LOW PRESSURE

by BROWN SANDRA

  Ray had heard her say, “I’ll leave immediately and get there as soon as I can.” Then more softly. “No, I’ll be driving this time.”

  Some soft good-byes had been exchanged, and then she’d disconnected.

  He’d peered over the banister and saw her snatch a large shoulder bag from the hall table, then go directly to the front door and pick up a suitcase. She’d paused only long enough to hit the light switch and plunge the first-floor rooms into darkness before she’d sailed through the front door and locked it behind her.

  It had all happened so swiftly that Ray was still lurking on the landing, gripping his knife in a sweaty clutch and debating what his next course of action should be, when he’d heard her car starting. Headlights swept across the front windows as she backed out of the driveway and drove away. Just like that, she was gone.

  Ray had had no choice except to punt. Again.

  And that was why he was convinced that some bad mojo was working against him. He’d left her house and walked back to where he’d left his pickup. As far as he could tell, it had gone unnoticed. Just to be on the safe side, he’d switched out the license plates several times before driving to Georgetown.

  Exhausted and out of options, he’d decided to go home.

  Now, forty minutes after being thwarted again, he reached the duplex. He secured his pickup in the garage, then walked to the front door and let himself in. Groping his way around the living room, he lowered the blackout shades on both front windows. Only then did he move to a table and switch on a small-wattage lamp.

  Turning toward the kitchen, he drew up short. “Jesus,” he grumbled. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?”

  Rupe Collier stepped out of the shadows and into the circle of feeble light. “I’m here because you don’t do as you’re told.”

  Chapter 25

  I don’t take orders from you.” Belligerently Ray shouldered past Rupe and lumbered into his kitchen. Rupe caught the full brunt of his body odor as he went past.

  “You stink, Ray. Why don’t you go take a shower?”

  “Why don’t you kiss my ass?” He took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, twisted off the cap, which he dropped to the floor, and guzzled half of it before lowering the bottle and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he belched loudly and wetly.

  Charming, Rupe thought. As soon as Ray’s usefulness ran out, he needed to disappear.

  From the outset their alliance had been an uneasy and tenuous one, fraught with mistrust on both sides. But for Rupe’s peace of mind it had been necessary to forge the quasi-friendship.

  Following Allen’s fatal stabbing, Rupe had heard about Ray’s attempts to scale the walls, both real and figurative, that protected the Lystons. As the prosecutor who’d gotten Allen convicted, Rupe figured he would also be a target for Ray’s revenge. He had an idiot’s IQ, but he was just pugnacious enough and stupid enough to be dangerous in a loose cannon sort of way.

  Besides, Rupe was a firm believer in the adage that it was better to be lucky than smart.

  He feared that one day Ray would get lucky and either kill, maim, or damage him in one manner or another. Rupe didn’t want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, but he’d already made one attempt on Ray’s life by staging the auto accident. He’d decided to take a different tack and befriend the man.

  Because Rupe also believed in keeping his friends close, but his enemies closer.

  He’d found Ray living in the same rundown house he’d shared with his late brother. Being limited in all capacities including his mangled left arm, he’d been unable to acquire gainful employment and was barely scraping by on welfare.

  In rode Rupe Collier on a white stallion—actually in a flashy white Cadillac—offering Ray a new place to live rent free. He gave him a recently repossessed pickup truck and a job at a glass company, which Rupe had bought so windshield repairs and replacements could be done there cheaply.

  Initially Ray had responded to the extended olive branch with a threat to bash in Rupe’s skull. Playing meek and mild, Rupe apologized and said that he didn’t blame Ray for his antagonism. Of course “antagonism” had to be defined.

  Ray was mollified by the apology, but not entirely without suspicion. “How come you’re doing this?”

  “If I hadn’t prosecuted your brother’s case so well, he would still be alive. I feel terrible about that. Even if Allen was guilty, he wasn’t given a death sentence. He shouldn’t have died in prison. And if he was innocent . . . well, that’s a possibility I can’t bear to think about.”

  “He was innocent. You and Moody cooked up a case against him.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Ray,” Rupe had said, oozing remorse. “Moody was keen on sending your brother to Huntsville.”

  “Even if he didn’t do nothin’?”

  Rupe sighed. “Moody couldn’t make the charges stick with Denton Carter. He didn’t have anybody else to nail that crime on, so . . .”

  He made a helpless gesture and left the thought unfinished. Ray’s beetled brow indicated that his pea-sized brain was trying to process it. Eventually he reached the conclusion that Rupe had hoped he would. “It’s Moody’s fault Allen got killed.”

  Rupe protested, but gently. “I must take partial responsibility. That’s why I’m here. I can’t bring your brother back, but I can make your life easier. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

  Ray accepted the arrangement. He would work for Rupe, live in a rented duplex paid for by Rupe, drive a new pickup every two or three years, and tell absolutely no one about his benefactor.

  “I want to remain anonymous. Do you know what that means, Ray?” After explaining the concept of anonymity, he said, “That means I’ll be like an invisible friend. No one can know about our friendship. Just us.”

  “Why don’t you want anybody to know?”

  “Because charity isn’t true charity if it’s advertised.”

  If Ray had thought it through, he might then have wondered why Rupe was often photographed handing over checks in sizeable amounts to local charities. The funds came from his employees, who were encouraged, even browbeaten, to contribute. Not a penny came from Rupe’s private pocket, but he took credit for the generosity of Collier Motors.

  Ray did as Rupe ordered and got a post office box, so that nothing was mailed to him at the duplex. He used a cell phone, no land line. Rupe’s comptroller paid all his utility bills, and the relatively insignificant sums were so well hidden in the books of corporate entities and limited liability companies that an auditor would never find the link between the two men.

  The only thing Rupe had Ray personally register to himself was the pickup truck.

  “If you break the law while driving this truck, I don’t want them coming after me.” Rupe had said it with a smile, a wink, and a slap on the back, which had made Ray think that they were buddies.

  They weren’t. While the arrangement was indisputably beneficial to Ray, it served to keep him on a short leash, which Rupe held in a tight grip. It also provided Rupe with a facilitator who was as dumb as he was strong, and both traits had proved useful many times over. In a dispute, Rupe had often relied on Ray’s violent streak to bring the other party around to his way of thinking.

  Ray was dull-witted, obedient, uncurious, and malleable. For as long as their arrangement had been in place, he’d never once questioned Rupe’s instructions or balked when told to do something.

  Until this week. Which was why Rupe was now standing in a filthy kitchen, watching with disgust as Ray folded a slice of cold bologna into his mouth. Chewing it, he asked, “What happened to your face?”

  “We’ll get to that. First I want to know where you’ve been and why you’ve ignored my calls.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Not at work. Your foreman tells me you haven’t shown up for several days.”

  “I’ve been following Bellamy Price. I thought you’d
want me to keep doing that.”

  “Do me a favor, Ray. Don’t do my thinking for me, all right?”

  Her publicity blitzkrieg had annoyed and concerned Rupe. By happy circumstance, one of his most reliable repo men had an acquaintance, who had a cousin in Brooklyn, who knew of a guy, who, for a nifty fee, could send “messages with impact.” Rupe had contacted him by telephone, and, after being given a menu of options, he’d selected the rat trick, which had actually sent chills down his own spine.

  Soon after that, when he learned that Bellamy Price had returned to Austin, he feared that she hadn’t been scared silent, only scared into moving her media carnival right into his backyard. That was when he’d instructed Ray to follow her for a few days and see what she was up to.

  Apparently nothing. She’d spent time with her parents in their mansion, then she’d rented her own place, but she’d kept a low profile. No interviews, no lectures, no book-signing events. Relieved, he’d called Ray off. But Ray must have developed ideas of his own.

  “It’s a good thing I kept following her. You want to know why? Guess who she’s hanging out with?”

  “Denton Carter. And the reason I know that is because they came calling at my house around sundown tonight.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  The wind had been taken out of Ray’s sails, but he retaliated with querulousness and a transparent indifference. “So what’d they want?”

  “No, I get to go first with the questions. Tell me what you’ve been doing the last several days.”

  “I told you.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “I know better, Ray. One thing you did, you beat up Dent Carter.”

  He jutted out his lantern jaw. “What if I did?”

  “Where?” Rupe asked only in order to compare Ray’s version to Dent’s. Ray’s mumbled account more or less correlated.

  “But he didn’t recognize me. He didn’t say my name or nothin’.”

  “Well, there you’re wrong. He told me himself that you had attacked him.”

  Rupe could tell that worried him, but what Ray said was, “My word against his.”

  “You’d better hope so. What did you do after you left the pancake house?”

  “I got the hell out of there.” He told Rupe about tracking them, losing them, picking up their trail again at Dent’s place, at her house, until Rupe himself got confused. It was clear Ray couldn’t exactly remember the sequence.

  “But he always goes back to that old landing strip sooner or later. They’ve took off from there several times the last coupla days.”

  “In his airplane?”

  “No. A bigger one. His is busted up. The old man was working—”

  Suddenly Ray clamped his mouth shut and looked away from Rupe. He ran his large hand back and forth over that hideous tattoo on his left arm as though petting the snake.

  Rupe tilted his head to one side. “ ‘The old man? Gall Halloway? He was working. . . .?” He ended on an implied question mark. “Ray? How do you know what he was doing?”

  Ray remained silent. He looked around as though seeking the nearest way out.

  Rupe sighed. Loath as he was to touch anything in the place, he propped himself against the counter, folded his arms, and crossed his ankles. “Just what have you been up to? And you’d fucking better not lie to me.”

  Ray wrestled with indecision for several moments, but then he blurted out, “She’s got rich and famous. That’s not right.”

  Then he talked for ten minutes, spraying bologna-flecked spit with every other word. Rupe listened without interrupting. He sifted out what he discerned were outright lies or half-truths, filled in what he guessed Ray was omitting, and began considering how he could turn Ray’s reckless actions to his advantage.

  And when he determined a way, it was all he could do to keep from breaking into a wide smile. Instead, he pretended to be disappointed in his protege, angry over his independent actions, and deeply troubled by what the consequences of them might be.

  As for Ray, over the course of his monologue he’d worked himself into a lather. He was perspiring profusely. Even his scalp was beaded with sweat, its sour stench contributing to his body odor. Reflexively he did curls with his left biceps and contracted and extended the fingers of that hand.

  Through clenched teeth, he said, “She was only steps away from the closet. I could smell her. Then her phone rang.” He’d been pacing like a caged bear. Now he came to a sudden halt and slapped his palm several times against his forehead. “So close.”

  Rupe made a tsking sound. “So close to getting justice for Allen.”

  Ray swiped his bare arm across his sweaty forehead. “Damn straight. Eye for an eye.” He took another bottle of beer from the fridge, uncapped it with a hard twist, took a long drink, then faced Rupe and rolled his shoulders as though preparing for a fight. “Now you know what I’ve done, you gonna fire me? Kick me out of this place? Go ahead, see if I care.”

  “I should. But the fact is, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Ray. I’m torn.”

  “Torn?”

  “Between duty and obligation. Between the law and justice.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Rupe thoughtfully tugged on his lower lip. “Will you answer a few questions for me?”

  Ray, pleased that he’d been given a choice, hooked his foot around the leg of a chair and dragged it from beneath the table, then flopped down into it. “Shoot.” He slurped from the bottle of beer.

  “Before Gall switched out the hangar lights, did he see you?”

  “He could’ve. But except for the work light under the airplane, it was dark in there. That’s how come I didn’t notice it wasn’t a real person.”

  Reasonable doubt, Rupe thought. Even if Gall Halloway swore on the Bible that his attacker had been Ray Strickland, it could be argued that it was too dark inside the hangar for him to make a positive identification.

  “You didn’t leave anything behind? Or take anything?”

  He shook his head, but Rupe sensed he was lying. He let it go. It would actually be better if Ray did have something that could place him in the hangar that night. But Rupe didn’t want him arrested just yet.

  “You’ve changed the tags on your truck?”

  “Five times,” Ray said. “But the old man couldn’t have seen it anyway, ’cause I parked a long way off.”

  For several moments, Rupe pretended to struggle with a decision and finally gave a deep sigh. “You should have checked with me before taking these actions. But you didn’t, so now Dent Carter, and possibly Gall Halloway, are on the lookout for you.”

  “I’m not scared of them.”

  “What if they’ve notified the police? Aren’t you scared of them? Do you want to go to prison and wind up like Allen?”

  That subdued him.

  “You’ve committed felonies, Ray. I can’t protect you. In fact, I should turn you in myself.”

  “After everything I’ve done for you? Fuck that.”

  He had an excellent point. But Rupe didn’t give him time to realize it. “Relax. We’re friends, and I wouldn’t betray a friend. Besides, I understand why you’d want to get revenge on Bellamy Price for writing that book and dragging your brother’s name through the mud all over again.” After a strategic pause, he said, “But she shouldn’t be your primary target. She’s not the one who destroyed Allen’s life. And yours.”

  He left the counter and came to stand beside Ray, settling a hand on his shoulder. “Earlier you asked who’d messed up my face. I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count. It was the same person who sent your brother to prison, to his death.”

  Ray snarled, “Moody.”

  Rupe squeezed the beefy flesh beneath his hand. “Moody.”

  The drive to Houston took Bellamy almost four hours.

  Within seconds of receiving Olivia’s phone call, she was out of her hous
e and on her way. She hadn’t even taken time to change out of the clothes that had been slept in while she was in Marshall.

  Slept in with Dent while she was in Marshall.

  Disallowing herself to think of him and the shocking discovery brought about by their last argument, she forced herself to concentrate on driving. She stopped twice for coffee, although her mind was far too troubled for there to have been any danger of her falling asleep at the wheel. The real hazard lay in the tears that continued to fill her eyes and blur her vision.

  Her father was dead. She had failed to grant his dying request. And it seemed possible, even probable, that she had killed his firstborn daughter. He’d died possibly believing that she had.

  When she arrived at the hospital she went directly to the room where he’d died. The lights had been dimmed, but they were sufficient to reveal her stepmother’s grief. Deep lines of misery were etched into Olivia’s face, making her appear to have aged drastically.

  For several minutes, the two women clung to each other and wept, their shared heartache making words superfluous.

  Eventually Olivia eased away and blotted her eyes. “The funeral director arrived ahead of you, but I wouldn’t let them take him away. I knew you’d want time with him. Take all you want.” She touched Bellamy’s arm gently, then left the room.

  She walked over to the bed and looked at her father’s body for the first time since entering the room. People said kind things about the deceased. How peaceful one looked, how one appeared only to be sleeping.

  Those were lies. Told out of compassion, perhaps, but lies nonetheless. Her father didn’t look asleep; he looked dead.

  In the few hours since he’d breathed his final breath, all vestiges of life had deserted his body completely. Already his skin had a waxy appearance. He seemed not to be made of flesh and blood or of anything organic, but of something artificial.

  Rather than this upsetting her, she took comfort in realizing that what was left of him wasn’t him at all. She wasn’t prompted to embrace the still body or kiss the bloodless cheek, but rather to remember all the times she’d given him hugs or kisses when he was alive and warm and able to return them.