Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

It was one thing for Dale to rethink the Susan Lyston case all day, every day. But he didn’t want anyone else to.

It had made him feel only marginally better to learn that Bellamy Price’s book had made Rupe nervous, too. Rupe Collier was a bigshot in Austin these days. He couldn’t be happy over having himself portrayed in the book as a ruthless young prosecutor who would go to any lengths to get his belt notched with a felony conviction, although that was exactly what he’d been and precisely what he’d done.

And he was looking for Dale.

Donald Haymaker, a buddy from Dale’s days on the force who still had ties to the Austin PD and was one of the few people among his acquaintances who knew how to reach him, had called him a few weeks ago, days after T. J. David’s true identity became known.

After they’d swapped trite pleasantries, he’d said, “Uh, Dale, have you heard about this book?”

He didn’t need to specify which book. Dale told him he’d read Bellamy Price’s Low Pressure .

“Me, too,” Haymaker admitted with noticeable awkwardness. “I think everybody in the country has. Rupe Collier included. He, uh, he called me, Dale. He hem-hawed for ten minutes or so, then casually—way too casually—asked me if I knew where you were and how to get in touch.”

“You didn’t give him my number, did you?”

“Hell no! But what do you think that slippery sumbitch wants with you after all these years? It’s gotta have something to do with that book, don’t you think?”

That was precisely what Dale thought. The book would have caused Rupe’s sphincter to pucker. He would be hating it and the hype surrounding it even more than Dale did, and Dale hated it like hell.

Bellamy Lyston Price, that homely, gawky titmouse of a girl, had stirred up a damn fucking mess. It had all the potential of becoming the crowning touch to Dale Moody’s miserable life.

He finished his whiskey in one slug, dropped his cigarette butt on the porch, balanced the pistol in his hand, and wished with every decaying fiber of his being that, just once before he died, he could enjoy a moment when he would know with one hundred percent certainty that he had helped convict the right man.

I was the first,” Dent said, repeating it with emphasis.

He held Bellamy’s stare for several moments, then, muttering an expletive, got up and moved restlessly around the kitchen. He bumped his fist against the crate of small appliances she hadn’t yet unpacked and eventually went to stand at the sink. He slid his hands, palms out, into the seat pockets of his jeans and stared through the window into her backyard.

“There’s a broken flowerpot on the steps,” he said. “I found it last night.”

“That must’ve been awful for you.”

“Naw, it was just a flowerpot. I got over it.”

“I was talking about being considered a suspect.”

He turned his head and spoke to her from over his shoulder. “I got over it.”

“Did you?”

Hearing the doubt behind the question, he turned back to the window, pulled his hands from his pockets, and placed them on the edge of the sink, leaning into it. “Have you ever been questioned by the police?”

“Other than being stopped for speeding, no.”

“It makes you feel guilty, even though you’re not. It’s the loneliest, most isolating feeling in the world.”

“Your father—”

“Couldn’t be bothered to go with me to the police station.”

“You had Gall Hathaway in your corner.”

“The police questioned us separately. He wasn’t in on those initial interrogations.”

“If I recall correctly, he retained a lawyer for you.”

“Not right away. We didn’t think a lawyer would be necessary. During those first couple of shakedowns I was all alone.”

“They came down hard on you.”

“You could say, yeah. He thought for sure I’d killed your sister.”

“The detective, you mean?”

“Moody. You called him Monroe in your book, but his name was Dale Moody. Soon as he got my name from your folks—who also thought I was the culprit—he came to my house, woke up me and my old man, asked if he could talk to me about Susan. But he didn’t exactly put it in the form of a polite request. Till then I didn’t even know that she’d been murdered. I learned that from him when he started trying to strong-arm a confession out of me.”

“What was that like, being pressured to make a confession?”

He left the window and went to the fridge, took out the pitcher of tea and brought it back to the table. She shook her head no when he held the pitcher above her glass, so he poured himself a refill, then resumed his seat across from her. However, instead of taking a drink, he placed the fingers of both hands against the glass and rubbed them up and down.

“Dent?”

“What?”

“I asked you a question.”

“I heard you.”

“Well, how did you feel?”

“How do you think? I felt like shit. Enough said.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m inviting you to vent your anger, and I think you want to.”

“After all this time? It’s a little late.”

“Yesterday you said it hadn’t been long enough.”

He removed his hands from around the glass and rubbed his wet fingertips on the legs of his jeans. He frowned irritably at Bellamy, but she kept her expression calm and inquisitive.

He mouthed another curse, then said, “The girl I’d been making out with two days earlier was on a slab in the county morgue. Something like that sorta messes with your mind, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I was trying to wrap my brain around Susan being killed by the tornado, when this Law & Order wannabe shows up and starts asking me what we’d argued about, when I’d last seen her, where was I when she was being choked to death.” Noticing Bellamy’s grimace, he pointed at her face. “Yeah. Like that. That’s how I felt.”

“I tried to capture those conflicting emotions in my book.”

“You described the scene real well, even down to leaving my old man out of it.”

“I omitted him because I didn’t have a sense of him.”

Dent barked a laugh. “Join the club. I lived with him, and I didn’t have a sense of him, either. For all practical purposes, the man was a fucking ghost.”

That struck her as odd phraseology. “Explain what you mean by that.”

“Why? Are you plotting another book?”

She slapped the tabletop as she came quickly to her feet. “Okay, don’t explain it. You’re the one who proposed we take this trudge down memory lane, not me. You can see yourself out.”

As she went past him, his arm shot out and encircled her waist, bringing her up short and close to him.

The contact startled her, making her breath catch. They held that pose for several moments, neither of them moving, then he relaxed his arm, dragging it away from her slowly, trailing his fingers over her rib cage. Softly he said, “Sit down.”

She swallowed and resumed breathing. “Are you going to act like a jerk?”

“Probably. But you wanted to hear this.” He nodded her toward the chair.

She returned to it, placed her hands primly in her lap, and looked at him expectantly. But after several seconds, he shrugged. “Well? Ask away.”

“I have to pull it out of you? You’re not going to volunteer anything?”

“What do you want to know?”

“What happened to your mother?”

The question caught him off guard, and she was glad it was he who seemed unbalanced for a moment. He looked away, shifted his position in the chair, rolled his shoulders in a defensive gesture. “I was told she died when I was a baby.”