"Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse 02 - Living Dead In Dallas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Charlaine)

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LIVING DEAD IN DALLAS

by Charlaine Harris.


An Ace Book
Ace mass-market edition / April 2002




This book is dedicated to all the people
who told me they enjoyed Dead Until Dark.
Thanks for the encouragement.




My thanks go to Patsy Asher of Remember the Alibi in San Antonio, Texas; Chloe Green of
Dallas; and the helpful cyber-friends I've made on DorothyL, who answered all my questions promptly and
enthusiastically. I have the greatest job in the world.




Chapter 1


Andy 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 been dealt 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