Definitely Dead

hoard a little energy.
    The police station was much like I expected it to be. Though there’s a lot to be said for Shreveport, it has more than its fair share of crime. We didn’t excite much attention at all, until officers who’d been on the scene put their heads together with police in the building, and then there were a few stolen glances at Quinn, some surreptitious evaluations. He was formidable-looking enough for them to credit ordinary strength as the source of his defeat of the two muggers. But there was just enough strangeness about the incident, enough peculiar touches in the eyewitness reports . . . and then my eye caught a familiar weathered face. Uh-oh.
    “Detective Coughlin,” I said, remembering now why the name had sounded familiar.
    “Miss Stackhouse,” he responded, with about as much enthusiasm as I had shown. “What you been up to?”
    “We got mugged,” I explained.
    “Last time I saw you, you were engaged to Alcide Herveaux, and you’d just found one of the most sickening corpses I’ve ever seen,” he said easily. His belly seemed to have gotten even bigger in the few months since I’d met him at a murder scene here in Shreveport. Like many men with a disproportionate belly, he wore his khaki pants buttoned underneath the overhang, so to speak. Since his shirt had broad blue and white stripes, the effect was that of a tent overhanging packed dirt.
    I just nodded. There was really nothing to say.
    “Mr. Herveaux doing okay after the loss of his father?” Jackson Herveaux’s body had been found half-in, half-out of a feed tank filled with water on an old farm belonging to the family. Though the newspaper had tap-danced around some of the injuries, it was clear wild animals had chewed at some of the bones. The theory was that the older Herveaux had fallen into the tank and broken his leg when he hit the bottom. He had managed to get to the edge and haul himself halfway out, but at that point he had passed out. Since no one knew he’d visited the farm, no one came to his rescue, the theory went, and he’d died all by himself.
    Actually, a large crowd had witnessed Jackson’s demise, among them the man beside me.
    “I haven’t talked to Alcide since his dad was found,” I said truthfully.
    “My goodness, I’m sure sorry that didn’t work out,” Detective Coughlin said, pretending he didn’t see that I was standing with my date for the evening. “You two sure made a nice-looking couple.”
    “Sookie is pretty no matter who she’s with,” Quinn said.
    I smiled up at him, and he smiled back. He was sure making all the right moves.
    “So if you’ll come with me for a minute, Miss Stackhouse, we’ll get your story down on paper and you can leave.”
    Quinn’s hand tightened on mine. He was warning me. Wait a minute, who was the mind reader around here? I squeezed right back. I was perfectly aware that Detective Coughlin thought I must be guilty of something , and he’d do his best to discover what. But in fact, I was not guilty.
    We had been the targets, I’d picked that from the attackers’ brains. But why?
    Detective Coughlin led me to a desk in a roomful of desks, and he fished a form out of a drawer. The business of the room continued; some of the desks were unoccupied and had that “closed for the night” look, but others showed signs of work in progress. There were a few people coming in and out of the room, and two desks away, a younger detective with short white-blond hair was busily typing on his computer. I was being very careful, and I’d opened my mind, so I knew he was looking at me when I was looking in another direction, and I knew he’d been positioned there by Detective Coughlin, or at least prodded to get a good hard look at me while I was in the room.
    I met his eyes squarely. The shock of recognition was mutual. I’d seen him at the packmaster contest. He was a Were. He’d acted as Patrick Furnan’s second in the duel. I’d caught him cheating. Maria-Star had told me his punishment had been having his head shaved. Though his candidate won, this punishment had been exacted, and his hair was just now growing in. He hated me with the passion of the guilty. He half rose from his chair, his first instinct being to come over to me and beat the crap out of me, but when he absorbed the fact that someone had already tried to do that, he smirked.
    “Is that your partner?” I asked Detective Coughlin.
    “What?” He’d been peering at the