Deadlocked

"Did you see the dead girl arrive? Do you know how she got here, or why she came?" Ambroselli asked Pam.

"Our other guests entered through the front door, properly. I suppose this Kym entered through the kitchen," Pam said, shrugging elegantly. "Eric sent me on an errand, and I didn't see her arrive."

"No, I didn't," Eric said. "What errand?"

"Mustapha told me you wanted me to go buy some more rum," Pam said. "Was this not the case?"

Eric shook his head. "I wouldn't send you on an errand if Mustapha was here at the house," he said. "You're better protection, any day."

"I'll check from now on," Pam promised. Her voice was cold. "I assumed the order came from you, and of course I set off for the store. When I got back, I checked the living room to make sure all was well, and I heard Sookie enter. Since I knew you were anxious to see her, and I knew you were in the bedroom, I took her back there."

I was in a group of multi-projectors. Ambroselli's brain was the busiest, naturally. T-Rex was thinking he was glad his publicist was on speed dial, and wondering whether or not this incident would help his image. Viveca and Cherie were terribly excited. They didn't have the imagination to be relieved that the body on the lawn wasn't one of them. My own head was whirling with the excitement pouring from so many heads.

"Mr. Compton, same questions for you," Ambroselli said. "Did you see the victim arrive?"

"I did not," Bill said very positively. "I should have. I was in charge of watching the front of the house. But I didn't see her get out of a car or approach by foot. She must have come through the back gate and up the hill to creep around the corner of the house and enter through the garage, or perhaps she came in through the French windows that open onto the kitchen and the living room. Though I'm sure some of our guests would have noticed if she'd entered there."

There was a round of headshakes. No one had seen her come in that way.

"And you didn't know her? Had never seen her?" Ambroselli said to Pam.

"As Eric pointed out, she may have been to Fangtasia. I don't remember meeting her or seeing her there."

"Are there security cameras in Fangtasia?"

There was a moment of silence. "We don't permit any sort of camera in Fangtasia while the club is open," Eric said smoothly. "If patrons want pictures, there is a club photographer who is happy to take snapshots."

"So let me see if I've got this right," Ambroselli said. "This house belongs to you, Mr. Northman." She pointed from the floor to Eric. "And you're the proprietor of Fangtasia. Ms.... Ravenscroft works there with you as the club manager. Ms. Ravenscroft does not live here in this house. Ms. Stackhouse, from Bon Temps, is your girlfriend. She doesn't live here, either. Mr. Compton-who sometimes works for you?-also lives in Bon Temps."

Eric nodded. "Exactly so, Detective." Bill looked approving. Pam looked bored.

"If you-all would go sit over at the dining table"-and the cop's eyes expressed sardonic pleasure that a vampire had a dining table-"I'll talk to these nice people." She smiled unpleasantly at the visiting vamps.

Pam, Eric, Bill, and I went to sit at the table. The darkness pressing at the windows loomed at my back in a very nerve-racking fashion.

"Mr. de Castro, Mr. Friedman, Ms. Witherspoon," Ambroselli said. "You're all three visiting from-Vegas, is that right?" The three vampires, wearing identical approving smiles, nodded in chorus. "Mr. de Castro, you have a business in Las Vegas ... Mr. Friedman is your assistant ... and Ms. Witherspoon is your girlfriend." Her eyes went from Eric, Pam, and me to the Las Vegas trio, drawing a definite parallel.

"Right," Felipe said, as if he were encouraging a backward child.

Ambroselli gave him a look that told Felipe he was permanently on her shit list. She turned to the next trio.

"So, Mr. Rexford, Ms. Dodson, Ms. Bates. Tell me again how you came to be here? You met up with Mr. de Castro and his party in the bar of the Trifecta?"

"I been dating T-Rex here for a while," Cherie said. The massive wrestler put an arm around her. "And Viveca is my best buddy. We three were having a drink, and we met up with Felipe and his friends in the bar. We got to talking." She smiled to show off her dimples. "Felipe said they were coming over to visit Eric, here, and they invited us to come along."

"But the dead woman wasn't with you at the bar at the casino."

"No," said T-Rex, now grave. "We never seen her at the Trifecta, or anywhere else, before we came in this house."

"Was anyone else inside when they got here?" Detective Ambroselli asked Eric directly.

"Yes," Eric said. "My daytime man, Mustapha Khan." I fidgeted at his side, and he cast me a quick glance.

Ambroselli blinked "What's a daytime man?"

"It's sort of like having another assistant," I said, leaping into the conversation. "Mustapha does the things that Eric can't, things that require going out in the daylight. He goes to the post office; he picks up stuff from the printer; he goes to the dry cleaner; he gets supplies for this house; he gets the cars serviced and inspected."

"Do all vampires have a daytime man?"

"The lucky ones," Eric said with his most charming smile.

"Mr. de Castro, do you have a daytime man?" Ambroselli asked him.

"I do, and I hope he is hard at work in Nevada," Felipe said, radiating bonhomie.

"What about you, Mr. Compton?"

"I've been fortunate enough to have a kind neighbor who will help me out with daytime errands," Bill said. (That would be me.) "I'm hiring someone so I won't tax her goodwill."

The detective turned to the patrol officer behind her and issued some commands that the vampires could surely hear, but I could not. However, I could read her mind, and I knew that she was telling the officer to also search for a man named Mustapha Khan who seemed to be missing, and that the victim's name was probably Kym Rowe and he should check the missing-persons list to see if she was on it. A plainclothes guy-another detective, I guessed-came in and took Ambroselli out on the front porch.

While he whispered in her ear, I was sure all the vampires were trying hard to hear what he was telling her. But I could hear it in her brain. Pam touched my arm, and I turned to face her. She raised her eyebrows in a question. I nodded. I knew what they were talking about.

"I need to talk to all of you separately," Ambroselli said, turning back to us. "The crime-scene team needs to go through the house, so if you could come down to headquarters with me?"

Eric looked angry. "I don't want people going through my house. Why would they?" he asked. "The woman died outside. I didn't even know her."

"Well, you took her blood quick enough," Ambroselli said.

Valid point, I thought, tempted to smile for just a nanosecond.

"We won't know where she died until we look at your house, sir," Ambroselli continued. "For all I know, you're all covering up a crime that took place inside this very room." I had to repress an impulse to glance around in a guilty way.

"Eric, Sookie, and I were together from the time this Rowe woman left the bedroom until we came out here to talk to Felipe and his friends," Pam said.

"And we were all together until Eric and Pam and Sookie came out here from the bedroom," Horst said promptly, which was simply not true. Any of the Nevada vampires or their human pickups could have slipped outside and disposed of Kym.

At least Pam was telling the truth.

Then I remembered that I'd been shut in the bathroom. By myself. For at least ten minutes.

I'd assumed that Pam had remained outside the bathroom door; I'd assumed Eric had gone into the living room to tell Felipe and his crowd that it was time to get down to business. He would have suggested that the human guests go into the other bedroom while we had our discussion.

That's what I'd assumed.

But I had no way to know for sure.

Chapter 4

Down at the police station, we covered the same conversational ground, but this time on an individual basis. It was both boring and tense. When I'm dealing with the police, I'm always thinking what I could be guilty of. I always imagine there are laws I don't know about, laws that I've broken. And of course, I've broken a few major laws that haunt me, some more than others.

After the individual interviews, conducted by several policemen, we were deposited back in our little groups and stowed separately around the big room. The Nevada vampires were finishing up talking to a detective several yards away, while I could see Cherie in a glass-walled cubicle with yet another interviewer. T-Rex and Viveca waited for her on a bench against the wall.

I was more than ready to leave this building. This late at night, even on a Saturday, the traffic on Texas Boulevard would be light. If I had my car, I could be home in an hour, maybe less. Unfortunately, the police had suggested we all pile into Felipe's Suburban for the trip to the station. Since my car had been parked at the curb, it was temporarily part of the crime scene.

Simply for want of something else to do while she waited to hear from the crime-scene people, Cara Ambroselli was walking us through the evening one more time.

"Yes," an obviously bored Eric was saying. "My friend Bill Compton came in from Bon Temps. Since the other vampires who work for me were busy at the club, I asked Bill to help out at my house because I was having company, though I confess I wasn't expecting quite so much of it. Bill was ... tasked ... with patrolling the front grounds. Though I live in a gated community, from time to time curiosity seekers try to make my acquaintance, especially during a party. So Bill was doing a circuit of the front yard and the area around it, every few minutes. Right, Bill?"

Bill nodded agreeably. He and Eric were such buddies. "That's what I did," he said. "I surprised one old man who came down to the end of his driveway to get his newspaper, and I saw one woman out walking her dog. I talked to Sookie when she arrived."

It was my turn to do the smiling and nodding. We were all friends, here! And if I'd followed Bill's advice, I thought, I would never have seen Eric sucking on Kym Rowe's neck, and I would never have seen her dead body, and I would be sound asleep in bed. I looked at Bill thoughtfully. He raised his brows at me-What? I shook my head, a tiny motion.

"And you had asked this missing man, Mustapha, to help Mr. Compton keep intruders away. Though his employment is as your daytime man." Detective Ambroselli was talking to Eric.

"I think we've already covered that."

"Where do you think Mr. Khan is?"

"Last time I saw him, he was in the kitchen," I said, figuring it was my turn. "As I told you, we spoke when I came inside."

"What was he doing?"

"Nothing in particular. We didn't talk long. I was ..." I was in a hurry to see Eric, but he was busy with the dead woman. "I was anxious to apologize to our guests for being a bit late," I said. Mustapha had made me late on purpose-but what that purpose had been, I couldn't fathom.

"And you came upon Mr. Northman in your bedroom, or at least the bedroom you customarily use, taking blood from another woman."

There was really nothing to say to that.

"Didn't that make you really angry, Ms. Stackhouse?"

"No," I said. "I get anemic if he drinks from me too often." At least that part was the truth.

"So you're not mad, even though he could get the same nourishment from a bottle?"

She just wasn't going to stop. That was what you wanted in a cop, unless you had stuff to hide.

"I wasn't happy," I said simply. "But I accepted it, like death and taxes. Comes with the territory when you're dating a vampire." I shrugged, trying to imitate nonchalance.

"You were unhappy, and now she's dead," Ambroselli said. She looked down at her notepad for dramatic effect. She thought we were all a bunch of lousy liars. "According to Ms. Dodson, she heard Ms. Ravenscroft threaten the victim."

Eric turned a dark blue gaze on Cherie Dodson, clearly visible through the glass of the enclosure. At the same moment, her wrestler friend, T-Rex, was looking at Cherie almost as unhappily as Eric. Though I had to stretch a little, I could get the gist of his thoughts. T-Rex knew what his girlfriend was saying to the police. Cherie's disclosure didn't accord with T-Rex's code of ethics. Thad Rexford had a very interesting mind, and I would have liked to wander around in it a little longer, but Eric gripped my hand to give it what he thought was a gentle squeeze. I turned to look up at him with narrowed eyes. He could tell I was distracted, and he didn't think my mind should be wandering.

"I advised the woman that she should leave town, yes," Pam said imperturbably. "I don't think that was threatening her. If I'd wanted to threaten her, I'd have said, 'I'll rip your head from its neck.'"

Ambroselli took a deep breath. "Why did you tell her to leave town?"

"She had been insulting and insolent to Sookie, who is my friend, and Eric, who is my boss."

"What did she say that was so insulting?"

Probably I should answer this one. It would sound haughty coming from Pam. Of course, Pam was haughty. "She was pretty excited that Eric had taken blood from her." I shrugged. "She seemed to think that made her special. She wasn't happy Eric told her to leave after I showed up. I guess she'd assumed that Eric's taking blood from her meant he wanted to have sex with her, and she thought I would, you know, participate in that." This was hard to say, and it must have been unpleasant to hear, from the face the detective made.