"You wouldn't have summoned the police yourself, for any reason?" Eric said, and there was the smell of danger in the room.
Bill looked surprised-which is to say, his eyebrows twitched and he frowned. "I can't think of a reason I would do such a thing. On the contrary-since I was outside patrolling, I'll obviously be a suspect."
"Where is Mustapha?" Eric said.
Bill stared at Eric. "I have no idea," he answered. "He was patrolling the perimeter, as he put it, earlier in the evening. I haven't seen him since Sookie came in here."
"I saw him in the kitchen," I said. "We talked." A presence caught my attention. "Brain at the front door," I said.
Eric strode to the little-used front door, and since I was in tow, I trotted along. Eric threw the door open, and the woman standing on the porch was left standing foolishly poised to knock.
She looked up at Eric, and I could read her thoughts. To this woman, he was beautiful, disgusting, repellent, and oddly fascinating. She didn't like the "beautiful" and "fascinating" parts. She also didn't like being caught on the wrong foot.
"Mr. Northman?" she said, her hand dropping to her side like a stone. "I'm Detective Cara Ambroselli."
"Detective Ambroselli, you seem to know who I am already. This is my dearest one, Sookie Stackhouse."
"Is there really a dead person on the lawn?" I asked. "Who is she?" I didn't have to make up the curiosity and anxiety in my voice. I really, really wanted to know.
"We were hoping you could help us with that," the detective said. "We're pretty sure the dead woman was leaving your house, Mr. Northman."
"Why do you think so? You're sure it was this house?" Eric said.
"Vampire bites on her neck, party clothes, your front yard. Yeah, we're pretty sure," Ambroselli said drily. "If you could just step over here, keeping your feet on the stepping-stones ..."
The stones, set at regular intervals in the grass, curved around to the driveway. The dark green and deep pink of the crepe myrtles coordinated with the pink and green of the dress worn by the dead woman. She was lying at their base, a little inclined to her left side, in a position disturbingly similar to the way she'd lain across Eric's lap when I'd first seen her. Her dark hair had fallen across her neck.
"That's the woman no one knew," I said. "At least, I think so. I only saw her for a minute. She didn't tell me her name."
"What was she doing when you saw her?"
"She was donating some blood to my boyfriend, here," I said.
"Donating blood?"
"Yeah, she told us she'd done it before and she was happy to give," I said, my voice calm and matter-of-fact. "She definitely volunteered."
There was a moment of silence.
"You're kidding me," Cara Ambroselli said, but not as if she were at all amused. "You just stood there and let your boyfriend suck the neck of another woman? While you did ... what?"
"It's about food, not about sex," I said, more or less lying. It was about food, but quite often it was also definitely about sex. "Pam and I talked about girl stuff." I smiled at Pam. I was aiming for "winsome."
Pam gave me a very level look in reply. I could imagine her looking at dead kittens that way. She said, "I love the color of Sookie's toenails. We talked about pedicures."
"So you two talked about your toenails while Mr. Northman fed off this woman, in the same room. Cozy! And then, what, Mr. Northman? After you had your little snack, you just gave her some money and sent her on her way? Did you get Mr. Compton to escort her to her car?"
"Money?" Eric asked. "Detective, are you calling this poor woman a whore? Of course I didn't give her any money. She arrived, she volunteered, she said she had to go, and she left."
"So what did she get out of your little transaction?"
"Excuse me, Detective, I can answer that," I said. "When you're giving blood, it's really very pleasurable. Usually." Of course, that was at the will of the vamp doing the biting. I shot a quick glance at Eric. He'd bitten me before without bothering to make it fun, and it had hurt like hell.
"Then why weren't you the donor, Ms. Stackhouse? Why did you let the dead girl have all the fun of feeding him?"
Geez! Persistent. "I can't give blood as often as Eric needs it," I said. I stopped there. I was in danger of overexplaining.
Ambroselli's neck whipped around as she sprung the next question on Eric.
"But you could survive just fine on a synthetic blood drink, Mr. Northman. Why'd you bite the girl?"
"It tastes better," Eric said, and one of the uniforms spit on the ground.
"Did you decide you'd like a taste, Mr. Compton? Seeing as how she'd already been tapped?"
Bill looked mildly disgusted. "No, ma'am. That wouldn't have been safe for the young lady."
"As it turns out, she wasn't safe, anyway. And none of you knows her name, or how she got here? Why she came to this house? You didn't call some kind of I need a drink hotline ... like a vampire escort service?"
We all shook our heads simultaneously, saying no to all these questions at once. "I thought she came with my other guests, the ones from out of town," Eric said. "They brought some new friends they met at a bar."
"These guests are inside?"
"Yes," Eric said, and I thought, Oh, gosh, I hope Felipe got them out of the bedroom. But of course, the police would have to talk to them.
"Then let's take this inside and meet these guests," Detective Ambroselli said. "Do you have any objection to us coming inside, Mr. Northman?"
"Not the least in the world," Eric said courteously.
So I traipsed back into the house with Bill, Eric, and Pam. The detective led the way as if the house were hers. Eric permitted it. By now the Las Vegas contingent would have cleaned up, I hoped, since they'd certainly heard what Ambroselli had said when Eric went to the door.
To my relief, the living room looked much more orderly. There were a few bottles of synthetic blood, but they were all positioned adjacent to a seated vampire. The big windows in the back were open and the air quality was much better. Even the ashtray was out of sight, and someone had positioned a large bowl over the worst gouge marks on the coffee table.
All the vamps and the humans, fully clothed, had assembled in the living room. They wore serious expressions.
Mustapha was not among them.
Where was he? Had he simply decided he didn't want to talk to the police, so he'd departed? Or had someone entered through the French windows in the kitchen doors and done something terrible to the Blade wannabe?
Maybe Mustapha had heard something suspicious outside and had gone to investigate. Maybe the killer or killers had jumped him once he got outside, and that was why no one had heard anything. But Mustapha was so tough that I simply couldn't imagine anyone ambushing him and getting away with it.
Though "Mustapha" might not fear anything, in actuality he was the former KeShawn Johnson, and he was an ex-con. I didn't know why he'd been incarcerated, but I knew it was for something he'd been ashamed of. That was why he'd adopted a new name and a new profession after he'd served his term. The police wouldn't know him as Mustapha Khan ... but they'd know he was KeShawn Johnson as soon as they took his fingerprints, and he was scared of prison.
Oh, how I wished I could communicate all this to Eric.
I didn't believe Mustapha had killed the woman on the lawn. On the other hand, I'd never been completely inside his head, since he was a Were. But I'd never heard senseless aggression or random violence, either. Rather, Mustapha's top priority had always registered as control.
I believe most of us are capable of moments of rage, moments when our button's been pressed to the point where we lash out to stop the pressure. But I was sure that Mustapha was used to much worse treatment than anything that girl could have handed out.
While I was worrying about Mustapha, Eric was introducing the remaining newcomers to Detective Ambroselli. "Felipe de Castro," he said, and Felipe nodded regally. "His assistant, Horst Friedman." To my surprise, Horst rose and shook her hand. Not a vampire thing, handshaking. Eric continued, "This is Felipe's consort, Angie Weather-spoon." She was the third Nevada vampire, the redhead.
"Pleased to meetcha," Angie said, nodding.
The last time I'd seen her, Angie Weatherspoon had been dancing on the low table, enjoying Felipe's regard. Now the redhead was wearing a gray pencil skirt, a sleeveless green button-up blouse with tiny ruffles on the deep V neckline, and three-inch heels. Her legs went on forever. She looked great.
When Eric turned to the humans for their introductions, he paused. Eric clearly didn't know the hugely muscular man's name, but before the moment could become awkward, the man extended a bulging arm and shook the detective's hand very delicately. "I'm Thad Rexford," he said, and Ambroselli's mouth dropped open.
The uniform who'd come in behind her said, "Oh, wow! T-Rex!" with sheer delight.
"Wow," Ambroselli echoed, forgetting her stern expression.
All the vampires looked blank, but another human present, a plump and perky twenty-year-old with a light brown mane of hair of which Kennedy Keyes would have approved, looked proud, as if being at the same party with him raised her status. "I'm Cherie Dodson," she said, in a voice that was surprisingly babyish. "This is my friend Viveca Bates. What's going on out front, guys?" Cherie was the woman who'd been making out with T-Rex. Viveca, just as curvaceous but with slightly darker hair, had been the one giving Felipe the "donation."
Detective Ambroselli quickly recovered from the surprise of meeting a famous wrestler at a vampire's house, and she was twice as pugnacious since she'd shown a moment of starstruck awe. "There's a dead woman outside, Ms. Dodson. That's what's going on. You-all need to stay here to be ready for questioning. First off, did you ladies bring a third woman here with you?" The detective was clearly talking to the humans; that is, all the humans except me.
"These two lovely ladies were with me at the casino," T-Rex said.
"Which one?" Ambroselli was all about the details.
"The Trifecta. We met Felipe and Horst at the bar there, struck up a conversation over drinks. Felipe here kindly invited us to Mr. Northman's beautiful home." The wrestler seemed completely at ease. "We was just out on the town, having some fun. We didn't bring nobody else with us."
Cherie and Viveca shook their heads. "Just us," Viveca said, and gave Horst a coy sideways look.
"The victim came into the house, Mr. Northman says, but he doesn't seem to know who she was." Cara Ambroselli's flat tone made it clear what she thought of men who took blood from women they'd never met, while at the same time casting doubt on Eric's assertion that he hadn't known her. That was a lot to convey in one sentence, but she managed.
I was standing right behind her, and I was getting a good reading on her. Cara Ambroselli was both ambitious and tough-necessary attributes to get ahead in the law enforcement world, especially for a woman. She'd been a patrol officer, distinguished herself by her courage in rescuing a woman from a burning house, sustained a broken arm in the course of subduing a robbery suspect, kept her head low and her social life secret. Now that she was a detective, she wanted to shine.
She was simply packed full of information.
I kind of admired her. I hoped we wouldn't be enemies.
Cherie Dodson said, "Tell me she doesn't have on a green and pink dress." All the flirty fun had drained from her voice.
"That's what she's wearing," the detective said. "Do you know her?"
"I met her this evening," Cherie said. "Her name's Kym. Kym-with-a-y, she said. Her last name was Rowe, I think. T-Rex, you remember her?"
He looked down as though he were working hard at recovering the recollection, his dyed platinum hair showing a quarter-inch of dark root. T-Rex's cheeks sported reddish-brown bristles, and his tight black T-shirt revealed that he'd shaved his chest. I thought that he had some ambivalence about his hair growth, but I was kind of fascinated by his musculature, I have to admit. He just bulged muscles everywhere, even in his neck. I glanced up to find Eric giving me a frosty look. Well, big whoop, considering.
"I had quite a bit to drink tonight, Miz Ambroselli," the wrestler said, with a charming ruefulness. "But I remember the name, so I must have met her. Cherie, honey, was she at the bar?"
"No, baby. Here. While we were dancing, she walked through the living room. She asked where Mr. Northman was."
"How did this Kym arrive here?" Ambroselli asked. She looked at me first. I don't know why.
I shrugged. "She was already here when I came in this evening," I said.
"Where was she?"
"She was giving Eric blood back in the first room on the left past the bathroom."
"And you invited her?" Ambroselli asked Eric.
"To my house? No, as I said, I'd never met her-that I can recall. I'm sure you know I own Fangtasia, and many people come in and out of the bar, of course. I had gone to Sookie's room because I wanted to have a private word with her before the ... before we entertained our guests. This woman, this Kym, came back to the room. She said that Felipe had sent her to me as a present."
The detective didn't even ask Felipe. She just switched her dark gaze to him. The king spread his hands charmingly. "She seemed at loose ends," he said, with a smile. "She asked me if I knew Eric. I told her where Eric might be found. I suggested she go back to Eric and ask him if he wanted a drink. I thought he might be lonely without Sookie."