Dancers in the Dark and Layla Steps Up

by Charlaine Harris

  The tire company was owned by a Hutton, and one of the car dealerships, too.

  There was no sign crediting the Huttons with owning the police force, but Sean suspected that might be close to the truth. He found the station easily; it was right off the town square, a low redbrick building. The sidewalk from the parking area to the front door was lined with azaleas just about to bloom. Sean opened the swinging glass door to see a young policeman with his feet up on the counter that divided the public and private parts of the front room. A young woman in civilian clothes—short and tight civilian clothes—was using a copier placed against the wall to the left, and the two were chatting as Sean came in.

  “Yes, sir?” said the officer, swinging his feet to the floor.

  The young woman glanced at Sean, then did a double take. “Vampire,” she said in a choked voice.

  The man glanced from her to Sean in a puzzled way. Then he seemed to take in Sean’s white face for the first time, and he visibly braced his shoulders.

  “What can I do to help you, sir?” he asked.

  “I want to speak with Sergeant Kryder,” Sean said, smiling with closed lips.

  “Oh, he retired,” called the girl before the young man could answer. The man’s name tag read “Farrington.” He wasn’t pleased at the girl’s homing in on his conversation with the vampire.

  “Where might I find him?” Sean asked.

  Officer Farrington shot a quelling glance at the girl and pulled a pencil out of his drawer to draw Sean a map. “You take a left at the next stop sign,” he told Sean. “Then go right two blocks, and it’s the white house on the corner with the dark green shutters.”

  “Might be gone,” said the girl sulkily.

  “Barbara, you know they ain’t left yet.”

  “Packing up, I heard.”

  “Ain’t left yet.” Farrington turned to Sean. “The Kryders are moving to their place in Florida.”

  “I guess it was time for him to retire,” Sean said gently, willing to learn what he could.

  “He took it early,” the girl said. “He got all upset about the Layla LeMay thing.”

  “Barbara, shut up,” Officer Farrington said, his voice very sharp and very clear.

  Sean tried hard to look indifferent. He said, “Thank you very much,” and left with the instructions, wondering if they’d call ahead to the ex-sergeant, warn him of Sean’s impending visit.

  * * * *

  Sergeant Kryder had indeed gotten a call from the police station. His front light was on when Sean parked in front of his modest house. Sean didn’t have a plan for interrogating the retired policeman. He would play it by ear. If Rue had written the man’s phone number in her book, then the man had befriended her.

  Sean knocked at the door very gently, and a slim, clean-shaven man of medium height with thinning fair hair and a guarded smile opened the door. “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  “Sergeant Kryder?”

  “Yes, I’m Will Kryder.”

  “I would like to speak with you about a mutual friend.”

  “I have a mutual friend with a vampire?” Kryder seemed to catch himself. “Excuse me, I didn’t mean to offend. Please come in.” The older man didn’t seem sure about the wisdom of inviting Sean in, but he stood aside, and Sean stepped into the small living room. Cartons were stacked everywhere, and the house looked bare. The furniture was still there, but the walls were blank, and none of the normal odds and ends were on the tables.

  A dark-haired woman was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a dish towel in her hand. Two cats rubbed her ankles, and a little Pekingese leaped from the couch, barking ferociously. He stopped when he got close to Sean. He backed up, whining. The woman actually looked embarrassed.

  “Don’t worry,” Sean said. “You can never tell with dogs. Cats generally like us.” He knelt and held out a hand, and the cats both sniffed it without fear. The Pekingese retreated into the kitchen.

  Sean stood, and the woman extended her hand. She had an air of health and intelligence about her that was very appealing. She looked Sean in the eyes, apparently not knowing that he could do all kinds of things with such a direct look. “I’m Judith,” she said. “I apologize for the appearance of the house, but we’re leaving in two days. When Will retired, we decided to move down to our Florida house. It’s been in Will’s family for years.”

  Will had been watching Sean intently. “Please have a seat,” he said.

  Sean sank into the armchair, and Will Kryder sat on the couch. Judith said, “I’ll just go dry the dishes,” and vanished into the kitchen, but Sean was aware that she could hear them if she chose.

  “Our mutual friend?” Will prompted.

  “Layla.”

  Will’s face hardened. “Who are you? Who sent you here?”

  “I came here because I want to find out what happened to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s scared of something. Because I can’t make it go away unless I know what it is.”

  “Seems to me if she wanted you to know, she would tell you herself.”

  “She is too frightened.”

  “Are you here to ask me where she is?”

  Sean was surprised. “No. I know where she is. I see her every night.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think you’re some kind of private detective. We knew someone would be coming sooner or later, someone like you. That’s why we’re leaving town. If you think you can get rid of us easy, let me tell you, you can’t.” Will’s pleasant face was set in firm lines. He suddenly had a gun in his lap, and it was pointed at Sean.

  “It’s easy to see you haven’t met a vampire before,” Sean said.

  “Why is that?”

  Before Will could pull the trigger, Sean had the gun. He bent the barrel and tossed it behind him.

  “Judith!” Will yelled. “Run!” He dove for Sean, apparently intending to grapple with Sean until Judith could get clear.

  Sean held the man still by clamping Kryder’s hands to his sides. He said, “Calm yourself, Mr. Kryder.” Judith was in the room now, a butcher knife in her hands. She danced back and forth, reluctant to stab Sean but determined to help her husband.

  Sean liked the Kryders.

  “Please be calm, both of you,” he said, and the quiet of his voice, the stillness of his posture, seemed to strike both of the Kryders at the same time. Will stopped struggling and looked at Sean’s white face intently. Judith lowered the knife, and Sean could tell she was relieved to be able to.

  “She calls herself Rue May now,” he told them. “She’s going to the university, and she has a cat named Martha.”

  Judith’s eyes widened. “He does know her,” she said.

  “He could have found that out from surveillance.” Will was not so sure.

  “How did you meet her?” Judith asked.

  “I dance with her. We dance for money.”

  The couple exchanged a glance.

  “What does she do before she goes on stage?” Judith asked suddenly.

  “Head up, chest out, shoulders square, big smile, pretty hands.” Sean smiled his rare smile.

  Will Kryder nodded at Judith. “I reckon you can let go of me now,” he told Sean. “How is she?”

  “She’s lonely. And she saw something the other night that scared her.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “I know she was a beauty queen. I know she danced in a lot of contests. I know she never seems to hear from her family. I know she has a brother. I know she’s hiding under another name.”

  “Have you seen her stomach?”

  “The scars, yes.”

  “You know how she got that way?” Kryder didn’t seem to be concerned with how Sean had come to see the scars.

  Sean shook his head.

  “Judith, you tell him.”

  Judith sat on the couch beside her husband. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, she appeared to be organizing her thoughts.

 
“I taught her when she was in tenth grade,” Judith said. “She’d won a lot of titles even then. Layla is just…beautiful. And her mother pushed and pushed. Her mother is an ex-beauty queen, and she married Tex LeMay after she’d had two years of college, I think. Tex was a handsome man, still is, but he’s not tough, not at all. He let LeeAnne push him around at home, and at work he let his boss stomp on what was left of his…manhood.”

  Sean didn’t have to feign his interest. “His boss?”

  “Carver Hutton III.” Will’s face was rigid with dislike as he spoke the name.

  “The family that owns this town.”

  “Yes,” Judith said. “The family that owns this town. That’s who Tex works for. The other LeMay kid, Les, was always a dim bulb compared to Layla. Les is a good boy, and I think he’s kept in touch with Layla—did you say she calls herself Rue these days? Les is off at college now, and he doesn’t come home much.”

  “Carver IV came back from his last year of college one Christmas, two years ago,” Will said. “Layla’d been elected Christmas Parade Queen, and she was riding in the big sleigh—’course, it’s really a horse-drawn wagon, we don’t get snow every year—and she was wearing white, and a sparkly crown. She looked like she was born to do that.”

  “She’s a sweet girl, too,” Judith said unexpectedly. “I’m not saying she’s an angel or a saint, but Layla’s a kind young woman. And she’s got a backbone like her mother. No, I take that back. Her mother’s got a strong will, but her backbone doesn’t even belong to her. It belongs to the Social God.”

  Will laughed, a small, choked laugh, as if the familiar reference sparked a familiar response. “That’s the god that rules some small towns,” he said to Sean. “The one that says you have to do everything exactly correct, follow all the rules, and you’ll go to heaven. Social heaven.”

  “Where you get invited to all the right places and hang around with all the right people,” Judith elaborated.

  Sean was beginning to have a buzzing feeling in his head. He recognized it as intense anger.

  “What happened?” he asked. He was pretty sure he knew.

  “Carver asked Layla out. She was only seventeen. She was flattered, excited. He treated her real well the first two times, she told me. The third time, he raped her.”

  “She came over here,” Judith said. “Her mom wouldn’t listen, and her dad said she must be mistaken. He asked her didn’t she wear a lot of perfume and makeup, or a sexy dress.” Judith shook her head. “She’d—it was her first time. She was a mess. Will called the chief of police at the time. He wasn’t a monster,” Judith said softly. “But he wasn’t willing to lose his job over arresting Carver.”

  “She shut herself in the house and wouldn’t come out for two weeks,” Will said. “Her mother called us, told us to quit telling lies about the Huttons. She said Layla had just misunderstood the situation. Her exact words.”

  “Then,” said Judith heavily, “Layla found out she was pregnant.”

  The buzzing in Sean’s head grew louder, more insistent. He had never felt like this before, in his hundreds of years.

  “She called Carver and told him. I guess she thought something so serious would bring him to his senses. Maybe she imagined that his parents had brought on all his violence. Maybe she thought he would do right by her somehow. She was just seventeen. I don’t know what she thought. Maybe she wanted him to take her to a doctor, I don’t know. She didn’t want to tell her parents.”

  “He decided to take care of it himself,” Sean said.

  “Yeah,” Will said. “He lost his mind. Usually, he can act like a real person when other people are around.” Will Kryder sounded as detached as if he were discussing the habits of an exotic animal, but his hands were clasped in front of him so tightly that they were white. “Carver couldn’t maintain the facade that night. He pulled up in front of the LeMays’ house, and Layla came out, without saying anything to Tex or LeeAnne about where she was going. But Les was watching out the window, and he saw…he saw…”

  “After he socked her in the face a few times, he broke his soda bottle and used that,” Judith said simply. There was a long moment of silence. “Les got him off in time to save Layla’s life, by hitting Carver with his baseball bat…he was on the high school team, then.”

  “Go on,” Sean managed to say. They’d been lost in these tragic memories, but when they heard his voice, they looked up, to be absolutely terrified by Sean’s face. “I’m not angry with you,” Sean said, very quietly. “Go on.”

  “The scene at the hospital was—you can imagine,” Will said, his voice weary. “She lost the baby, of course, and there was considerable damage. Permanent damage. She was in the hospital for a while.”

  “No one could ignore that,” Judith said bitterly. “But the Huttons got a good lawyer, of course, and he made a case for insanity. Here in Pineville, of course, a Hutton won’t get convicted of jaywalking. He was declared temporarily insane, and the judge sentenced him to time in a mental institution and ordered his family to pay all Layla’s medical expenses. He did grant Layla a restraining order against Carver ever contacting her again, or even coming within a hundred feet of her. I guess that’s worth the paper it’s printed on. When the mental doctors decided Carver was ‘stabilized,’ he could be released, and he had to go through so many courses of outpatient anger management and other therapy. That took four years.” She shook her head. “Of course, that doesn’t mean jack.”

  “He mutilates Layla, he causes the death of his own child in her womb, and after a token sentence, he walks free.” Sean shook his head, his expression remote. “Since I’ve lived in America, I’ve admired its justice system. So much better than when I was a boy in Ireland, when children could be hung for stealing bread when they were hungry. But this isn’t any better.”

  The Kryders both looked embarrassed, as if they were personally responsible for the injustice. “That’s another reason we’re moving,” Will said. “Sooner or later, when we least expect it, Carver III will make us pay for backing Layla up. She stayed with us some, when she was convalescing. She didn’t want to see her parents. Les used to come over, visit her. Not LeeAnne. Not Tex.”

  Sean didn’t express incredulity, and he didn’t comment on Layla’s family’s behavior. He’d seen worse in his long life, but he hadn’t seen worse done to someone he cared about as much as he cared about Layla LaRue LeMay.

  “Does she call you?” Sean asked.

  “Yes, she does, from time to time. She’ll call here, or she’ll call the station to talk to Will, to find out if Carver’s out yet.”

  “And is he?”

  “Yes. After four years, he’s off all supervision now. He’s footloose and fancy-free.”

  “And is he living here?”

  “No. He left town right away.”

  “She saw him,” Sean said out loud.

  “Oh, no. Where?”

  “At a party, where we were dancing.”

  “Did he approach her?”

  “No.”

  “Did he see her?” Judith had hit the nail on the head.

  Sean said slowly, “I don’t know.” Then he said, “But I have to get back. Now.”

  Will said, “I hope you’re planning on being good to her. If I hear different, I’ll come back and track you down with a stake in my hand. She’s had enough trouble.”

  Sean stood and bowed, in a very old-fashioned way. “We’ll see you in Florida,” he said.

  He left Pineville, pushing the rental car to its limit, so he could make the last plane that would get him into the city in time to find a daytime resting place. There was a safe apartment very close to the airport, maintained by the vampire hierarchy. He called ahead to reserve a coffin, and got on the plane after making sure there was an emergency space in the tail where he could wait if sunlight caught them. But all went well, and he was in a room with three other occupied coffins by the time the sun came up.

  Chapter Seven

&
nbsp; The personnel of Blue Moon Entertainment and Black Moon Productions were draped around the big practice room in various positions of weariness. It was a scant hour after darkness had fallen, and some of the vampires looked sluggish. Every one of them clutched a bottle of synthetic blood. Most of the humans had coffee mugs.

  Rue had come in full disguise. The more she’d thought about the glimpse she’d had of the man who’d looked so much like Carver Hutton IV, the more spooked she’d gotten. Between that fear and her upsetting spat with Sean, and the remembered tingle she’d felt when they kissed, she hadn’t been worth anything during the weekend so far. She’d performed her regular weekend chores, but in a slapdash fashion. She hadn’t been able to study at all.

  When Sean came in, wearing sweatpants and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, her pulse speeded up in a significant way. He folded to the floor by her, his back against the glass of the mirror as hers was, and scooted closer until their shoulders and hips touched.

  Sean was silent, and she was too self-conscious to look up at his eyes. She’d half expected to hear from him the night before, and when the phone hadn’t rung and there’d been no knock at her door, she’d felt quite disconcerted. Men had seldom walked away from her, no matter how rocky their relationship had grown. I am not going to ask him where he’s been, she swore to herself.

  Sylvia was talking on the phone and smoking, which all the human dancers detested. She was doing it to prove she was the boss. Rue made a face and tried to arrange herself so her back was comfortable. The wall wasn’t friendly to her spine, which had been jolted when she caught Megan after Charles Brody had shoved her. Megan was moving a little stiffly. Hallie looked subdued and David seemed healed, as far as Rue could tell. She hoped this week would be a better one for the entertainment troupe as a whole.

  Rue sighed and tried to shift her weight slightly to her right hip. To her astonishment, in the next moment she felt herself being lifted. Sean had spread his legs, and he put her down between them, so her back rested against his stomach and chest. He scooted his butt out from the wall to give her a little incline. She was instantly more comfortable.