Club Dead

thing I’d ever tasted.
    “You killed them all,” I said in a creaky voice.
    Eric nodded.
    I thought of the circle of brutish faces that had surrounded me. I thought of the Were slapping me in the face.
    “Good,” I said. Eric looked a little amused, just for a second. Bill didn’t look anything in particular.
    “How many?”
    Eric looked around vaguely, and Bill pointed a finger silently as he toted them up.
    “Seven?” Bill said doubtfully. “Two in the yard and five in the house?”
    “I was thinking eight,” Eric murmured.
    “Why did they come after you like that?”
    “Jerry Falcon.”
    “Oh,” said Bill, a different note in his voice. “Oh, yes. I’ve encountered him. In the torture room. He is first on my list.”
    “Well, you can cross him off,” Eric said. “Alcide and Sookie disposed of his body in the woods yesterday.”
    “Did this Alcide kill him?” Bill looked down at me, reconsidered. “Or Sookie?”
    “He says no. They found the corpse in the closet of Alcide’s apartment, and they hatched a plan to hide his remains.” Eric sounded like that had been kind of cute of us.
    “My Sookie hid a corpse?”
    “I don’t think you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun.”
    “Where did you learn that term, Northman?”
    “I took ‘English as a Second Language’ at a community college in the seventies.”
    Bill said, “She is mine.”
    I wondered if my hands would move. They would. I raised both of them, making an unmistakable one-fingered gesture.
    Eric laughed, and Bill said, “Sookie!” in shocked admonishment.
    “I think that Sookie is telling us she belongs to herself,” Eric said softly. “In the meantime, to finish our conversation, whoever stuffed the corpse in the closet meant to saddle Alcide with the blame, since Jerry Falcon had made a blatant pass at Sookie in the bar the night before, and Alcide had taken umbrage.”
    “So all this plot might be directed at Alcide instead of us?”
    “Hard to say. Evidently, from what the armed robbers at the gas station told us, what’s remaining of the gang called in all the thugs they knew and stationed them along the interstate to intercept us on the way back. If they’d just called ahead, they wouldn’t now be in jail for armed robbery. And I’m certainly sure that’s where they are.”
    “So how’d these guys get here? How’d they know where Sookie lived, who she really was?”
    “She used her own name at Club Dead. They didn’t know the name of Bill’s human girlfriend. You were faithful.”
    “I hadn’t been faithful in other ways,” Bill said bleakly. “I thought it was the least I could do for her.”
    And this was the guy whom I’d shot the bird. On the other hand, this was the guy who was talking like I wasn’t in the room. And most importantly, this was the guy who’d had another “darling,” for whom he’d planned to leave me flat.
    “So the Weres may not know she was your girlfriend; they only know she was staying in the apartment with Alcide when Jerry disappeared. They know Jerry may have come by the apartment. This Alcide says that the packmaster in Jackson told Alcide to leave and not return for a while, but that he believed Alcide had not killed Jerry.”
    “This Alcide . . . he seemed to have a troubled relationship with his girlfriend.”
    “She is engaged to someone else. She believes he is attached to Sookie.”
    “And is he? He has the gall to tell this virago Debbie that Sookie is good in bed.”
    “He wanted to make her jealous. He has not slept with Sookie.”
    “But he likes her.” Bill made it sound like a capital crime.
    “Doesn’t everyone?”
    I said, with great effort, “You just killed a bunch of guys who didn’t seem to like me at all.” I was tired of them talking about me right above my head, as illuminating as it was. I was hurting real bad, and my living room was full of dead men. I was ready for both those situations to be remedied.
    “Bill, how’d you get here?” I asked in a raspy whisper.
    “My car. I negotiated a deal with Russell, since I didn’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my existence. Russell was in a tantrum when I called him. Not only had I disappeared and Lorena vanished, but his hired Weres had disobeyed him and thus jeopardized business dealings Russell has with this Alcide and his father.”
    “Who was Russell angriest with?” Eric asked.
    “Lorena, for letting me escape.”
    They had a good laugh