Floating Staircase (20 page)

A small floating dock—no bigger than a twin mattress and covered with a panel of slate two inches thick—had broken free of its moorings earlier that evening. It floated unanchored and unobserved for several hours, making its way up the river and toward the bay. By the time Kyle leaped off the upper pier of the double dock, the floating barge was directly below him, invisible in the darkness.

The sickening thud I heard was the sound of Kyle's head opening up on the slate before he rolled, unconscious, into the river where he sank like a stone and drowned.

A
t seventy-seven, Earl Parsons had a face like an old bloodhound who'd been scolded one too many times for rooting around in the trash. His body was of the long-limbed variety, like an orangutan or a tree sloth, and he came packaged in pale blue polyester slacks, a checkered flannel work shirt, American flag suspenders, and a bulky nylon ski jacket with a faux fur collar that looked like something a sheriff might wear in the mountains of Colorado. His graphite-colored hair was unevenly parted and plastered to his scalp with what must have been several handfuls of camphor-scented liniment. It was my assessment he didn't often comb his hair. Yet he arrived with such an air of genuine appreciation and country pleasantness that I couldn't help but like him immediately.

“This is great,” he said. “I mean, I really appreciate your time, Mr. Glasgow. If I had to write one more article about Mora Chauncey's cocker spaniels, I think my head would cave in.”

We were sitting in the living room, Earl leaning forward in a cushioned armchair while I sat across from him on the sofa. Jodie was perched on the sofa's arm beside me, beaming. Sheila the librarian had probably mentioned to him that I was married—I remember saying something about my wife to her that day at the library—so he arrived not only with his spiral-bound notebook and a camera slung around his neck but hoisting a bouquet of wildflowers, which Jodie graciously accepted and put into a vase.

“I'm just flattered you think I'm newsworthy,” I told him.

“Not to downplay your accomplishments as an artist, but anything louder than a fart around here's newsworthy to me,” he said, then glanced at Jodie and looked horrified. “Oh, ma'am, I'm sorry. I'm just a tactless old fool who spends too much time alone. My apologies.”

Jodie waved him off. “Please. Do I look like some debutant who's never heard a fart before?”

He smiled, his teeth nicotine stained and choppy, and growled laughter at the back of his throat. “I guess you're a woman of the world, all right.”

“Well said.” To me, she said, “I like this old man. Can we keep him?”

This sent Earl into a fit of laughter that reminded me of gravel crunching beneath car tires, his eyes tearing up and his big, rough hands slapping his knees so hard I feared his legs would crumble to powder. The laughing jag lasted several seconds and was contagious; by the end of it, we all felt like old friends.

“Before we begin,” he said, removing a paperback from his coat pocket, “I was hoping you'd scribble your John Hancock in this for me. If, of course, it's not too much of an imposition.”

He passed me the book. When he said on the phone he was reading one of my novels, I just assumed it was the copy of
Silent River
from the public library. But this was a copy of
Water View,
newly purchased and, as evidenced by the creases in the spine and a few dog-eared pages, already read.

“It was great,” Earl said, handing me a pen. “Those last thirty pages flew by. I've already started
The Ocean Serene,
too. I know I'm reading them out of order, but to be honest, I hadn't planned on reading any beyond this one here. It sucked me in and I had to read more.”

“That's very nice of you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.”

On the title page, I wrote:

To Earl Parsons, my wife's new pet—
May all your farts be silent but deadly.

Travis Glasgow

I gave him back the book and expected him to read what I wrote, but he didn't. He stuffed it into his pocket and, grinning like a child, said, “I really appreciate that. I never got a book signed by anyone before.”

The interview lasted for almost half an hour, with Earl asking the usual questions about how I got started in the business, where I got my ideas, and which one of my novels was my favorite. He segued into our reasons for coming to Westlake and our impressions of the town so far. I supplied him with the requisite answers. The old guy seemed pleased.

During a break in our conversation, Jodie convinced him to stay for lunch. Although he seemed fretful about imposing, Jodie's pestering broke him down and he agreed. Jodie slipped into the kitchen to make coffee and sandwiches.

“She's lovely,” Earl said after she'd gone.

“Are you married?”

“You're looking at a bachelor of the first order right here in your living room.” He winked at me, a glitter in his eye. “Doesn't mean I ain't ever been in love before, though. Went through my fair share of broken hearts.”

“How long have you been working for the newspaper?”

“Lord,” Earl said, sitting back in the chair. He looked too big for it, his legs like oversized pistons jutting at awkward angles. “Must be about a decade or so. Just after I retired from the mill.”

“Do you know about what happened to the little boy who lived in this house? The one who drowned in the lake?”

He pressed two fingers to his forehead and, almost as if reciting poetry from memory, said, “Elijah Dentman, ten years old. Mother's name was Veronica. Didn't have no father.”

“That's a good memory. Do you know who covered the story for the paper when he drowned?”

“Sure do,” he said. “Was me.”

I blinked. “No kidding?”

“Like I said, I'm the resident Woodward and Bernstein around here.” He drummed his fingers against the camera that hung across his chest. “Resident Annie Leibovitz, too, I suppose.”

“I read your articles about what happened,” I confessed and leaned forward in my seat.

“You know, I joke about nothing ever happening here worth writing about, but the truth is, I'd prefer writing about pie eating contests and cocker spaniels than to ever have to report on something like that again.”

“Were you on the scene while they were searching for the body?”

“All evening and well into the night. I left when the divers gave up the next morning.”

“Without the body,” I said. This wasn't a question. I was testing the air between us.

“Without the body,” he repeated, and we looked at each other for a beat longer than necessary.

“Don't you find that odd? That this is a self-enclosed lake and the body was never recovered?”

Earl didn't answer me right away, and I thought maybe I'd insulted him somehow. Then he cleared his throat and glanced over my shoulder, possibly to make sure Jodie was out of earshot. “There's plenty strange about what happened to that boy, the least of which is the fact they never found his body. I assume, based on your timing asking these questions, that your wife doesn't know about what happened?”

“She knows a boy drowned in the lake. That's about it. She hasn't pursued the details.”

“You mind me asking why you're interested in the matter? If it's none of my business, please say so and I'll shut my yap.”

“I think things were overlooked,” I said. “I think the cops didn't know how to handle an investigation of that magnitude and didn't turn over every stone. I think a boy doesn't just drown in a lake and completely disappear, even if the police didn't start searching for him until a couple hours later after he went missing.”

“What are you saying?”

“I think Elijah Dentman was murdered.” It had been on my mind for some time now, not only in the writing I'd been doing but in real life, too. The pieces didn't add up to make a complete whole. What cinched it for me was the visit to West Cumberland where I stood face-to-face with David Dentman.

To my surprise, Earl did not scoff at the notion. Just the opposite: he seemed to embrace it. “You got a suspect in mind?”

“Could be anyone, I guess. Could be some vagrant that ran into the kid down by the water. Could be someone the kid knew from town.”

The old man shook his head. “No, that ain't what you think. Tell me what you think.”

“I believe David Dentman did it,” I said, and it was almost like confessing my sins to a priest. “I believe the boy's uncle killed him.”

Almost too casually, Earl said, “He got a motive?”

“Maybe. I don't know what it might be, if that's what you're asking.” But of course I knew that in real life, motives were not as indispensable as they were in books and movies. In real life, sometimes people did horrible things for no discernible reason.

Jodie returned with coffee and ham and cheese sandwiches.

Earl's face lit up as if his girlfriend had walked into the room. “Thank you kindly, dear. You're too good to this old fool, and we've only just met.”

“I have a soft spot in my heart for fools,” she said, smiling. Then she twirled a finger in my hair. “Just ask my husband.”

After Earl snapped a couple of photos of me to go along with the article, he gave Jodie a one-armed fatherly hug, and I walked him to the front door.

“I'll let you know when the article comes out,” Earl said, tugging on his sheriff's jacket and stepping onto the porch. Beyond the tamaracks, the sky was a mottled cheesecloth color that made me feel instantly sad for no perceivable reason. “And again, I appreciate your time.”

“No sweat.”

“Here.” Earl thrust one of his hands into mine, his callous fingers like barbed fruit against my palm. When he withdrew his hand, there was a folded piece of notebook paper in mine. “If you don't mind a messy bachelor pad and stale beer, you come on by, and I'll show you some stuff you might be interested in.” He zipped his jacket and shoved his hands into the pockets. “I know what it's like to sit awake at night thinking the thoughts of a haunted man.”

This struck me as oddly profound.

“You take care, Travis.”

I watched him leave and didn't look at what he'd written on the slip of paper until after his pickup had pulled out of the driveway. In an old man's spidery, hieroglyphic handwriting: his address.

E
arl's bachelor pad was a double-wide that looked suspiciously like an old boxcar, with multiple TV antennas and drooping Christmas lights (even though it was mid-January) on the roof and a few old junkers rusting away in random places on the lawn. It sat atop a wooded hill at the end of Old County Road, which wasn't exactly part of Westlake, although the lights of Main Street were clearly visible from his front door. It was late afternoon, two days since the interview at my house, and the sky was bruising to a cool, steady purple along the horizon.

As I pulled in beside the trailer, a sharp-faced black dog barked at me from the far side of the yard. It was tied to the bumper of a vintage Chevrolet, though the bumper didn't look secure enough to prevent the critter from breaking free and charging for my jugular. Up in the mountains, wind rolled like a thousand drums.

Earl walked out the front door just as I got out of the car. He wore faded jeans, an open-throated flannel shirt, and brown forester's boots, all of which seemed two sizes too large for his frame. He raised one hand in welcome, then shouted something at the dog, which quieted the mongrel as effectively as if he'd whipped it with a birch branch.

I slammed the car door and crunched through the snow, a backpack over my shoulders. I held two of my writing notebooks under one arm, the third one having vanished, one might surmise, into thin air.

For the past two days I'd searched the entire house from top to bottom for the missing notebook but couldn't find it. I'd pestered Jodie about possibly misplacing it, but she swore she hadn't seen it. I dug through all the boxes in Elijah's bedroom, which had become my writing office as well, on the off chance that I'd accidentally packed it away with some of the boy's stuff. While bent over one particular box, I thought I heard footsteps . . . then someone breathing down my neck. I spun around, expecting to see Elijah, blue-skinned and bloated, muddy water pooling on the cement floor about his feet, standing an arm's length from me in the half dark. But there was no one there; I was alone.

Earl nodded at me as I approached. “Snow's thinned out some. How's the driving?”

“They've got much of downtown cleared up, but it's still a bit treacherous here in the hills.”

We shook hands. Across the yard, the large black dog started barking again.

“Come on inside,” Earl said, turning and pushing the door open. “It's cold as a witch's tit out here.”

Inside, I was treated to wood paneling and startling neon carpeting, a sofa that looked as if it had been salvaged from the set of
Sanford and Son,
and garish prints of hunting dogs, cattails, and bulging-eyed bass leaping out of rivers. Mounds of clothes seemed to rise from the floor and move when you weren't looking directly at them, and empty beer bottles and pizza boxes were placed almost strategically throughout the cramped interior. Despite the amassment of television antennas on his roof, Earl's tiny, prehistoric Zenith worked off a pair of rabbit ears capped in aluminum foil. It was the den of a career bachelor, that wily and elusive animal who has never been scolded to pick up his socks, iron a shirt, or wash the dishes.

“I warned you the place was a mess.”

I followed him onto an elevated section of the floor, where the shag carpeting gave way to crude linoleum, and stood shifting from one foot to the other while Earl cleared half-eaten Chinese food containers and stacks of newspaper off what I construed to be the kitchen table. With some humility, I noticed a stack of my paperback novels on one of the countertops, the top one splayed open and upside down to save his page.