Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(42)

Yes. Everything was in its proper place.

It was the smell.

It was a sort of penny smell.

A coppery smell, sharp and salty.

The smell of blood.

It was down here with me, not upstairs where the guest bedrooms sat in neat solitude.

“Gran?” I called. I hated the quavering in my voice.

I made myself move, I made myself go to the door of her room. It was pristine. I began switching on lights as I went through the house.

My room was just as I’d left it.

The bathroom was empty.

The washroom was empty.

I switched on the last light. The kitchen was . . .

I screamed, over and over. My hands were fluttering uselessly in the air, trembling more with each scream. I heard a crash behind me, but couldn’t be concerned. Then big hands gripped me and moved me, and a big body was between me and what I’d seen on the kitchen floor. I didn’t recognize Bill, but he picked me up and moved me to the living room where I couldn’t see any more.

“Sookie,” he said harshly, “Shut up! This isn’t any good!”

If he’d been kind to me, I’d have kept on shrieking.

“Sorry,” I said, still out of my mind. “I am acting like that boy.”

He stared at me blankly.

“The one in your story,” I said numbly.

“We have to call the police.”

“Sure.”

“We have to dial the phone.”

“Wait. How did you come here?”

“Your grandmother gave me a ride home, but I insisted on coming with her first and helping her unload the car.”

“So why are you still here?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“So, did you see who killed her?”

“No. I went home, across the cemetery, to change.”

He was wearing blue jeans and Grateful Dead T-shirt, and suddenly I began to giggle.

“That’s priceless,” I said, doubling over with the laughter.

And I was crying, just as suddenly. I picked up the phone and dialled 911.

Andy Bellefleur was there in five minutes.



JASON CAME AS soon as I reached him. I tried to call him at four or five different places, and finally reached him at Merlotte’s. Terry Bellefleur was bartending for Sam that night, and when he’d gotten back from telling Jason to come to his grandmother’s house, I asked Terry if he’d call Sam and tell him I had troubles and couldn’t work for a few days.

Terry must have called Sam right away because Sam was at my house within thirty minutes, still wearing the clothes he’d worn to the meeting that night. At the sight of him I looked down, remembering unbuttoning my blouse as I walked through the living room, a fact I’d completely lost track of; but I was decent. It dawned on me that Bill must have set me to rights. I might find that embarrassing later, but at the moment I was just grateful.

So Jason came in, and when I told him Gran was dead, and dead by violence, he just looked at me. There seemed to be nothing going on behind his eyes. It was as if someone had erased his capacity for absorbing new facts. Then what I’d said sank in, and my brother sank to his knees right where he stood, and I knelt in front of him. He put his arms around me and lay his head on my shoulder, and we just stayed there for a while. We were all that was left.

Bill and Sam were out in the front yard sitting in lawn chairs, out of the way of the police. Soon Jason and I were asked to go out on the porch, at least, and we opted to sit outside, too. It was a mild evening, and I sat facing the house, all lit up like a birthday cake, and the people that came and went from it like ants who’d been allowed at the party. All this industry surrounding the tissue that had been my grandmother.

“What happened?” Jason asked finally.

“I came in from the meeting,” I said very slowly. “After Sam pulled off in his truck. I knew something was wrong. I looked in every room.” This was the story of How I Found Grandmother Dead, the official version. “And when I got to the kitchen I saw her.”

Jason turned his head very slowly so his eyes met mine.

“Tell me.”

I shook my head silently. But it was his right to know. “She was beaten up, but she had tried to fight back, I think. Whoever did this cut her up some. And then strangled her, it looked like.”

I could not even look at my brother’s face. “It was my fault.” My voice was nothing more than a whisper.

“How do you figure that?” Jason said, sounding nothing more than dull and sluggish.

“I figure someone came to kill me like they killed Maudette and Dawn, but Gran was here instead.”

I could see the idea percolate in Jason’s brain.

“I was supposed to be home tonight while she was at the meeting, but Sam asked me to go at the last minute. My car was here like it would be normally because we went in Sam’s truck. Gran had parked her car around back while she was unloading, so it wouldn’t look like she was here, just me. She had given Bill a ride home, but he helped her unload and went to change clothes. After he left, whoever it was . . . got her.”

“How do we know it wasn’t Bill?” Jason asked, as though Bill wasn’t sitting right there beside him.

“How do we know it wasn’t anyone?” I said, exasperated at my brother’s slow wits. “It could be anyone, anyone we know. I don’t think it was Bill. I don’t think Bill killed Maudette and Dawn. And I do think whoever killed Maudette and Dawn killed Grandmother.”