THE WORD OF A CHILD Page 3

  The only one who seemed to hear her was Detective McLean, whose mask slipped briefly to reveal a flash of—what? Compassion? Some inner anguish?

  Or was it pity, because twice she had been fooled by monsters who walked as men?

  The next moment he looked back at Gerald Tanner and said in that quiet, steadying voice, "Mr. Tanner, I have every intention of hearing your side. Teenagers do make up stories like this. You will not be railroaded, I promise."

  Mariah stood up and left, not caring whether the principal would be annoyed.

  God help her, she would never look at Gerald Tanner again without hearing the whisper of doubt.

  Already those doubts murmured in her ear as she made her way blindly through the office and out the double doors to the parking lot.

  But the ones that were not content to murmur, that clawed deep, had nothing to do with a high school computer teacher. Always, always, they had to do with Simon, the man she had loved.

  If he had done what they said—of course he hadn't, but if he had—would he one day touch Zofie in a way no father should?

  She got into her car, locked the door and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She tasted the salt of her own tears.

  "What else could I do?" she asked aloud, and didn't even know if she was talking about Simon or Gerald Tanner.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  Connor took a long swallow of beer and announced, "I'm starting to hate my job."

  He and his brothers, policemen all, had gathered for their traditional weekly dinner and couple of beers at John's. John was the only one of them with children and a wife, which meant the sofa coordinated with the leather chair and the Persian rug, the kitchen table wasn't covered with old pizza boxes and takeout Chinese cartons, and instead of an overflowing hamper, the bathroom had clean, matching towels and, tonight, even flowers in a stoneware vase.

  Connor was beginning to think a life of domestic happiness didn't look so bad. Not that he had any prospects for marriage, but … hell, he could buy a house. A man didn't need a wife for that.

  Right now, the three were slouched in the living room. Natalie, John's wife, had shooed them out of the kitchen and insisted that she and their mother would clean up. The kids were doing homework upstairs. Whether Mom was here or not, somehow Natalie always managed to give the brothers time to talk. After finishing in the kitchen, Mom usually left, while Natalie was likely to pop in long enough to kiss their cheeks and wish them good-night, exchange a slow, deep look with her new husband, and disappear upstairs to read in bed. And wait for John, who would start getting antsy in an hour or so. Who could blame him, with a luscious woman like Natalie waiting?

  Even the idea of a wife wasn't sounding so bad to Connor. Must be a symptom of age, he figured; his thirtieth birthday had come and gone.

  His comment about his job still hung in the air when his mother appeared in the doorway. Voice sharp, she said, "Don't say things you don't mean. You sound like a teenager, making too much of some little complaint."

  Surprised by her agitation, Connor raised his brow. "How do you know it's a little complaint?"

  In the act of snatching up a coffee mug left on the end table, she demanded, "Well, isn't it?"

  He shrugged. "Just a case I was going to tell Hugh and John about."

  "Hardly your 'job,' then," she chided him. A regal, fine-boned woman, Ivy McLean departed for the kitchen.

  After a moment of silence during which none of the brothers moved, Connor cleared his throat. "What's with Mom?"

  John gave him a look. "You know how important she thinks our work is. You aren't supposed to bitch. You don't have a job," he said dryly. "You have a calling."

  "We're making the streets safe, et cetera, et cetera," Hugh added.

  Connor grunted. As a kid, he hadn't been conscious of pressure from Mom to become a cop, the way John claimed to. He'd become one because his big brother had. There was no question, however, that Mom was proud of the fact all three sons were in law enforcement. And maybe she had no understanding of the need to grumble. A stoic herself, she had raised her three sons alone with grit and without whining.

  John gave himself a shake. "Back to your job. Why are you starting to hate it?"

  Hugh, the youngest and best-looking of the three McLean brothers, slumped lower in his chair. "It's that fuzzy, did-he-or-didn't-he crap," he announced. "Here's free advice—go back on patrol. Do some real police work."

  John grabbed an empty and tossed it, connecting with Hugh's chest. "You don't think raping a thirteen-year-old is a crime? Arresting a rapist isn't real police work?"

  Unoffended, Hugh crumpled the can in one hand. "I listen to Connor. These cases aren't clear-cut. This one with the schoolkid isn't a rape, it's a … jeez, I don't know." He gestured vaguely.

  "A knife at the throat isn't the only kind of force," Connor said. "The power an adult—and at that a teacher, a figure of authority—wields over a kid is considerable."

  "I know that. I'm not excusing it. I'm just saying, you may never know who's lying. Don't you ever hunger for a good, old-fashioned shooting at a convenience store?"

  Connor grunted. "Maybe."

  "Maybe" wasn't the real answer; "no" was. Sometimes he wasn't sure he was cut out to be a cop at all. Going back into uniform didn't appeal, and he wasn't sure investigating murders or arson or bank robberies as a Major Crimes Unit detective like John would make his view of the world any sunnier.

  He was a cop, he was good at his job, and what else would he do? Until recently he'd never questioned any of the above, but lately he had felt restless. No, worse than that: he saw himself for the home wrecker he was.

  Today, he'd seen it in Mariah Stavig's eyes. She hated him for what he had done to her family. And the little girl Simon Stavig had supposedly molested? She was probably still in counseling. She'd probably have hang-ups her entire life, and he, Detective Connor McLean, had done jack for her.

  John got the conversation back on the track. "Something getting to you about this case?"

  Connor rolled his beer can between his palms. "Just a weird coincidence."

  They waited.

  He told them about Mariah Stavig, the teacher the girl had chosen to confide in, and how he had investigated her husband three years before.

  "Her face was familiar so I looked up the file." He continued his story. "The case was ugly. A three-year-old girl who said Simon Stavig molested her, but without corroborating evidence we were never able to arrest him."

  John studied him thoughtfully. "But you think he did it."

  "Oh, yeah." Connor shook his head in disgust. "He was one of those guys who got seriously pissed because we'd come knocking on his door. He wasn't shocked, the way you'd expect. I mean, wouldn't you be stunned if you were accused by some friend of Maddie's? Nah, this guy wasn't surprised. He was angry that we'd take the word of a kid that age."

  John grunted. "This Mariah Stavig is still married to him?"

  "I don't know. Now, she was shocked. I can still see her standing there waiting for her husband to say, 'I didn't do it.' Getting more anxious by the minute when he didn't. Big eyes, you know." They were a mixture of green and brown that might make a poetic man think of the mossy floor of the rain forest. Not that he was poetic. "She was scared and puzzled. Even she recognized that his reaction wasn't right."

  "And now she had to call you to investigate some other guy."

  "Yup." Another swallow of beer seemed appropriate. Tonight he almost regretted that he wasn't really a drinking man; the two or three beers that were his limit didn't do much to drown the mocking voice that had lately been asking what good he was to the world. Irritably muting it, Connor said, "And she was damned upset when she saw that the luck of the draw had brought me."

  "She blames you."

  Connor shrugged. "Probably."

  They all sat in silence for a moment. The syndrome was familiar to them all. The battered wife called the
cops, then was angry at the one who responded for making her husband madder, for jailing him, for letting the neighbors see the trouble behind the facade of her happy home. The storekeeper didn't blame the punks who robbed him, he blamed the cops who offered inadequate protection, who couldn't make an arrest. People called the police reluctantly, then saw the officers who responded not as saviors but as symbols of whatever bad thing had happened.

  "You going to beg off the case?" Hugh asked.

  Connor frowned. He'd considered it. He couldn't exactly be said to have a conflict of interest, but certainly this investigation would be hindered by Mariah Stavig's hostility. On the other hand, Port Dare was small enough that he often encountered people he knew. The sexual crimes unit was all of two officers strong. Penny Kincaid had plenty to do without taking on a call that had been his by rotation.

  Besides, he was already hooked. He wanted to find out whether Tracy Mitchell was lying and why. And he wondered what had happened to Mariah Stavig in the three years since the case against her husband had been dropped. Despite her bewilderment at Stavig's strange reaction to the investigation, had she maintained faith in her husband? Did she trust him with their pretty little girl? Or had she left the son of a bitch, and now had her struggles as a single mom to blame as well on the cop and social worker who'd come a'knocking with an unprovable accusation?

  "Nah," he said, with another shrug that expressed more indifference than he felt. "She called us. She'll cooperate."

  Hugh was apparently satisfied. He laid his head back and gazed dreamily at a wall of books.

  Big brother John, however, studied Connor with slightly narrowed eyes. "Reluctant cooperation from her is going to eat at you, isn't it?"

  Connor pretended surprise and ignorance. "Why would it bother me?"

  "Could be I'm wrong." John's gaze stayed unnervingly steady. "But I don't think so."

  Connor swore. "I don't know what you're talking about." He, too, crushed his beer can in his hand, getting more profane when a jagged edge bit into his palm.

  "Sorry." John didn't sound repentant. He did, however, switch his gaze to his youngest brother. "So, what's with this blonde you're seeing?"

  Nothing was with her, Connor could have told him. She'd go the way of all the other petite blondes their baby brother dated. Hearth and home did not yet interest him.

  Truthfully Connor had a hard time imagining Hugh ever letting himself be vulnerable enough to experience anything approaching true love. Even with his brothers, he backed off from expressing emotion or admitting weakness. John thought Hugh had been hit hardest by their father's murder; Connor privately thought the opposite, that Hugh had been young enough to be oblivious to much of their mother's agony and to what he himself had lost.

  Either way, Hugh did more than avoid commitment; he made sure the issue never had a chance to arise. He'd been damn near raised by his big brothers. Hell, maybe he wasn't capable of softer emotions. A man was what he'd learned to be. Honor mattered to Hugh. Duty. Family. Probably friendship. But tenderness and romantic love? Nah.

  Right now, Connor was just grateful for the change of subject. John was too perceptive.

  Yeah, Mariah Stavig's shock and hatred had gotten to Connor today. Probably she and her reaction to him were symbolic; he'd walked into too many living rooms to spread distrust, bewilderment, even fear, then walked away without a backward glance, much less resolution.

  Mariah Stavig was the face that represented all the others who had been left to pick up the pieces after he shrugged and said, "I don't have enough evidence to take to the prosecutor."

  Connor wanted to know what he had done to her life, and he wanted her forgiveness. It was ridiculously important to Connor that he somehow make her understand that he'd only been doing his job.

  Suddenly the face his memory flashed like a slide in a projector wasn't Mariah Stavig's. The hatred and terror that blazed at him weren't hers, but rather a teenage girl's.

  How could you do this to me? I trusted you, the girl in his memory had cried.

  He could still hear his own stumbling response. I thought it was the right thing to do.

  There it was in a nutshell, his credo: Do the right thing. Black and white. Right in this column, wrong in that. He understood the agonized choices and tragedy that lay between, but had never let those deter him from pursuing justice.

  Trouble was, what did a man do when he began to wonder whether the credo he lived by was a simplistic piece of crap?

  Making a sound, Connor got to his feet. "I'll see you, okay?"

  John stood, too, a frown gathering on his brow. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine." To convince his brothers, Connor set up for a shot, released the empty beer can and crowed when it dropped with a clank into the brown paper bag by John's chair. With their good-nights following him, he paused only long enough to stick his head in the kitchen, thank Natalie for dinner and say goodnight to her and his mother before heading out to his car.

  He was thirty years old. Almost thirty-one. Hell of a time to discover he had spent most of his adult life trying to vindicate a decision he'd made when he was seventeen. I trusted you.

  Connor revved the engine as he started his car. Swearing under his breath, he backed out of the driveway, then drove away just under the speed limit. He knew better than to think he could outrun a ghost.

  Mariah was unsurprised to find a pink message slip in her mail cubby in the school office.

  Please call Detective McLean.

  Did he remember her? She'd bet on it. Did he feel any guilt about making accusations he could never prove, about leaving her family to live with doubt and whispers and questions? Or did he believe complacently that he held no blame for the disruption left in his wake?

  She stared with burning eyes for another moment at his name, then crumpled the slip in her fist. It would be a cold day in hell before she would ever call him.

  On a shuddering breath, she turned blindly and left the office, hoping nobody had noticed her distress. She was glad she'd come early, so she had half an hour to compose herself before her first class poured into her room.

  The pink slip still crumpled in her fist, Mariah exchanged greetings with other teachers and aides as she made her way through the halls. Port Dare Middle School was badly in need of being bulldozed and replaced. Timber played a big role in the local economy, however, which meant luxuries like new schools were no more than dreams these days. This building was the original high school, now housed in an equally inadequate campus built in the fifties. Until a new industry could be coaxed to this isolated small city to replace the dying business of logging the Olympic rain forest, Port Dare School District would have a tough time passing bond issues. In the meantime, middle-schoolers—and their teachers—coped with a four-story Depression-era building with wonderful murals painted by WPA workers, decrepit bathrooms and insufficient classroom and locker space.

  Mariah's room was on the fourth floor, which kept her in shape. The English teachers didn't complain, because they stayed the warmest in winter when the inadequate heat the ancient furnace pumped out all rose to their floor, making it comfortable while the math classrooms in the basement were icy.

  A student, then a senior at the high school, had come back several years before to paint a minimural of Shakespeare surrounded by actors costuming themselves on the wall outside her classroom. Today she paused, her key in the classroom door, and stared at the lovingly created mural.

  Her students liked her. Remembered her. Trusted her.

  Tracy Mitchell had trusted her. Had come to her for help.

  How could she let one of her students down because her own scars weren't fully healed?

  She turned the key and went into the classroom, for once locking the door behind her. Empty or full, this room was a refuge. Bright posters and glorious words decorated the walls. Old-fashioned desks formed ragged rows. Mariah absently traced with her fingers one of the long-ago carved notes that scarred them: JB+RS
. Morning sunlight streamed in the wall of windows. She even loved the old blackboard and the smell of chalk and the uneasy squeak of it writing on the dusty surface.

  Her meandering course between desks brought her to the one where Tracy Mitchell sat from 10:10 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. every day. Sometimes she whispered with friends or used her superdeluxe calculator to write notes for them to read. But once in a while, she actually heard the magic in words, saw the wonderful, subtle hues they conjured, and she would sit up straight and listen with her head cocked to one side, or she would read her part in a play with vivacity and passion if not great skill.

  Mariah stood, head bent, looking at the desk. Tracy had a spark. She had promise she would likely never fulfill, given her family background and her tight skirts and her sidelong glances at boys. But it was there, and teachers were sometimes wrong about who would succeed or fail. She did not deserve to be blackmailed, to have her budding sexuality exploited, to have to feel that this, of all things, was her fault.

  With another sigh, Mariah went to her desk and dug in her tote for her cell phone. Apparently, despite the sunlight, warm for October, it was really a cold day. A very, very cold day.

  Somewhere.

  She picked the wadded-up message from the otherwise empty waste can, smoothed it out on the desk and dialed the number.

  "Detective McLean."

  "This is Mariah Stavig. You asked me to call."

  His voice was calm, easy, deep, and agonizingly familiar. "I wondered when you have a break today so that we could talk."

  "I take lunch just after eleven. Or I have a planning period toward the end of the school day."

  "Eleven?"

  "School starts at 7:20." Why did he think she was returning his call so early?

  He made a heartfelt comment on the hour, with which she privately agreed; students would learn better with another hour of sleep. But Mariah said nothing except, "You must start work early, too."

  "Actually I just got up." He yawned as if to punctuate his admission. "This is my cell phone number."