TAPROOT

JEFFREY J. MARIOTTE

Jeff Mariotte contributed “Taproot,” which takes place shortly after the events that open Living Dead in Dallas. If you remember, Sookie has to call Andy’s sister, Portia, to pick up Andy, who’s had too much alcohol to drive. When Andy comes to pick up his car the next day, there’s a nasty surprise inside. With Sookie and Bill out of town, it’s up to Andy to figure out what’s going on in Bon Temps.

—

Like most Louisiana police detectives, Andy Bellefleur made occasional trips to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. One of those, two autumns back, had coincided with the annual prison rodeo. The warden insisted that Andy take advantage of the timing and gave him a behind-the-scenes tour of the arena.

There, Andy had seen a bull called Bust-’em-up, a battle-scarred veteran the approximate color of fresh blacktop. Somewhere along the way, Bust-’em-up had lost the tip of its right horn and acquired a reputation for meanness. The enormous creature could barely move in the chute; frustrated, it smashed into the sides, almost dislodging from their perches the cowboys trying to help the unfortunate rider who had drawn it get settled on the animal’s back. The bull stamped and snorted and kicked up clouds of dust, eyes rolling wildly in its head. The beast’s only need at that moment was release: to be let into the open space of the arena, to buck the offending weight off its back, to move. If it happened to crush a few ribs or break a leg or tear open somebody’s scalp, well, that was gravy. Mostly, it wanted to be free.

Andy felt the same way.

He was not a small man. He liked to think of his muscular heft as a professional advantage, that he came across as a solid citizen, someone the townsfolk could count on. The Honda Civic his sister, Portia, had provided—borrowed from a longtime client of her law firm, who would never have the resources to pay everything she owed—was okay for a short while, but nothing he’d want to use for long. He liked being able to stretch his legs. Belted into the small car, with the door closed, he felt more than a little claustrophobic.

Like Bust-’em-up, he just wanted out. In Andy’s case, not into a rodeo arena, but into the parking lot of Merlotte’s Bar and Grill.

The Honda was painted a vibrating orange color that made Andy’s teeth hurt. But it was cheaper than a rental, and until his Buick was released from impound—taken because Lafayette Reynold had been found inside it, murdered, in the parking lot at Merlotte’s—it would have to do.

Officially, Andy couldn’t work the case. When a homicide victim turns up in your car, it doesn’t matter who you are, you sit near the top of the list of suspects. He was on desk duty for the moment, which meant he was not expected to catch cases but to spend his days twiddling his thumbs in a cubicle where the air conditioner was almost as weak as the coffee. Anyway, Merlotte’s was on Renard Parish turf, not inside town limits, so the Bon Temps PD wasn’t directly involved in the investigation.

But unofficially, there was no way Andy was staying out of it. He was a regular at Merlotte’s, where Lafayette had worked as a cook. And everyone in Bon Temps knew Lafayette. A flamboyantly gay African American man in a small northern Louisiana town might as well have been carrying around a neon sign with an arrow pointing at you and the words LOOK AT ME emblazoned across it every time he left his house.

Somebody had broken Lafayette’s neck and sexually assaulted him. Andy knew he hadn’t murdered anyone, and he sure hadn’t messed with him, but that was all he knew. As far as he was concerned, the list of nonsuspects was one person long, and the suspect pool contained everybody else. And the fact that the body had been dumped in his car made the whole thing sort of personal.

He found some shade by a big pine, determinedly not parking in what had been his usual spot but never would be again, and disentangled himself from the car’s seat belt. He was passing through the front door when three luxury SUVs and a white van pulled into the lot.

Sam Merlotte stood at the bar, enveloped by the yeasty fragrance of beer on tap. Andy usually liked the smell, but now it reminded him of the night Lafayette had died, when he had kept putting them away until they’d put him away. “Might want to raise your prices, Sam,” he said. “Some high-end vehicles parking outside.”

Sam glanced at the door. “I’ll leave ’em low,” he said. “Maybe they’ll tip better. In my experience, the more well-heeled someone is, the worse he tips.” He gave Andy a searching look. “How you doing, Andy?”

“Oh, you know,” Andy answered, wanting to dodge any questions about the other night before they were asked. “I’m lookin’ for Sookie. She here?”

“She’s off for a few days,” Sam said.

“Off? She at home?”

Sam’s gaze shifted toward the front door. Maybe he was waiting for the people from those SUVs. Or maybe he was trying to avoid Andy’s gaze. Andy found the latter explanation more likely. “No, she’s . . . out of town. With Bill.”

Andy didn’t have much patience with vampires, as a general rule, and he particularly didn’t like Bill Compton. “Well, you were here that night. The night . . . you know.”

“Yeah.”

“I was just hopin’ someone could tell me who all was in here that night. You know, were there any strangers around, anybody who looked nervous, anyone who just came in for a few minutes and left again? Like that.”

“I was here,” Sam said. “But I—” The front door banged open, and something like relief passed across Sam’s face. “Hello,” he called out. “Welcome to Merlotte’s.”

“I’m looking for Sam Merlotte,” the man at the front of the pack said. He was dressed in a cream-colored shirt that looked like silk, with French cuffs and big gold cuff links. Over that he had on a navy blue blazer. His jeans were the overpriced kind that mimicked the look you could get by buying a pair of Wranglers off the rack and dragging them behind your truck for a couple of days.

Others streamed in behind him, not quite as overdressed, but clearly not folks who bought their clothes at Tara’s Togs or the Bon Temps Walmart.

“That’s me,” Sam said.

“Marvelous.” The man crossed the plank floor in a few long strides, his right hand held out before him. He looked vaguely familiar. He had piercing blue eyes under a curly mop of coppery hair. His facial features appeared small, or maybe his head was just big. Mostly, Andy saw two slabs of deeply tanned cheek, blocking in a finely chiseled nose and a mouth overstocked with bright white teeth. Although the combination of parts was strange, somehow it came together in a way that wasn’t unpleasant to look at.

The man had reached the bar and gripped Sam’s hand by the time Andy realized who it was. “Hey,” he said. “You’re—”

“Tristan Kowel, Mr. Merlotte,” the man said, ignoring Andy. “Delighted to meet you. You’ve got a lot of fans on the coast. A lot of fans.”

“Portia watches your show,” Andy said. “My sister. Portia.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. . . . Kowel, is it?” Sam said. “Fans?”

“He’s got a show,” Andy said. “On the Food Network. Burgers and Beer, isn’t that it?”

“Triple B,” Kowel said. “Burgers, Beer, and Bar-B-Q. We spotlight the best bar-and-grill establishments from coast to coast.”

“Portia loves it.”

“I’m still not clear on—” Sam began.

“We’re thrilled that you’ve given us approval to shoot here,” Kowel said. He didn’t seem like a guy who listened much. If at all.

“I don’t remember giving anybody—”

“You’ll hardly know we’re here.” Kowel executed a spin that Andy thought might be most accurately labeled a pirouette. “Of course, we’ll touch the place up some. Charmingly rustic, isn’t it?”

“Touch the place—?” Sam began.

“What do you think, Bradley?” Kowel asked. “Bradley Millham is our set decorator. He’s a big fan, Mr. Merlotte. Sam. I can call you Sam, right? It’s like I’ve known you forever.”

“Sure,” Sam said. “Everybody calls me Sam. But I—”

“Bradley?” Kowel said. He swept an arm toward the back bar. “What do you think? Does it all have to go, or can you work with it?”

Kowel’s voice filled the cavernous interior of Merlotte’s, almost empty in the hours between the breakfast and lunch rushes. Bradley, on the other hand, was so quiet Andy had to strain to hear.

“I think . . .” he said. “I think some of it isn’t too awful. You know, considering.”

“Considering what?” Sam asked.

“You know, the point of the series isn’t to present stylish bistros. We like our featured locations to be rough around the edges. We’ll have to do some work, to establish some sense of realism, but—”

“What do you mean, realism?” Sam said. “My place is plenty real!”

“It’s real,” Kowel assured him. “But it’s not reality real.” Sam sputtered something, but Kowel just kept talking. “Don’t worry, Bradley is the best there is. You’ll love what he comes up with.”

“Listen,” Sam said. “I’m not sure I want this place—”

Kowel raised a hand to silence him. To Andy’s surprise, it worked. “Trust us, Sam. We do this all the time. The publicity value alone will be enormous—you literally cannot buy this kind of advertising. And our location fee should help you overcome any minor qualms.”

“Location fee?”

“It was covered in the agreement we sent you. Casey-Lynn?”

A female voice called out from the throng milling near the doorway, and Andy’s head spun around as if mounted on ball bearings. “Yes, Tris?” she said.

“You did cover Mr. Merlotte’s location fee in the agreement, correcto?”

“I’m sure I did.” Casey-Lynn stepped toward him.

Andy couldn’t hold his mouth closed. “Casey-Lynn Jennings?”

“Why, Andrew Bellefleur,” she said, stopping short. “It really is you, isn’t it?”

“I think so. I mean, it was last I looked. Oh, hell, that don’t make any sense.”

“Then it’s you, all right.”

Casey-Lynn moved into Andy’s arms, which he hadn’t even realized he had spread. She wrapped her considerably more slender arms around him and squeezed. Her grip was tighter than the Honda’s, and far more pleasant.

“Casey-Lynn,” Kowel said, stretching out the nn until it was its own syllable.

“He sounds impatient,” Andy said. His arms had closed around her, and he didn’t feel inclined to let go.

“Always,” Casey-Lynn whispered. She eased herself from Andy’s grasp, one hand lingering on his arm. “Yes, Tris, we covered that.” She took her hand away, though Andy could still feel its warmth, and dug into a cloth bag hanging from her shoulder. “I have a copy of the agreement right here,” she said, withdrawing a pink file folder.

As she carried it to the bar, Andy found himself wondering if it was actually a pink manila folder, or if “manila” was the color. Manila was a city in the Philippines, he knew, but that didn’t help. He was, he realized, thinking absurd thoughts to keep from staring at her behind as she leaned on the bar. That behind was a little fuller than it had been in high school, but no less shapely for that. Which was the last time Andy had seen Casey-Lynn Jennings, though not the last time he’d thought about her.

A girl like her—a woman, now—didn’t come into a guy’s life every day. She could disappear in a flash, he had learned, but that didn’t mean she was easily forgotten.

While he stood there, his mind reeling with Casey-Lynn’s sudden, unannounced reappearance in Bon Temps, the rest of Kowel’s crew got busy. Most were young, all lean and polished, and even the ones wearing T-shirts and ragged jeans wore obviously high-priced T-shirts and ragged jeans. Men and women bustled around Merlotte’s, bringing in what looked like enough gear to build a bar from scratch if they’d wanted to. A couple went into the kitchen, where days earlier Lafayette might have been working. Today Andy’s cousin Terry objected loudly to the intrusion. One bearded guy with rectangular, heavy-framed glasses held his hands in front of his face and peered through the square hole they made. Another guy, with a heavier beard but thinner glasses, was counting electrical outlets and handling power cords as if he could intuit from the weight what events might have occurred in their vicinity in the past.

If he could, that might be a better trick than Sookie Stackhouse’s.

A gentle hand on his shoulder let him know that Casey-Lynn was finished with Sam. “I’ll be in town a few days, Andy,” she said. She had lost all but a trace of her Louisiana accent. “Busy, but I should have some time to myself. I hope we can get together. You know, talk about old times.”

“Yeah. Uhh, yeah, okay, sure.” Andy fumbled a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. “My numbers are on there. Call whenever.”

“You’re a cop,” she said. “Isn’t that precious? I’ll call soon as I can get a free minute. Got to run, now.” She gave him a peck on the cheek, letting her lips rest there a long moment before pulling away. Then she was rushing toward the kitchen door, where Tristan Kowel stood, arms folded over his chest, waiting with what must have been his trademark impatience.

Andy looked around for Sam, who never had answered his questions about that night. When he finally spotted him, Sam was deep in conversation with Bradley and one of the bearded guys. Andy, it seemed, would just have to wait.

Casey-Lynn Jennings. How about that? At first he couldn’t wait to tell Portia he had seen her, but by the time he was belted into the torture-Honda, he had changed his mind. Portia had never liked her. When Casey-Lynn had broken up with him, Portia had said—and these words had been blazed into his soul ever since—“Good. That scrawny bitch doesn’t deserve you anyway.”

Even that was selective memory. Truth was, she never had broken up with him, really. She had stopped answering his letters and stopped coming to the phone when he called after her family had moved to Arizona. Then the number he had was disconnected and he’d never heard from her again.

He never would have taken her for a Hollywood type. But years had passed since he’d known Casey-Lynn. A lot of them.

Bon Temps was small enough that everybody in the high school more or less knew one another. You saw the same people every day for four years—most of them people you’d known in grade school and junior high—and every face became pretty familiar. But there were people you socialized with and those you didn’t, and even though Andy had thought Casey-Lynn Jennings attractive, he had never believed they had anything in common.

He played football and hung out with jocks. Friday nights, after the season ended, were for drinking beers and maybe plinking at cans out in the woods. Casey-Lynn hung out in the library, wrote poetry, and was friends with the drama club people. If they had been drawn into a human Venn diagram, they would barely have intersected.

Until midway through the season during his junior year, when a rough tackle had left Andy sidelined with a torn rotator cuff. He had still suited up for practice, and for the first couple of weeks he sat on the bench cheering on his teammates. But when the pressure of an upcoming midterm in his World History class had caught up with him, he’d started cracking his books instead of watching drills and practice scrimmages.

That was when Casey-Lynn entered his life. Andy was sitting in the shade of the bleachers, near the chain-link fence surrounding the stadium, and had a couple of books spread out on the ground as he scribbled in a spiral notebook.

“What’re you working on?” a voice asked from the other side of the fence. Andy looked up and saw Casey-Lynn there, fingers laced through the chain link. The late-afternoon sun was in her face, and her big green eyes were squinting, her nose crinkled. She had long blond hair that caught the sunlight and seemed to magnify it, and he thought, in that moment, that he had never seen a prettier girl.

“History,” he said. “I have to know the causes of World War One, and I’m trying to keep these names straight. Archduke Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the rest of those guys.”

“Ferdinand’s assassination was the immediate catalyst, but don’t forget about the spread of European nationalism. And the Pig War.”

“Pig War?” Andy echoed.

When Casey-Lynn released the fence and sat, her crossed legs transformed her long, floral-print skirt into rolling meadowlands. “It was really a customs blockade of Serbian pork,” she explained. “But it’s symptomatic, and it did play a direct role.”

“No shi—no kidding?” He hadn’t heard anything in class about a Pig War. But Casey-Lynn sounded like she knew what she was talking about. When she launched into a detailed description of the events that pushed the world toward war, she made it both more entertaining and easier to follow than Mr. Ludlow, Andy’s history teacher, had ever managed to do.

By the end of the lecture, he’d asked her out.

Casey-Lynn declined.

She also said no the second time, and the third through ninth.

But somehow she never made him feel rejected or demeaned. It almost turned into a game between them, and their friendship deepened to the point that at school they spent most of their time together, except when class schedules interfered. Finally, the tenth time Andy asked, she agreed to accompany him to the school’s Christmas dance, though she insisted on meeting him there.

That night was as close to magic as anything Andy had ever known.

He arrived at school to find her waiting outside. It was cold enough that every exhalation produced a puff of steam, but she was wearing a red sateen dress that left her arms and shoulders bare. If she’d come in a coat, she had already ditched it. As Andy approached, she dashed into his arms and welcomed him with a kiss that seemed like it would never end, and at the same time was over far too soon.

They danced together to every song—Andy had never been much of a dancer, except for that night—and during slow ones, they held each other as if they would never let go. Once in a while, she tilted her head up and found his lips with hers, for kisses that went on until, on one occasion, Assistant Principal Duckworth warned them that if they did it again, they’d be escorted from the premises.

After, in Andy’s car, the kisses were faster and more frantic, and accompanied by groping and heavy breathing that curtained the windows with steam. Later, Andy couldn’t say when the pickup truck had stopped beside his car in the now-empty school lot, or how long it had sat, engine rumbling, before he and Casey-Lynn noticed.

“Shit!” she said when she finally peered outside. “It’s my brother. I have to go, baby.”

“I could take you home in a while.” She had never invited him to her house or introduced him to her family. He was curious about the brother, but fogged windows and the truck cab’s height blocked his view.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll get in trouble if I don’t go with him.”

“But, Casey-Lynn . . .”

She pushed his hands away from her. “Seriously, Andy. I have to go.”

“Can I see you tomorrow? Or over break?”

“We’ll see. I’ll call you.”

And she had, from a gas station pay phone in Houston. The family, she told him, was moving west. She apologized for not being able to see him before they left, but she would let him know where she landed. Then she said, “Someone’s coming, I gotta run,” and hung up.

She had written, for a while, and taken his calls for a while.

Then nothing.

Until now.

She called at eleven the next morning and asked if Andy could meet her at Merlotte’s for lunch. He was off that day, not even exercising his thumbs at his desk. He had already showered and shaved, but he did so again, then got in the hated Honda and drove over.

Sam’s parking lot was full of booth benches and tables and bar stools and chairs and kitchen equipment, stacks of dishes and glassware, pots and pans, trays of utensils, and all the miscellaneous stuff Sam used inside. A carpentry crew had set up sawhorses and acquired lumber and was hard at work on some object Andy couldn’t identify. The sounds of power saws and hammering filled the air, as did scents of sawdust and paint. Plastic sheeting trailed from the front door, and a paint-spattered guy was carrying two five-gallon cans inside.

Sam Merlotte stood at a remove from it all, watching and scratching the top of his head.

“What’s goin’ on?” Andy asked him.

“I don’t really know anymore.”

“Lot of activity. Looks like they’re tearing the place apart.”

Sam glanced at him. “They are, pretty much.”

“That okay with you?”

“Apparently I signed a contract saying it was. I don’t actually remember doing that, but it’s my signature.”

“Could it be a forgery?”

Sam showed him a wry grin. “One thing I’ve learned in Bon Temps, Andy. Anything could be anything.”

“Guess that’s true.”

“Count on it.”

“Listen, Sam,” Andy said. “About that night—”

“I’ve been trying to remember, Andy. Lafayette was my friend as well as my chef. But I really can’t say that anyone came in that night who was at all out of the ordinary. Anyway, I doubt anyone would have dumped his body while we were open. There are always people coming and going, and they couldn’t have known you’d get a ride home, until you did. I figure the body was put in your car after hours, when it was the only car left in the lot. They might not even have known it was yours.”

“Could be,” Andy agreed. He had thought of that. In the couple of days since, he had considered just about every possible angle.

Still, he had to be missing something, because he hadn’t yet figured out who had done it.

“Sorry, Andy,” Sam said. “I—”

“Yeah,” Andy interrupted. Casey-Lynn had appeared in the doorway and was looking outside, shading her eyes against the sun. “If you think of anything else, let me know.”

She spotted Andy and burst from the door. He broke away from Sam and met her halfway. They embraced, not quite with the passion of that evening outside the Christmas dance, but it was, Andy thought, a better hug than most he’d had since then.

“You ready for some lunch?” she asked.

Andy gestured toward the restaurant furnishings clotting the parking lot. “Is it open?”

“Only to crew,” Casey-Lynn said. “But Terry’s on the grill. He can whip up anything you want.”

“I know that. He’s my cousin.”

“Of course he is, silly.”

She took him by the hand and led him inside. Emptied out, the place seemed huge. The crew had set up lights on stands and suspended more from the ceiling. Against one wall, workers were installing a kind of wooden latticework with indentations that almost looked like the insides of egg cartons, except with hollow centers. Soundproofing, Andy guessed. Others were refinishing the bar with a high-gloss, almost metallic finish, and yet more were painting the kitchen. Andy wondered how Terry was managing to cook anything, with what seemed to be all the kitchenware outside and a crew of painters underfoot.

Casey-Lynn led Andy through the interior and out the back door. A handful of tables had been set up between the restaurant and Sam’s trailer, and various crew members occupied a couple of them. Tristan Kowel sat by himself, at a table with a single chair and a big umbrella covering it. He gazed on the scene before him with what looked like barely restrained revulsion.

“Guy’s kind of a jerk, ain’t he?” Andy said softly.

“Tristan? He’s okay. He knows he’s the show. Without him, it’s just footage of a bunch of greasy spoons nobody would want to go into.”

“Sam’s place isn’t bad.”

“I don’t mean Merlotte’s,” Casey-Lynn said quickly. “But most of them. This is like coming home.”

“It wasn’t here when you were.”

“I mean Bon Temps. You. Being here again, after so long.”

“It has been a while.”

She took his hand, held it. The years had etched tiny lines in her face: around her eyes, at the corners of her mouth. He liked them. Her hair was a shade or two darker than it had been, and cut short, even with her jawline. She had put on a little weight, and he liked that, too. He wondered what the transition had been like, from the smart, pretty girl he had known to the accomplished woman she was today.

“I guess I owe you an apology, don’t I?” she said.

“For what?”

“Disappearing like that.”

He chuckled. “It was kind of abrupt.”

“You didn’t know my parents.”

“You never let me.”

“There was a reason for that.” She let go of his hand, and her gaze wandered around the back parking area. Andy followed it. Fall was starting to set in; leaves were beginning to brown, and some had already dropped, dry and curled, onto the ground. Nobody had told the mosquitoes yet, but they would get the message soon enough. “I guess we didn’t use the word dysfunctional in those days, but that’s what they were. We were. My daddy was never any good, Andy. He was a petty criminal, as lazy as the day is long, always looking for the easiest way to do anything. Mama wasn’t much better, and that’s how they reared up us kids. When one of them would come home and say, ‘Time to pack up and move,’ we packed up and moved. It usually meant there was a sheriff on the way.”

“You wrote me back for a while. You answered when I called.”

“Until they told me I couldn’t. If anybody figured out I was talking to you, they could find us through you. So I had to stop, and I couldn’t say why. I’m so sorry, Andy.” She met his gaze again, her eyes liquid, her lower lip trembling. He hoped she wouldn’t cry. He never had liked it when women cried. A cop saw too much of that. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“I can’t say I wasn’t hurt,” he said. “But that was a long time ago. I’m over it now.”

She managed a smile, though it looked a little pained. “I’m glad to hear that. When I knew we were coming here, I hoped I’d be able to see you. I admit, I looked you up online, saw that you and Portia were still here. I even knew you were a cop before you gave me your card, even though I pretended to be surprised. And I saw some pictures of you, so I knew how handsome you’d become.”

Andy felt heat rising into his cheeks. “Not half as handsome as you are pretty, Casey-Lynn.”

“Oh, stop.” She waved her fingers at him. “I’m practically haggard.”

“You’re crazy. You look beautiful.”

“Obviously the years have affected your eyesight, but I’ll take it.”

A production assistant came over with a legal pad and took lunch orders. A little while later, they were eating burgers and fries that weren’t half-bad and hardly tasted like paint. Casey-Lynn told him how she’d wound up in the television business, and Andy tried to bring her up to speed on events in Bon Temps. To the extent that he could, anyway; as he talked, he realized that a lot of people around Bon Temps seemed to have secrets they wanted to protect. That was probably true everywhere, but it seemed especially pronounced here. He stopped short of telling her what he knew of Sookie’s abilities, but he did bring her name up after she got him talking about Vampire Bill. He couldn’t tell if she was more fascinated by the fact that Bon Temps now harbored an out vampire, or that Sookie was dating him.

“I would love to see Sookie,” Casey-Lynn said. “I never knew her that well, but I always thought she was cool. And I wouldn’t mind a look at that vampire. When do they get back?”

“Sam’s not sure,” Andy replied. “Couple of days, maybe.”

“Okay, good. I mean, we should still be here.”

“I meant to ask you something, Casey-Lynn. Sam says he doesn’t remember signing any contracts. How did you approach him in the first place?”

She let her gaze fall to her plate and tapped her fingernails on its edge. “E-mail, I think. It might have been a phone call, though, then e-mail. I do whatever I can to line up the places Tristan wants to visit.”

“How did he hear about Merlotte’s?”

“I told him about it.”

“But you’d never been here.”

“Andy, I spend my life studying up on bar and grills, roadside cafés, that kind of thing. When I heard about it, that it was in Bon Temps, of course I was intrigued. I did some more research and it sounded like it was right up Tris’s alley. So I got in touch with Sam and made the arrangements.”

“Which he forgot all about. He sure wasn’t expecting you yesterday.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to say something here?”

“I’m just curious about how y’all do things in Hollywood,” Andy said. “Sam was genuinely surprised.”

“We usually call a few days before we show up. Somebody might have dropped the ball on that. Or else not been able to reach him. I hear there was quite a stir over here the other day.”

Andy had wondered when that would come up, and how. He told her what had happened that night, admitting that he’d been emotionally ravaged by a pedophilia case and gotten much drunker than he’d intended. Talking about the case, even in the most general terms, twisted his guts into knots.

When he was finished telling Casey-Lynn about that, and the aftermath—Sookie finding the murdered Lafayette in his car—she was holding his hands, trying to quell their trembling. He swallowed, hard, and knew the blood had drained from his face. Casey-Lynn regarded him as if trying to decide whether she should dial 911.

“I’m so sorry, Andy,” she said. “That’s truly awful, start to finish. I’m sorry you had to go through it, but I’m glad you’re strong enough to stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves.”

“I guess,” Andy said. He’d never been great at accepting praise. “Thanks.”

“How did Sookie handle it?”

“She’s pretty tough, I guess. She’s okay.”

“When did you say she and Bill Compton are getting back into town? I’d hate to miss her.”

“I’m not sure,” Andy said again. “Shouldn’t be too long.”

Kowel had gone inside while they ate, but now he came to the back door. “Casey-Lynn, I need you,” he said.

She gave Andy’s hands a final squeeze. “Duty calls, babe. I’ll let you know when I can get free again.”

“Okay, Casey-Lynn,” he said. “See you later.”

She went inside. He waited a few minutes longer, not sure his legs would support him yet. His own story had affected him, as he had known it would. He was more surprised by the impact of hers. He had thought there was something off about her family, about their disappearance. Who just picks up and vanishes like that? For years, he had woven fanciful tales of intrigue in his mind. Thinking about it now, he suspected that taste of mystery might have been one of the factors that had driven him to become a detective.

When he felt stronger, he pushed back his chair, rose, and headed through the restaurant. The crew had finished putting up the strange egg-carton construction on the west wall. Now one of the clean-shaven guys stood on a ladder, inserting what looked like six-inch wooden dowels into the holes in the center of each depression. Andy wasn’t sure what the point was, but he was impressed by the crew’s thoroughness. He even saw one of the female crew members spraying something onto a cloth from an unmarked bottle—some cleaning solution, he guessed—and wiping out the inside of each glass.

Driving home, he couldn’t get the lunchtime conversation out of his mind. Casey-Lynn hadn’t quite been all over him, but she had been more physically affectionate than he’d expected. Did she want to pick up where they left off, all those years ago? That was impossible, wasn’t it? Too much had happened—and, he had to admit, he had been really hurt. He wasn’t sure he had entirely forgiven her. He’d thought he had, but her showing up again had peeled away the emotional scar tissue, exposing the original wound again.

He was glad to see her, and the attraction was still strong. But he felt there was something she wanted, and he couldn’t figure out what it was.

He was a smart guy. He was a detective, a good one, who solved real crimes. So why couldn’t he figure out Casey-Lynn? If she had an angle, it was opaque to him. If she wanted to rekindle something long since buried, what was the purpose? She wasn’t likely to stick around in Bon Temps, and he had no interest in going to Hollywood. And she was still beautiful, but he would never have anything like movie-star looks.

So it wasn’t that. There was something else going on. But he didn’t know what it was, and that fact wouldn’t stop gnawing at him.

He woke shortly after two in the morning and sat up in bed, eyes wide.

He sat there for a few minutes, trying to talk himself down. What he was thinking just couldn’t be.

But he couldn’t make it not make sense.

He dressed and left the house quietly, so he wouldn’t wake his sister or grandmother, and got into the Honda. He followed the twin cones of its headlights down Magnolia Creek Road to Parish Road 34, then turned onto Hummingbird Road and took that to Merlotte’s. The restaurant was dark. Andy drove around it and parked outside Sam’s trailer, feeling a little guilty about what he had to do.

He pounded on the trailer door until lights blinked on. Sam opened the door a minute later, wearing boxer shorts and holding a shirt closed over a chest furred with tightly coiled, golden hairs. Andy looked away. “Sorry if I woke you, Sam,” he said.

“If? Of course you woke me. Those Hollywood people ran me ragged all day. What is it?”

“How do you organize your e-mails?”

“What?”

Andy repeated the question, though it had seemed straightforward enough the first time.

Sam blinked a couple of times. “Organize? I run a bar and grill. I’d be surprised if I get ten e-mails a day, if you don’t count groups asking for money and junk mail about growing a bigger—”

“I get those, too,” Andy said, cutting him off. “Not that I need ’em.”

“Anyway, I don’t organize my e-mails. I just leave them in the order they come in, except for the ones I trash. Why?”

“Your computer in here or in the restaurant? Or both?”

“In there. When I’m here, I want to be away from the business.”

“Can’t blame you for that.”

“What’s this all about, Andy?”

“Open the place up and I’ll tell you.”

“You’re not drunk again, are you?”

“Hell no, Sam. I might be seeing clearly for the first time in days.”

“Okay, hang on.” Sam let the door swing closed. When he emerged a minute later, he had shoved his feet into some shoes, pulled on a pair of jeans, and fastened a few of the pearl snaps on his shirt. “Wish you’d tell me what this is about.”

“It’s about what those people are doing in your place,” Andy said.

“What people? Tris? The crew? They’re getting ready to shoot a TV show. This could really put Merlotte’s on the map.”

“You sure you want to be on the map?” Andy asked as they crossed the parking area to the restaurant’s back door. “Seems like for some of the people working here, being put on display in front of the whole world might not be their most favorite thing.”

“Maybe. What’s that got to do with e-mail?”

“Nothing,” Andy replied. “I’m just saying.”

Sam stuck his key in the lock, turned it, hit some light switches on the way in. “Andy, you’re not making much sense.”

“Just find me the e-mail Casey-Lynn sent you when she asked if they could film here. Hell, doesn’t even have to be the first one. Find the one where she sent you a contract, the one where she offered you money. Anything.”

Sam stopped, halfway toward his office, and turned slowly. He looked at Andy, something like comprehension beginning to glimmer in his eyes. “You know? I’m not sure I can.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“What, though? This is all some kind of setup? For what?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s what I want to find out.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll check my e-mail. I really don’t remember any, but she and Tris said they’d been in touch. They knew so much about the place, I believed them. And you know, things have been a little crazy around here, these last couple months. I could’ve been distracted.”

Sam went into his office, and Andy wandered around the restaurant. It looked like a different place. The crew had remodeled and repainted and refinished. The furniture had been brought back inside, but it looked new. Polished glassware was arrayed behind the bar, and there was a new mirrored back bar with tiny spotlights illuminating the bottles of liquor and artificial blood, creating an elegant effect.

“This looks great!” Andy called. “They did a hell of a job!”

“They did, didn’t they?”

“I thought the point was to show the world the places they found, though, not to turn them into something else.”

“Andy, it’s TV. Nothing’s real on TV.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Sam emerged from his office, looking glum. “I can’t find them. Not a single e-mail.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know, Sam. But I got a feeling Casey-Lynn Jennings is right in the middle of it. Do you know when they’ll be here?”

“They’re shooting tomorrow. Today, I guess. She said around six.”

“Know where they’re staying?”

“They have some fancy tour buses over at Don’s trailer park. They need the hookups, Bradley said.”

“So we got, what, almost four hours? That should give us time.”

Sam was wide-awake now, but confused. “Time for what?”

“To figure out what they’re up to.” Andy glanced toward the egg-carton construction. “What’s that thing?”

“Bradley called it a decorative accent.”

“I think it’s a lot more than that,” Andy said. He dragged a table and a chair over beside the wall, then stepped up into the chair and onto the table.

“Careful.”

“Don’t worry,” Andy said. He reached inside the little hole at the back of the indentation with two fingers, and withdrew what he had thought were dowels.

They weren’t.

The crew showed up a few minutes after six. Andy and Sam and Bud Dearborn and Alcee Beck were waiting inside, sitting around a table with coffee cups and a mostly empty pot on top of it. Bud was the Renard Parish sheriff, Alcee one of his detectives.

For the past hour, Andy had felt a growing kinship with that old bull Bust-’em-up. The nearer six o’clock came, the more he felt trapped in a narrow space, when all he wanted to do was get out, get away, run. Move.

But he stayed and drank coffee and traded stories with the Renard Parish cops, even though he’d heard theirs before and they’d heard his. When the door opened and Tristan Kowel looked in, Andy sat with his hands on the tabletop, trying to look as if he hadn’t a care.

“Sam?” Kowel said. “Ready for the big day?”

“Come on in, Tris,” Sam said. “Everybody with you?”

“The whole crew.”

Kowel entered, and the others trailed behind him, each looking at the men around the table with some measure of curiosity and surprise. When Casey-Lynn came in, she started toward Andy, then hesitated. The pause was brief; some people might have missed it, but Andy didn’t. Then she was walking toward him again, her steps a little more determined. Also more forced, as was her smile.

“I didn’t expect to see you here so early, Andy,” she said. She put her arms around him, gave him a quick hug. He returned it without enthusiasm. “Something wrong?” she asked.

“You tell me.”

“I don’t— What are you talking about?”

“It’s Bill, isn’t it?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Andy pointed to the egg-carton wall. “Wooden stakes, loaded into spring-fired launchers, enough to blanket the whole dining area. Silver nitrate coating the inside of every glass in the place—barely enough to be noticeable, maybe enough to make some humans sick. But probably enough to make a vampire dead. Electric current in the bar, wired separately for each position, probably controlled remotely. I don’t know what else—we only had a few hours, so we haven’t completely torn the place apart.”

“Andy, baby, I—”

“When I told you about him, I called him ‘Vampire Bill.’ You knew he was Bill Compton, even though I never said his last name. And you acted surprised when I mentioned that there was an out vampire livin’ here—but how could it be a surprise if you already knew his name?”

As he spoke, something changed in her face. It was almost like she’d been standing in a light that had been switched off. She closed up, looked away from him, pressed her lips together. For a long moment, she didn’t speak.

Then she touched his arm, a glancing pass, and dropped her hand to her side. “Okay, yes. I told you about my family, Andy. How none of them—none of us—have ever been any good. That’s true, much as I hate to admit it. And that kind of thing has deep roots.”

“What’s that got to do with Bill?”

“Bill’s the taproot,” she said. “The one from which all the rest emerged. He murdered my great-grandfather. It’s family legend. Everybody in my family knows Bill Compton’s name, and everybody knows that after his death, Enoch’s wife, Clara, went a little nuts. More than a little.”

“So you’re trying to kill Bill—and endangering everybody else in Merlotte’s in the bargain—because of something you think he did decades ago?”

“Longer than that. And we know he did it. That’s never been at issue. Some don’t think that’s the only reason the family fell apart, but I believe it is. The hatred, the bitterness, the thirst for vengeance—that’s as hereditary as hair color or high cholesterol, and it got passed down to all of us. Bill Compton’s an abomination, and I hate him. But not just him—I hate all bloodsuckers. That’s why I joined the Fellowship of the Sun—because their goals match those I’ve had for so long. And if some vamp-loving people get hurt, too, well, that’ll just make a bigger statement, won’t it?”

“You’re a member of that cu—”

“Don’t say ‘cult,’ Andy. It’s a church. We believe.”

“I thought churches believed in forgiveness. You might try that sometime.”

“Some things aren’t so easily forgiven,” she said.

“Tell me about it.” Even as he spoke, he knew he hadn’t truly forgiven, either. If he had, he might not have been so quick to suspect her. “So, what, is the whole crew in on this?”

“Just a few. Fellowship folks got me the job in the first place. When I told them what I had in mind—what a splash it would make—they were on board. Not Tristan, though, so don’t blame him. He never knew. I was the instigator.” She raised the hand to his arm again, and this time clutched it tight. “I’m sorry, Andy. About . . . you know, everything. The way I was raised. The way I left you. Lying to you.”

“I’m sorry, too, Casey-Lynn. I don’t like vampires, either, but the law’s the law. And Bill’s never done anything to hurt me, or anyone else I know. You’ll have to go with Bud—with Sheriff Dearborn, there. What happens after that is out of my hands.”

She swallowed, eyes glistening, but then she hardened again, dropped her hand, looked him straight in the eye. “It was a hell of a plan, Andy. And this doesn’t change anything. The Fellowship’s work—the Lord’s work—goes on, with or without me.”

She turned away and went toward Dearborn, hands out, wrists together. “I take it you’d like to handcuff me?” she said.

Bud talked quietly with Casey-Lynn for a few minutes, and she pointed out the four Fellowship members who had helped her. Some looked like they wanted to run, but Alcee was blocking the door, and nobody wanted to tangle with him.

While Bud and Casey-Lynn talked, Sam and Tristan Kowel were deep in conversation. Then Dearborn and Alcee led the conspirators away, and Kowel turned to those left behind. “We’re going to put it back, people.”

“Back?” someone asked.

“Merlotte’s. Back to what it was when we came.”

“But it looks so much better now,” Bradley complained.

“Back,” Sam said.

“Back,” Kowel echoed.

As the crew debated how to proceed, Andy walked out the front door and watched Bud and Alcee divide the detained into two vehicles. Bud took Casey-Lynn, though she had to sit in his front seat.

She craned her head as Bud drove out of the lot. When she met Andy’s gaze, her lips curled into a smile. It wasn’t a smile of victory, or even one acknowledging an old friend. He thought perhaps it was the smile of the faithful, of someone who could afford to take the long view. It lasted for only an instant, and then the smile was gone and she looked straight ahead, through the windshield, as if ready to face whatever came next.

Andy watched her leave him again. He’d thought the last time was for keeps, but he knew this one was. Even if she was convicted and incarcerated locally, he wouldn’t visit. He would testify at the trial, but that was all. He wouldn’t be drawn into her life again. That was a trap, as surely as a rodeo chute to a bull, and he wasn’t dumb enough to enter it a third time.

When both sheriff’s vehicles were out of sight, Andy started back into Merlotte’s, but he stopped himself as he reached for the door. He needed some sleep, a clear head.

Bill was safe, for now, but Lafayette’s killer was still out there.

Andy stood there a moment longer. The early-morning sun picked out the needles on the big pines, defining each one distinctly and surrounding it with a halo of light. The smell of the trees hung heavy in the morning air and high clouds dotted the sky, and somewhere a bird chittered, and he heard the whine of a mosquito, and he knew that Bon Temps was waking up.

Bon Temps. His town.

He got into the Honda, but instead of going home and closing his eyes, he drove to Caddo Road, made a right on Court Street, and cruised slowly through downtown, then the side streets leading away. He didn’t have Casey-Lynn, or anyone like her. But he had someplace he knew he belonged, and she’d never had that. Maybe that made a difference. All the difference.

Anyway, it did to him.