Free Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris Page B

among the various offices. I’d mentioned him the night before to Eric; Eric had sent Alcide to Jackson with me. But Alcide and I had some man-woman issues that were still unresolved, and it would be cheating to call him when I only wanted help he couldn’t give. At least, that was how I felt.
    I was scared to leave the house in case there might be news of Jason, but since the sheriff wasn’t looking for him, I hardly thought there would be any word soon.
    Before I left, I made sure I’d arranged the closet in the smaller bedroom so that it looked natural. It would be a little harder for Eric to get out when the sun went down, but it wouldn’t be extremely difficult. Leaving him a note would be a dead giveaway if someone broke in, and he was too smart to answer the phone if I called just after dark had fallen. But he was so discombobulated by his amnesia, he might be scared to wake all by himself with no explanation of my absence, I thought.
    I had a brainwave. Grabbing a little square piece of paper from last year’s Word of the Day calendar (“enthrallment”), I wrote: Jason, if you should happen to drop by, call me! I am very worried about you. No one knows where you are. I’ll be back this afternoon or evening. I’m going to drop by your house, and then I’ll check to see if you went to Shreveport. Then, back here. Love, Sookie. I got some tape and stuck the note to the refrigerator, just where a sister might expect her brother to head if he stopped by.
    There. Eric was plenty smart enough to read between the lines. And yet every word of it was feasible, so if anyone did break in to search the house, they’d think I was taking a smart precaution.
    But still, I was frightened of leaving the sleeping Eric so vulnerable. What if the witches came looking?
    But why should they?
    If they could have tracked Eric, they’d have been here by now, right? At least, that was the way I was reasoning. I thought of calling someone like Terry Bellefleur, who was plenty tough, to come sit in my house—I could use waiting on a call about Jason as my pretext—but it wasn’t right to endanger anyone else in Eric’s defense.
    I called all the hospitals in the area, feeling all the while that the sheriff should be doing this little job for me. The hospitals knew the name of everyone admitted, and none of them was Jason. I called the highway patrol to ask about accidents the night before and found there had been none in the vicinity. I called a few women Jason had dated, and I received a lot of negative responses, some of them obscene.
    I thought I’d covered all the bases. I was ready to go to Jason’s house, and I remember I was feeling pretty proud of myself as I drove north on Hummingbird Road and then took a left onto the highway. As I headed west to the house where I’d spent my first seven years, I drove past Merlotte’s to my right and then past the main turnoff into Bon Temps. I negotiated the left turn and I could see our old home, sure enough with Jason’s pickup parked in front of it. There was another pickup, equally shiny, parked about twenty feet away from Jason’s.
    When I got out of my car, a very black man was examining the ground around the truck. I was surprised to discover that the second pickup belonged to Alcee Beck, the only African-American detective on the parish force. Alcee’s presence was both reassuring and disturbing.
    “Miss Stackhouse,” he said gravely. Alcee Beck was wearing a jacket and slacks and heavy scuffed boots. The boots didn’t go with the rest of his clothes, and I was willing to bet he kept them in his truck for when he had to go tromping around out in the country where the ground was less than dry. Alcee (whose name was pronounced Al-SAY) was also a strong broadcaster, and I could receive his thoughts clearly when I let down my shields to listen.
    I learned in short order that Alcee Beck wasn’t happy to see me, didn’t like me, and did think something hinky had happened