Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)(67)
Author: Charlaine Harris

Damn coward.

I went home because I couldn’t think of anything to do. I realized it wasn’t a workday for me anyway, and that was a good thing, though I didn’t really care too much at that point. It occurred to me that I wasn’t handling this as well as I ought, that I had been much steadier when Gran had died.

But that had been a finite situation. We would bury Gran, her killer would be arrested, we would go on. If the police seriously believed that Jason had killed Gran in addition to the other women, then the world was such a bad and chancy place that I wanted no part of it.

But I realized, as I sat and looked in front of me that long, long afternoon, that it was naivete like that that had led to Jason’s arrest. If I’d just gotten him into Sam’s trailer and cleaned him up, hidden the film until I found out what it contained, above all not called the ambulance … that had been what Sam had been thinking when he’d looked at me so doubtfully. However, Arlene’s arrival had kind of wiped out my options.

I thought the phone would start ringing as soon as people heard.

But no one called.

They didn’t know what to say.

Sid Matt Lancaster came about four-thirty.

Without any preliminary, he told me, "They’ve arrested him. For first-degree murder."

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Sid was regarding me with a shrewd expression on his mild face. His conservative black-framed glasses magnified his muddy brown eyes, and his jowls and sharp nose made him look a little like a bloodhound.

"What does he say?" I asked.

"He says that he was with Amy last night."

I sighed.

"He says they went to bed together, that he had been with Amy before. He says he hadn’t seen Amy in a long time, that the last time they were together Amy was acting jealous about the other women he was seeing, really angry. So he was surprised when she approached him last night in Good Times. Jason says Amy acted funny all night, like she had an agenda he didn’t know about. He remembers having sex with her, he remembers them lying in bed having a drink afterward, then he remembers nothing until he woke up in the hospital."

"He was set up," I said firmly, thinking I sounded exactly like a bad made-for-TV movie.

"Of course." Sid Matt’s eyes were as steady and assured as if he’d been at Amy Burley’s place last night.

Hell, maybe he had.

"Listen, Sid Matt." I leaned forward and made him meet my eyes. "Even if I could somehow believe that Jason had killed Amy, and Dawn, and Maudette, I could never believe he would raise his finger to hurt my grandmother."

"All right, then." Sid Matt prepared to meet my thoughts, fair and square, his entire body proclaimed it. "Miss Sookie, let’s just assume for a minute that Jason did have some kind of involvement in those deaths. Perhaps, the police might think, your friend Bill Compton killed your grandmother since she was keeping you two apart."

I tried to give the appearance of considering this piece of idiocy. "Well, Sid Matt, my grandmother liked Bill, and she was pleased I was seeing him."

Until he put his game face back on, I saw stark disbelief in the lawyer’s eyes. He wouldn’t be at all happy if his daughter was seeing a vampire. He couldn’t imagine a responsible parent being anything but appalled. And he couldn’t imagine trying to convince a jury that my grandmother had been pleased I was dating a guy who wasn’t even alive, and furthermore was over a hundred years older than me.

Those were Sid Matt’s thoughts.

"Have you met Bill?" I asked.

He was taken aback. "No," he admitted. "You know, Miss Sookie, I’m not for this vampire stuff. I think it’s taking a chink out of a wall we should keep built up, a wall between us and the so-called virus-infected. I think God intended that wall to be there, and I for one will hold up my section."

"The problem with that, Sid Matt, is that I personally was created straddling that wall." After a lifetime of keeping my mouth shut about my "gift," I found that if it would help Jason, I’d shake it in anybody’s face.

"Well," Sid Matt said bravely, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his sharp nose, "I am sure the Good Lord gave you this problem I’ve heard about for a reason. You have to learn how to use it for his glory."

No one had ever quite put it that way. That was an idea to chew over when I had time.

"I’ve made us stray from the subject, I’m afraid, and I know your time is valuable." I gathered my thoughts. "I want Jason out on bail. There is nothing but circumstantial evidence tying him to Amy’s murder, am I right?"

"He’s admitted to being with the victim right before the murder, and the videotape, one of the cops hinted to me pretty strongly, shows your brother having sex with the victim. The time and date on the film indicate it was made in the hours before her death, if not minutes."

Damn Jason’s peculiar bedroom preferences. "Jason doesn’t drink much at all. He smelled of liquor in the truck. I think it was just spilled over him. I think a test will prove that. Maybe Amy gave him some narcotic in the drink she fixed him."

"Why would she do that?"

"Because, like so many women, she was mad at Jason because she wanted him so much. My brother is able to date almost anyone he wants. No, I’m using that euphemism."

Sid Matt looked surprised I knew the word.

"He could go to bed with almost anyone he wanted. A dream life, most guys would think." Weariness descended on me like fog. "Now there he sits in the jail."

"You think another man did this to him? Framed him for this murder?"

"Yes, I do." I leaned forward, trying to persuade this skeptical lawyer by the force of my own belief. "Someone envious of him. Someone who knows his schedule, who kills these women when Jason’s off work. Someone who knows Jason had had sex with these gals. Someone who knows he likes to make tapes."

"Could be almost anyone," Jason’s lawyer said practically.

"Yep," I said sadly. "Even if Jason was nice enough to keep quiet about exactly who he’d been with, all anyone’d have to do is see who he left a bar with at closing time. Just being observant, maybe having asked about the tapes on a visit to his house…" My brother might be somewhat immoral, but I didn’t think he’d show those videos to anyone else. He might tell another man that he liked to make the videos, though. "So this man, whoever he is, made some kind of deal with Amy, knowing she was mad at Jason. Maybe he told her he was going to play a practical joke on Jason or something."

"Your brother’s never been arrested before," Sid Matt observed.