Low Pressure

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 ha

d 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.”