Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

In the interrogation room, Strohman closed his notebook.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Adam dropped me off that evening. Weakened, spiritually fatigued, I entered the house with no greater designs other than to crawl beneath the stream of a warm shower and wash the tiredness from my marrow.

Jodie was standing at the foot of the stairs, half-cloaked in shadow.

The look on her face immediately froze my blood. “What?”

“I think . . .” She looked around—a blind child suddenly given the gift of sight. “I think . . . someone was in the house.”

“What are you talking about? Were you asleep?”

“Yes. But noises woke me. Thumping noises. Like an animal in the attic or trapped behind the wall. I got out of bed to see what it was. I thought maybe you’d come home and I hadn’t heard the front door. So I called your name.” I watched as a chill zigzagged through her. “Oh, Jesus.”

“What? Jodie . . .”

“I called your name, and then I heard someone run across the living room and slam the front door.”

“Babe.” I went to her, embraced her. “You were dreaming.”

“No. I was awake.”

“There’s no one here. I just unlocked the door now. It was locked.”

“Are you sure?”

“I swear it.”

“Jesus.” She laughed nervously against my collarbone. “Oh, Jesus.”

In the morning, Adam showed up with a document for me to sign. It looked very official and said Consent to Search at the top. “Strohman wants your permission for us to dig up your lawn once the ground thaws a bit.”

“He thinks Elijah’s buried in the yard?”

“He thinks if David Dentman could brainwash his sister so easily to lie to the police the first time, what’s to say any of what was said last night was the truth.”

“Are you serious?”

He handed me the consent form and a pen. It was serious, all right.

“They’ve both been charged.”

“With lying to the cops?”

“With murder,” Adam said. “David’s still at the station. He’s being charged as an accessory. Veronica’s being shipped to a hospital over in Cumberland this afternoon. She’s been practically catatonic all night.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What is it? You look sick.”

Truth was, I felt sick. “It feels wrong.”

Taking the signed form from me, Adam folded it in halves, then slipped it into the back pocket of his chinos. “Vindication’s a little harsher than you’d hoped, huh?” He went to the door.

“Hey, you really think they’re going to find the body buried in the yard?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Adam said and left.

I called Earl and told him everything I knew. He would be the first to break the story.

“What do you do now?” he asked me after I’d given him all I had.

“Nothing,” I told him. “My part in this is over.”

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.