Floating Staircase(83)

“What is this?” Dentman’s voice seemed to come from deep down in his chest. I could tell his sentiment echoed my brother’s, who remained silent.

“Sit down,” I told Dentman.

“Travis.” Adam had found his voice, weak as it was.

Dentman pulled out the empty chair and slowly lowered himself into it. Both his hands were in his lap and beneath the table, and a swimmy, unsettling thought crossed my mind—maybe he’d brought a gun. I was pretty certain Adam had his gun on him—even off duty, he typically carried it—but would he be able to pull it in time if Dentman decided to plant a bullet in my brain?

“What’s going on here, Travis?” Adam continued.

Dentman took Adam in. He must have assumed my brother was in on this, that we’d both come together to gang up on him.

“This is it,” I told them both, setting the cheese-yellow envelope on the tabletop. “This is what I found.” I turned to Adam. “You can do with it what you want, but I’m done after tonight.” Thinking of my marriage, I added, “I have to be.”

“I can see I made a mistake not filing those charges against you,” Dentman said. He was red faced and fuming.

Pushing the envelope in front of Adam, I tried to sound calm. “It was something you told me last month. You said murderers have motives, innocent people have alibis, and you can’t lock people up just because the pieces don’t fit.”

“Travis . . .” There was a stomach-weakening distress evident in Adam’s tone. With the sober perception of a clairvoyant, I knew I was breaking his heart.

“Open it,” I told him.

He picked up the envelope but didn’t open it right away.

Dentman adjusted himself in his seat, and I thought he was going to stand up and march right out of the bar. But he remained seated, and I could almost see the anger radiating off his scalp like steam from hot coals.

“Do it,” I urged Adam. “Go on.”

Adam slipped his thumb beneath the tape and ripped open the envelope. What slid out onto the tabletop was a stack of papers bound together by a metal clip. He fingered the first page, lifted it to see the printout underneath. “What am I looking at?”

“It’s the time and attendance records of the construction company where you work,” I said, speaking directly to Dentman. “You’ll notice the date on the top sheet is the same day Elijah supposedly drowned.” I leaned over and absently tapped the column I’d highlighted. “Those are Dentman’s hours.”

“Where’d you get this?” Adam said.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s all there.”

“I don’t have to sit here listening to this,” Dentman said, but he didn’t get up.

“You couldn’t have been at the house the day Elijah disappeared,” I went on, “because you were at work. You clocked out at a quarter after six. The job site was just over thirty miles away, so the earliest you could have gotten home was six thirty, and that’s if you were speeding. More like quarter to seven is my guess. Which would account for the delay in calling the police.”

“This is bullshit,” Dentman muttered, his teeth clenched.

“What’s bullshit is your statement to the police.” From my pocket I took the articles I’d torn from the library newspapers and unfolded them and set them on the table. “According to Nancy Stein’s statement, that scream she believed she heard happened around five thirty.”

“The sound of the boy falling off the staircase,” Adam said, studying the paperwork.

“Only it wasn’t,” I said. “I think the wail Nancy heard was actually Veronica Dentman down by the water.”

Dentman stood. “You son of a bitch.”

“You told me yourself that night in the cemetery that your sister was your sole responsibility and you wouldn’t let anything happen to her. That’s why you lied to the police. You were covering for her.”

Dentman’s chest was expanding, retracting, expanding, retracting. From across the table I could feel his hot breath in my face. “You don’t know nothing.”

I turned to my brother. “It’s all there in the paperwork.”

Very slowly, Adam set the printout down on the table. His face was white. He said nothing.

“I’m getting the f*ck out of here,” Dentman said, turning to leave.

“Stop,” Adam called after him.

Amazingly, Dentman froze in midstride. His hands were trembling, and his profile resembled something that might have been on the bow of a pirate ship.

“Is this true?” Adam asked him.

“Fuck you. I didn’t have to come out here.”

“Will you sit down, please?”

“I don’t have to answer your goddamn questions.”

Adam stood. “I need you to come to the station with me, Mr. Dentman.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“I’m not asking. We’re going to the station.”

“I want him in jail,” Dentman said, glaring at me. His eyes were slits cut into the ruddy fabric of his face. “I want the son of a bitch arrested for harassment.”

Gathering up the paperwork from the table, I stood and said, “Fine. Let’s all go downtown.”