Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

He paused and looked over his shoulder at them. “You gotta admit he was a slick, hustling type. In the pen, he affiliated with a gang of like minds.” He faced forward again. “The murder was blamed on gang warfare within the prison, although no one was ever brought up on charges.

“Anyway, I left my plate of food on the table, went outside, and threw up. Hard. Till I was completely empty, and then I kept on retching. Because the last I saw of Allen Strickland, he was being escorted from the courtroom after his sentencing. He turned to where I was seated in the gallery, looked me straight in the eye, and said, ‘I didn’t kill her. God is my witness.’

“Now, I’ve heard hundreds of guilty men and women swear on God and all the angels that they’re innocent. But I believed Allen Strickland. So, no, Ms. Price, I don’t believe with all my heart that he was guilty of killing your sister. I never did.”

He remained as he was for as long as it took him to take a deep breath and release it slowly. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel as washed clean, as sanctified, as he thought he might after making that admission, and realized that he’d been naive to think it would be that easy.

He turned back into the room and, resuming his seat, picked up the glass and drained it of the liquor. The two people sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bed were watchful.

She was the first to speak. “If you didn’t believe in his guilt, how… why…”

“How and why did I get the grand jury to indict, and a jury to convict? I could reel off a dozen good reasons, but the main one? We had to get the egg off our faces.”

“We?” Dent said.

“Rupe and me.”

“So he’s tarnished, too?”

Dale chuckled over Bellamy’s quaint term for corrupt. “You could say. Anyhow, we’d gone public with one prime suspect.” He looked at Dent. “But you had an alibi. We didn’t believe it, but we couldn’t crack it. That’s when Allen Strickland started looking like a winning prospect.

“We were desperate to make good our promise to the Lystons, the PD, everybody, that we’d produce the culprit and bring him to justice. We couldn’t let this big, juicy case get away from us.

“Here we had us a prominent family’s daughter slain at the company barbecue, during the worst storm in half a century. The girl was pretty, she was rich, she’d been found stripped of her panties. And you gotta hand it to Rupe, he’s a showman. He baited the sex hook every time he gave the media a sound bite.

“You know,” he continued thoughtfully, “I think he was actually glad we never found her underwear, because that kept the public dwelling on it. Had her panties been the murder weapon? Where were they now? Would they be found? It was like a damn soap opera. Tune in tomorrow for the next episode.”

He dragged his hands down his face. “At one point, Rupe even suggested we plant a pair of underwear to be ‘found’ by a rookie cop, someone unassuming, so it would look convincing. We’d have to show them to your parents for identification. They would deny they were Susan’s, of course, but it still wouldn’t look good for the guy who’d been found with them. It would make him look like a collector.”

“You were actually going to plant false evidence on Allen Strickland’s property?” Bellamy asked.

Dale’s gaze slid involuntarily toward Dent. “This was early in the investigation.”

Dent stared at him for several beats, and when the implication sank in, he shook his head with disbelief. “Christ.”

He stood up and began to prowl the room as though looking for something or someone to hit. Dale thought he might be the target, but Dent moved to a window, where he propped his shoulder on the frame and stared out over the desultory waters of the lake. Dale noted that there was a spot of dried blood on his shirt about waist level.

Before he could ask about it, Bellamy said, “I didn’t like him.”

“Who?”

“Rupe Collier. I didn’t like him when he talked to my parents during the trial, assuring them that he was going to send Susan’s killer to jail for a long time. Then, when I was researching my book, I called him and asked for an interview. I made several appointments with him, all of which he canceled at the last minute. I suppose he ran out of excuses because I was finally allowed ten minutes of his time. He was—”

“You don’t have to tell me how he was,” Dale said. “I know all too well.” He flexed the fingers of his right hand. The knuckles were bruised and sore from their contact with Rupe’s teeth, but he enjoyed the discomfort and only wished he’d struck the grinning son of a bitch even harder. “He told you squat, right?”

“He was wishy-washy and vague,” she said. “Finally he told me that he’d forgotten the details of the case, and that instead of talking to him, I might try coaxing the police department into showing me the case file.”

Dale tipped his chin, his question implicit.

“I tried,” she said. “Unfortunately, the file had gone missing.”

“That’s right.”

“You knew?”

“Rupe’s too ambitious and too good at covering his ass to have let that file survive,” he said. Then he pulled himself up out of his chair. “And I’m too good at covering my own ass not to have made a copy of everything.”

Startled, Bellamy and Dent glanced at each other, then watched as Moody went into the kitchen area of his cabin, which was demarcated by a short bar with a chipped Formica top. He opened the oven beneath the greasy range and took from it an accordion file folder that was expanded beyond capacity. The original elastic cord had been replaced by a thick rubber band.

“I’ve been afraid I’d get really drunk one night, forget it was in there, and turn on the oven.” He carried the folder over to Bellamy and handed it to her, then returned to his chair, lit a fresh cigarette, and poured himself another drink.

Dent rejoined her on the bed as she removed the rubber band and folded back the flap. The file contained a daunting amount of material. Thumbing through the well-worn edges of paper, she saw copies of various things: official forms and documents, lined notebook sheets filled with handwriting, transcriptions of recorded interviews, and countless scraps of paper with only one or two words scribbled on them. It would take weeks to sort through.

“I took lots of notes,” Moody said, “and confiscated the notes of other detectives. Took me several days to get everything copied on the sly while Rupe was breathing down my neck to turn the file over to him. There’s stuff in there from Haymaker, notes he took until he asked to be taken off the case and reassigned.”

Dent raised his head and looked over at him.

“The screwdriver thing made him squeamish,” Moody said.

“How did you feel about his abdication?”

“It might have pissed me off, but I didn’t have time to think about it.” He indicated the file. “I was kinda busy.”

“Busy trying to crack me,” Dent said.

Moody shrugged his massive shoulders. “It’s usually the boyfriend. Or someone equally close to the victim.”

“My father and stepbrother?” she asked.

“Anybody who fell into the category of close male associate.”

“But my father ?”

“Look, I’m not going to apologize to you for doing my job.”

Because she didn’t want to antagonize him into silence, she backed off that. “I don’t understand why Allen Strickland didn’t come under suspicion immediately. Even according to your own notes… At least I assume this is your handwriting.” She held up the top sheet.