But Not For Lust by BJ Bourg (comprehension books .txt) 📕

were by yourself,” he said in a low growl. “Even with my arm and fingers broken, I’d whip your ass if you asked that question while I was free.”

“Look, I’m not trying to be disrespectful.” I paused for a moment. “Your wife wasn’t raped, Dillon. She was having an affair.”

“Don’t you dare talk about my wife like that!” His voice was thunderous and he leapt to his feet. “She’s a good woman!”

I stood and met his gaze, only I was calm and rational while he was blind with rage. As we stared eye-to-eye for a long minute, neither of us saying anything, realization seemed to slowly sink in. He began to realize that I wasn’t lying or bluffing. I don’t think he believed me, but he was starting to wonder if I had some kind of evidence to support my claim.

“What?” His shoulders slumped. “No way!”

“When your wife got home Friday night, she was coming back from seeing her lover—Nikia Billiot. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but while you were at work, she was cheating on you with your best friend. It’s been going on for months.”

“No.” Dillon’s face lost all color. “That’s impossible.”

“Ty’s only sin was playing in the road that night,” I continued. “Betty almost ran him over, and that’s why she thought to mention his name.”

“No!” He shook his head. “Betty said it was the crazy man who lives down her sister’s street. She said she almost ran him over and when she stopped to check on him, he attacked her. She said he dragged her to his camper. She said she was fighting back and screaming, but no one came to her rescue. She…she gave me details about what happened—sick details that would anger any man, that would make any man insane. Details that you can’t make up. She was telling the truth.”

I cocked my head curiously to the side. “Dillon, did you tell Betty what you did to Ty?”

“I wasn’t gonna, but she saw me covered in blood when I got home that night. When she asked what happened, I told her everything. Well, except the part about Nikia. I didn’t tell her that he was with me.”

“How’d Betty react when you told her?”

“Um, I don’t know. It was weird. She looked at me differently after that night. It’s like she fell in love with me all over again—even more than before.” He was thoughtful. “She told me that she never thought someone would kill for her. She said it made her feel more special than she’d ever felt in her life. I defended her honor—I protected her so he could never hurt her again.”

“I’m sorry, Dillon,” I said with a sigh, “but Ty has never hurt anyone. He didn’t have a lustful disposition. He was a good man who suffered from mental illness—that’s it. He wasn’t dangerous.”

“No, that’s not true!” Dillon shook his head from side to side, but I could tell he knew I was right. “Stop saying that.”

“It is true,” I insisted. “Your wife told Nikia she liked it rough. He was the one who ripped her clothes off and had sex with her—”

“Shut up, damn it! That’s not true!” Dillon’s face was burning with rage, but I was getting the sense it was now directed at Nikia. “Stop calling my wife a liar!”

Letting out a long sigh, I fished my cell phone from my pocket and accessed the audio file that contained Nikia Billiot’s statement. I advanced the file until I came to the part where Nikia was describing the sex acts he and Betty had participated in on Friday night. I hated to do it, but Dillon needed to know the whole story and he wasn’t listening to me.

His mouth slowly fell open as his best friend’s voice sounded through the little speaker and described how he had ripped Betty’s shirt and bra off, how he had slapped her around before having sex with her.

“I gave her what Dillon couldn’t give her,” Nikia was heard saying. “She said he was boring in the bedroom. She wanted to be man-handled, and only a real man can do that.”

“Is…is that really Nikia?” he asked through clenched teeth. “Is that really my friend? My best friend?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

He stammered and tried to string together a few words, but they wouldn’t fall into place.

“You murdered an innocent man,” I said after a long while of watching him suffer internally. “No one hurt your wife. She lied to cover up her affair with Nikia. She played you, Dillon. She got you to kill an innocent man.”

It took all of several minutes for him to finally utter a discernible phrase, and it came out more like a question. “I…I killed an innocent man?”

I frowned and nodded. “You did.”

“Dear God, I killed an innocent man.” I could almost see the realization sweeping over him. He was recognizing the betrayal that had been perpetrated against him by his wife, and the gravity of his predicament was finally sinking in. “Betty knew he was innocent, but she let me kill him anyway. She…she’s pure evil!”

  CHAPTER 56

When the ambulance arrived, Baylor was right behind it and Amy was with him. Susan and I had already obtained permission to search Dillon’s truck and had recovered the tire thumper and some blood samples from the bed of the pickup. We had arranged for a tow truck to transport the pickup to the sheriff’s office’s secure motor pool for further processing.

I waved Baylor over when he arrived.

“Do you mind waiting for the tow truck to arrive?” I asked. “We need to maintain a secure chain of custody over Dillon’s pickup until it gets to the sheriff’s office.”

He said he would, and I turned to Amy, who appeared to be walking a lot better than earlier in