Floating Staircase(29)

According to David Dentman, the boy’s uncle, Elijah had been swimming in the lake that afternoon and playing on the floating staircase while David watched him from the living room window and Elijah’s mother slept upstairs. When it began to get dark, David looked up to find Elijah gone. He rushed down to the lake and called for Elijah, but the boy did not answer. He waded out into the lake, still shouting the boy’s name, but to no avail. Panic apparently set in when David noticed what appeared to be blood on one of the wooden stairs of the floating staircase. He hurried back to the house and phoned the police.

The cops executed a cursory search of the lakeside and the surrounding woods. They also interviewed neighbors, and there was a quote from Nancy Stein in the article that corroborated David Dentman’s story: she’d been out walking her dog and saw Elijah playing on the floating staircase. Then later that afternoon she heard what she thought to be a sharp scream by the water. Nancy Stein hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, of course, but now . . .

By the time I read to the end of the article, I felt as though I’d been punched in the stomach, for there was one bit of crucial information Adam had neglected to tell me after the Christmas party at his house: Elijah’s body had never been found. The Westlake Police Department had sent a scuba unit into the lake but did not find Elijah. According to the chief of police, the lake was deep during the summer months, and with all the rain they had been having, the sediment at the bottom was churned up, making visibility difficult. They continued to dredge the lake all evening and well into the following morning, but they never found the boy. They never found the boy.

The final determination was located on the front page of the following week’s paper. Police deduced that the boy had fallen off the staircase and struck his head on one of the stairs, knocking himself unconscious and ultimately drowning. DNA proved the blood on the stair was, in fact, his. The scream Nancy Stein allegedly heard had most likely been Elijah as he fell off the staircase before he struck his head on the step. And just like that the case was closed.

I read and reread the article, unable to comprehend it. The lake was large, sure, but it was a self-contained body of water. How had they been unable to find a body? Had the kid fallen in and been swept away that quickly? It made no sense.

“Brought you some coffee, anyway,” Sheila said, causing me to launch out of my skin. Deep in concentration, I hadn’t even heard the door open. Sheila set down a Styrofoam cup on the table beside the newspapers. Peering over my shoulder, she examined the headline, then shook her head as if gravely disappointed. “I remember that. A horrible tragedy.”

“They never found the body,” I said, my voice paper-thin and incredulous.

“Always such a tragedy when something like that happens to a person so young.” Then she frowned, her face collapsing in a cavalcade of wrinkles. “Why would you want to read about such a terrible thing?”

“My wife and I just moved to town, and I heard about what had happened.” I offered her a wan smile. “I guess I was just curious.”

“A young man like you shouldn’t be curious about such morbidity. You should be thinking about football and fishing and spending time with your wife.”

“I’m a horror writer. Morbid curiosity is my bread and butter, Sheila,” I confessed, picking up the cup of coffee and taking a sip.

She beamed like a proud mother at my use of her name. “So, what do you write? Short stories?”

“Novels.”

“Really? That’s fantastic! Have any of them been published?”

“All of them.” I’ve always hated this question.

“Well! Would we have any here at the library, then?”

“In fact, you’ve got one of my books right out there on the shelf. Filed under G for Glasgow.” I suddenly wanted to get rid of her and figured this might be the way to do it.

“Now isn’t that something? Glasgow, did you say? Like the city in Scotland?”

“The very same.”

Sheila’s smile grew so wide I thought it might just cleave her face in half. “Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to find the book and have you autograph it. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll put up a nice little local author carousel by the front doors.” She clasped her hands against her bosom. “It’s like having a celebrity in the neighborhood.”

As Sheila scuttled off, I replaced the yellow legal pad on the wall peg. Before leaving, however, I surrendered to a sudden compulsion and flipped back to the newspaper articles about Elijah Dentman. Casting a cursory glance over one shoulder, I tore the pages out of the newspapers and hastily folded them into the back pocket of my jeans.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me they never found Elijah Dentman’s body?”

It was Adam’s day off, and we were sitting at the bar at Tequila Mockingbird, plowing through beers. The ‘Bird, as it was known to the regulars, was a gloomy, rustic pub, with smoked brick walls and floorboards as warped as the nightmares of a madman. A splintered bar clung to one wall and faced an arrangement of circular tables. An old jukebox collected dust beside the restroom door, and exposed ceiling joists, all blackened and unreliable, spoke of past grease fires gone horribly out of control. With all its ghosts and vapors, it was no different than every other small-town bar throughout America.