Floating Staircase(92)

Strohman checked his notes. “His bedroom was in the basement, you said?”

“It was a room my father built a long time ago. Elijah liked it. He could hide in it, and it was dark and quiet. Veronica hated that he liked it, but she couldn’t get him to come out. Eventually we just moved his bed and the rest of his stuff down there.”

Strohman rubbed his forehead and looked like he was ready for a nap.

In the shadows toward the back of the interrogation room, the two uniformed policemen shifted soundlessly.

“Okay, David. So Veronica looks and she can’t find him. What did she do next? Did she just sit down on the stairs and wait for you to come home? Because that’s how you found her, correct?”

“No. I mean, yes, that’s how I found her. But that’s not . . . it didn’t happen like that.”

“Tell me how it happened.”

“She said she couldn’t remember it all. It went black for a while.”

Strohman asked him what that meant.

“One of her spells,” Dentman said. “She must have worked herself up real good and had one of her spells.”

“A blackout,” said Strohman. “Like, uh . . .” He snapped his fingers in rapid succession. “Like, hey, nobody’s home. Right?”

Strohman’s glibness about the whole situation stirred something inside David Dentman. Even from my vantage, I could see it simmering and kicking off white sparks just beneath the surface of his eyes.

He may not have killed Elijah, but those are the eyes of a cold-blooded killer, all right.

“Veronica didn’t know how long she’d been out,” Dentman went on, “but when she came to, Elijah was still gone. That’s when she sat down on the stairs and waited for me.”

“All right. So you come home. Then what?”

“Just like I said—just like she said. She told me what I’ve told you now.”

“And did you believe her? That the boy had just vanished into thin air?”

Dentman didn’t respond.

“Are you going to answer the question?”

“My sister, she’s very delicate.”

“I understand. We’ve been over that already. Are you going to answer my question?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Then what do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it was, it was an accident.”

“I think I know.” Dentman grinned. “Yeah?”

“These blackouts—”

“I know what you’re getting at. She didn’t do anything to deliberately hurt that child.”

“Okay. But accidentally, maybe—”

“Stop it. You’re putting words into my mouth. I didn’t say that.”

“Then tell me how we’ve got to this place. Tell me how we’re hearing this story from you now when back in the summer we heard a completely different one—that you’d been home watching the boy and that Veronica had been in bed with a headache. It’s obvious you concocted that to protect her at the time—you didn’t want her answering any direct questions, sure—but look where it’s gotten the both of you.”

Quick as a jackrabbit, Dentman stood. His chair went skidding backward on the floor, causing the two uniformed officers to fumble into one another in an attempt to catch it. His chained hands planted firmly on the tabletop, David looked about ready to spit fire.

At the opposite end of the table, Strohman could have been watching an old black-and-white movie on AMC.

“Down!” instructed one of the uniformed officers, clamping a hand around one of Dentman’s massive shoulders.

The second officer quickly shoved the chair against the backs of Dentman’s knees. “Sit down!”

Like a ship sinking into the ocean, Dentman slowly lowered himself down on the chair.

“Your temper calls into question everything you’re telling me,” Strohman said. “I’m beginning to think we’re all wasting our time here.”

“You wanted a f*cking statement. I gave you one.”

“What happened after you got home and your sister told you Elijah had disappeared? After you searched the house and couldn’t find him?”

“You want me to say it, don’t you? You’re going to make me say it.”

“Yes,” Strohman said, “I am.”

Dentman leaned closer to Strohman over the table and said, “I thought she might have hurt him real bad and that she hadn’t realized it.”

“Hurt him?”

“Killed him,” Dentman said. It was like an absolution.

At that moment, I realized I was holding my breath.

“I kept asking Veronica what she did, but she said she couldn’t remember, that she had blacked out while looking around for him. I asked her if it was possible something happened to him by the water. She just cried and said he’d hit his head. She said this over and over again, too. So I went down to the water. I called Elijah’s name. I searched the surrounding woods and then waded into the lake. I couldn’t find him . . . but I saw the blood on the step.”

“How long did you search for him?”

“A long time. Maybe thirty minutes. I couldn’t imagine where he’d gone. If he’d . . . if he’d gone under and gotten stuck somewhere, I had no way of knowing and no way of finding him, of pulling him out.”