Floating Staircase (33 page)

I took off several days from writing altogether—partially because I was still out of sorts from the hideous flu I'd caught slashing around in the lake in near-freezing weather, but mostly because I owed that time to Jodie. We made love several nights in a row. We went to the movies together like a couple of high school sweethearts, and I helped her edit a rough draft of her dissertation. Valentine's Day arrived, and I bought her flowers and chocolate, and she made my favorite meal—baked macaroni—and we watched old Woody Allen movies until the early hours of the morning. In the weeks after my nervous breakdown on the floating staircase, everything was as perfect as pie.

Then Earl telephoned me one rainy afternoon and said, “Boy, you're a goddamn genius,” and it started all over again.

B
y the time I arrived at Tooey's bar, the drizzle had increased to a steady rain, driving craters in the hummocks of graying snow along the shoulders of Main Street.

The day before, Earl had met me at the front door of his trailer where, with near childish jubilance, he handed over a cheese-yellow envelope sealed with packaging tape. Inside the double-wide, I could hear dogs barking.

“I can't believe it worked,” I said, hefting the weight of the envelope. It had been a long shot; I hadn't expected it to actually amount to anything.

“I told them I was with the union, that we needed the paperwork for an impending audit. Just like you said to.” The old man grinned like someone who'd just figured out a secret. Had he been just a bit younger, I had no doubt he would have been bouncing on the balls of his feet. “They bought it.”

“Hook, line, and sinker,” I said. “Listen, I know you're a reporter. Without insulting you, is there any possible way I can—”

He cut me off. “I won't print a word of this before I hear back from you.”

“Thank you.” I was looking very hard at the envelope he'd given me.

“You know what this means,” Earl said evenly.

“Of course,” I said. We both knew what it meant. “Of course.”

Now I crossed the sawdust floor of Tequila Mockingbird and sat at an empty table toward the rear of the room. My chair faced the door. The jukebox was rolling through a sad country number, visibly making the shoulders of the few assorted patrons at the bar slump. Rain hammered the tin roof and sluiced down the windowpanes. The whole place felt hollowed and bleak, like a grave site that had been violated by vandals. I checked my watch.

Wiping a glass with a dishrag, Tooey Jones approached the table. “One of the few lost souls who dare to brave the rain,” he commented. “What'll it be?”

I ordered a glass of water, which I gulped down the moment it arrived, as well as a gin and tonic (so that I wouldn't arouse suspicion), which remained untouched on the table beside the envelope I'd gotten from Earl. On the juke, the sad country song segued into some old but upbeat Charlie Rich tune. Across the room, the framed panels from Blake's
Songs of Innocence and Experience
were like startling and irrational anomalies that somehow made their way into an otherwise mundane dream. My gaze lingered on the reproductions of “The Little Boy Lost” and “The Little Boy Found.”

When Adam arrived, his hair was matted to his head with rainwater, and he was blowing into his hands for warmth. He ordered a beer at the bar, then came over and sat opposite me at the table. He was in plain-clothes—khaki slacks, an outdated American Eagle sweater, canvas peacoat with corduroy cuffs and collar—and he looked exhausted from a long day.

Smiling at him, I tried my best to look casual.

Under the pretense of brotherly companionship, I'd phoned Adam this morning and asked him to meet me for a few beers down at the ‘Bird when he got off work. I had said nothing about Earl's envelope (which was now tucked beneath the table in my lap) or the contents therein. I would sit here and engage my brother in idle small talk and wait to see if the rest of my plan fell into place.

Just as Jodie and I had overcome my little episode—the “incident,” as I thought of it—following my breakdown on the floating staircase, my brother and I had seemingly bridged our differences as well. Whether it was genuine or only the illusion of authenticity, we became brothers again. (Suffice it to say, I knew my intentions on this evening—as well as the envelope in my lap—risked destroying all that we had rebuilt, although I hoped it wouldn't. Had I possessed any doubt about the contents of the envelope, I would have set it afire in the hearth back at the house and never brought up the Dentmans to my brother again.)

“You're looking better,” Adam said over the rim of his pint glass. “How're you feeling?”

The flu had passed for both of us—following me out onto the floating staircase that afternoon, Adam had gotten sick, too—and I'd shaved and had my hair cut.

“Better,” I told him. “Stronger.” For a second, I wondered if he could sense the nervousness just below the surface of my voice.

Five minutes later—right on time—the pub's door banged open. David Dentman's broad-shouldered outline was framed against the stormy, gunmetal sky. Dripping rainwater on the floor, Dentman pushed through the doorway, his considerable bulk exaggerated by the heavy corduroy coat he wore. Behind him, the pub's door slammed shut on its frame. Aside from my brother and me, no one looked at him.

Adam did not say anything at first. He didn't even glance at me. Not that I was prepared to look at him; my stare was locked on Dentman.

When Dentman noticed me from across the room, it was like being spotted in the beam of a prison yard's searchlight. His expression was the same one he'd had that day when he came home and found me in his house with his sister—like a pot graduating to a slow boil on the stove.

“Travis,” Adam said, his voice small. He was still looking over his shoulder.

“He's going to want to hit me,” I said quickly as Dentman approached our table.

The big man stood before the last empty chair at the table. If he recognized my brother, and I was pretty sure that he did, he didn't acknowledge him. Glaring at me, Dentman squeezed a folded slip of paper in one fist.

I didn't need to examine it to know it was the letter I'd printed on my word processor and stuffed into a plain white business envelope. I'd driven to the Dentmans' house in West Cumberland yesterday evening and fed the letter through the mail slot in the door. Then I'd knocked and quickly climbed back into my car and pulled backward down the drive. Until now, I'd had strong doubts that Dentman would even show up. Despite what I'd written on that letter . . .

“What is this?” Dentman's voice seemed to come from deep down in his chest. I could tell his sentiment echoed my brother's, who remained silent.

“Sit down,” I told Dentman.

“Travis.” Adam had found his voice, weak as it was.

Dentman pulled out the empty chair and slowly lowered himself into it. Both his hands were in his lap and beneath the table, and a swimmy, unsettling thought crossed my mind—maybe he'd brought a gun. I was pretty certain Adam had his gun on him—even off duty, he typically carried it—but would he be able to pull it in time if Dentman decided to plant a bullet in my brain?

“What's going on here, Travis?” Adam continued.

Dentman took Adam in. He must have assumed my brother was in on this, that we'd both come together to gang up on him.

“This is it,” I told them both, setting the cheese-yellow envelope on the tabletop. “This is what I found.” I turned to Adam. “You can do with it what you want, but I'm done after tonight.” Thinking of my marriage, I added, “I have to be.”

“I can see I made a mistake not filing those charges against you,” Dentman said. He was red faced and fuming.

Pushing the envelope in front of Adam, I tried to sound calm. “It was something you told me last month. You said murderers have motives, innocent people have alibis, and you can't lock people up just because the pieces don't fit.”

“Travis . . .” There was a stomach-weakening distress evident in Adam's tone. With the sober perception of a clairvoyant, I knew I was breaking his heart.

“Open it,” I told him.

He picked up the envelope but didn't open it right away.

Dentman adjusted himself in his seat, and I thought he was going to stand up and march right out of the bar. But he remained seated, and I could almost see the anger radiating off his scalp like steam from hot coals.

“Do it,” I urged Adam. “Go on.”

Adam slipped his thumb beneath the tape and ripped open the envelope. What slid out onto the tabletop was a stack of papers bound together by a metal clip. He fingered the first page, lifted it to see the printout underneath. “What am I looking at?”

“It's the time and attendance records of the construction company where you work,” I said, speaking directly to Dentman. “You'll notice the date on the top sheet is the same day Elijah supposedly drowned.” I leaned over and absently tapped the column I'd highlighted. “Those are Dentman's hours.”

“Where'd you get this?” Adam said.

“Doesn't matter. It's all there.”

“I don't have to sit here listening to this,” Dentman said, but he didn't get up.

“You couldn't have been at the house the day Elijah disappeared,” I went on, “because you were at work. You clocked out at a quarter after six. The job site was just over thirty miles away, so the earliest you could have gotten home was six thirty, and that's if you were speeding. More like quarter to seven is my guess. Which would account for the delay in calling the police.”

“This is bullshit,” Dentman muttered, his teeth clenched.

“What's bullshit is your statement to the police.” From my pocket I took the articles I'd torn from the library newspapers and unfolded them and set them on the table. “According to Nancy Stein's statement, that scream she believed she heard happened around five thirty.”

“The sound of the boy falling off the staircase,” Adam said, studying the paperwork.

“Only it wasn't,” I said. “I think the wail Nancy heard was actually Veronica Dentman down by the water.”

Dentman stood. “You son of a bitch.”

“You told me yourself that night in the cemetery that your sister was your sole responsibility and you wouldn't let anything happen to her. That's why you lied to the police. You were covering for her.”

Dentman's chest was expanding, retracting, expanding, retracting. From across the table I could feel his hot breath in my face. “You don't know nothing.”

I turned to my brother. “It's all there in the paperwork.”

Very slowly, Adam set the printout down on the table. His face was white. He said nothing.

“I'm getting the fuck out of here,” Dentman said, turning to leave.

“Stop,” Adam called after him.

Amazingly, Dentman froze in midstride. His hands were trembling, and his profile resembled something that might have been on the bow of a pirate ship.

“Is this true?” Adam asked him.

“Fuck you. I didn't have to come out here.”

“Will you sit down, please?”

“I don't have to answer your goddamn questions.”

Adam stood. “I need you to come to the station with me, Mr. Dentman.”

“I don't have time for this.”

“I'm not asking. We're going to the station.”

“I want him in jail,” Dentman said, glaring at me. His eyes were slits cut into the ruddy fabric of his face. “I want the son of a bitch arrested for harassment.”

Gathering up the paperwork from the table, I stood and said, “Fine. Let's all go downtown.”

“You shit!” Dentman lunged at me, knocking the table onto its side with a crack.

I jumped backward as one of Dentman's massive fists swung at me like a wrecking ball; the wind from the blow blew the hair off my forehead. I braced myself for a second strike—Dentman already had his arm cocked and ready—but Adam was on him in a heartbeat, pinning one wrist behind his back and throwing his weight against the larger man. Dentman's second punch went wild as he fell forward on his knees.

Adam shouted something unintelligible at him and pressed down on Dentman's shoulder as if he feared the larger man might fly away. “Stay down. Don't resist.”

Handcuffs appeared. Their serrated teeth ratcheted at the small of Dentman's back.

Tooey charged out from behind the bar. “What the hell's going on?” He paused when he saw the handcuffs.

“Get up,” Adam said to the side of Dentman's face.

At first, Dentman did not move. With his yellow eyes locked on mine in a death stare and his flushed cheeks visibly quivering, I thought we would all remain frozen where we were until Armageddon turned us into smoldering piles of ash. Then Dentman got one foot on the floor and, with Adam's assistance, pulled himself up.

The next one to move was Tooey—he rushed over and righted the overturned table.

Adam pivoted and shoved Dentman toward the door. “Let's go, Travis,” he said without facing me. “Let's go.”

Bending down, I picked up the copied records from the construction company and crammed them back into the envelope. As Tooey went on setting the chairs back around the table, I noticed something else, too: the letter I had slipped through the Dentmans' mail slot, the one he'd had clenched in one fist when he first arrived. I picked that up, too.

It said:

David—

Meet me at Tequila Mockingbird in Westlake tomorrow at 5 p.m. sharp, or Veronica goes to jail.

There had been no need to sign it.

Stuffing the letter into the rear pocket of my jeans, I followed Adam and Dentman out into the rain.

A
s it turned out, Strohman's office
did
function as an interrogation room, albeit only when the main interrogation room was occupied. On this night, David Dentman, escorted by two uniformed officers, was led into Strohman's uninspired little office where he awaited a meeting with Paul Strohman himself.