Floating Staircase (29 page)

“What is it you think about me? What is it you think about my family?”

“You've lost your mind,” I told him.

“Reach under your seat.”

“No. Enough bullshit. What's this all about?”

“You tell me.”

“Look, I don't know what you're getting at. If this is about the box I brought by your house, I thought we'd already—”

“Reach under your seat,” Dentman repeated with more than just a hint of irritation in his voice.

Reluctantly, I leaned forward and slid one hand beneath my seat. My breath was rattling in my throat. I patted around the stiff carpeting, not knowing what to expect, what I was searching for . . . and then the tips of my fingers touched something. I took it out and put it in my lap, blessedly covering the photographs with it. Looking at it, I felt something thick and wet roll over in the pit of my stomach, and I thought I would throw up. My hands were shaking, and I couldn't keep my teeth from vibrating in my head. In my throat, my breath temporarily seized up. I prayed for unconsciousness.

On my lap was my missing writing notebook.

There were a million questions—a trillion questions—shooting through my brain, but my mouth, that traitorous cretin, would not formulate the words.

Dentman maneuvered the shuddering pickup straight down Main Street and past the depressed little shops of rural Westlake, now dark and closed. Only the shimmering pink neon lights of Tequila Mockingbird were visible, radiating with a dull sodium throb in the darkness. Ahead, through the windshield, the night was a tangible thing—a black velvet cloak draped over the valley.

“W-where did you get this?” I stammered, finding my voice at last. My mind reeling, I felt the cold cloak of fear settle over me the moment I realized that I had never changed the locks on the doors upon moving into the house on Waterview Court.
My God,
I thought, unable to move, unable to breathe. I couldn't pull my gaze from the notebook—the camouflaged black-and-white cover, the string-bound spine, the frayed edges.

We bumped along the roadway, leaving Westlake behind us like a distant memory; all that existed of the town was the spatter of fading lights in the pickup's rearview mirror.

“You son of a bitch,” I muttered, lifting the notebook. It weighed two hundred pounds. “You broke into my house.”

“I did no such thing.” He gunned the truck to seventy miles an hour. I could feel the tires spinning over black ice. “Actually, you left it at my house. In that box you brought over.”

The world struggled to remain in focus.

“You been asking around town about me,” Dentman said. “Don't think I haven't noticed.”

“I can explain.”

“You can explain why you've got my family's name written in that notebook of yours?”

“It's going to sound strange, but yes, I can explain all of it.”

“I don't like it.” His attention was fixated on the darkness ahead. There were no houses here—no lights and certainly no signs of civilization—only the black-on-black wash of heavy trees on either side of the truck. “I don't like you sniffing around in my private life, my private business.” He paused, perhaps for dramatic effect. “I don't like what you did to my sister even more.”

I choked down a hard lump of spit. “I didn't do anything to her.”

“You got her all stirred up.” Denton faced me. His eyes were hollow pits in the darkness. I could smell cigarette smoke coming through his pores. “She loved that boy. It broke her heart what happened to him. What kind of sick fuck follows her to a new town to revisit such a tragedy?”

“That wasn't my intention.”

“Oh,” he countered, “I know your intention. I seen your books and how you like to exploit people's tragedies.”

“They're just books. They're not real.” I gripped the dashboard with one hand. “Please watch the road.”

He shook his head like he was disappointed in me. “She told me about you. Said you talked about the boy. Told her she could have all that stuff back if she came out to the house.”

“No. I never said that. I never told her to come out to the house.”

“So you're saying my little sister's lying to me?”

“The road,” I groaned. “Watch it.”

Ahead, the road forked. Dentman took a right without signaling. We were nearly riding on two wheels. “The hell's the matter with you? You sick or something?”

“It was all a misunderstanding.”

“What about the stuff in your notebook there? That all a misunderstanding, too?”

“Just let me explain—”

“Oh yeah,” David said. “I can see how that could happen. A misunderstanding. Sure.”

“Where are we going?”

“What's the matter?” He motioned toward the open glove compartment. The paperback vibrated against the hanging mouth of it as the pickup gathered speed. “You write this scary stuff, but I guess you're just a shitless little weasel in real life.”

“Stop the truck.”

“That makes you a coward in my book.”

“David—”

“Not facing a situation, not confronting it—that makes you a coward.”

“Stop the truck. I want to get out.”

“Get out? Now? I thought you wanted to learn all about my family. For your book.”

“I'm not writing a book. This is just—this was—it's my private business—”

“Which involves
my
private business,” Dentman said, his voice rising. “Which involves my
family's
private business.”

“Just tell me where we're going.”

“I'm taking you to meet someone.”

“I don't want to meet anyone. Let me out of the goddamn truck.”

Ahead, I noticed the glimmer of lights through the trees. Fresh hope welled up inside me. I wasn't familiar with where we were, but at least there were other people around.

If Adam wanted proof that David Dentman was a homicidal maniac, he'd certainly have it when they found my body torn to bits on the side of this wooded highway tomorrow morning . . .

“I'll say,” he went on, the accelerator flat on the floor now, “you've got me made out pretty colorful in that notebook of yours. Call me a murderer and everything.”

“It's not you.”

“No? Used my name.”

“If you're too fucking stupid to understand what I'm trying to tell you—”

The pickup squealed as Dentman slammed on the brakes, causing the rear of the truck to fishtail. Forward momentum drove me into the dashboard. The Fourth of July was going on somewhere at the back of my brain. Dentman corrected the fishtailing until we leveled out. He muttered something to himself about nearly missing a turn as he rotated the steering wheel.

“You're a fucking psychopath,” I said, pulling myself back into my seat.

To my astonishment, Dentman laughed. The sound was like a thousand barking dogs. “You know what I think?” He tapped his temple. “I think you're blind and I think you're ignorant. I think you're a selfish son of a bitch. If you keep on nosing in other people's business, you'll eventually get what's coming to you.”

“Go to hell.”

“You have no idea how you upset her. You have no idea what it was like trying to get her through that. You stupid motherfucker, she loved that boy.”

“What about you? How'd you feel about him?”

“I don't feel like answering any of your goddamn questions,” he snarled. “Wind up in one of your shitty books.”

“Tell me what you did to him.”

Again, Dentman stopped the truck—this time with more care. The pickup idled in the middle of the road, the engine ticking down around us, our mingling respiration fogging up the windshield. The residential lights I'd spotted, which I'd hoped would prove my salvation, were still too far away. Here, alone with a child killer, I was surrounded by trees, by shadows and darkness and night.

“Get out,” Dentman breathed. His eyes were small and a bit far apart but like two burning embers affixed to the carved stone face of an idol. His teeth were little and evenly spaced. He had thin lips that curled when he was angry.

“Was it an accident or did you do it on purpose?” I said. It was like listening to someone else using my voice. I couldn't stop myself. “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe you panicked.”

“Yes,” he said. “Just like you wrote in your little notebook. Now get out of my truck.”

Not needing a third invitation, I popped the door handle and dumped myself out onto the ice-slicked blacktop. Held tightly to my chest were the crime scene photos and the notebook. The night was cold and damp, but my heart was racing, and I was sweating so profusely that I hardly noticed.

Dentman shut the truck down, then turned off the headlights. As he got out of the cab and came around the front of the vehicle, I was certain he was going to pull a handgun from his waistband and blow me away right here on the side of the road. I could easily imagine my blood staining the snow a deep crimson hue, the liberated crime scene photographs fluttering like tumbleweeds down the empty single-lane blacktop all the way into the next town.

He came up to me and grabbed my elbow. “Come on.” He tried to jerk me toward the shoulder of the road.

“Where are we going?”

“This is what it's all about, isn't it? The climax of your fucking story? This is what the readers have been waiting for, right?”

I couldn't stop my feet: they moved of their own will. Beside me, Dentman was huge, and it was like being ushered by a giant stone bell tower. He was breathing strenuously, and I could feel his heartbeat through the tightened grip of his palm around my elbow.

“He was autistic,” I said.

David grunted.

“Your nephew. He was autistic, wasn't he?”

“You're out of your mind.”

“Is that why you killed him? Because he was different and you didn't understand him? Maybe he frightened you a little, too.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“You may have fooled the police but you didn't—”

Dentman yanked my arm back, nearly dislocating it at the shoulder.

I stumbled and almost spilled the notebook and photos to the ground.

Still gripping my elbow, he swung me around until I was staring directly at him. “You . . . shut . . . up,” he breathed.

My mind rattled with things to say, none of them strong enough for the moment.

We crested a snowy embankment and slipped beneath a canopy of trees. The moon was blotted out almost altogether. I paused only once, more than certain of my own impending doom, but Dentman jerked me forward, and I clumsily continued to follow. We crossed through a shallow grove of trees that emptied into a vast clearing covered by sinister ground fog. I was surprised (and relieved) to see more lights ahead. In front of us stood what must have been a ten-foot-tall wrought iron fence. Beyond the fence, the dorsal fin crescents of tombstones rose from the rolling black lawn.

A cemetery.

“Come on,” Dentman urged, letting go of my arm and moving along the length of the fence.

I watched him lead for some time, his enormous head slumping like a broken puppet's, before following. We came to a small gravel driveway that wound through an opening in the cemetery gate. Without waiting for me, Dentman passed through the entrance and continued to advance up the slight incline of the cemetery grounds, passing granite botonées like mile markers.

I pursued the hulking behemoth, suddenly less apprehensive of my own safety. Curiosity drove me now. Curiosity and finality. I walked across the cemetery lawns, the frigidity of the air finally driving its point home. My breath was sour and raspy. I could sense my pulse throbbing beneath the palms of my hands. We passed a large mausoleum and beyond that several grave markers fashioned to look like stars and stone angels. Now trying to keep up, I hurried down a gradual slope and saw him stop beneath a great oak tree at the far end of the cemetery grounds. He stood looking down, half leaning against the wrought iron gate. For all I knew, he could have forgotten all about me.

Solemn was my approach. Strong wind rattled the bare branches of the oak. What sat before us were two headstones with two different names on them. The first:

The second:

Along with their respective dates.

“I'm not a smart man, Glasgow. I don't write books, and I don't wear a suit and tie to work. But I'm not an imbecile, either. I know you. You're the type of person thinks they can get away with any damn thing they want. Any damn thing in the world. You think this whole fucking universe would just crumble to pieces if you didn't exist to keep it all together.”

“I don't.”

“That's bullshit. See, you been asking about me. But I been asking about you.” He sprung at me, causing a moan to escape my lips. Again, he spun me around, and looked at the fresh granite tombstone, still too new to be overgrown with vines and weeds.
Beloved Son and Nephew.

I felt a fist strike the small of my back. Wincing, I dropped my notebook and the crime scene photos. The wind was quick to gather up the photos and bully them across the cemetery grounds.

“You're kneeling on my nephew's grave. I'm trying to instill a little humility in you, a little reverence. You ever have to bury an empty coffin?”

“Get . . . off me . . .”

“All your writings about ghosts and murders and dead children,” he said at my back, his voice trailing in the wind. He could have been shouting ten stories above me for all the difference it made. “Go on. Ask the grave whatever ghostly questions you got, you motherfucker. Ask it.”

Twisting in his grasp, I told him again to get the fuck off me.