Floating Staircase

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

February was angry and eager and shook us to our souls. Once again, the whole world seemed to freeze. But by early March, the snow had receded, and the gray slope of our lawn rose as if out of ash. The blustery winds grew tame and warmed up. We celebrated Jacob’s eleventh birthday, and he dazzled us with card tricks. Jodie finished her dissertation and looked forward to receiving her PhD in May. She had verbally accepted the full-time teaching position at the university, and although it wouldn’t start until the fall, she went out one afternoon with Beth to shop for a whole new wardrobe.

Sales for Water View continued to climb. The whole Dentman ordeal nearly a month behind me now, I began to feel the writing bug edge closer and closer again. That was good; like the parent of a child gone away to summer camp, I had been eagerly awaiting its safe return.

Jodie surrendered the upstairs office to me. I stocked it full of my writing implements, fresh heaps of notebooks, word processor, and lucky ceramic mug. I wrote there in the mornings before Jodie woke up, downing cup after cup of overpowering Sumatra coffee. Sometimes when I knew Jodie was still sound asleep, I would open the single window and smoke a cigarette, my head poking halfway out into the chilly morning air.

Having aborted the story of the Dentmans and the floating staircase, I resumed the partially finished manuscript of which I’d already sent sample chapters to Holly Dreher in New York. It was coming smooth and good and honest. As with every other book, it was important to write it honestly.

(Once, at a writers’ conference in Seattle, I’d had a few drinks with a best-selling novelist. Like teenagers confused about their sexuality, this author’s novels traversed that blurry and often fatal line between genres, and he drank expensive scotch and listened to jazz records in his hotel room because he thought those things made him more writerly. We must have talked for hours that evening at the hotel bar, but the only thing I took away with me was his comment that all good books were honest books and that all the rest could suck a fat one. I took half of that sentiment and filed it deep down in the writing center of my brain and have used it ever since. All good books are honest books.)

So I wrote, and it was strong and good and honest.

One afternoon, I heard the bumping sound. It was the same sound Jodie had heard that night when I’d come home from the police station—I was certain of it. The first time I heard it, I was alone in the house and standing in my underwear in the kitchen about to pour a fresh cup of coffee. It sounded like it was coming from upstairs. But when I reached the top of the stairs, the sound stopped.

The next time I heard it, I was lying in bed at night. Beside me, Jodie was sleeping the sleep of the blissfully innocent. I could hear it across the hall, and for one insane moment, I imagined a dozen tiny elves walking on the keyboard of my word processor, finishing my book for me. I got out of bed and crossed the hall, flipping the light on in the office. The sound had stopped. I stood there holding my breath, listening for a very long time, but it didn’t start up again.

The third and final time, it happened on the day a big yellow bulldozer appeared in my backyard to dig up patchy sections of my lawn. A few officers milled about, and even Strohman made an appearance. Tugging on some clothes, I met Strohman outside, and we both smoked cigarettes without talking to each other. The smell of the bulldozer’s diesel exhaust was cloying.

Back in the house, I started making lunch. Jodie was at the movies with Beth and the kids, and despite the racket in the yard, I knew that I could finish the first draft of the new book today. The thought made me happy. Alone, I ate lunch on the front porch until the clouds of bulldozer exhaust crept over the roof and settled down around me like nuclear winter.

I showered, shaved, and dressed in clean clothes. I sat in the office and fired up the word processor, smelling its electric body, feeling the keys as they hummed lightly beneath the pads of my fingers.

Then the thumping started again. It was right behind the desk against the wall.

Dropping to my hands and knees, I slid the desk away from the wall with little difficulty. Instantly, I felt foolish. The culprit, of course, was the cubbyhole door. It had come ajar, and as the wind rattled the eaves, the door had been thumping against the back of the desk.

I pushed the cubbyhole door shut but didn’t stand up right away. Outside, I heard the bulldozer’s gears grinding and someone shouting.

There was a gooseneck lamp on the desk. I yanked it down and switched it on. The light was dull but it would serve its purpose. With one hand, I pushed the cubbyhole door, and it popped open on its hinges. Cold air breathed out.

I thought of Elijah telling Althea Coulter that he had gone away.

I thought of Veronica in the interrogation room saying, When I came back . . . gone . . .

Bending over, I shoved the lamp into the cubbyhole and peeked inside.

It was just a tiny square box, a space for storage, with wooden struts and pink insulation for walls. The frayed baseball was still inside. So were the Matchbox cars and the Scrooge McDuck comic book. A child’s secret hiding place. I thought about the time Adam and I treaded water beneath the double dock, hiding from the rifle-toting lunatic marching on the boards above us. Hiding, I thought. Children hide.

When I came back . . . gone . . .

But of course, there was nothing here. The cubbyhole was empty. I’d known that—I’d known it since that first day I’d opened the door and found the shoe box full of dead birds. Just what had I expected to find?

And then I smelled it.

Sickeningly sweet, like day-old chamomile tea. Borne on the cold air, it grew more and more pungent with each inhalation. I craned the neck of the lamp farther into the cubbyhole and squeezed my head and shoulders inside. By no means am I a big man, but the opening was too tight for me to slip in past my chest. I recalled my nightmares from so many weeks ago—being squeezed to death in a constricting wall. Sweat suddenly sprung out along my brow.

Sometimes we go in; sometimes we go out.

In, I thought. He went in.

I reached out and fingered a curled bit of insulation paper. The Pink Panther’s face smiled slyly at me. Slowly, I peeled the curl of paper away from the wooden struts. I expected to find Sheetrock behind there, the back of the office closet. But what the light from the gooseneck lamp brought into view was a narrow cavern between the eaves and the back of the closet, a slender vertical cut behind the wall. This wasn’t just a cubbyhole; this was a crawl space.

Bringing the lamp closer to the narrow sliver of darkness, I held my breath and felt the sweat run down my face.

Sometimes we go in, I thought.

Holding my breath.

I saw him.