Low Pressure (41 page)

“Yes, I’m sure she got double pleasure out of taunting you and humiliating me.”

He watched her eyes, noting the shifting emotions they revealed. One second she looked abject and lost, like the awkward and insecure pre-adolescent who had been so cruelly insulted. Next, her eyes reflected the bewilderment she felt over that cruelty and the heartless nature of a sister who could inflict it. Finally, her blue eyes began to shimmer with tears of fury.

He’d watched from astride his motorcycle as the same transformation had taken place in the eyes of the twelve-year-old Bellamy.

Quietly, he said, “You had every right to hate her.”

“Oh, I did.” Her voice vibrated with the intensity of her hatred. Her hands closed into tight fists. “Knowing that I had a hopeless crush on you, she deliberately said the most hurtful thing possible. It was evil of her. I despised her. I wanted to claw her eyes out. I wanted to—”

He knew the instant the thought struck her, because she looked stricken by it. “I wanted to kill her.” Moments ticked by while she gaped at him, breathing through slightly parted lips. “I wanted to kill her, and you thought I had. Didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t tell the police that I’d seen you leaving the state park. You would have had to recount what was said between you and Susan in the boathouse, which the police would have seen as a motive for me to murder my sister. But you didn’t tell. You protected me.”

“Like hell. I was no hero, Bellamy. If it had come down to ratting you out or saving my own skin, I would have told. But when Moody came to my house the next morning and started questioning me, he never mentioned the quarrel at the boathouse, only the one Susan and I had had at your house that morning.

“It became clear to me that he didn’t know about that second argument, didn’t know I’d been with her at the boathouse, and that definitely worked in my favor. So I kept quiet about it.” He took a step closer, but she took a corresponding step back, so he stayed where he was. “I couldn’t figure why you didn’t tell Moody about it.”

“My memory of it was blocked.”

“But I didn’t know that. I thought you were holding back because—”

“Because I had killed her.”

He hesitated, then reluctantly mumbled, “It crossed my mind.”

“And now?”

“Now?”

“Do you still think I did?”

“I’ve got better sense. You were a scrawny kid. Susan outweighed you fifteen, twenty pounds.”

She folded her arms and hugged her elbows. “She was clouted over the back of her head, remember? In a fit of rage, I could have hit her with something hard enough to dull her senses.”

“I don’t see that happening, do you? Seriously?”

“With a surge of adrenaline, people can perform physical feats that would be impossible for them at other times.”

“Only in the movies and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”

Furious over the quip, she cried, “This isn’t funny!”

“You’re right, it’s not. It is, however, ridiculous to think that you—”

“Answer my question, Dent.”

“What was the question?”

“You know the question!”

“Do I think you killed your sister?
No!
”

“How do you know? I was at the scene. I saw her before her purse was sucked into the tornado. How do you know I didn’t kill her?”

“Why would you have taken her underwear?”

“Maybe I didn’t. Maybe by the time I caught up with her in the woods, she wasn’t wearing any. She could have given her panties to you.”

“She didn’t.”

“To Steven. To Allen Strickland.” Squeezing her eyes closed, she asked in a frightened whisper, “Did I see her do that?”

“Stop it, Bellamy. This is crazy. You can’t force yourself to remember things that didn’t happen.”

She pulled her lower lip through her teeth, but now it didn’t look sexy. It was the gesture of someone in torment. “Rupe Collier thought it possible.”

“He was only trying to get a rise out of you. You know that.”

“I think Daddy suspects.”

“
What?
”

“It’s occurred to him. I know it has.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

As she recounted their conversation of the day before, Dent became increasingly agitated. “Be reasonable. If he thought you’d done it, he sure as hell wouldn’t have asked you to grant his dying wish and expose the murderer.”

Past listening, she threaded the fingers of both hands through her hair and held it off her face. He could practically see her mind wildly spinning. “When we were with Moody and I described the crime scene, you got nervous. You were biting the inside of your cheek. You looked tense, tightly wound, like you were about to spring off the bed.” He tried to keep his expression neutral, but she was too perceptive.

“You thought that if I told too much I would incriminate myself. That’s why you got anxious, isn’t it?”

“Bellamy, listen—”

“You think I killed her and couldn’t live with what I’d done, so I blocked my memory of it. That’s what you think.”

“It makes no difference what I think.”

“Of course it does!”

“To who?”

“To me!” she shouted. “It matters to me that you think I’m a murderer.”

“I
never
said that.”

“You did.”

“I said that it had crossed my mind.”

“Which is as good as.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Thinking that, why would you want to go to bed with me?”

“What does one have to do with the other?”

She looked at him, aghast, speechless, and horrified.

He took a breath, blew it out, then said, “Look, after what Susan said about you, I wouldn’t have blamed you for driving a stake through her heart. I don’t believe you choked her, but if you did, so what? I don’t care.”

She hugged herself even more tightly. “You’ve said that repeatedly. You didn’t care about your dad’s indifference. You don’t care what my parents think about you. You left the airline uncaring of people’s opinion. You don’t care if Moody blows his brains out. You don’t care if I took my sister’s life. You. Don’t. Care. About anything. Do you?”

He remained stonily, angrily silent.

“Well, your not caring is a big problem for me.” She held his gaze for several beats, then went to the staircase and started up. “I want you to go now, and I don’t want you ever to come back.”

Inside the master bedroom closet, Ray Strickland was beside himself. He’d overheard everything.

That bitch Bellamy had killed Susan and had got off scot-free! Allen had paid with his life for her crime, while she’d gone merrily on her way, living the good life.

“Not for much longer,” he whispered.

He heard a door slam and figured it was Dent Carter storming out. Which was okay. Ray could catch up with him later. Right now, he wanted to feel the book writer’s blood on his hands. He wanted to wash his face in it, bathe in it.

He slid his knife from the scabbard, thrilling to that hissing sound.

He could hear her tread as she made her way upstairs. Only a few moments now, and the injustice done to Allen would be avenged.

He heard her on the landing. Coming down the hall. She was steps away, seconds shy of entering the bedroom. She was mere heartbeats away from death.

The bedroom light flicked on.

He took a tighter grip on the bone handle of his knife and held his breath.

D
ent wasn’t enjoying the kissing. Hers were sloppy.

He decided to skip the preliminaries and move things along. Reaching under the back of her top, he unhooked her bra strap.

“My, my. You’re eager,” she whispered and dug her tongue into his ear.

“I am.”

“Okay by me. I’ll just be a minute.” She went into the bathroom and, after pausing to blow him a kiss, shut the door.

He went over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it to test its firmness. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t be there long. Just long enough.

He had tried to coax Bellamy out of her retreat upstairs, but it was as though the plug had been pulled on her emotions. She’d paused on the stairs to deliver a parting shot, spoken in a monotone, her expression closed, cold, removed.

“Look at it this way, Dent, if it turns out that I’m the culprit, your name will be cleared. You do care about that.”

He’d left, telling himself that his leave-taking was long overdue. He never should have become involved with her in the first place. Gall had tried to tell him, but had he listened? No. He’d plunged in and, now he was sick of everything associated with the Lystons.

He’d had it up to here with right versus wrong. He was no longer interested in who had said what, who had done what, and he was tired of trying to fit all the pieces together. To what end? Okay, exoneration for himself. But in the grand scheme of things, that wasn’t much. He could live without ever being rubber-stamped innocent of killing Susan.

So if Bellamy wanted to end their affiliation here, this way, then it was fine and dandy with him.

While with her, he’d forgotten every life-lesson he’d ever learned. Like, don’t become involved in someone else’s mess. Don’t offer advice to someone who obviously doesn’t want it. Don’t be a sap and admit to feeling anything, because what does it get you? Nothing, that’s what. You wind up being not only rejected, but made to look like a damn fool as well.

He should have remembered that from all the times he’d cried himself to sleep for want of the mother who had cared so little as to have abandoned him. Or from the times he’d tried to get his father’s notice, only to be ignored.

His father, the wizard of indifference, had taught him one thing: People could affect you only if you allowed them to.

So he’d told himself that Bellamy’s problems were no longer his, that he was done, finished, and had sped away from her house in desperate need of diversion. He’d stopped at the first bar that looked promising. By the time he’d finished his second drink, she—he hadn’t caught her name and didn’t intend to—had taken up residence on the barstool next to his.

She was cute and cuddly. She hadn’t talked about anything even remotely serious. Instead she’d been flirtatious, funny, and flattering, all excellent antidotes for what he’d been dwelling on over the past few days.

He hadn’t noticed the color of her eyes, only that they weren’t haunted. Or angry and accusatory. Or blue, and soulful, and deep enough for a man to drown in.

She didn’t have a pale sprinkling of freckles on her cheekbones.

Her lower lip didn’t make him think of sin and salvation at the same time.

Her hair wasn’t dark and sleek.

Her main asset was that she was friendly and agreeable. No analyses, no whys and wherefores, none of that. In no time at all, her hand was making forays up his thigh, and he couldn’t remember exactly who’d suggested the motel, him or her, but here they were, and he was waiting for her to come out of the bathroom so they could screw and get it over with.

Get it over with?

It suddenly occurred to him that he wasn’t looking forward to it. Not in the slightest. So what the hell was he doing here?

And just where was he, anyway?

His searching gaze connected with his reflection in the mirror above the dresser opposite the bed. Mentally erasing the cuts and bruises from his face, he assessed the man looking back at him. With as much objectivity as possible, he decided that for a man nearing forty, he was holding up fairly well.

But ten years from now, would he still be looking at himself in the mirror of a random motel room, waiting for a woman he wasn’t even attracted to, whose name he hadn’t bothered to get? At sixty would he still be doing this?

It was a depressing prospect.

Not even realizing his intention, he left the bed, went to the door, and pulled it open. On his way out, he paused to glance back in the direction of the bathroom, thinking that maybe he should say something, provide some excuse for cutting out. But whatever he told her would be a lie, and she would know it, and that would insult her worse than if he just split.

Which was justification for letting himself off the hook easily. But at least he had the decency to acknowledge it this time.

He drove his Vette hard, but when he entered his apartment, he looked around and wondered why he’d been in such a hurry to get here. It was a shabby rathole, just as Bellamy had said. Sad and lonely, she’d called his life. She was right about that, too.

He stared into the emptiness of the room, but what he actually looked into was the vast, empty landscape of his life. The thing was—and it was the thing that bothered him most—he saw nothing in his future that was going to fill that wasteland.

Moving suddenly, he’d fished his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and turned it on, then scrolled through the list of recent calls until he found the number he sought. He called it, and a woman answered by asking, “Is this Dent?”

“Yeah. Is Gall there?”

“Hold on. He’s been trying to reach you.”

Dent heard a muffled exchange, then Gall came on. “Where have you been?”

“Was that your lady?”

“Who else would it be?” he replied querulously. “I’ve called you a dozen times. Why didn’t you answer?”