Low Pressure (20 page)

“Impossible.”

“It’s true. She was jealous of the special relationship you and Howard had. He favored you, and she knew it. It also miffed her that when I came into the family, you and I forged a sibling bond that I never had with her, or even wanted. Not that she craved my friendship, but she didn’t want to be second on anyone’s list.”

He looked across at Dent again. “You weren’t her one and only. She told me about all the boys she ‘did’ behind your back. She was a slut who gave away free samples. It was befitting that she was strangled with her own underpants.”

“Steven, please,” Bellamy whispered.

“You wanted to hear this; you’re going to hear all of it,” he said testily. “One Sunday at family dinner, Susan passed a pair of her panties to me under the table. Here I was, seated between her and Howard, and she reaches for my hand and presses her underwear into it. I became so hot with fear and mortification I thought I’d pass out. And all through the meal, she was smiling that sly, triumphant smile that was uniquely hers.

“That was the kind of demeaning joke she liked to pull. There were many more times when she did something similar. I could go on and on, but it would serve no purpose. She can no longer make my life hell. She’s dead. And I’m glad.”

He fell silent for several moments, then roused himself as though coming awake after a bad dream. He looked out over the dining room and said, “I need to get back to work. Besides, I’ve said everything I plan to. Except this.” Before continuing, he made certain of their full attention.

“Moody questioned me extensively, but my story never changed. Not one word of it. He didn’t have any evidence to place me where her body was discovered. Nor could he cite an opportunity for me to have killed her. But what he never asked me, what he didn’t know, was that I sure as hell had a motive.”

T
he fist came out of nowhere and crashed into Rupe’s face like a wrecking ball.

He landed hard on his butt. Lightning bolts of pain pierced his skull and ricocheted off the inner walls of his cranium. His ears rang, and he was momentarily blinded.

Before he could even cry out, he was grabbed by his shirt collar and jerked to his feet with teeth-jarring, bone-shaking velocity. The planet teetered, then spun out of its orbit, making him sickeningly dizzy. He gagged on the nausea that filled his throat. His head wobbled on his neck uncontrollably. Blood streamed from his broken nose into his slack lips.

“Hey, Rupe, long time no see.”

Being shaken like a rag doll, Rupe blinked against the skyrockets of pain still exploding from within his skull. The earth righted itself and, finally, the multiple blurred images wavering inches from him coalesced into one of an older, heavier, uglier Dale Moody.

“How’re you doing, Rupe?”

Dale knew the extent of the other man’s pain, because Dale had had it described to him before. He’d landed a blow just like the one he’d delivered to Rupe on a fellow cop, who’d later waxed poetic about the various levels of excruciating pain to be found on the receiving end of Dale’s right fist.

In answer to Dale’s question, Rupe mumbled unintelligibly.

“Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

Dale, still gripping a fistful of expensive, imported silk/cotton blend, hauled Rupe by his shirt collar over to his rattletrap Dodge and propped him against the rusty, dented rear quarter panel. “Would you take this heap for a trade-in?”

“Fgnuckyoo.” With his rubbery lips and swelling nose, that was the closest Rupe could come to correct pronunciation.

Dale grinned, but it was a nasty expression. “I’ll take that as a no.” Keeping his grip on Rupe with one hand, he used the other to open the back door of his car, knock the top off a white foam cooler, and take from it a bag of frozen peas he’d brought for the occasion.

“Maybe this will help.” He crammed the bag over Rupe’s brutalized nose.

Rupe cried out in fresh pain, but he reached up and snatched the bag of peas from Dale’s hand. He applied it more gently and glared at the former detective from behind the smiling Green Giant. “I’m filing charges of assault.”

“Will that be before or after your eyes swell shut? I hope you don’t have any TV commercials to do this week. You’re gonna look like shit for a while. Maybe you can buy shirts that’ll match your bruises.”

“You’re a . . .”

“I know what I am,” Dale said brusquely, all traces of humor vanishing. “And I know even better what you are. Now, we can stand here all night swapping insults. I’ve got nothing else to do. But you’re a busy man. You’re also the one who’s bleeding and hurting like hell. Your better option is to talk to me like you’ve been itching to do. I drove halfway across the state to get here. So talk, you son of a bitch.”

Rupe continued to glower at him, but Dale knew better than anyone that the former ADA was good at thinking on his feet. Even in a tight spot like this, he would be searching for an angle that would turn the situation to his advantage. Knowing this about his nemesis, Dale wasn’t surprised when Rupe cut to the chase.

“The Lystons’ younger daughter. Remember her? Bellamy? She’s written a book.”

“Old news, Rupe.
Low Pressure
. I know all about it. I also know about the tabloid writer who’s exploiting it. I stopped on my way here to gas up and saw today’s issue in a rack by the register. Bet the cashier would’ve been blown away if she’d known she was selling a copy to one of the featured personalities.

“I fared better than you, Rupe,” Dale continued conversationally. “I was only mentioned as the ‘former lead investigator, unavailable for comment.’ But Van Durbin went on at some length about you. Reading between the lines, I’d say he wasn’t all that impressed with your public service to Travis County. He said you couldn’t give him a ‘definitive’ answer when he asked you about hard evidence, which in this case was a pair of lacy underwear. Van Durbin relished that.”

“I read it.” Rupe lifted the makeshift ice pack from his nose, looked with disgust at the imprint his blood had made on it, then tossed it aside. It landed on the pavement near his feet with a loud splat. Rupe looked down at it and used that opportunity to take in the parking lot at a glance.

“Nobody’s around,” Dale told him. “Nobody to rush to your rescue. Which is your own fault for parking way out here at the edge of the lot. What? Are you scared somebody will notice you coming and going out of that young lady’s apartment up there?

“You really should choose another place for your shabby rendezvous, Rupe, or you’re liable to get caught with your pants down. How old is she, anyhow? Eighteen? Nineteen at a stretch? Is she even legal? Shame on you, diddlin’ a girl too young to buy beer. You being a church deacon and all.”

If looks could kill, Dale would be dead. “Your pal Haymaker?” Rupe spat. “Is he your snitch?”

Ignoring that, Dale continued taunting him just for the hell of it, just because it felt good. “Does your wife know you’re banging a hot young thing? Come to think of it, your missus might not be all that upset about it. She might be glad to learn you can still get it up.” Dale leaned in and whispered, “But you’d better hope Van Durbin doesn’t get wind of it.”

Rupe scoffed. “He has a column in a cheap rag that people line their birdcages with. So what? What harm can he really do me?”

“Austin’s King of Cars?” Dale mocked.

Rupe wiped dripping blood from the end of his nose and shook it off his fingers. “That was the ad man’s suggestion.”

“Whatever, Rupe. Whatever. You’ve done real good for yourself. But it could all go away like that.” He snapped his fingers half an inch from Rupe’s brutalized face.

“You think I’m scared of Van Durbin?”

“No, but you’re scared shitless of me.” Dale crowded in on him. “First the book, and now Van Durbin, have stirred up the dust, but I’m the one who could choke you on it.”

“You’d choke, too.”

“But I don’t have anything to lose.”

With both hands, Rupe pushed against Dale’s broad chest. Dale fell back a step, and Rupe gave him and his car a scornful once-over. “That’s readily apparent.”

Dale ignored the insult. “You, on the other hand, have made a large target of yourself. You’re easy pickin’s for a media crucifixion.”

“Save your threats. If you tried to destroy me, you’d fail.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re already beat, you just don’t know it,” Rupe said. “That’s why I’ve been trying to reach you, to tell you that if you get to feeling sentimental about Allen Strickland, law, justice, and the American way, you’ll be digging your own grave and yours alone.”

“If the Susan Lyston case was reopened—”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Beat before you start.” He looked at Dale and shook his head sorrowfully. “Do you think I’d let that case file just languish there in the PD like a ticking time bomb?” He barked a laugh, which caused him to wince with pain. “Hell, no, Dale. That file was adiosed weeks after Strickland’s conviction.”

Dale balled his hands into fists and gritted his teeth. “That file contained all my notes on the case.”

“And you were awfully cooperative to hand everything over to me when requested, Dale. I really do appreciate that.”

Dale closed the space between them. “Where is it?”

“I didn’t just have it sneaked out of the PD, Dale. I lit the match, watched it burn, then scattered the ashes to the four fucking winds. So if anybody tried to find it now, they would be SoL.”

Again, he looked Dale up and down and laughed. “You came out of hiding and got all dressed up for nothing. Sorry, Dale.” He raised his hands and shrugged elaborately, assuming the smug air that made Dale despise him.

But Dale waited, knowing it was coming. He waited. Waited.

And when the King of Cars smiled his billboard smile, Dale slammed his fist into the grillwork of dentistry, destroying it with knuckles of iron and almost two decades of pent-up wrath.

Rupe howled, covered his mouth with both hands, and slid down the side of the car.

Using the toe of his boot, Dale pushed him away from the wheel so he wouldn’t impede him when he drove away. Then, standing over him, he said, “You put the squeeze on Haymaker again, I’m gonna come back and hack off your sagging balls with a dull pair of pinking shears. I had a case once, a guy did that to his poker-playing buddy. He got three years for it. But it taught the other guy a lesson on cheating that he never forgot.”

During the flight back to Austin, neither Bellamy or Dent was very talkative. Parting with Steven had made her terribly sad, because now she knew he had deliberately excised her from his life, whereas before, she’d deluded herself into believing that circumstances were responsible for the rift.

But her somber mood was largely attributed to what he had revealed about himself and Susan. “How could I have lived in the same house with them and not have known?”

She didn’t even realize she’d posed the question out loud until Dent replied. “You were a kid. Maybe you sensed something between them but didn’t recognize it for what it was.”

“I just thought they didn’t like each other much.”

After a moment, Dent said, “He could be making it up.”

“He wouldn’t invent a lie like that. It’s too painful and embarrassing for him.”

“Would he lie about something else?”

She looked at him, her question implied.

He said, “Steven didn’t see you at the boathouse just before the storm. But you didn’t see him there, either, did you?”

“I might have. I can’t remember.”

“Okay. But he told us that he went to the boathouse to get contraband beer when he didn’t even like beer. Kinda struck me as strange.”

“You think he’s lying about where he was when Susan was killed?”

He raised his shoulders. “It’s something to think about, that’s all. He admitted to having motive.”

“So you believe that part, that Susan came on to him sexually.”

“Yeah, I believe it.”

They lapsed into silence. Eventually she said, “She was selfish and vain. But I had no idea that she could be that cruel-hearted.”

“Didn’t you?” Speaking with quiet intensity, he said, “Your quest for the truth could turn up more ugly surprises, Bellamy. Are you sure you want to continue?”

“I have to.”

“No you don’t.”

“I won’t stop now, Dent.”

“Maybe you should. Why keep going when there may be other land mines out there?”

“Nothing could be as bad as the secret we uncovered today.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then, without saying anything more, faced forward.

“The other boys,” she said haltingly. “The ones she boasted having been with . . .”

“What about them?”

“You didn’t know?”

“Sure I knew.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I didn’t care.”

They spent the remainder of the flight in pensive silence and didn’t speak again until they exited the Austin-Bergstrom terminal for the parking garage where he had left his Corvette.

Bellamy offered to call a car service to take her home. “If you’d rather not drive me all the way to Georgetown.”

“I’ll drive you. But Gall’s airfield is between here and there. I’d like to stop on the way.”