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That afternoon, the little world of Merlotte’s Bar was very quiet. I changed, tied on my black apron, smoothed my hair, and washed my hands. Sam was behind the bar with his arms crossed over his chest, staring into space. Holly was carrying a pitcher of beer to a table where a lone stranger sat.

“How was Hotshot?” Sam asked, since we were alone at the bar.

“Very strange.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “Did you find out anything useful?”

“Actually, I did. I’m just not sure what it means.” Sam needed a haircut, I noticed; his curly red-gold hair formed an arc around his face in a kind of Renaissance-angel effect.

“Did you meet Calvin Norris?”

“I did. He got Crystal to talk to me, and he made me a most unusual offer.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you some other time.” For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to phrase it. I looked down at my hands, which were busy rinsing out a beer mug, and I could feel my cheeks burning.

“Calvin’s an okay guy, as far as I know,” Sam said slowly. “He works at Norcross, and he’s a crew leader. Good insurance, retirement package, everything. Some of the other guys from Hotshot own a welding shop. I hear they do good work. But I don’t know what goes on in Hotshot after they go home at night, and I don’t think anyone else does, either. Did you know Sheriff Dowdy, John Dowdy? He was sheriff before I moved here, I think.”

“Yeah, I remember him. He hauled Jason in one time for vandalism. Gran had to go get him out of jail. Sheriff Dowdy read Jason a lecture that had him scared straight, at least for a while.”

“Sid Matt told me a story one night. It seems that one spring, John Dowdy went out to Hotshot to arrest Calvin Norris’s oldest brother, Carlton.”

“For what?” Sid Matt Lancaster was an old and well-known lawyer.

“Statutory rape. The girl was willing, and she was even experienced, but she was underage. She had a new stepdad, and he decided Carlton had disrespected him.”

No politically correct stance could cover all those circumstances. “So what happened?”

“No one knows. Late that night, John Dowdy’s patrol car was found halfway back into town from Hotshot. No one in it. No blood, no fingerprints. He hasn’t ever been seen since. No one in Hotshot remembered seeing him that day, they said.”

“Like Jason,” I said bleakly. “He just vanished.”

“But Jason was at his own house, and according to you, Crystal didn’t seem to be involved.”

I threw off the grip of the strange little story. “You’re right. Did anyone ever find out what happened to Sheriff Dowdy?”

“No. But no one ever saw Carlton Norris again, either.”

Now, that was the interesting part. “And the moral of this story is?”

“That the people of Hotshot take care of their own justice.”

“Then you want them on your side.” I extracted my own moral from the story.

“Yes,” Sam said. “You definitely want them on your side. You don’t remember this? It was around fifteen years ago.”

“I was coping with my own troubles then,” I explained. I’d been an orphaned nine-year-old, coping with my growing telepathic powers.

Shortly after that, people began to stop by the bar on their way home from work. Sam and I didn’t get a chance to talk the rest of the evening, which was fine with me. I was very fond of Sam, who’d often had a starring role in some of my most private fantasies, but at this point, I had so much to worry about I just couldn’t take on any more.

That night, I discovered that some people thought Jason’s disappearance improved Bon Temps society. Among these were Andy Bellefleur and his sister, Portia, who stopped by Merlotte’s for supper, since their grandmother Caroline was having a dinner party and they were staying out of the way. Andy was a police detective and Portia was a lawyer, and they were both not on my list of favorite people. For one thing (a kind of sour-grapey thing), when Bill had found out they were his descendants, he’d made an elaborate plan to give the Bellefleurs money anonymously, and they’d really enjoyed their mysterious legacy