Dead until Dark

When I hadn't heard anything in a couple of minutes, I pulled on a bathrobe and went to the front door. The yard, lit by the security light, was empty. Then I glimpsed move­ment to the left, and when I stuck my head out the door, I saw Bubba, trudging back to his hideout.

"What happened?" I called softly.

Bubba changed direction and slouched over to the porch.

"Sure enough, some sumbitch, scuse me, was sneaking around the house," Bubba said. His brown eyes were glow­ing, and he looked more like his former self. "I heard him minutes before he got here, and I thought I'd catch ahold of him. But he cut through the woods to the road, and he had a truck parked there."

"Did you get a look?"

"Not enough of one to describe him," Bubba said shame­facedly. "He was driving a pickup, but I couldn't even tell what color it was. Dark."

"You saved me, though," I said, hoping my very real grat­itude showed in my voice. I felt a swell of love for Bill, who had arranged my protection. Even Bubba looked better than he had before. "Thanks, Bubba."

"Aw, think nothing of it," he said graciously, and for that moment he stood up straight, kind of tossed his head back, had that sleepy smile on his face... itwas him, and I'd opened my mouth to say his name, when Bill's warning came back to shut my mouth.

JASON made bail the next day.

It cost a fortune. I signed what Sid Matt told me to, though mostly the collateral was Jason's house and truck and his fishing boat. If Jason had ever been arrested before, even for jaywalking, I don't think he would have been permitted topost bond.

I was standing on the courthouse steps wearing my hor­rible, sober, navy blue suit in the heat of the late morning. Sweat trickled down my face and ran between my lips in that nasty way that makes you want to go jump in the shower. Jason stopped in front of me. I hadn't been sure he would speak. His face was years older. Real trouble had come to sit on his shoulder, real trouble that would not go away or ease up, like grief did.

"I can't talk to you about this," he said, so softly I could barely hear him. "You know it wasn't me. I've never been violent beyond a fight or two in a parking lot over some woman."

I touched his shoulder, let my hand drop when he didn't respond. "I never thought it was you. I never will. I'm sorry I was fool enough to call 911 yesterday. If I'd realized that wasn't your blood, I'd have taken you into Sam's trailer and cleaned you up and burned the tape. I was just so scared that was your blood." And I felt my eyes fill. This was no time to cry, though, and I tightened up all over, feeling my face tense. Jason's mind was a mess, like a mental pigsty. In it bubbled an unhealthy brew compounded of regrets, shame at his sexual habits being made public, guilt that he didn't feel worse about Amy being killed, horror that anyone in the town would think he'd killed his own grandmother while lying in wait for his sister.

"We'll get through this," I said helplessly.

"We'll get through this," he repeated, trying to make his voice sound strong and assured. But I thought it would be awhile, a long while, before Jason's assurance, that golden certainty that had made him irresistible, returned to his pos­ture and his face and his speech.

Maybe it never would.

We parted there, at the courthouse. We had nothing more to say.

I sat in the bar all day, looking at the men who came in, reading their minds. Not one of them was thinking of how he'd killed four women and gotten away with it so far. At lunchtime Hoyt and Rene walked in the door and walked back out when they saw me sitting. Too embarrassing for them, I guess.

Finally, Sam made me leave. He said I was so creepy that I was driving away any customers who might give me useful information.

I trudged out the door and into the glaring sun. It was about to set. I thought about Bubba, about Bill, about all those creatures that were coming out of their deep sleep to walk the surface of the earth.

I stopped at the Grabbit Kwik to buy some milk for my morning cereal. The new clerk was a kid with pimples and a huge Adam's apple, who stared at me eagerly as if he was trying to make a print in his head of how I looked, the sister of a murderer. I could tell he could hardly wait for me to leave the store so he could use the phone to call his girlfriend. He was wishing he could see the puncture marks on my neck.

He was wondering if there was any way he could find out how vampires did it.

This was the kind of trash I had to listen to, day in, day out. No matter how hard I concentrated on something else, no matter how high I kept my guard, how broad I kept my smile, it seeped through.