Floating Staircase

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Get in the truck,” Dentman muttered offhandedly. The only light inside the cab was from the burning ember of a cigarette.

“What are you doing here?” There was an icy finger tracing the contours of my spine.

“Looking for you.” He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the passenger door. The interior dome light came on, sending inky pools of shadow running down his face.

“No. We can talk out here.”

“Christ, Glasgow, don’t be such a pussy. I’m not gonna hurt you. Get in the truck.” He sounded disgusted with the whole ordeal.

It was a stupid damn thing—one of those stupid damn things that cause audiences in movie theaters to shout less than flattering names at the ignorant but well-meaning protagonist—but I had my reasons. So I walked around the front of David’s pickup, feeling the heat of the headlamps wash over me as I passed, and got into the passenger seat. All too aware of the photographs I was carrying, I held my breath; rolled into a cone, they couldn’t have been more conspicuous if they’d been adorned with Christmas lights.

The vehicle’s interior smelled of turpentine and tobacco and whiskey and sweat. This close, I could smell Dentman, too, and it was a strong, masculine, canine smell—almost feral.

Dentman dropped the truck into gear. The engine roared and caused the entire chassis to shudder. It sounded like there was an army tank under the hood.

“I thought you just wanted to talk,” I said.

The pickup’s headlights cleaved into the darkness as we pulled out into the street and headed for the intersection. Watching as the speedometer climbed well past fifty, fifty-five, sixty, I reached for the seat belt but found none. Yeah, this is smart.

Dentman slouched in the driver’s seat, huge and filling it completely, both his big, meaty paws gripping the steering wheel, his head tilted slightly down while watching the blackened, narrow roadway from beneath the cliff of his Neanderthal brow.

“This is a residential neighborhood,” I reminded him.

His profile affected the faintest smirk.

Wind whipped in through the open driver’s side window, freezing the air and emitting an aboriginal hum as it funneled through the tube of photographs I held. I tried to will the photos away into nonexistence by mere thought. Please, please, please.

Dentman cast an empty stare at the photos and, presumably annoyed by the sound, rolled up his window. “You stink like a distillery,” he commented after a moment, actually sniffing the air like a bloodhound.

The pickup bucked along the road, the engine furious under the hood. I counted the seconds until the doors came loose on their hinges.

“What do you want?” I said.

“Open the glove compartment.”

“No, thanks. I’m fine.”

“Open it.”

Hesitantly, I opened the glove compartment. The door dropped like a mouth, and a little orange light spilled out onto my lap. There was only one item inside, and I had to blink several times to convince myself that it was actually what I knew it to be. “I take it you don’t want an autograph,” I said, staring at the paperback copy of The Ocean Serene.

“I highlighted my favorite paragraphs,” Dentman said.

“Is that right?” Heavy with sarcasm.

I opened the book and flipped through the pages. What moonlight there was allowed me to see the highlighted portions of the text. I stopped on one of the pages and read it. Then I closed the book, pushing it back inside the open glove compartment, and stared at Dentman’s sharp profile, outlined in phosphorescent moonlight. “I’m flattered you’re such an avid fan, but where the hell are we going?”

“Tell me something,” Dentman said, his tone almost conversational as we barreled through the streets. “Whose life is that book about?”

“Huh?”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Steal people’s lives? Cheapen their tragedies for the sake of entertainment? For the sake of your bank account?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“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:

B

ERNARD

D

ENTMAN

The second:

E

LIJAH

D

ENTMAN

B

ELOVED

S

ON AND

N

EPHEW

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.

He didn’t. “I can’t have you sniffing around in my family’s business. My sister ain’t strong enough, and I won’t let you torment her anymore.” His head just over my shoulder, I could feel his hot breath crawling down the nape of my neck. “See,” he practically whispered, his mouth nearly brushing my ear now, “my father was a rotten, miserable son of a bitch who caused more harm than anyone should ever have to endure. I took my sister away from him and raised her. Until I die, she will be my sole responsibility. Until I die. Ain’t no one gonna hurt her. Especially you. She’s my sister and I love her, no matter what.”

I managed to turn and look at him. His eyes were the eyes of a wolf—hungry, desperate, wild. “I’ve already told the cops about you. My brother’s a cop. He knows what I’ve been up to. You kill me, they’ll catch you this time.”

Dentman grasped my right wrist. His face was nearly on top of my own, his breath reeking. There was a complete absence of expression on his face—no smile, no bared teeth. Just a set face, set mouth, clenched jaw.

In a futile attempt to wrench my wrist free, I lost my balance and cracked the side of my head smartly against Elijah’s gravestone. Instantly, capering swirls exploded in front of my eyes, and I felt the world tilt to one side. I thought of fireworks and a filmstrip slipping in the grooves of a projector. Blindly, I began clawing at the front of Dentman’s shirt.

With seemingly little effort, Dentman pinned my right hand to the ground while stepping on my wrist with his booted foot. “You stupid bastard. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already.”

He brought down his fist on my face. Eye-watering pain blossomed from my nose and spread out across my face, rattling like a rusty shopping cart with crippled casters through my head. I hardly cared about struggling free at that moment. I just prayed my death would be swift and painless. All I could do was cringe in anticipation of the next punch.

But it did not come. Instead, Dentman grabbed my hands and dragged my body about two feet to the left of the gravestone and allowed me to roll over on my side.

I inhaled a deep swallow of air. It hurt my lungs, my chest. I still couldn’t open my eyes, still couldn’t bring myself to do it until I caught my breath. I was aware of Dentman’s hulking shape above me, and I imagined him withdrawing that same imaginary handgun I’d dreamt up from before and plugging me once, assassin style, in the head.

Finally, I opened my eyes and rolled over on my back. Coughing. Sputtering. My vision was still blurred, but I managed to turn my head and seek out my attacker.

His face stoic and unreadable, Dentman moved away from me like an out-of-breath hunter admiring his catch.

“What the hell are you going to do to me?” We say such pitiful things in our final moments of desperation.

Dentman sneered. “Jesus fuck, boy. You’re pathetic. Look at you.”

“You can’t kill me.”

“Piece of shit.” Kneeling down beside me, he gripped my wrists again.

Peripherally, I caught a glint of moonlight on metal, then heard a sound like pocket change being jangled. When I looked up, I saw he’d handcuffed me to the fucking iron fence. “You can’t leave me out here. I’ll freeze to death.”

David’s enormous shoulders heaved with every breath. I could see vapor trails rising like steam from each nostril like a bull. He spat on me, turned, and sauntered away.

I listened to his heavy boots crunch through the snow. With my head still spinning, I sat up and watched him leave. Once he passed through the trees and into the darkness, disappearing from sight, I nearly forgot what he looked like.

I think I’m going to pass out, I thought. I think I’m going to pass out. I think I’m going to—

Darkness.