Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

I took a long, hard pull on the fresh beer. The chill of it raced down my throat and triggered a pleasant tingling sensation just above my buttocks. Something suddenly occurred to me.

“You knew something was fishy from the very beginning,” I said. It was not a question. “Otherwise, why would you have had your sources run background checks on David and Veronica?” It was my turn to lean toward him across the table. “I believe you’re a good journalist. I do. Something about this case didn’t sit well with you from the start, either. Am I right?”

Earl set his beer on the table and, holding one finger up like a schoolmarm, rose once again with some difficulty. He returned to the credenza and riffled through more paperwork. From over his shoulder, he said, “Keep talking. I think you and I are on to something, all right.”

I told him about the basement bedroom and how all of Elijah’s things had been left there, sealed up behind the wall. I told him of the unsettling supposition made by Ira Stein about Elijah digging up his wife’s dead dog and slinking away with it like some grave robber in an old Universal monster movie. Lastly, I told him of my visit to the Dentman house in West Cumberland (at which time Earl suspended his search through the paperwork, turned halfway around, and offered me an astonished yet envious grin) and of my unsettling confrontation with David following a brief and utterly uneventful discourse with Veronica.

“The fact that she’s been institutionalized half her life doesn’t surprise me in the least,” I said. “Talking to that woman was like talking to one of Jack Finney’s pod people.”

“You sure she wasn’t just in mourning over her son?”

“I thought she was at first, but then I could tell something was . . . well, off. She seemed terrified of her brother.”

“Here,” Earl said, finally locating what he’d been searching for. He hobbled over and gave me a stack of eight-by-ten color glossies.

As I looked through them, I was aware of the old man’s hand coming to rest on my shoulder. I felt a pang of sadness for him and couldn’t help but wonder about the backstory between him and his estranged son.

I flipped through several photos before I recognized the location. “This is my backyard. I’ve never seen it in summer, the leaves on the trees and all the bushes and flowers in bloom. You took these?”

“Annie Leibovitz, remember?”

One shot was of the lake behind my house, the foliage around the lake as heavy as a shroud. There were police officers gathered around the cusp of the lake, and two divers were rising out of the water in scuba gear. Another photo had the front grille of a police cruiser in the foreground, parked down in the grass of the sloping hillside. There were a couple of shots of David speaking with police, but his face was mostly blocked by police hats. Lastly was a photo of Veronica standing by herself and halfway concealed by trees. Her face had that same vacuous, haunted expression she’d had when I’d knocked on her front door.

“That’s the shot,” Earl said from behind me, looking over my shoulder. “That’s the one that gave me chills for nights afterward. Just like you said—that goes beyond a mother in shock, beyond a mother in mourning. In fact, how would you say she looks to you? You’re the writer. How would you describe her?”

I thought long and hard before admitting she looked absolutely terrified.

“Right,” Earl agreed without hesitation. “Scared to death.”

There was something else that bothered me about the photos. I flipped through them a second and third time, trying to figure out what it was, but it eluded me.

“There were enough people milling about by the lake that afternoon, as you can imagine,” Earl said. “I blended right in, and after a while no one paid me any mind. I got close enough to eavesdrop when the cops were questioning David. The guy was calm and specific, unruffled by the cops’ questions. When it came time to ask Veronica some questions, she just sounded like a record skipping on a groove—’I was asleep. I was asleep. I was asleep.’ Finally, David told the cops to leave her alone, that she was delicate and they were upsetting her.” He shook his head, his eyes distant and glassy. “I can still hear her clear as day—’I was asleep. I was asleep.’”

“You think she was coached?”

“By David?”

“Who else?”

“It’s possible. But it’s hard to tell with that woman. I don’t think a single word that ever came from her mouth has sounded natural. That’d be my bet.”

“Hmmm,” I said, still flipping through the photographs. “You’re probably right.”

“None of them ever made it to print,” Earl said, still hunkering over my shoulder. “Fat Figgis said they were too gruesome for The Muledeer.”

“Fat Figgis?”

“Jan Figgis,” he said. “My editor. The woman’s four hundred pounds if she’s an ounce.”

“Can I hold on to these?”

“The photos? Shoot, you can keep ‘em.”

“Thanks,” I said, slipping the glossies inside the cover of one of my notebooks. “And can I bother you with a favor?”

“Bring it on, son,” he said, returning to his seat across from me at the table. (The epithet did not slip by me unnoticed.)

“I want to put your investigative skills to the test. I need you to locate a woman named Althea Coulter for me. All I know is she used to live in Frostburg and she’s most likely licensed as a grade school teacher.” I thought about how Nancy had referred to the woman, then added, “There’s a good chance she might already be dead, though.”

“Can I ask who this Althea Coulter is?”

“For a brief time, Elijah Dentman was home-schooled when he lived in my house. According to the Steins, Althea Coulter was his teacher. I want to talk to her.”

“Alive or dead,” Earl promised, “I’ll find her.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Honest writing, much like honest people, comes without wanting anything in return. I found myself on an exploration of characters—characters that begot story; story that begot emotion—traversing through Edenic pastures and Elysian fields where dead boys frolicked in barefooted bliss on the dew-showered plains, and terminal skies reflected the roiling slate seas instead of the other way around.

I was out back chopping firewood when Adam came over. I heard his boots crunching through the crust of snow before I actually saw him emerge from the trees.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” I went on chopping. The goddamn furnace was still uncooperative, so Jodie and I were going through several logs a day in the fireplace. It hadn’t snowed for days, but it was still deathly cold.

“Haven’t seen you in a couple days. I popped in yesterday, but Jodie said you’d gone out somewhere. Some book research or something.”

“Yeah.”

“You ever take any of that stuff to Veronica Dentman? I never heard how it went.”

“I did,” I said, splitting another log.

“And . . . ?”

I rested the axe head in the snow and leaned on the handle. I was out of breath and sweating despite the cold. “I brought her a box. She was . . . standoffish.”

“Understandable. You probably gave her one hell of a shock showing up like that.”

“Then David came home, and he gave me one hell of a shock. He thought I was a cop.”

Adam chewed his lower lip. “Nothing happened, did it?”

“What would happen?”

“Never mind.”

“Did you guys know he has a criminal record?”

Adam looked away from me. His nose was red and one nostril glistened. “Don’t tell me that just came up in conversation with him.”

“No. I found that out on my own.”