Low Pressure

If the perp had planned it, he couldn’t have done better than to have an F-5 tornado sweep through the place where he’d killed Susan Lyston.

Dale and other detectives had tried to question everyone who’d attended the barbecue and had been in the vicinity at the time of the slaying. They’d interviewed as many as they could locate. But both the pavilion and the boathouse had been flattened. The gravel lot where over two hundred vehicles were parked had been turned into an apocalyptic landscape of twisted steel and shattered glass.

Consequently, dozens who’d narrowly escaped death had sustained serious injuries. Many were hospitalized with internal injuries, head trauma, compound fractures, cuts and contusions, and shock. It had taken weeks to track down and question everyone.

But in the meantime, Dale had grilled Denton Carter.

As the boyfriend with whom Susan had quarreled that morning, his name had gone to the top of the list of possible suspects. Right off, Dale and his team of detectives thought they had their man. The eighteen-year-old was a surly wiseass who had issues with authority. Dale heard that from faculty members of the high school from which Dent had graduated only the week before.

“He’s an intelligent kid,” a school counselor had told Dale. “He finished with a three-point-two GPA and probably could have done better if he’d wanted to. But that was the problem. He didn’t want to. Terrible attitude. The boy carries a big chip on his shoulder.”

Dale had discovered that for himself the first time he hauled Dent Carter in for questioning. After the vulgar language, Dale had put him in jail, thinking that a night in lockup might improve his manners. But the following day he had smirked at Dale and shot him the finger when he was released.

Dale had hated watching him saunter out, but he didn’t have any evidence with which to hold him. Not then, and not days later, after conducting a thorough investigation and repeated interrogations. The boy’s story never deviated from what he had initially told Dale. No one could testify to seeing him at the barbecue, and the old man from the airfield provided him with an alibi. Dale had had no choice but to let him go.

His interest had shifted to Allen Strickland.

Now, Dale hefted his pistol in his palm while mentally enumerating all the facts that had pointed to Strickland’s guilt. There had been enough to charge him. But there wasn’t a single, solid piece of hard evidence to prove that he’d killed that girl.

The ADA assigned to prosecute the case, Rupert Collier, an eager bloodsucker if ever there was one, had built a case out of circumstantial evidence. His summation had been delivered with the fervor of a tent revival evangelist. As though fearing hell for themselves if they didn’t convict, the jury had brought in a guilty verdict in under two hours.

Allen Strickland had gone to prison.

Dale Moody had turned to drink.

Eighteen years later, Bellamy Lyston Price had written a book that underscored every doubt Dale had ever entertained about what had happened in the woods that day just before the historic tornado.

And what made him mad as hell was that that damn book might conjure up doubt in the minds of others as well. The ending left a lot open to speculation. Readers might start wondering if maybe the criminal investigation had been sloppy, if maybe the ambition of the ADA had outdazzled that of the accused’s court-appointed defender, if maybe Allen Strickland hadn’t been the last person to see Susan Lyston alive after all.

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.

Chapter 7

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 unpack