Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

“What are you helping him with?”

“I guess I’m sort of a witness.”

“Is this about the drowned boy?”

I closed my eyes and said, “Yes.”

There was a lengthy hesitation on her end. I couldn’t imagine her expression. Was she fearful I was falling back into it again?

“Are you okay?” she said finally.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m okay if you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

“When will you be home?”

“I don’t know. I rode here with Adam. The car’s still down at the ‘Bird. I guess I’ll be home whenever Adam gets off.”

“You want Beth and me to come get you?”

“No,” I said. “Sit tight. I can’t imagine I’ll be too late.”

“Okay,” she said. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.” And I hung up.

“So nice,” Mae said, beaming at me. She had lipstick on her teeth, and her silvery hair was pulled back into a bun. “Your wife?”

“Yes. Is there a place where I can smoke around here?”

“Outside on the front steps.”

Freezing and wet, I chain-smoked cigarettes on the front steps of the Westlake Police Department like someone about to be executed. When the wind blew, it caused a whirring in the nearby trees that sounded like the ocean. The sky was a black web speckled with stars.

It was closing on eleven o’clock when Adam pushed through the front door and stood behind me. His shadow fell over me as I sat on the concrete steps, shivering in my coat and working down to the bottom of my cigarette pack. The parking lot’s lights cast an unnatural orange glow along the flagstone sidewalk that ran the length of the building.

“Can I bum one of those?”

“You don’t smoke menthols,” I said, handing him my last cigarette anyway.

He lit it and coughed as he inhaled. Leaning against the railing, he said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about that summer.”

There was no need for him to explain what he meant.

“Maybe it’s you coming to live out here or maybe it’s everything that’s been going on lately. I don’t know.”

I watched him suck hard on his smoke. His head was enveloped in an aura of cold orange light.

“Christ,” Adam uttered, crushing the half-smoked cigarette beneath his boot. “Let’s get out of here.”

On the car ride to Waterview Court, I asked him what was going to happen next.

“We’re gonna hold them both overnight. The DA will want statements before he takes a step.”

“How’s that looking?”

“The statements?” There was a disheartening resignation in my brother’s voice. “David won’t say a word, and Veronica’s completely out of it. Even if she admitted to anything, it won’t hold water unless her brother gives a statement that’s pretty much on the same level. Also, we’ll need to subpoena those time and attendance records from the construction company. That’ll take a while.”

“I already gave you the records.”

“I know. But we need to go through the appropriate legal channels.”

“Will it screw anything up that I’ve already given you the records?”

“It shouldn’t, although a good defense attorney will certainly try to make an issue of it. But you weren’t operating under the direction of law enforcement. No one bullied or persuaded you into getting those records and handing them over. Truth is, they’re fair game. The subpoena’s just to make sure we’ve got no holes in the case.”

“Do you think this thing will really go to trial?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been a part of anything this big before.”

Like the static-laden call over a CB radio, I could hear Paul Strohman inside my head saying, Most of my officers have never seen blood let alone worked a homicide investigation. And on the heels of that, as poignant as a warning: I could tell you stuff that would make you spend the rest of your nights sitting up in bed, listening for every little creak in your house.

As Adam weaved through the dark streets, I watched the shapes of the trees whip by on the shoulder of the road.

“So let’s say Dentman did cover up for his sister,” I said to the passenger window. “Let’s say she killed her son and he knew nothing about it, had nothing to do with it. What sort of charges is he looking at?”

“Obstruction, false statements, conspiracy, aiding and abetting. Christ, I don’t know.”

“Jesus,” I mused.

“Don’t tell me you’re having some change of heart. Not after all this.”

“No,” I said. “I’m just trying to digest the whole thing.”

Adam choked on a laugh. “Are you kidding me? You’re the only one who had any clue. Imagine how Paul fucking Strohman feels right now.”

“But I was wrong. It was Veronica, not David.” I thought about this, my mind racing. “What did you mean, David won’t say a word?”

“He refuses to talk. He won’t give a statement. No one’s heard him open his mouth since we brought him in.”

We, I thought. Since we brought him in. This is fucking surreal.

“Would Strohman consider dropping the charges against David in exchange for a statement?”

Adam’s face was a ghastly green in the glow of the dashboard. “That would be up to the DA, not Strohman. Besides, what makes you think Dentman would agree to that? He lied for his sister the first time around. I doubt he’ll be willing to toss her in the fire for some reduction in charges.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” I said. “Not exactly.”

He glanced at me. “What is it?”

“It’s just . . . I’m just thinking. Any chance you can get Strohman to feel out the DA?”

“About dropping Dentman’s charges in exchange for some incriminating confession against his sister?”

“Not a confession,” I corrected. “A statement. I don’t think Dentman’s got anything to confess.”

“Well,” he said, not without some brotherly con descension. “That’s certainly a change in your tune.” He turned the wheel, and the cruiser crawled onto Main Street. Ours were the only headlights on the street. “Anyway, if we’re talking first degree murder, the DA’s going to want someone to do jail time.”

“And it won’t be Veronica, will it?” I said.

“You’ve seen her, talked to her,” said Adam. “There’s not a jury on the planet who’ll put that woman in prison, no matter how gruesome the crime. Not that we even have a body,” he added sternly, as if this were somehow my fault. “Given her background, even a court-appointed defense lawyer will push for insanity and will probably get it. The only bars that woman will see will be on the windows of a sanitarium.”

I let this sink in.

“Do you think we’ll ever find out exactly what happened to Elijah?” I said as we pulled onto Waterview Court.

Adam seemed to chew on this for a second or two. “I can’t say. But we’re one step closer, aren’t we?”

The headlights pierced the darkness of our street. The streetlamps were out, and it was like driving along the floor of the deepest ocean.

“You scared the shit out of me that day on the lake,” Adam said out of nowhere. “When I saw you pick up that axe . . .”

“I scared myself,” I admitted, surprised by my own candor. “I just had to know.”

“How did you know?”

In my head, Althea Coulter spoke up: Nature does not know extinction. It knows that when life is snuffed out and the soul vacates the body, it must, by definition, go somewhere. And if you don’t believe in God or a god or in heaven and hell, then where do souls go?

“Ghosts,” I said as we came to a slow stop in the cul-de-sac. “Do you believe in them?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO