“What you doing out here?” he asked again.
“Something bad seems to have happened to Dawn,” I said, not knowing if I should tell him or not. “My boss sent me here to look for her when she didn’t come to work.”
“She in there?” JB simply scrambled out of the window. He had some shorts on, cut-offs.
“Please don’t look,” I asked, holding up my hand and without warning I began crying. I was doing that a lot lately, too. “She looks so awful, JB.”
“Aw, honey,” he said, and bless his country heart, he put an arm around me and patted me on the shoulder. If there was a female around who needed comforting, by God, that was a priority to JB du Rone.
“Dawn liked ’em rough,” he said consolingly, as if that would explain everything.
It might to some people, but not to unworldly me.
“What, rough?” I asked, hoping I had a tissue in my shorts pocket.
I looked up at JB to see him turn a little red.
“Honey, she liked . . . aw, Sookie, you don’t need to hear this.”
I had a widespread reputation for virtue, which I found somewhat ironic. At the moment, it was inconvenient.
“You can tell me, I worked with her,” I said, and JB nodded solemnly, as if that made sense.
“Well, honey, she liked men to—like, bite and hit her.” JB looked weirded out by this preference of Dawn’s. I must have made a face because he said, “I know, I can’t understand why some people like that, either.” JB, never one to ignore an opportunity to make hay, put both arms around me and kept up the patting, but it seemed to concentrate on the middle of my back （checking to see if I was wearing a bra） and then quite a bit lower （JB liked firm rear ends, I remembered.）
A lot of questions hovered on the edge of my tongue, but they remained shut inside my mouth. The police got there, in the persons of Kenya Jones and Kevin Prior. When the town police chief had partnered Kenya and Kevin, he’d been indulging his sense of humor, the town figured, for Kenya was at least five foot eleven, the color of bitter chocolate, and built to weather hurricanes. Kevin possibly made it up to five foot eight, had freckles over every visible inch of his pale body, and had the narrow, fatless build of a runner. Oddly enough, the two K’s got along very well, though they’d had some memorable quarrels.
Now they both looked like cops.
“What’s this about, Miss Stackhouse?” Kenya asked. “Rene says something happened to Dawn Green?” She’d scanned JB while she talked, and Kevin was looking at the ground all around us. I had no idea why, but I was sure there was a good police reason.
“My boss sent me here to find out why Dawn missed work yesterday and hadn’t shown up today,” I said. “I knocked on her door, and she didn’t answer, but her car was here. I was worried about her, so I started around the house looking in the windows, and she’s in there.” I pointed behind them, and the two officers turned to look at the window. Then they looked at each other and nodded as if they’d had a whole conversation. While Kenya went over to the window, Kevin went around to the back door.
JB had forgotten to pat while he watched the officers work. In fact, his mouth was a little open, revealing perfect teeth. He wanted to go look through the window more than anything, but he couldn’t shoulder past Kenya, who pretty much took up whatever space was available.
I didn’t want my own thoughts any more. I relaxed, dropping my guard, and listened to the thoughts of others. Out of the clamor, I picked one thread and concentrated on it.
Kenya Jones turned back to stare through us without seeing us. She was thinking of everything she and Kevin needed to do to keep the investigation as textbook perfect as Bon Temps patrol officers could. She was thinking she’d heard bad things about Dawn and her liking for rough sex. She was thinking that it was no surprise Dawn had met a bad end, though she felt sorry for anyone who ended up with flies crawling on her face. Kenya was thinking she was sorry she’d eaten that extra doughnut that morning at the Nut Hut because it might come back up and that would shame her as a black woman police officer.
I tuned in to another channel.
JB was thinking about Dawn getting killed during rough sex just a few feet away from him, and while it was awful it was also a little exciting and Sookie was still built wonderful. He wished he could screw her right now. She was so sweet and nice. He was pushing away the humiliation he’d felt when Dawn had wanted him to hit her, and he couldn’t, and it was an old humiliation.