Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

“Would have been unprofessional,” Ira went on, as if his wife hadn’t spoken. Then he leaned closer to me, and I could see the bleariness of his eyes as they swam behind his glasses. “Someone should have been watching him that day by the lake.”

The conversation was closing in on the details of Elijah’s death. I felt a giddy sense of elation at that—an emotion for which I would hate myself later, once I had ample time to replay the entire conversation in my head.

“What exactly happened that day?” I asked, and it was like firing a flare into the night sky.

“No one was watching him,” said Ira simply. “He was out there playing on that damnable staircase when he fell and cracked his head and drowned.”

“Did either of you hear or see anything?” Of course, having read the newspaper articles, I already knew the answer to this question. But it seemed the next logical jump, and I wanted to keep them going.

“Nancy heard him cry out.”

“I heard someone cry out,” Nancy corrected.

I asked her what she meant.

“It was late afternoon. It was a cool day so we had the windows open. I’d just started dinner when I heard a high-pitched . . . I don’t know . . . a high-pitched wail.”

“About what time was this?”

“Around five thirty. If I eat dinner too late, I get horrible indigestion.”

“And you’re not sure it was the boy?”

“Honestly, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. As you’ll soon learn, there’re plenty of noises around the lake in the summer—birds, animals, children playing. You can even hear traffic on the other side of town echo out over the water on cool summer nights, and God help us when the loons come back to roost. The thing about the lake is it plays with the sound, twists everything like a riddle, and bends it out of proportion. You think you hear something off to the left, but it’s really a quarter of a mile out on the other side of the lake past the pines.”

“So when did you realize it had been Elijah?”

“I guess after the police came by and asked if we’d heard anything unusual,” Nancy said. “I thought about it long and hard and said I’d heard someone cry out—or thought I did. But I never said with any certainty that it had been that little boy,” she added quickly and in such a fashion that I suddenly knew this poor woman had lost sleep over this many nights. “It’s important to understand that.”

“I understand,” I said. “Did either of you see Elijah out there that afternoon?”

“I saw him,” Nancy said, and it was as if she were confessing to some heinous crime. She looked miserable. Her skin had grown so pale I thought that if she pricked herself with a needle, she wouldn’t bleed. “I’d been out walking Fauntleroy earlier that day by the lake. Elijah was standing on the staircase and jumping off into the water like a diving board. I remember shaking my head and thinking how dangerous it was.”

“There’s the rest of the boating pier just under the surface of the water,” Ira interjected. “You dive too deep and strike your head.” He made a face to show that his premonition about the dangers of the floating staircase had obviously come true. “We’re always chasing the neighborhood kids away in the summer.”

“Did you see or hear anything that day, too, Ira?”

“It was a weekday. I was teaching a late class at the college.”

“What time was that?”

“Class ended at six fifteen. I would have went to my office to gather my things before heading home.” Considering, he said, “I suppose it was around seven o’clock when I finally got home.”

I considered this, then turned back to Nancy. “Was he alone when you saw him? Down by the water?”

“Yes.” She dropped her voice like someone about to spread a rumor and said, “None of the other children ever played with him.”

“How come?”

For the first time since we’d started this conversation, the Steins both went silent. Nancy stared at her mug, which was no longer giving off steam. For a split second I feared she might return to the kitchen.

Eventually Ira said, “Go on. Tell him about the dog.”

“Chamberlain wasn’t just a dog,” Nancy scolded, sounding genuinely hurt.

“We used to have two of these moppets,” Ira said, motioning with one loafered foot at Fauntleroy. (The dog must have recognized the condescension in Ira’s voice because he growled way back in his throat.) “Chamberlain got cancer two summers ago and died last spring.”

“The treatments wouldn’t take,” Nancy said miserably.

“Doc gave us some pills to put in his food when the time came. It was nice and easy.”

“And painless,” added Nancy.

“The next morning I found him dead right over there,” Ira said and pointed to the rectangle of sunlight that spilled in through the glass patio doors. “Probably been sunning himself when he finally passed.”

Nancy sniffled. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her.

“I took him out into the woods and buried him halfway down the slope, just before the land gets too rocky. Whole thing must have taken a good hour—you really underestimate the size of a lapdog when you got to dig a hole in the ground for it—and when I looked up, exhausted and sweating, I saw the little Dentman boy staring at me through the trees. He was maybe twenty yards away. I didn’t think anything of it until I happened back that way a couple of days later on my way to the water for some fishing and found the grave dug up and the dog’s body missing.”

“Lord, have mercy,” Nancy whispered and actually genuflected.

Across the room the record ended, filling the silence with the pop-sizzle-hiss of the needle.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you saying Elijah Dentman dug up your dead dog and made off with it?”

“I’m saying,” Ira intoned, emphasizing the word, “that he’d been the only living soul who’d known where I buried the dog. And a few days later, that hole was dug up and Chamberlain was missing. You do the math.”

“But . . . why?” I had no idea what else to say. This tidbit had blindsided me, even in spite of those dead birds I’d found in the cubbyhole last month.

“Who knows?” Ira said. “You tell me.”

“This is such morbid talk,” Nancy said, turning away and hurrying into the kitchen. I thought I heard her begin to sob once she was out of sight.

“What’s all this got to do with the history of Westlake, anyhow?” Apparently Ira hadn’t drunk enough wine for the peculiarity of our conversation to elude him.

As if to bolster my undercover role, I turned back to the photo album and riffled through a number of pages. “I guess we just got a little fixated. Veered off topic.”

Ira got up to replace the record.

I continued turning the pages of the album without really looking at the photographs while I struggled to digest all that had just been relayed to me. Could it be true? Had Elijah actually dug up the Steins’ dead dog? And if so, for what purpose?

What type of motive can you really expect from a troubled young boy? said the therapist’s voice in the back of my head. Again, I thought of the baby birds I’d squeezed to death in a fit of anger and confusion following Kyle’s death. The world could be an angry, hurtful place.

Ira put on a Billie Holiday record and remained standing in front of the phonograph, swaying drunkenly to the music.

My hand froze in the middle of turning one page. I hadn’t been paying attention but happened to glance down at just the right moment to catch it. The right photo. The impossibly right photo. I started sweating so profoundly I thought I might leave stains on the wingback chair.