alcee Beck was wearing a jacket and slacks and heavy scuffed boots. The boots didn’t go with the rest of his clothes, and I was willing to bet he kept them in his truck for when he had to go tromping around out in the country where the ground was less than dry. Alcee (whose name was pronounced Al-SAY) was also a strong broadcaster, and I could receive his thoughts clearly when I let down my shields to listen.

  I learned in short order that Alcee Beck wasn’t happy to see me, didn’t like me, and did think something hinky had happened to Jason. Detective Beck didn’t care for Jason, but he was actually scared of me. He thought I was a deeply creepy person, and he avoided me as much as possible.

  Which was okay by me, frankly.

  I knew more about Alcee Beck than I was comfortable knowing, and what I knew about Alcee was really unpleasant. He was brutal to uncooperative prisoners, though he adored his wife and daughter. He was lining his own pockets whenever he got a chance, and he made sure the chances came along pretty frequently. Alcee Beck confined this practice to the African-American community, operating on the theory that they’d never report him to the other white law enforcement personnel, and so far he’d been right.

  See what I mean about not wanting to know things I heard? This was a lot different from finding out that Arlene really didn’t think Charlsie’s husband was good enough for Charlsie, or that Hoyt Fortenberry had dented a car in the parking lot and hadn’t told the owner.

  And before you ask me what I do about stuff like that, I’ll tell you. I don’t do squat. I’ve found out the hard way that it almost never works out if I try to intervene. What happens is no one is happier, and my little freakishness is brought to everyone’s attention, and no one is comfortable around me for a month. I’ve got more secrets than Fort Knox has money. And those secrets are staying locked up just as tight.

  I’ll admit that most of those little facts I accumulated didn’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things, whereas Alcee’s misbehavior actually led to human misery. But so far I hadn’t seen a single way to stop Alcee. He was very clever about keeping his activities under control and hidden from anyone with the power to intervene. And I wasn’t too awful sure that Bud Dearborn didn’t know.

  “Detective Beck,” I said. “Are you looking for Jason?”

  “The sheriff asked me to come by and see if I could find anything out of order.”

  “And have you found anything?”

  “No, ma’am, I haven’t.”

  “Jason’s boss told you the door to his truck was open?”

  “I closed it so the battery wouldn’t run down. I was careful not to touch anything, of course. But I’m sure your brother will show back up any time now, and he’ll be unhappy if we mess with his stuff for no reason.”

  “I have a key to his house, and I’m going to ask you to go in there with me.”

  “Do you suspect anything happened to your brother in his house?” Alcee Beck was being so careful to spell everything out that I wondered if he had a tape recorder rolling away in his pocket.

  “Could be. He doesn’t normally miss work. In fact, he never misses work. And I always know where he is. He’s real good about letting me know.”

  “He’d tell you if he was running off with a woman? Most brothers wouldn’t do that, Miss Stackhouse.”

  “He’d tell me, or he’d tell Catfish.”

  Alcee Beck did his best to keep his skeptical look on his dark face, but it didn’t sit there easily.

  The house was still locked. I picked out the right key from the ones on my ring, and we went inside. I didn’t have the feeling of homecoming when I entered, the feeling I used to have as a kid. I’d lived in Gran’s house so much longer than this little place. The minute Jason had turned twenty, he’d moved over here full-time, and though I’d dropped in, I’d probably spent less than twenty-four hours total in this house in the last eight years.

  Glancing around me, I realized that my brother really hadn’t changed the house much in all that time. It was a small ranch-style house with small rooms, but of course it was a lot younger than Gran’s house—my house—and a lot more heating- and cooling-efficient. My father had done most of the work on it, and he was a good builder.

  The small living room was still filled with the maple furniture my mother had picked out at the discount furniture store, and its upholstery (cream with green and blue flowers that had never been seen in nature) was still bright, more’s the pity. It had taken me a few years to realize that my mother, while a clever woman in some respects, had had no taste whatsoever. Jason had never come to that realization. He’d replaced the curtains when they frayed and faded, and he’d gotten a new rug to cover the most worn spots on the ancient blue carpet. The appliances were all new, and he’d worked hard on updating the bathroom. But my parents, if they could have entered their home, would have felt quite comfortable.

  It was a shock to realize they’d been dead for nearly twenty years.

  While I stood close to the doorway, praying I wouldn’t see bloodstains, Alcee Beck prowled through the house, which certainly seemed orderly. After a second’s indecision, I decided to follow him. There wasn’t much to see; like I say, it’s a small house. Three bedrooms (two of them quite cramped), the living room, a kitchen, one bathroom, a fair-sized family room, and a small dining room: a house that could be duplicated any number of times in any town in America.

  The house was quite tidy. Jason had never lived like a pig, though sometimes he acted like one. Even the king-size bed that almost filled the biggest bedroom was more-or-less pulled straight, though I could see the sheets were black and shiny. They were supposed to look like silk, but I was sure they were some artificial blend. Too slithery for me; I liked percale.

  “No evidence of any struggle,” the detective pointed out.

  �
��While I’m here, I’m just going to get something,” I told him, going over to the gun cabinet that had been my dad’s. It was locked, so I checked my key ring again. Yes, I had a key for that, too, and I remembered some long story Jason had told me about why I needed one—in case he was out hunting and he needed another rifle, or something. As if I’d drop everything and run to fetch another rifle for him!

  Well, I might, if I wasn’t due at work, or something.

  All Jason’s rifles, and my father’s, were in the gun cabinet—all the requisite ammunition, too.

  “All present?” The detective was shifting around impatiently in the doorway to the dining room.

  “Yes. I’m just going to take one of them home with me.”

  “You expecting trouble at your place?” Beck looked interested for the first time.

  “If Jason is gone, who knows what it means?” I said, hoping that was ambiguous enough. Beck had a very low opinion of my intelligence, anyway, despite the fact that he feared me. Jason had said he would bring me the shotgun, and I knew I would feel the better for having it. So I got out the Benelli and found its shells. Jason had very carefully taught me how to load and fire the shotgun, which was his pride and joy. There were two different boxes of shells.

  “Which?” I asked Detective Beck.

  “Wow, a Benelli.” He took time out to be impressed with gun. “Twelve-gauge, huh? Me, I’d take the turkey loads,” he advised. “Those target loads don’t have as much stopping power.”

  I popped the box he indicated into my pocket.

  I carried the shotgun out to my car, Beck trailing on my heels.

  “You have to lock the shotgun in your trunk and the shells in the car,” the detective informed me. I did exactly what he said, even putting the shells in the glove compartment, and then I turned to face him. He would be glad to be out of my sight, and I didn’t think he would look for Jason with any enthusiasm.

  “Did you check around back?” I asked.

  “I had just gotten here when you pulled up.”