Living Dead in Dallas

Chapter 1
    A NDY BELLEFLEUR  was as drunk as a skunk. This wasn’t normal for Andy—believe me, I know all the drunks in Bon Temps. Working at Sam Merlotte’s bar for several years has pretty much introduced me to all of them. But Andy Bellefleur, native son and detective on Bon Temps’s small police force, had never been drunk in Merlotte’s before. I was mighty curious as to why tonight was an exception.
    Andy and I aren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination, so I couldn’t ask him outright. But other means were open to me, and I decided to use them. Though I try to limit employing my disability, or gift, or whatever you want to call it, to find out things that might have an effect on me or mine, sometimes sheer curiosity wins out.
    I let down my mental guard and read Andy’s mind. I was sorry.
    Andy had had to arrest a man that morning for kidnapping. He’d taken his ten-year-old neighbor to a place in the woods and raped her. The girl was in the hospital, and the man was in jail, but the damage that had beendealt was irreparable. I felt weepy and sad. It was a crime that touched too closely on my own past. I liked Andy a little better for his depression.
    “Andy Bellefleur, give me your keys,” I said. His broad face turned up to me, showing very little comprehension. After a long pause while my meaning filtered through to his addled brain, Andy fumbled in the pocket of his khakis and handed me his heavy key ring. I put another bourbon-and-Coke on the bar in front of him. “My treat,” I said, and went to the phone at the end of the bar to call Portia, Andy’s sister. The Bellefleur siblings lived in a decaying large white two-story antebellum, formerly quite a showplace, on the prettiest street in the nicest area of Bon Temps. On Magnolia Creek Road, all the homes faced the strip of park through which ran the stream, crossed here and there by decorative bridges for foot traffic only; a road ran on both sides. There were a few other old homes on Magnolia Creek Road, but they were all in better repair than the Bellefleur place, Belle Rive. Belle Rive was just too much for Portia, a lawyer, and Andy, a cop, to maintain, since the money to support such a home and its grounds was long since gone. But their grandmother, Caroline, stubbornly refused to sell.
    Portia answered on the second ring.
    “Portia, this is Sookie Stackhouse,” I said, having to raise my voice over the background noise in the bar.
    “You must be at work.”
    “Yes. Andy’s here, and he’s three sheets to the wind. I took his keys. Can you come get him?”
    “Andy had too much to drink? That’s rare. Sure, I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she promised, and hung up.
    “You’re a sweet girl, Sookie,” Andy volunteered unexpectedly.
    He’d finished the drink I’d poured for him. I swept the glass out of sight and hoped he wouldn’t ask formore. “Thanks, Andy,” I said. “You’re okay, yourself.”
    “Where’s . . . boyfriend?”
    “Right here,” said a cool voice, and Bill Compton appeared just behind Andy. I smiled at him over Andy’s drooping head. Bill was about five foot ten, with dark brown hair and eyes. He had the broad shoulders and hard muscular arms of a man who’s done manual labor for years. Bill had worked a farm with his father, and then for himself, before he’d gone to be a soldier in the war. That would be the Civil War.
    “Hey, V. B.!” called Charlsie Tooten’s husband, Micah. Bill raised a casual hand to return the greeting, and my brother, Jason, said, “Evening, Vampire Bill,” in a perfectly polite way. Jason, who had not exactly welcomed Bill into our little family circle, had turned over a whole new leaf. I was sort of mentally holding my breath, waiting to see if his improved attitude was permanent.
    “Bill, you’re okay for a bloodsucker,” Andy said judiciously, rotating on his bar stool so he could face Bill. I upgraded my opinion of Andy’s drunkenness, since he had never otherwise been enthusiastic about the acceptance of vampires into America’s mainstream society.
    “Thanks,” Bill said dryly. “You’re not too bad for a Bellefleur.” He leaned across the bar to give me a kiss. His lips were as cool as his voice. You had to get used to it. Like when you laid your head on his chest, and you didn’t hear a heartbeat inside. “Evening, sweetheart,” he said in his low voice. I slid a glass of the Japanese-developed synthetic B negative across the bar,