Sookie 09 Dead and Gone (6 page)

I shrugged. “We both helped to look for bodies,” I said. “It was a terrible day. I don’t remember what name he gave.”

“That seems strange,” Lattesta said, and I thought,
Oh, shit
. “Since someone answering your description and a young man answering his description checked into a motel some distance from the explosion that night and shared a room.”

“Well, you don’t have to know someone’s name to spend the night with them,” Amelia said reasonably.

I shrugged and tried to look embarrassed, which wasn’t too hard. I’d rather they think me sexually easy than decide I was worthy of more attention. “We’d shared a horrible, stressful event. Afterward, we felt really close. That’s the way we reacted.” Actually, Barry had collapsed in sleep almost instantly, and I had followed soon afterward. Hanky-panky had been the furthest thing from our minds.

The two agents stared at me doubtfully. Weiss was thinking I was lying for sure, and Lattesta suspected it. He thought I knew Barry very well.

The phone rang, and Amelia hurried to the kitchen to answer it. She came back looking green.

“Sookie, that was Antoine on his cell phone. They need you at the bar,” she said. And then she turned to the FBI agents. “Probably you should go with her.”

“Why?” Weiss asked. “What’s up?” She was already on her feet. Lattesta was stuffing the picture back into his briefcase.

“A body,” Amelia said. “A woman’s been crucified behind the bar.”

The agents followed me to Merlotte’s. There were five or six
cars parked across the spot where the front parking lot ended and the back parking began, effectively blocking access to the back. But I leaped out of my car and picked a path between them, and the FBI agents were right on my heels.

I had hardly been able to believe it, but it was true. There was a traditional cross erected in the employee parking lot, back by the trees where the gravel gave way to dirt. A body was nailed to it. My eyes scanned it, took in the distorted body, the streaks of dried blood, came back up to the face.

“Oh, no,” I said, and my knees folded.

Antoine, the cook, and D’Eriq, the busboy, were suddenly on either side of me, pulling me up. D’Eriq’s face was tearstained, and Antoine looked grim, but the cook had his head together. He’d been in Iraq and in New Orleans during Katrina. He’d seen things that were worse.

“I’m sorry, Sookie,” he said.

Andy Bellefleur was there, and Sheriff Dearborn. They walked over to me, looking bigger and bulkier in their waterproof quilted coats. Their faces were hard with suppressed shock.

“Sorry about your sister-in-law,” Bud Dearborn said, but I could barely pay attention to the words.

“She was pregnant,” I said. “She was pregnant.” That was all I could think about. I wasn’t amazed that someone would want to kill Crystal, but I was really horrified about the baby.

I took a deep breath and managed to look again. Crystal’s bloody hands were panther paws. The lower part of her legs had changed, too. The effect was even more shocking and grotesque than the crucifixion of a regular human woman and, if possible, more pitiful.

Thoughts raced through my head with no logical sequence. I thought of who needed to know that Crystal had died. Calvin, not only head of her clan but also her uncle. Crystal’s husband, my brother. Why was Crystal left here, of all places? Who could have done this?

“Have you called Jason yet?” I said through numb lips. I tried to blame that on the cold, but I knew it was shock. “He would be at work this time of day.”

Bud Dearborn said, “We called him.”

“Please don’t make him look at her,” I said. There was a bloody mess trailing down the wood of the cross to the ground at its base. I gagged, got myself under control.

“I understand she cheated on him, and that their breakup was pretty public.” Bud was trying to be dispassionate, but the effort was costing him. Rage was in the back of his eyes.

“You can ask Dove Beck about that,” I said, instantly on the defensive. Alcee Beck was a detective for the Bon Temps police department, and the man Crystal had chosen to cheat with was Alcee’s cousin Dove. “Yeah, Crystal and Jason had separated. But he would never do anything to his baby.” I knew Jason would not have done such a horrific thing to Crystal no matter what the provocation, but I didn’t expect anyone else to believe me.

Lattesta walked over to us, Agent Weiss following close behind. She looked a little white around the mouth, but her voice was steady. “From the condition of the body, I believe this woman was a . . . werepanther.” She said the word as if it was hard to get it through her lips.

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am, she was.” I was still fighting to gain control of my stomach.

“Then this could be a hate crime,” Lattesta said. His face was locked down tight, and his thoughts were orderly. He was composing a mental list of phone calls he should make, and he was trying to figure out if there was any way he could take charge of the case. If the murder had been a hate crime, he had a good shot at being in on the investigation.

“And who might you be?” Bud Dearborn asked. He had his hands on his belt, and he was looking at Weiss and Lattesta as if they were pre-need burial plot salesmen.

While the law enforcement types were all introducing themselves and saying profound things about the crime scene, Antoine said, “I’m sorry, Sookie. We had to call ’em. But we called your house right after.”

“Of course you had to call them,” I said. “I just wish Sam was here.” Oh, gosh. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and pressed his speed-dial number.

“Sam,” I said when he picked up. “Can you talk?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding apprehensive. He could already tell something was wrong.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in my car.”

“I have bad news.”

“What’s happened? Did the bar burn down?”

“No, but Crystal’s been murdered in the parking lot. Out back by your trailer.”

“Oh, shit. Where’s Jason?”

“He’s on his way here, near as I can find out.”

“I’m sorry, Sookie.” He sounded exhausted. “This is going to be bad.”

“The FBI is here. They’re thinking it might be a hate crime.” I skipped the explanation of why they’d happened to be in Bon Temps.

“Well, a lot of people didn’t like Crystal,” Sam said cautiously, surprise in his voice.

“She was crucified.”

“Dammit to
hell
.” A long pause. “Sook, if my mom is still stable and nothing’s happening legally with my stepfather, I’ll start back later today or early tomorrow.”

“Good.” I couldn’t begin to pack enough relief into that one word. And it was no use pretending I had everything under control.

“I’m sorry,
cher
,” he said again. “Sorry you’re having to handle it, sorry Jason will be suspected, sorry about the whole thing. Sorry for Crystal, too.”

“I’ll be glad to see you,” I said, and my voice was shaky with incipient tears.

“I’ll be there.” And he hung up.

Lattesta said, “Ms. Stackhouse, are these men other bar employees?”

I introduced Antoine and D’Eriq to Lattesta. Antoine’s expression didn’t change, but D’Eriq was completely impressed that he’d met an FBI agent.

“Both of you knew this Crystal Norris, right?” Lattesta said mildly.

Antoine said, “Just by sight. She come in the bar some.”

D’Eriq nodded.

“Crystal Norris Stackhouse,” I said. “She’s my sister-in-law. The sheriff’s called my brother. But you need to call her uncle, Calvin Norris. He works at Norcross.”

“He her nearest living relative? Besides the husband?”

“She’s got a sister. But Calvin’s the leader of—” I stopped, not sure if Calvin had endorsed the Great Reveal. “He raised her,” I said. Close enough.

Lattesta and Weiss huddled with Bud Dearborn. They were deep in conversation, probably about Calvin and the tiny community out at the bleak crossroads. Hotshot was a group of small houses containing lots of secrets. Crystal had wanted to escape from Hotshot, but she also felt most secure there.

My eyes returned to the tortured figure on the cross. Crystal was dressed, but her clothes had ripped when her arms and legs had changed to panther limbs, and there was blood everywhere. Her hands and feet, impaled with nails, were crusted with it. Ropes did the work of holding her to the crossbar, kept the flesh from ripping free of the nails.

I’d seen a lot of awful things, but this was maybe the most pathetic. “Poor Crystal,” I said, and found tears were rolling down my cheeks.

“You didn’t like her,” Andy Bellefleur said. I wondered how long he’d been out here, looking at the ruin of what had once been a living, breathing, healthy woman. Andy’s cheeks were patched with stubble, and his nose was red. Andy had a cold. He sneezed and excused himself to use a handkerchief.

D’Eriq and Antoine were talking to Alcee Beck. Alcee was the other Bon Temps police detective, and that didn’t make the investigation look too promising. He wouldn’t be too regretful about Crystal’s death.

Andy faced me again after he’d stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket. I looked at his weary, broad face. I knew he’d do his best to find out who’d done this. I trusted Andy. Square-built Andy, some years my senior, had never been a smiley kind of guy. He was serious and suspicious. I didn’t know if he’d chosen his occupation because it suited him, or if his character had altered in response to his occupation.

“I hear she and Jason had split,” he said.

“Yes. She cheated on him.” This was common knowledge. I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

“Pregnant and all, like she was?” Andy shook his head.

“Yeah.” I spread my hands.
That was the way she was
.

“That’s sick,” Andy said.

“Yeah, it is. Cheating with your husband’s baby in your stomach between you . . . that’s just specially icky.” It was a thought I’d had but never voiced.

“So, who was the other man?” Andy asked casually. “Or men?”

“You’re the only guy in Bon Temps who doesn’t know she was screwing Dove Beck,” I said.

This time it registered. Andy glanced over at Alcee Beck and back to me. “I know now,” he said. “Who hated her that much, Sookie?”

“If you’re thinking Jason, you can just think again. He would never do that to his baby.”

“If she was so free with herself, maybe it wasn’t his baby,” Andy said. “Maybe he found that out.”

“It was his,” I said with a firmness I wasn’t sure I felt. “But even if it wasn’t, if some blood test says it wasn’t, he wouldn’t kill anybody’s baby. Anyway, they weren’t living together. She’d moved back in with her sister. Why would he even go to the trouble?”

“Why were the FBI at your house?”

Okay, so this questioning thing was going to go one way. “Some questions about the explosion in Rhodes,” I said. “I found out about Crystal while they were there. They came along out of professional curiosity, I guess. Lattesta, the guy, thinks this might be a hate crime.”

“That’s an interesting idea,” he said. “This is undoubtedly a hate crime, but whether or not it’s the kind of thing they should investigate, I don’t know yet.” He strode off to talk to Weiss. Lattesta was looking up at the body, shaking his head, as if he was noting a level of awfulness he’d thought couldn’t be reached.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was in charge of the bar, and the crime scene was on bar property, so I was determined to stay.

Alcee Beck called, “All people on the scene who are not police officers, leave the area! All police officers who are nones sential to the crime scene, step into the front parking lot!” His gaze fell on me, and he jabbed a finger toward the front. So I went back to lean against my car. Though it was cold enough, it was lucky for all of us that the day was bright and the wind wasn’t blowing. I pulled my coat collar up around my ears and reached into the car to get my black gloves. I tugged them on and waited.

Time passed. I watched various police officers come and go. When Holly showed up for her shift, I explained what had happened and sent her home, telling her I’d call when I’d gotten permission to reopen. I couldn’t think of any other course of action. Antoine and D’Eriq had left long ago, after I’d entered their cell numbers on my phone.

Jason’s truck screeched to a halt beside my car, and he leaped out to stand in front of me. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, but this was no time to talk about our differences. “Is it true?” my brother asked.

“I’m sorry. It’s true.”

“The baby, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Alcee come out to the job site,” he said numbly. “He come asking how long it had been since I’d seen her. I haven’t talked to her in four or five weeks, except to send her some money for the doctor visits and her vitamins. I saw her once at Dairy Queen.”

“Who was she with?”

“Her sister.” He took a long, shuddering breath. “You think . . . was it bad?”

No point beating around the bush. “Yes,” I said.

“Then I’m sorry she had to go that way,” he said. He wasn’t used to expressing complex emotions, and it sat awkwardly on him, this combination of grief and regret and loss. He looked five years older. “I was so hurt by her and mad at her, but I wouldn’t want her to suffer and be afraid. God knows we probably wouldn’t have been good as parents, but we didn’t get a chance to try.”

I agreed with every part of what he’d said.

“Did you have company last night?” I said finally.

“Yeah, I took Michele Schubert home from the Bayou,” he said. The Bayou was a bar in Clarice, only a few miles away.

“She stay all night?”

“I made her scrambled eggs this morning.”

“Good.” For once my brother’s promiscuity paid off—Michele was a single divorcée without children and forthright to boot. If anyone would be willing to tell the police exactly where she’d been and what she’d done, Michele was the woman. I said as much.

“The police have already talked to her,” Jason told me.

“That was fast.”

“Bud was in the Bayou last night.”

So the sheriff would have seen Jason leave and would have noted whom he’d left with. Bud hadn’t kept the job of sheriff this long without being shrewd. “Well, that’s good,” I said, and couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You think maybe she was killed because she was a panther?” Jason asked hesitantly.

“Maybe. She was partially changed when she was killed.”

“Poor Crystal,” he said. “She would have hated anyone to see her like that.” And to my amazement, tears ran down his face.

I didn’t have the slightest idea how to react. All I could do was fetch a Kleenex from the box in my car and shove it in his hand. I hadn’t seen Jason cry in years. Had he even cried when Gran had died? Maybe he really had loved Crystal. Maybe it hadn’t been solely wounded pride that had caused him to set up her exposure as an adulteress. He’d fixed it so both her uncle Calvin and I would catch her in the act. I’d been so disgusted and furious with being forced to be a witness—and with the consequences—that I’d avoided Jason for weeks. Crystal’s death had shunted aside that anger, at least for the moment.

“She’s beyond that now,” I said.

Calvin’s battered truck pulled up on the other side of my car. Quicker than my eye could track, he stood in front of me, while Tanya Grissom scrambled out the other side. A stranger looked out of Calvin’s eyes. Normally a peculiar yellowish color, those eyes were now almost golden, and the irises were so large that there was almost no visible white. His pupils had elongated. He was not even wearing a light jacket. It made me cold to look at him in more ways than one.