Floating Staircase(69)

Adam would not look at the picture.

“Then there’s this one,” I went on anyway, turning to the shot of Veronica and her blank stare. “She’s looking toward the lake in this shot, probably just catching the photographer as he snaps the picture. It’s evident the photographer’s down by the water shooting up at her. You can tell by the angle, and if you’d walked the perimeter of the lake and glanced toward my house—”

“Travis . . .”

“Just look at them.” I turned both photographs around so that he could view them right side up. But he didn’t look down.

Eerily calm, my brother said, “I don’t believe this. I swear to God I don’t believe this.” He regarded me with such abject disappointment, it was all I could do not to get up and flee from his house like a crazy person. “When I opened the door a minute ago, I guess I had some hope that you’d come to your senses and were here to see your wife.”

“You’re missing the point. Look at the photos. Look at the trees.”

“I don’t—”

“Just look at them, damn it!”

Tiny beads of perspiration had popped out along Adam’s upper lip. Finally, he looked at the photos on his kitchen table. He said nothing, waiting for me to continue.

I said, “What do you notice?”

“About the trees?”

“Yes. What do you notice?”

“I see . . . I see trees.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right. Trees. A ton of them. A goddamn shitload. It’s the middle of summer, and the whole goddamn yard is infused with trees.”

“Your point being?”

“My point being David Dentman’s statement to the police is bullshit. He said he was watching the boy swim in the lake that day from the house. It’s his eyewitness testimony that claims when he could no longer see the boy, he ran down to the lake to find him. That’s when he noticed he was gone.” Again, I tapped both pictures. “But that’s bullshit. You can’t see the back of the f*cking house through the trees, which means you can’t see the goddamn staircase from the house. You can hardly even tell there’s a lake back there in the summer, I’ll bet.”

Adam scowled. “What are you talking about? I’ve seen it from your house. You and Jodie marveled about the lake the day you moved in. You can see it out your bedroom window.”

“Sure,” I said, nodding. “In the winter. And even then you have to look through a meshwork of tree branches. When spring comes and those branches fill up with leaves, you probably can’t see a single drop of water from my bedroom window. Or any other window of the house.”

Adam sighed and leaned back in his chair. I couldn’t tell if he was working over what I’d just told him or if he was about to tell me to get the hell out of his house. His expression was unreadable.

“You were there that day.” I pushed the photo of the cops closer to him across the table. “You couldn’t see the house through those trees, could you?”

“You’re asking me to remember trees?”

“Christ, why are you being so obstinate about this? It’s not just about the f*cking trees; it’s about what Dentman said.”

“So this makes David Dentman a liar,” he stated.

“It does.”

“Irrefutably?”

“W-well, sure,” I stammered, trying to think of any holes in the story before Adam could point them out. “He lied to cover up what really happened.”

Adam folded his arms across his chest. “So what really happened?”

I slumped against the chair. “I’m not exactly sure. I mean, I haven’t worked everything out in my head . . . just a . . . a . . .”

“Just what?” That classic Adam Glasgow condescension was in his voice, an uneasy serenity in the face of all I’d just showed him. At that moment I realized that I would never stop feeling like his younger brother—his subordinate, his weak and guilty little brother.

“You’re refusing to put the pieces together.” I slammed one hand down on the table. The photographs fluttered.

“Don’t do that,” he said, glancing at my hand.

“David Dentman has a criminal record,” I trucked on, ignoring him. “David Dentman lied in his statement to the police. Elijah Dentman’s body was never recovered from a goddamn self-enclosed lake!”

Adam breathed heavily through flared nostrils. I found myself temporarily mesmerized by the pores in his nose and the dark sheen of beard that looked painted along his jawline. I couldn’t pull my gaze from him.

“So David Dentman killed his nephew,” said my brother.

“Yes.”

“And these pictures are your proof of that? These”—he gestured at the photographs—”trees? A confused and heartbroken man’s statement taken in the midst of searching for his nephew’s corpse?”

“I know what it sounds like,” I admonished. “But it doesn’t change the fact that—”

“Man, there are no facts.” Adam shocked me by reaching across the table and covering one of my hands with his own. Tenderly.

I fought the electric urge to buck backward as if injured.

“Listen to me, okay? We’ve investigated the matter. It’s not unusual for divers to come up empty, even in what you call a self-enclosed body of water. Do you have any idea how big that lake is? Do you know how many boles or submerged deadfalls or rock formations are on the floor of the lake? How many rocky caves and underground tributaries going out to a hundred rivers? All those places where a body can get lost, get trapped. Forever.” He shrugged. It was a hopeless gesture. “As for these photos, David Dentman says he saw the kid by the lake. Who’s to say he didn’t? And Nancy Stein saw him. Is she a liar, too?”