From Dead to Worse

romances and a couple of mysteries, and even a science fiction, which I rarely read. (I guess I thought my reality was crazier than anything a science fiction writer could dream up.) While I was looking at the jacket of a book by an author I’d never read, I heard a thunk in the background and knew someone had come in the back door of the library. I didn’t pay attention; some people habitually used the back door.
    Barbara made a little noise, and I looked up. The man behind her was huge, at least six foot six, and whip thin. He had a big knife, and he was holding it to Barbara’s throat. For a second I thought he was a robber, and I wondered who would ever think of robbing a library. For the overdue-book money?
    “Don’t scream,” he hissed through long sharp teeth. I froze. Barbara was in some space beyond fear. She was way into terror. But I could hear another active brain in the building.
    Someone else was coming in the back door very quietly.
    “Detective Beck will kill you for hurting his wife,” I said very loudly. And I said it with absolute certainty. “Kiss your ass good-bye.”
    “I don’t know who that is and I don’t care,” the tall man said.
    “You better care, muthafucker,” said Alcee Beck, who’d stepped up behind him silently. He put his gun to the man’s head. “Now, you let go of my wife and you drop that knife.”
    But Sharp Teeth wasn’t about to do that. He spun, pushed Barbara at Alcee, and ran right toward me, knife raised.
    I threw a Nora Roberts hardback at him, whacking him upside his head. I extended my foot. Blinded by the impact of the book, Sharp Teeth tripped over the foot, just as I’d hoped.
    He fell on his own knife, which I hadn’t planned.
    The library fell abruptly silent except for Barbara’s gasping breath. Alcee Beck and I stared down at the creeping pool of blood coming out from under the man.
    “Ah-oh,” I said.
    “Welllllll . . . shit,” said Alcee Beck. “Where’d you learn to throw like that, Sookie Stackhouse?”
    “Softball,” I said, which was the literal truth.
    As you can imagine, I was late to work that afternoon. I was even more tired than I had been to start with, but I was thinking that I might live through the day. So far, two times in a row, fate had intervened to prevent my assassination. I had to assume that Sharp Teeth had been sent to kill me and had botched it, just as the fake highway patrolman had done. Maybe my luck wouldn’t hold a third time; but there was a chance it would. What were the odds that another vampire would take a bullet for me, or that, by sheer accident, Alcee Beck would drop off his wife’s lunch that she’d left at home on the kitchen counter? Slim, right? But I’d beaten those odds twice.
    No matter what the police were officially assuming (since I didn’t know the guy and no one could say I did—and he’d seized Barbara, not me), Alcee Beck now had me in his sights. He was really good at reading situations, and he had seen that Sharp Teeth was focused on me. Barbara had been a means to get my attention. Alcee would never forgive me for that, even if it hadn’t been my fault. Plus, I’d thrown that book with suspicious force and accuracy.
    In his place, I would probably feel the same way.
    So now I was at Merlotte’s, going through the motions in a weary way, wondering where to go and what to do and why Patrick Furnan had gone nuts. And where had all these strangers come from? I hadn’t known the Were who’d broken down Maria-Star’s door. Eric had been shot by a guy who’d worked at Patrick Furnan’s dealership only a few days. I’d never seen Sharp Teeth before, and he was an unforgettable kind of guy.
    The whole situation made no sense at all.
    Suddenly I had an idea. I asked Sam if I could make a phone call since my tables were quiet, and he nodded. He’d been giving me those narrow looks all evening, looks that meant he was going to pin me down and talk to me soon, but for now I had a breather. So I went into Sam’s office, looked in his Shreveport phone book to get the listing for Patrick Furnan’s home, and I called him.
    “Hello?”
    I recognized the voice.
    “Patrick Furnan?” I said, just to be sure.
    “Speaking.”
    “Why are you trying to kill me?”
    “What? Who is this?”
    “Oh, come on. It’s Sookie Stackhouse. Why are you doing this?”
    There was a long pause.
    “Are you trying to trap me?” he asked.
    “How? You think I got the phone tapped? I want to