Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

“Are you sure? Have you ever asked?”

He gradually eased himself back into the chair. After a moment, he said, “Tell you what. I’ll elaborate on my sex life after you tell me what went wrong with your marriage.”

Refusing to be baited, she said, “What time did you arrive at the state park?”

He snuffled a soft laugh. “Figured.” Then, “What time did I get to the park? I don’t know. I never could nail down a time for Moody, either, which he saw as an implicating factor. On my way there, I saw the funnel cloud. I realized the park lay in its path. I was minutes behind it, and when I got there, all hell had broken loose.

“It looked like—well, you know what it looked like. People were screaming. A lot of them were bloody and broken. Hysteria. Panic. Shock. Next to war, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You were in war?”

“Air force. Iraq. Our base took some rocket fire and the bastards got lucky with their aim. Left those of us who survived it with a… a lot to clean up.” His expression turned introspective. “War looks different from several miles up than when you’re scooping up red mush that used to be your wing man.”

He reached for his glass of tea and took a drink. They didn’t look at each other and neither said anything for a time, then she asked what else he remembered seeing in the wake of the tornado.

“Your dad. He was running around like a crazy man, his hands cupped around his mouth, calling your names. Steven appeared first, looking like a zombie, acting like one. Howard shook him, trying to snap him out of his daze. Then Olivia appeared.

“She was… well, that’s the only time I’ve seen any real emotion from the woman. She grabbed Steven and wrapped her arms around him like she was never going to let him go. Your dad was embracing both of them. He and Olivia were crying with relief over finding each other unharmed. But the group hug didn’t last long because you and Susan were still unaccounted for.

“When they saw me, Olivia ran over. Had I been with Susan? Had I seen her? Where was she? She was yelling in my face, making little sense, ranting at me for breaking my date with Susan, making it my fault that she was missing, accusing me of causing trouble as always.”

“She must have been out of her mind with worry.”

Dent fell silent and stared into near space for a moment, then said, “Yeah, but later, after Susan’s body was discovered, I thought about what she’d said. And in a way she was right. If I’d been with Susan that day as planned, she wouldn’t have been in the woods with Allen Strickland. She might have been injured or even killed by the twister, but as least she wouldn’t have been choked to death.”

“I suppose both of us suffer a bit of survivors’ guilt.”

“I guess. But I never let on to Moody about it. He would have misread it. It was bad enough that I was within thirty, forty yards of Susan’s body when the fireman found it. I’d been searching the woods with them. So were a dozen other men, but none of the rest became suspects. Only me. Later, Moody said it was like I had returned to the scene of the crime, as killers do. Bullshit like that,” he added in a mutter.

“Anyhow, when I realized that Susan was dead, not just unconscious, I threw up. Then I went to find your parents, but when I did, I chickened out. I couldn’t tell them. I just pointed them in the direction of where she’d been found.”

He stopped talking and, when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to continue, Bellamy prodded him. “And then what?”

“Then nothing. I was upset that my girlfriend was dead, but I knew that your folks wouldn’t welcome any condolences from me and wouldn’t want me hanging around like a member of the family. So I went home, went to bed.

“The following morning, Moody came calling. You know the rest. He’d talked to your parents and had made up his mind that I’d done it. He didn’t have any physical evidence against me, but I was treated like a felon. For weeks my name was the one in all the papers and on the news every night. I was the ‘suspect in the Susan Lyston slaying.’

“Hell, I couldn’t even go to her funeral for fear of being attacked by a lynch mob.” He formed a tight fist with one hand and tapped it against the tabletop. “The hell of it is, it didn’t stop, not after Allen Strickland was taken into custody, not even after he was convicted,” he said with raw resentment.

“See, A.k.a., the way it works? Even if you’re officially cleared of all suspicion, the taint of having been a suspect stays with you. It’s like a bad odor that clings to you. People have to accept that you’re innocent, but there’s a lingering doubt that you’re entirely clean.

“I learned that during the NTSB investigation. Somebody got hold of those old headlines, plastered them all over the damn place. After that, the airline was ashamed to claim me. It’s seriously bad PR to have an alleged murderer on your payroll.”

She grew uncomfortable under his glare and felt compelled to acknowledge that, sadly, he was right. “I’m sorry, Dent.”

“Can you be more specific? What exactly are you sorry for? For the dung heap I had to wrestle through then, or the fresh one I’m having to wrestle through now? Are you apologizing in advance for what will happen when Van Durbin’s newspaper hits the stands tomorrow and all that speculation starts whirling around me again?”

“Why should it?”

“You have to ask? Before Van Durbin files that story, you can bet he’ll want to identify ‘the cowboy.’ He’ll probably crap himself when he learns I’m none other than the ‘first person of interest.’”

“Who was vindicated.”

“Maybe in your book, but not in real life.”

“Gall provided you with an alibi that cleared you.”

“Moody figured that Gall was lying.”

“He had no case against you.”

“Right. The only thing that saved me was that I wasn’t found with Susan’s panties.”

Rupe Collier checked his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of his office door. He patted his thinning hair into place to help cover the ever-widening bald spot on the crown of his head, shot his cuffs to make certain the diamonds in his Texas-shaped gold cuff links were twinkling, smiled widely to check his capped teeth for stuck food, then, approving of what he saw, left his office.

He strode into the showroom, where strategically placed spotlights shone on the new models fresh from the factory. He didn’t ordinarily work the floor, but one of his salesman had told him that a customer was insistent on dealing with the “main man,” and Rupe was definitely that.

The customer, pointed out to Rupe by the salesman, was bent down, peering through the tinted glass window—an option available at extra cost—into the luxurious interior of a top-of-the-line sedan.

“Rupe Collier. Who do I have the pleasure of meeting?”

The customer straightened up and returned Rupe’s smile as he shook the extended hand. Rupe was pleased to see that his cuff links didn’t escape notice. The other man wasn’t dressed or groomed nearly as well, and that was the way Rupe liked it. It gave him a distinct advantage when it came to bargaining. In order to be a winner, one had to look the part.

The car shopper dropped Rupe’s hand and motioned toward the car. “How much would this baby set me back?”

“It’s worth every penny of the sticker price, but I can cut you the best deal in the country.”

“Thirty-day guarantee?”

“On any car on the lot. I stand behind my product.”