Dead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse #13)(31)
Author: Charlaine Harris

I shuddered again.

There was more to think about and more ground to retread, but suddenly I was dazed with exhaustion. I wouldn’t have imagined I could get into bed and close my eyes ever again, after a day like today . . . but my body thought otherwise, and I let it rule.

I might rue what I’d said this night when I woke up in the daytime. I might call myself a fool and pack my bags for Oklahoma. Right now, I had to let my regrets and conjectures go. As I scrubbed my face at the bathroom sink, I remembered I’d made a promise. Instead of calling Sam and having to answer questions, I texted him. "Home okay, bad but over."

I slept without dreams and woke to another day of rain.

The police were at my door, and they arrested me for murder.

ELSEWHERE

in a motel on the interstate fifteen miles from Bon Temps

The tall man was lying back on the double bed, his big hands clasped over his belly, his expression totally satisfied. "God be praised," he said to the ceiling. "Sometimes the evildoers get punished as they deserve."

His roommate ignored him. He was on the telephone again. "Yes," the medium man was saying. "It’s confirmed. She’s been arrested. Are we through here now? If we stay any longer, we run the risk of being noticed, and in my companion’s case . . ." He glanced over at the other bed. The tall man had left his bed to go to the bathroom, and he’d shut the door. The medium man continued in a hushed voice. "In his case, recognized. We couldn’t use the trailer because the police were sure to search it, and we couldn’t risk leaving trace, even with the Bon Temps police department. We’ve been changing motels every night."

The rich male voice said, "I’ll be there tomorrow. We’ll talk."

"Face-to-face?" The medium man sounded neutral, but since he was alone, he let his expression show his apprehension.

He heard the man on the other end laughing, but it was more like a series of coughs. "Yes, face-to-face," the man said.

After he’d ended the conversation, the medium man stared at the wall for a few minutes. He didn’t like this turn of events. He wondered if he was worried enough to forgo the remainder of his pay for this job.

He hadn’t lasted this long without being wily and without knowing when to cut his losses. Would his employer really track him down if he left?

Gloomily, Johan Glassport concluded that he would.

By the time Steve Newlin came out of the bathroom zipping up his pants, Glassport was able to relate the conversation without revealing by any blink of an eyelash how repugnant he found the idea of meeting their employer again. Glassport was ready to turn out the lights and crawl into his bed, but Newlin wouldn’t shut up.

Steve Newlin was in an exceptionally good mood, because he was imagining several things that might happen to the Stackhouse woman while she was in jail. None of these things was pleasant, and some of them were  p**n ographic, but all of them were couched in terms of what Steve Newlin’s personal Bible interpreted as hellfire and damnation.

Chapter 9

I never would have imagined I could be glad my grandmother was dead, but that morning I was. It would have killed Gran to see me arrested and put into a police car.

I never had experimented with bondage, and now I surely never would. I hate handcuffs.

I had a trite-but-true moment when Alcee Beck told me he was arresting me for murder. I thought, Any minute now I’ll wake up. I didn’t really wake up when I heard the doorbell. I just dreamed it. This isn’t real, because it can’t be. What convinced me that I was awake? The expression on Andy Bellefleur’s face. He was standing behind Alcee, and he looked stricken. And I could hear right in his brain, he didn’t think I deserved to be arrested. Not on the evidence they had. Alcee Beck had had to talk long and hard to convince the sheriff that I should be arrested.

Alcee Beck’s brain was strange; it was black. I’d never seen anything like it, and I couldn’t get a handle on it. That couldn’t mean anything good. I could feel his determination to put me in jail. In Alcee Beck’s mind, I might as well have "GUILTY" tattooed on my forehead.

When Andy put the cuffs on me, I said, "I assume I’m uninvited to Halleigh’s baby shower."

"Aw, Sookie," he said, which was hardly adequate.

To do Andy justice, he was embarrassed, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood to do him any justice when he was doing me none. "I think you know I never hurt Arlene," I said to Andy, and I said it very evenly. I was proud of myself for keeping a sealed and stern façade, because inside I was dying of humiliation and horror.

He looked as if he wanted to say something (he wanted to say, I hope you didn’t but there’s a little evidence says you did but not enough I don’t know how Alcee got a warrant), but he shook his head and said, "I got to do this."

My sense of unreality lasted all through the booking process. My brother, God bless him, was standing at the jail door when they brought me in, having heard through the instant messaging circuit what had happened. His mouth was open, but before he could vocalize all the angry words I could see crowding his brain, I started talking. "Jason, call Beth Osiecki, and tell her to get down here soon as she can. Go in the house and get the phone number for Desmond Cataliades, and call him, too. And call Sam and tell him I can’t come to work tomorrow," I added hastily, as I was marched into the jail and they shut the door on my brother’s anxious face. Bless his heart.

If this had happened even a week, two weeks ago, I could have been confident that Eric, or even perhaps my great-grandfather Niall (prince of the fairies), would have me out in the wink of an eye. But I’d burned my bridges with Eric, and Niall had sealed himself into Faery for complicated reasons.

Now I had Jason.

I knew every single person I saw during the process of being booked. It was the most humiliating experience of my life, and that was saying something. I discovered I was being charged with second-degree murder. I knew from Kennedy Keyes’s discussion of her time in jail that the penalty for second-degree murder would be life in prison.

I do not look good in orange.

There are worse things than humiliation and worse things than wearing a jail outfit (baggy tunic and drawstring pants). That’s for sure. But I have to say, my cup was full and overflowing, and I was ready for some goodness and mercy. I was so agitated that I was glad to see the cell door. I thought I’d be alone. But I wasn’t. Jane Bodehouse, of all people, was passed out and snoring on the bottom bunk. She must have had a few adventures after Merlotte’s closed the night before.

At least she was out of it, so I had plenty of time to adjust to my new circumstances. After ten minutes of processing, I was bored out of my mind. If you’d asked me how it would be to sit without work to do, without a book, without a television, without even a telephone, I would have laughed because I couldn’t have imagined such a situation.