Dead as a Doornail

Debbie’s body would have been a powerful statement of our guilt. My first instinct had been to cover up her visit to my house. Eric hadn’t given me any other advice, which also might have changed things.
    No, I wasn’t blaming my predicament on Eric. He hadn’t even been in his right mind at the time. It was my own fault that I hadn’t sat down to think things through. There would have been gunshot residue on Debbie’s hand. Her gun had been fired. Some of Eric’s dried blood would have been on the floor. She’d broken in through my front door, and the door had shown clear signs of her trespass. Her car was hidden across the road, and only her fingerprints would’ve been in it.
    I’d panicked, and blown it.
    I just had to live with that.
    But I was very sorry about the uncertainty her family was suffering. I owed them certainty—which I couldn’t deliver.
    I wrung out the washcloth and hung it neatly over the sink divider. I dried off my hands and folded the dish towel. Okay, now I’d gotten my guilt straight. That was so much better! Not. Angry with myself, I stomped out to the living room and turned on the television: another mistake. There was a story about Heather’s funeral; a news crew from Shreveport had come to cover the modest service this afternoon. Just think of the sensation it would cause if the media realized how the sniper was selecting his victims. The news anchor, a solemn African-American man, was saying that police in Renard Parish had discovered other clusters of apparently random shootings in small towns in Tennessee and Mississippi. I was startled. A serial shooter, here?
    The phone rang. “Hello,” I said, not expecting anything good.
    “Sookie, hi, it’s Alcide.”
    I found myself smiling. Alcide Herveaux, who worked in his father’s surveying business in Shreveport, was one of my favorite people. He was a Were, he was both sexy and hardworking, and I liked him very much. He’d also been Debbie Pelt’s fiancé. But Alcide had abjured her before she vanished, in a rite that made her invisible and inaudible to him—not literally, but in effect.
    “Sookie, I’m at Merlotte’s. I’d thought you might be working tonight, so I drove over. Can I come to the house? I need to talk to you.”
    “You know you’re in danger, coming to Bon Temps.”
    “No, why?”
    “Because of the sniper.” I could hear the bar sounds in the background. There was no mistaking Arlene’s laugh. I was betting the new bartender was charming one and all.
    “Why would I worry about that?” Alcide hadn’t been thinking about the news too hard, I decided.
    “All the people who got shot? They were two-natured,” I said. “Now they’re saying on the news there’ve been a lot more across the south. Random shootings in small towns. Bullets that match the one recovered from Heather Kinman here. And I’m betting all the other victims were shape-shifters, too.”
    There was a thoughtful silence on the end of the line, if silence can be characterized.
    “I hadn’t realized,” Alcide said. His deep, rumbly voice was even more deliberate than normal.
    “Oh, and have you talked to the private detectives?”
    “What? What are you talking about?”
    “If they see us talking together, it’ll look very suspicious to Debbie’s family.”
    “Debbie’s family has hired private eyes to look for her?”
    “That’s what I’m saying.”
    “Listen, I’m coming to your house.” He hung up the phone.
    I didn’t know why on earth the detectives would be watching my house, or where they’d watch it from, but if they saw Debbie’s former fiancé tootling down my driveway, it would be easy to connect the dots and come up with a totally erroneous picture. They’d think Alcide killed Debbie to clear the way for me, and nothing could be more wrong. I hoped like hell that Jack Leeds and Lily Bard Leeds were sound asleep rather than staked out in the woods somewhere with a pair of binoculars.
    Alcide hugged me. He always did. And once again I was overwhelmed by the size of him, the masculinity, the familiar smell. Despite the warning bell ringing in my head, I hugged him back.
    We sat on the couch and half turned to face each other. Alcide was wearing work clothes, which in this weather consisted of a flannel shirt worn open over a T-shirt, heavy jeans, and thick socks under his work boots. His tangle of black hair had a crease in it from his hard hat, and he was beginning to look a little