Floating Staircase

by Ronald Malfi

  “He was autistic,” I said.

  David grunted.

  “Your nephew. He was autistic, wasn’t he?”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Is that why you killed him? Because he was different and you didn’t understand him? Maybe he frightened you a little, too.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You may have fooled the police but you didn’t—”

  Dentman yanked my arm back, nearly dislocating it at the shoulder.

  I stumbled and almost spilled the notebook and photos to the ground.

  Still gripping my elbow, he swung me around until I was staring directly at him. “You . . . shut . . . up,” he breathed.

  My mind rattled with things to say, none of them strong enough for the moment.

  We crested a snowy embankment and slipped beneath a canopy of trees. The moon was blotted out almost altogether. I paused only once, more than certain of my own impending doom, but Dentman jerked me forward, and I clumsily continued to follow. We crossed through a shallow grove of trees that emptied into a vast clearing covered by sinister ground fog. I was surprised (and relieved) to see more lights ahead. In front of us stood what must have been a ten-foot-tall wrought iron fence. Beyond the fence, the dorsal fin crescents of tombstones rose from the rolling black lawn.

  A cemetery.

  “Come on,” Dentman urged, letting go of my arm and moving along the length of the fence.

  I watched him lead for some time, his enormous head slumping like a broken puppet’s, before following. We came to a small gravel driveway that wound through an opening in the cemetery gate. Without waiting for me, Dentman passed through the entrance and continued to advance up the slight incline of the cemetery grounds, passing granite botonées like mile markers.

  I pursued the hulking behemoth, suddenly less apprehensive of my own safety. Curiosity drove me now. Curiosity and finality. I walked across the cemetery lawns, the frigidity of the air finally driving its point home. My breath was sour and raspy. I could sense my pulse throbbing beneath the palms of my hands. We passed a large mausoleum and beyond that several grave markers fashioned to look like stars and stone angels. Now trying to keep up, I hurried down a gradual slope and saw him stop beneath a great oak tree at the far end of the cemetery grounds. He stood looking down, half leaning against the wrought iron gate. For all I knew, he could have forgotten all about me.

  Solemn was my approach. Strong wind rattled the bare branches of the oak. What sat before us were two headstones with two different names on them. The first:

  BERNARD DENTMAN

  The second:

  ELIJAH DENTMAN

  BELOVED SON AND NEPHEW

  Along with their respective dates.

  “I’m not a smart man, Glasgow. I don’t write books, and I don’t wear a suit and tie to work. But I’m not an imbecile, either. I know you. You’re the type of person thinks they can get away with any damn thing they want. Any damn thing in the world. You think this whole fucking universe would just crumble to pieces if you didn’t exist to keep it all together.”

  “I don’t.”

  “That’s bullshit. See, you been asking about me. But I been asking about you.” He sprung at me, causing a moan to escape my lips. Again, he spun me around, and looked at the fresh granite tombstone, still too new to be overgrown with vines and weeds. Beloved Son and Nephew.

  I felt a fist strike the small of my back. Wincing, I dropped my notebook and the crime scene photos. The wind was quick to gather up the photos and bully them across the cemetery grounds.

  “You’re kneeling on my nephew’s grave. I’m trying to instill a little humility in you, a little reverence. You ever have to bury an empty coffin?”

  “Get . . . off me . . .”

  “All your writings about ghosts and murders and dead children,” he said at my back, his voice trailing in the wind. He could have been shouting ten stories above me for all the difference it made. “Go on. Ask the grave whatever ghostly questions you got, you motherfucker. Ask it.”

  Twisting in his grasp, I told him again to get the fuck off me.

  He didn’t. “I can’t have you sniffing around in my family’s business. My sister ain’t strong enough, and I won’t let you torment her anymore.” His head just over my shoulder, I could feel his hot breath crawling down the nape of my neck. “See,” he practically whispered, his mouth nearly brushing my ear now, “my father was a rotten, miserable son of a bitch who caused more harm than anyone should ever have to endure. I took my sister away from him and raised her. Until I die, she will be my sole responsibility. Until I die. Ain’t no one gonna hurt her. Especially you. She’s my sister and I love her, no matter what.”

  I managed to turn and look at him. His eyes were the eyes of a wolf—hungry, desperate, wild. “I’ve already told the cops about you. My brother’s a cop. He knows what I’ve been up to. You kill me, they’ll catch you this time.”

  Dentman grasped my right wrist. His face was nearly on top of my own, his breath reeking. There was a complete absence of expression on his face—no smile, no bared teeth. Just a set face, set mouth, clenched jaw.

  In a futile attempt to wrench my wrist free, I lost my balance and cracked the side of my head smartly against Elijah’s gravestone. Instantly, capering swirls exploded in front of my eyes, and I felt the world tilt to one side. I thought of fireworks and a filmstrip slipping in the grooves of a projector. Blindly, I began clawing at the front of Dentman’s shirt.

  With seemingly little effort, Dentman pinned my right hand to the ground while stepping on my wrist with his booted foot. “You stupid bastard. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already.”

  He brought down his fist on my face. Eye-watering pain blossomed from my nose and spread out across my face, rattling like a rusty shopping cart with crippled casters through my head. I hardly cared about struggling free at that moment. I just prayed my death would be swift and painless. All I could do was cringe in anticipation of the next punch.

  But it did not come. Instead, Dentman grabbed my hands and dragged my body about two feet to the left of the gravestone and allowed me to roll over on my side.

  I inhaled a deep swallow of air. It hurt my lungs, my chest. I still couldn’t open my eyes, still couldn’t bring myself to do it until I caught my breath. I was aware of Dentman’s hulking shape above me, and I imagined him withdrawing that same imaginary handgun I’d dreamt up from before and plugging me once, assassin style, in the head.

  Finally, I opened my eyes and rolled over on my back. Coughing. Sputtering. My vision was still blurred, but I managed to turn my head and seek out my attacker.

  His face stoic and unreadable, Dentman moved away from me like an out-of-breath hunter admiring his catch.

  “What the hell are you going to do to me?” We say such pitiful things in our final moments of desperation.

  Dentman sneered. “Jesus fuck, boy. You’re pathetic. Look at you.”

  “You can’t kill me.”

  “Piece of shit.” Kneeling down beside me, he gripped my wrists again.

  Peripherally, I caught a glint of moonlight on metal, then heard a sound like pocket change being jangled. When I looked up, I saw he’d handcuffed me to the fucking iron fence. “You can’t leave me out here. I’ll freeze to death.”

  David’s enormous shoulders heaved with every breath. I could see vapor trails rising like steam from each nostril like a bull. He spat on me, turned, and sauntered away.

  I listened to his heavy boots crunch through the snow. With my head still spinning, I sat up and watched him leave. Once he passed through the trees and into the darkness, disappearing from sight, I nearly forgot what he looked like.

  I think I’m going to pass out, I thought. I think I’m going to pass out. I think I’m going to—

  Darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A slight and indistinct form crept beside me without maki
ng a sound. Weightless, it climbed onto my chest. Hot breath fell across my forehead. I felt its tongue lap up the tears that were searing hot ruts down the sides of my face.

  —Kyle, I said.

  No answer.

  When I finally came to, the sun was just beginning to crest through the cemetery trees. It hit my eyes in that perfect way only the sun knows how to do, and I winced and turned my head, suddenly unsure of my surroundings. Sunlight caused the trees to bleed and the snow-covered hills to radiate like a thousand Octobers. I could make out a distant church, its spire like the twist of a conch shell against the pale sky.

  Struggling to sit up, a nauseating wave of dizziness filtered into my brain. I tried to bring my right arm up but couldn’t—I was still handcuffed to the fence. Tenderly, I touched the side of my head with my free hand. Winced again. The bump there felt like a softball pushing its way through the side of my skull.

  The events of last night rushed back to me in a suffocating whirlwind. I glanced at my left hand and found it was sticky with blood. A sizeable gash bisected my palm. Somehow, in the jumble of events, I’d sliced it open pretty nicely. The fingertips were blue.

  Then I realized how badly I was shaking. I couldn’t calm myself, couldn’t get warm, and figured I must have been out here lying in the snow for at least five or six hours.

  My head was woozy, and I probably had a slight concussion. The blood from my injured hand had dried in the night, running in bright red parade streamers from my wrist down the length of my arm to the crease of my elbow and into the snow. I looked like I’d just gutted a pig.

  “Fuck . . .”

  The sound of my own voice sent shards of broken glass into the soft gray matter of my brain.

  Voices: I heard voices then, coming from afar. I caught movement through the trees and watched three people advancing toward me. As they drew nearer, I realized two of them were police officers in uniform. The third person I assumed to be the cemetery groundskeeper.

  The three men paused a few feet in front of me. I spied my notebook in the snow next to one of their shiny black shoes.

  “Hey,” said the taller officer. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “I’m fucking freezing,” I chattered.

  The groundskeeper pointed in my direction. He was a fat little shrew with atrocious teeth, a character in a Dickens novel. “See that? See his hand? I said he was chained up, didn’t I?”

  “My n-n-name’s T-T-Trav—”

  “I know who you are.” The taller cop, it turned out, was Douglas Cordova, my brother’s partner whom I’d met at the Christmas party. In his unblemished uniform and with his square jaw and jade-green eyes, he could have marched straight out of a recruiting poster. To the other officer, Cordova said, “Unhook him.”

  The second officer dropped to one knee in the snow while fumbling around on his belt for his handcuff key. Less intimidating than Cordova, this guy had a slack, sleepy-dog face, and his chin was minimal and abbreviated, giving his profile an overall unfinished look. His nameplate said Freers.

  “You need an ambulance or anything?” Freers said too close to my face. His breath smelled of onions.

  “No.”

  “You’re bleeding, you know.”

  I glanced at my lacerated palm.

  “I meant your face,” said Freers, standing.

  On shaky knees, I climbed to my feet and steadied myself against the large oak tree. My jeans cracked audibly, frozen stiff to my legs. Had I not been wearing my coat, I surely wouldn’t have made it through the night.

  “Who did this to you?” Cordova said. He had one hand on the groundskeeper’s shoulder, and they looked like mismatched football players about to form a huddle to discuss the next play.

  “David D-D-Dentman,” I said.

  Cordova did not alter his expression. “Okay,” he said, turning to his partner, “let’s get him in the car before he turns into a Popsicle.”

  Freers took me by the forearm and led me around the tombstones.

  “Wait.” I paused to pick up my notebook from the ground. Glancing around, I tried to see if I could spot any of Earl’s crime scene photos, but they were gone.

  “That there’s littering,” barked the groundskeeper. Pointing at the notebook in my hand, he said, “There’s a fine to pay for littering.”

  “No one’s littering,” Cordova assured him, his hand still on the smaller man’s shoulder.

  “There’s a fine,” he repeated, though his tone was much less stern.

  “Come on,” Cordova said, saddling up beside me and placing a couple of fingers at the base of my spine.

  “I think I can manage, thanks,” I said.

  “This is trespassing, too,” said the groundskeeper as we trailed out of the cemetery and down the gravel drive toward the road. The police car sat there waiting. “Trespassing!”

  “Don’t mind him,” Cordova said close to my ear.

  “Watch the skull bone,” murmured Freers as he unlocked the back door of the cruiser and helped me inside. Across the roof of the car he called out to Cordova, “Pump the heat up for this guy, will ya?”

  Doors slammed. Cordova negotiated his big bulk behind the steering wheel while Freers reclined in the passenger seat. Cordova cranked the heat, and despite my frozen state, I began to sweat into my shoes.

  “You okay back there, Travis?” Cordova asked.

  “Feel the heat?”

  Not trusting my lips to form words, I simply nodded repeatedly at his reflection in the rearview mirror.

  My head pounding like a calypso drum, I watched the landscape of Westlake shuttle by the windows. The string of shops, the collection of little whitewashed two-story homes, the parade of vehicles filing through the streets. We went by Waterview Court.

  “You missed my street,” I said through the holes in the Plexiglas partition.

  “We’re not taking you home,” said Cordova.

  “Where are we going?”

  Freers leaned over to Cordova, peering at me from the corner of one eye. “Maybe we should take him to the hospital first. He’s shaking like a tambourine.”

  “We can take him after,” Cordova said.

  “I asked where you were taking me.”

  Cordova’s eyes blazed in the rearview mirror. “Down to the station. Strohman wants to talk to you.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Should you be?” said Freers, turning around and grinning at me like an imbecile.

  Decidedly, I did not like Officer Freers.

  Paul Strohman’s office was a square cell of cinder blocks painted the color of bad beer. There were no photographs or awards on the walls, and aside from an oversized coffee mug and a telephone, the top of Strohman’s slouching wooden desk was bare as well. A single inlaid window, roughly the dimensions of a collegiate dictionary, was seated in the wall above the desk, the pane reinforced with wire. Had it not been for the stenciling on the pebbled glass of the office door—Paul J. Strohman, Chief—I would have thought this was one of the interrogation rooms.

  Strohman was handsomer in person. Tall and solid, with good hair and well-defined features, the chief of police exuded an indistinct celebrity quality. He wore a white dress shirt with no tie, the sleeves cuffed nearly to his elbows, and charcoal slacks with pleats. He was leaning back in a rickety wooden chair, the telephone to one ear, when Cordova nudged me through the door.

  Beforehand, Cordova had suggested I wash up in the men’s room at the end of the hall. He handed me a grubby-looking towel and a sliver of soap flecked with pebbly granules, which told me it needed a good washing of its own. As I washed the dried blood from my palm and my arm, along with the streamer of red ribbon that had trailed from my left nostril and down over my lips and chin, I heard Cordova and Freers murmuring in the hallway outside the door. Their communication was brusque. I made out only bits and pieces, though I was certain I heard Adam’s name mentioned. Leaning closer to the streaked and spotted mirror, I daubed at the
shiny new bruise on the edge of my forehead.

  Now, as Strohman’s door closed behind me, I wasn’t necessarily a new man, though at least I felt less like some vagrant who’d been picked up for loitering.

  “Okay,” Strohman said into the receiver. He motioned toward the only other chair in the office, which faced his desk. “Thanks, Rich . . . Yeah, no problem. Sure . . . Say hello to Maureen for me . . . Right. You, too.”

  I sat in the chair as Strohman hung up the phone. Still clutching the notebook to my chest, both my feet placed firmly on the floor, I had a sudden flashback of my interrogation with Detective Wren twenty years ago—how I’d sat shivering on a bench along the river, a towel draped over my scrawny shoulders as I sobbed and explained as best I was able what had happened. Summer crickets popped in the tall grass like popcorn, and clouds of gnats covered my ears. Detective Wren had leaned in close to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and talked very low and very lethargic. I could tell that it was difficult for him to speak quietly, even with ample training in the art, so I was sure it was a taxing exercise for him.

  “Travis,” said Strohman, “I’m Paul. I’m the chief down here. I work with your brother.”

  “I know who you are.”

  He seemed unfazed. “Nice shiner you got there.”

  “You should see the other guy.”

  “Right.” I felt him take in not only the discolored bit of fruit swelling from my forehead but also the mud-streaked condition of my clothes, the knotted tangles of my hair. Scooping up the telephone, he punched three digits on the keypad. “Hey, Mae, bring us some coffee in here, will ya? Thanks.” Then he hung up. “Looks like you could use some.”

  “Why’d you want me brought here? How do you know who I am?”

  “Because I spent yesterday morning talking David Dentman out of filing harassment charges against you,” Strohman said evenly.

  My laugh sounded like the caw of some strange bird. “You’ve got to be kidding. Me?” Although it hurt to do so, I tapped the shiny knob at my forehead with two fingers. “He hit me so hard I think he left his DNA in my skull.”