The Word of a Child

The good humor faded the moment Mariah said gravely, “Tracy has something to tell you.”

Tracy did haltingly tell her story for the principal. Afterward Noreen hugged her and said, “I’ll call your mother. We need to talk to her.”

“Will you fire him?”

The principal explained again about the necessity for an investigation, which Tracy took as an insult.

“You don’t believe me!”

As Mariah had a class, Mrs. Patterson took Tracy away. She paused to murmur, “Will you come to my office at the end of the day?”

“Yes, of course.”

Her seventh-graders were reading As You Like It aloud, stumbling over unfamiliar words and requiring constant explanations of Shakespearean language. Perhaps Shakespeare was too difficult for them, she thought, but then a student would read a passage with sudden understanding and relish for the rich language, and she would decide she’d been right to challenge them.

Today it was very difficult to keep her mind on the reading. Several times she was recalled by a loud, “Ms. Stavig? Ms. Stavig? I don’t get it.”

She avoided the faculty room during her break to be sure she didn’t run into Gerald Tanner, the computer teacher. He was likely to seek her out, as they’d talked about doing a joint project that involved Internet research in his class and a paper in hers.

She liked Gerald, who was new at the middle school this year. A tall bony man who made her think of Ichabod Crane, he was in his late thirties and had been teaching at a community college before he’d decided to “get ’em young,” as he’d put it.

Sexually? she wondered now in distaste.

But what if Tracy was lying for some reason? She might be afraid of her mother’s current boyfriend who had raped her, or mad at Gerald because he was flunking her, or… The possibilities were endless. She had seemed genuinely distraught, but Mariah had thought before that Tracy, who was in her beginning drama class, had real talent on the stage.

The accusation alone could be enough to ruin Gerald’s career as a teacher; such stories tended to follow a man.

She had reason to know.

Simon had lost his job after rumors got around, even though the accusation was never substantiated and he was never taken to trial. The excuse for firing him was trumped up, and he had known the real reason, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Now, three years later, he lived in Bremerton, where nobody whispered, but he’d had to take a job working at the Navy shipyard that wasn’t as good as the one he’d lost.

He’d lost his wife, too, but she didn’t want to think about that. Not today.

This was different, Mariah told herself; the victim was old enough to speak for herself, and it might not be too late for doctors to recover sperm and therefore DNA. This wasn’t anything like a child’s perhaps wild—or perhaps not—accusation.

Zofie’s daddy.

She would hear the quiet accusation until the day she died. Not in the little girl’s voice, because she’d never seen Lily Thalberg again. After the notoriety, after the investigation had stalled, the Thalbergs had moved away, wanting a fresh start, a friend of a friend had told Mariah. No, Mariah heard her husband named as a molester in the deep, certain voice of that police officer. Detective Connor McLean. He’d believed Lily Thalberg, she could tell. It was partly his certainty that had eaten at Mariah in the days and weeks following his initial visit, when Simon became furious at her smallest, meekest question and when she began to look at Zofie and worry.

She hated remembering. Second-guessing herself, feeling guilt again because she hadn’t stood behind her husband.

Why did Tracy have to come to her? she wondered wretchedly.

Her last student was barely out of the classroom when Mariah followed, locking the door behind her. In the office, the secretary said, “Mrs. Patterson is expecting you,” and waved her down the hall where the counselors and the principal and vice principal had their offices.

Both Mrs. Patterson and Mr. Lamarr, the vice principal, were in the office, she saw as she opened the door. But they weren’t alone. A second man who had been standing by the window turned as Mariah entered.

Her breath escaped in a gasp and she stopped halfway inside, clutching the doorknob.

As the big man with short, reddish-brown hair faced her, his light gray eyes widened briefly just before his expression became utterly impassive.

Anyone but him, she thought wildly. His voice would live forever in her nightmares and as the kernel of her guilt. If it had occurred to her he might be sent… But it hadn’t.

She heard herself say hoarsely, “I’m sorry, I can’t…” as she began to back up.

Noreen Patterson half rose from her chair behind the desk. “Mariah, what is it?”

Her wild gaze touched on him. She was breathing like an untamed creature caught in a trap. “I…I just can’t…” she said again, her voice high and panicky.

He said nothing, only waited at the far end of the office. A nerve spasmed under one eye, the only visible sign he understood her distress or felt it.

The vice principal had reached her. Gripping her arm, he said, “What is it? Are you sick, Mariah?”

Sick. She seized on an excuse no one would dispute.

“Yes.” She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling very well.”

Detective Connor McLean abruptly turned his back so that he looked out the window rather than at her.

“The flu is going around,” Ed Lamarr said. “Here. Why don’t you come in and sit down.”

In? She couldn’t.

But it seemed she could, because she allowed herself to be led to the chairs facing Noreen’s desk. Sinking into one, she tried not to look at the broad, powerful back of the man gazing out the window.

The principal sank back into her seat. “Do you feel well enough to talk about Tracy for a minute?”

Mariah breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. Slowly, carefully. She could be strong. He had never threatened her, never raised his voice.

He had only destroyed her marriage and her belief in both her husband and herself.

No. Her fingernails bit into her thighs. Be fair. It was childish to hold him responsible. He was not the accuser. If he had not come, it would have been someone else. He was only the messenger. The arm of the law.

Lily Thalberg’s voice.

As now he would be Tracy Mitchell’s.

“Yes.” Miraculously Mariah heard herself sound calm, if far away to her own ears. “I’m fine.”

“Ah. Well, let us know if it gets the best of you.”

Mariah sat with her knees and ankles together, her spine regally straight. Poised. A lady, who would never let anything get the best of her. “Of course,” she agreed.

“Then I want you to meet Detective Connor McLean of the Port Dare Police Department.”

Had he recognized her, or only seen that the sight of him upset her?

He turned.

She said stiffly, “How do you do.”

He nodded. “Ms. Stavig.”

Noreen smiled at Mariah. “Tracy Mitchell chose to come to Mariah. She tells me ‘everyone’ says you can be trusted.”

Mariah focused fiercely on the principal, blocking out her awareness of the police officer.

“In this case, of course, I couldn’t keep what she told me confidential. In the future, students may not think I can be trusted.”

“She understands that you did what you have to do.”

“Did she ask you to keep what she told you confidential, Ms. Stavig?” asked Detective McLean.

Mariah stared fixedly at the pencil cup on the principal’s desk. It was a crudely made and glazed coil pot, a child’s effort. “No,” she said. “What Tracy wanted, I think, was for Mr. Tanner to be fired. She must have realized I didn’t have the power to accomplish that. She did get somewhat upset at the idea of the police becoming involved, and particularly that she might have to testify in court.”

From her peripheral vision, she saw him pull a notebook from an inside pocket of his well-cut gray suit coat. “Will you repeat what she told you to the best of your memory, Ms. Stavig? I believe she may have been more expansive with you than she was with Mrs. Patterson.”

“Yes. Okay.” Mariah took a deep breath and began, at first disjointedly, feeling herself blush at the recitation of physical details, before pulling herself together to conclude like the articulate teacher she was.

“What was your first reaction?” the detective asked.

“That one of her mother’s boyfriends…” Mariah stopped herself and felt heat in her cheeks.

The principal smiled ruefully. “The same thought occurred to me.”

“Is it possible she’s accusing Mr. Tanner as a smokescreen?”

When no one else responded, Mariah did. “Anything is possible.”

He continued gently, relentlessly. “Tell me what you know of her home life.”

Mariah did, watching from the corner of her eyes as he took detailed notes.

“Do you know Gerald Tanner well?”

Surprised and made uneasy by the question, Mariah was unwary enough to look at him. Their eyes met briefly, and she turned her head quickly.

“Well, um, no,” she fumbled. “He’s new this year…”

“Aren’t you planning a project together?” Ed Lamarr asked.

“Yes.” Mariah explained. “We’ve never had any discussions I’d consider personal, however. I don’t even know if he’s married or has children.”

“Actually he’s single,” Noreen contributed. “No children.”

Mariah didn’t want to know that or anything else about her colleague. She wanted this never to have happened.

“What will you do?” she asked the principal.

“I’ve asked him to come to my office. I’ll have to tell him about the accusation, of course. Tracy has gone to the hospital for an exam, and, um…”

Mariah nodded.

“Unless DNA is recovered, however, the exam won’t be conclusive. Well,” she corrected herself, “unless she’s never had sexual intercourse at all and the entire story is fabricated.

“Detective McLean will be conducting an investigation. I fear parents will demand that Mr. Tanner be suspended during the course of it. I’m undecided about that yet. Students have been known to make frivolous accusations. I don’t want to overreact.”

“Tracy’s grades are suffering in my class,” Mariah said. “She may be flunking his.”

“And yet, the fact that she is a poor student can have no bearing on our response to her allegation,” Noreen Patterson pointed out. “In fact, I suspect her failing grade explains why she responded to his…um, blackmail. He wouldn’t have had the same leverage with a better student.”

Mariah nodded. “Yes. I understand. It’s just that…”

“That?” the principal prompted.

“It occurred to me today while we were talking that she and I were alone in a classroom with the door shut. She could have claimed I’d said or done anything. How will you ever know the truth?”

The police officer stirred. “I doubt a thirteen-year-old girl who is a poor student has the sophistication to have built an airtight case. She’ll have talked to friends, for example, possibly bragging about how she was going to get rid of her computer teacher and make everybody feel sorry for her. Clearly she didn’t understand that her accusation would go outside the school. In the stress of having to repeat her story to me, other officers, somebody from Child Protective Services, even a D.A., she’ll likely slip up.”

“If she’s not telling the truth,” Mariah felt compelled to say, surprised at her sharpness.

He lifted a brow. “Exactly.”

She started at a rap on the glass inset in the door.

Galvanized, Mariah leaped to her feet. She said hastily, “I know you’ll want to talk to Gerald without me here. Unless you need anything else, I’ll be going home now.”

Detective McLean’s light eyes flicked from her face to the man who stood behind her.

“Actually, Mariah, I was hoping you could stay.” Noreen cleared her throat. “I’d like your thoughts.”

Thoughts?

She was backpedaling, careful to avoid looking at the police officer who remained by the window, as though he imagined he could ever be unobtrusive.

“I don’t know what else I can add.” Please don’t make me do this, she begged the principal with her eyes. You don’t know what you’re asking.

But he did. And, damn him, remained silent.

Noreen Patterson said firmly, “I’d appreciate it if you would stay.”

Mariah stood for a moment, so near rebellion that she trembled. Nostrils flaring, she stared at Detective McLean, knowing what was coming, hating it and him. He could have rescued her, could have said in that quiet voice, “I don’t think we need Ms. Stavig to be here.”

But he said nothing of the kind, and after an intense inner battle Mariah went back to her seat and waited, head bowed.

Noreen Patterson raised her voice. “Come in.”

“You wanted to see me?” Gerald Tanner looked wary.

The principal asked him to take a seat. The remaining one was right beside Mariah. She stared down at her hands.

“Mr. Tanner, one of your students has accused you of trading a passing grade for sex.”

His body jerked, as though he’d been struck by a bullet. “What?”

Sounding calm, nonjudgmental, Noreen Patterson summarized Tracy’s story.

“Who is the student?” he asked, strain making his voice shake.

“Tracy Mitchell.”

“God.” He bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’ve had conferences with her—I know she can do the work if only she’d try—but I’ve never…” He drew a breath that was painful to hear.

Unable to prevent herself, Mariah turned her head to see the bewilderment and shock on his face.

“You don’t seriously think I…” He looked from face to face and saw that they did. “Oh my God. This can’t be happening!”

“I’m afraid it is, Mr. Tanner.” Detective McLean spoke quietly. “Any accusation of this magnitude has to be taken seriously.”

“But she’s thirteen years old! A…a child!” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I have never been interested, would never be interested…”

They began to ask questions, and Mariah watched his horrified disintegration.

“You’re going to take her word over mine?” He shoved his chair back. His frenzied gaze encountered Mariah. “Why is she here?”

Mariah opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“The student chose to confide in Ms. Stavig,” the principal said coolly. “Since she’s involved this deeply, I asked her to stay.”

He looked at her with deep hurt. “You couldn’t have come to me?”

“I…” Her voice stuck, unstuck. “You know I have to…”

“Set up an ambush?” He shot out of the chair as if he couldn’t bear to be so close to her.

“Ms. Stavig did nothing but what she is required by law to do, and you know it,” Mrs. Patterson said sharply.

“This is unbelievable!” He paced, his agitation making his gait jerky and his bony limbs look like sticks strung together. “Do I even get a chance to answer these charges? Does anybody care if I’m innocent?”

“Of course we care…”

He swung to face Detective McLean. “Are you going to arrest me?” he shouted. He stuck out his arms. “Here! Handcuff me now. Let’s get it over with. Apparently we can skip the trial, too. The judge and jury are right here!”

He had passed the point of listening to reason, and Mariah couldn’t blame him. They had ambushed him, and she understood his terror as the snares whipped shut on his ankles.

No matter the outcome, his life would never be the same again. Rumors would start, whispers would follow him. Even his best friends would feel doubt. Everyone would wonder: Did he do it? Even if Tracy Mitchell eventually recanted her story the doubts wouldn’t be completely erased. Maybe she was afraid of him; maybe that’s why she says it never happened. Maybe…

“I’m sorry,” Mariah whispered.

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 TWO

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 take-out 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.