Floating Staircase(73)

“Go to hell.”

“You have no idea how you upset her. You have no idea what it was like trying to get her through that. You stupid motherf*cker, she loved that boy.”

“What about you? How’d you feel about him?”

“I don’t feel like answering any of your goddamn questions,” he snarled. “Wind up in one of your shitty books.”

“Tell me what you did to him.”

Again, Dentman stopped the truck—this time with more care. The pickup idled in the middle of the road, the engine ticking down around us, our mingling respiration fogging up the windshield. The residential lights I’d spotted, which I’d hoped would prove my salvation, were still too far away. Here, alone with a child killer, I was surrounded by trees, by shadows and darkness and night.

“Get out,” Dentman breathed. His eyes were small and a bit far apart but like two burning embers affixed to the carved stone face of an idol. His teeth were little and evenly spaced. He had thin lips that curled when he was angry.

“Was it an accident or did you do it on purpose?” I said. It was like listening to someone else using my voice. I couldn’t stop myself. “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe you panicked.”

“Yes,” he said. “Just like you wrote in your little notebook. Now get out of my truck.”

Not needing a third invitation, I popped the door handle and dumped myself out onto the ice-slicked blacktop. Held tightly to my chest were the crime scene photos and the notebook. The night was cold and damp, but my heart was racing, and I was sweating so profusely that I hardly noticed.

Dentman shut the truck down, then turned off the headlights. As he got out of the cab and came around the front of the vehicle, I was certain he was going to pull a handgun from his waistband and blow me away right here on the side of the road. I could easily imagine my blood staining the snow a deep crimson hue, the liberated crime scene photographs fluttering like tumbleweeds down the empty single-lane blacktop all the way into the next town.

He came up to me and grabbed my elbow. “Come on.” He tried to jerk me toward the shoulder of the road.

“Where are we going?”

“This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? The climax of your f*cking story? This is what the readers have been waiting for, right?”

I couldn’t stop my feet: they moved of their own will. Beside me, Dentman was huge, and it was like being ushered by a giant stone bell tower. He was breathing strenuously, and I could feel his heartbeat through the tightened grip of his palm around my elbow.

“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:





B


ERNARD


D


ENTMAN


The second:





E


LIJAH