THE WORD OF A CHILD

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Tracy shook her head even as she stared down at the pack again. Nausea was rising the way it did every time she thought about what had happened.

  Every time she lied about it.

  She took a deep breath, fighting the upset stomach, telling herself she didn't have to throw up. But she knew she did.

  Ms. Stavig was talking, but Tracy didn't know what she was saying.

  "I've got to go," she said, jumping to her feet and backing toward the classroom door. "I just remembered I promised my mom I'd … do something."

  Ms. Stavig rose, too, and watched her with eyes that were so … so nice, it made Tracy want to cry.

  "Just remember," she said. "If you want to talk, you know where to find me."

  Tracy nodded, backed out the door and ran for the bathroom at the end of the hall, making it just in time. Afterward, she was grateful that nobody was around to hear her puking her guts out.

  Kneeling in front of the toilet, her face buried in her arms, crossed atop the seat, Tracy cried. How could she tell?

  She couldn't. She just couldn't! But she would hate herself for the rest of her life.

  "Sure." Chuck Berg stepped back. "Come on in. Have a seat. What do you want to know? I taught here with Gerald for … oh, six, seven years. I've given him a hard time about dummying down to the kiddie level."

  A community college instructor who also taught computers, Berg obviously hadn't heard about his former colleague's troubles. Sitting down behind his cluttered desk, he raised his eyebrows. "What's this about?"

  "I'm investigating allegations made by a student concerning Mr. Tanner," Connor said carefully. "I'd rather not be specific until I've heard your impressions about him."

  Berg ran a hand over his sandy, thinning hair while he thought. "All right," he said at last. "Depending on what you ask."

  "Have you seen him teach? Tell me what you think of his competency."

  Connor heard about Gerald Tanner's creativity, thoroughness, enthusiasm.

  "He actually enjoyed teaching the 100 level classes," Berg marveled. "We miss him."

  When questioned, he said that he and Tanner had been casual friends, occasionally playing a round of golf together, having a drink, that sort of thing. "We didn't usually socialize in the evening just because he wasn't married. You know how it is." He looked uncomfortable. "Couples tend to get together with couples."

  Connor nodded his understanding. "To your knowledge, did he date?"

  Relieved to be off the hook, the instructor sat back in his chair. "Yeah, sure. I mean, he wasn't exactly Don Juan, but… Sure. I remember he was seeing a part-timer from the English Department for a while."

  "Was he ever interested in students?"

  That straightened Berg right up. "Good God, no! Strictly verboten."

  Connor spread his hands. "That doesn't mean it doesn't happen."

  "Guy was straitlaced. No. If you heard something…" He shook his head, appearing sincere in his disbelief. "No. I just can't imagine. Not Gerald Tanner."

  Connor probed some more. No, they'd never discussed pornography, except maybe on a political level. He did recall them talking about an attempt by the city council in Bremerton to use zoning to outlaw topless joints. "We were both doubtful it would stand up in the courts," he said. "No, I didn't get the feeling Gerry felt strongly about the issue." He rested his forearms on the desk. "Now I think it's time you tell me what this is really about."

  Connor told him.

  Berg's shock showed. "You're taking this seriously?" He shook his head sharply. "Of course you are. You have to, don't you? And you wouldn't be here if you weren't investigating. But Gerald? No. He's a nice guy. I don't believe for a minute that he'd even look at a thirteen-year-old girl that way, much less rape her!" His thin, intelligent face set in older, harder lines, he looked squarely at Connor. "You wanted to know what I think. That's it."

  Connor pushed himself to his feet. "I appreciate your candor."

  "You've got the wrong guy." Berg said the same thing Connor had been hearing all day here on the campus of the community college where Tanner had taught for some years before quitting to take the job in Port Dare.

  Having friends stunned at the very idea didn't, in Connor's experience, rule out the possibility that Gerald Tanner had been disguising a sexual interest in young teenage girls all along, but did make it less likely. Many of these people had known Tanner for years. The man they knew was maybe a little inept socially, but he did have friends, date, get along with his colleagues and have an outlet in the online world where geeks were gods. Connor's first impression of the guy as a classic failure who needed the feeling of superiority he got from being the older and stronger in a sexual relationship was shifting into something more textured and … hell, likable.

  Damn it, he was getting a gut feeling at last, and it told him Tracy Mitchell was lying.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  « ^ »

  Connor rang Mariah's doorbell, feeling nervous as a teenager picking a girl up for a first date. He'd wanted this more badly than he had realized. Damn it, he should have thought of something special for the evening, something to make him stand out from the crowd of other men who would be asking her on dates if she had decided she was now ready.

  He'd considered a dozen possibilities from the Crescent Lake Lodge, tucked at the west end of the glorious deep-water lake in the Olympic National Forest, to any of several restaurants in Port Town-send, the nineteenth century port of call for the Puget Sound.

  The trouble was Zofie. Mariah would be paying a baby-sitter, and might balk at a destination a distance away that would have her out into the wee hours of the night. He pretty much figured they'd better stay in Port Dare. Which meant taking her to a restaurant where she might have eaten a hundred times.

  It was the company who counted, he reminded himself. A thought that didn't help. He could have used some teenage cockiness.

  The door opened without any warning footfalls. Framed in the opening, Mariah was ravishing in a snug teal sweater above a wrap skirt that looked South Seas to him with simple block-printed teal fish swimming around the hem of lustrous blue fabric.

  "Hi," she said, sounding shy.

  Maybe he wasn't the only one who was nervous. She'd admitted to not having dated since her divorce. She probably felt like a home-schooled kid being dropped into the unfamiliar public school system with no idea of the, unwritten rules and mores.

  "You look beautiful," Connor said.

  "Oh." Her cheeks pinkened. "Thank you. Um, come in. I need to say goodbye to Zofie."

  The baby-sitter appeared slightly older than Mariah's students, but too juvenile to cope with a crisis. On the other hand, Zofie smiled at him with complete poise.

  "Hi, Decktiv McLean." She only stumbled slightly over the "detective."

  "Hi, Zofie." He nodded at the baby-sitter, too.

  She gave him a quick, scared smile.

  Mariah hugged her daughter and kissed the top of her head. "I won't be too late."

  He'd figured her right and was glad not to have to be coming up with a last-minute change of plans.

  "Do you have a number where we'll be?" she asked him.

  "I'll have to use your phone book." He wrote down the restaurant number on a pad by the phone.

  "Call if you need me," Mariah told the baby-sitter. To her daughter, she added, "Be good for Christy."

  Zofie rolled her eyes. "I'm always good."

  Her mother laughed. "Uh-huh."

  Finally she and Connor were out the door. "I hope The Lighthouse sounds okay," he said.

  "I love it!" she assured him.

  Yup. She'd eaten there hundreds of times. "I've only been twice," she added. "Ages ago. It's not exactly the place to take a preschooler."

  He was pretty sure the host didn't hand out crayons and cartoon-printed place mats. "Probably not," he agreed.

  They chatted about nothing during the short drive, adults practiced at making conversa
tion with strangers. That's what they were, on one level: complete strangers. And yet they kept stumbling over their history.

  The restaurant was a sprawling, shingled building that had grown from the original working lighthouse whose beacon had been turned off in 1922, when new technology made it redundant. You could still tour the building, climbing the circular wrought-iron staircase to see the huge lamp, tended by a keeper who lived in the dank, stone-walled apartment at ground level. It was now a museum, furnished as the keeper had left it, the walls hung with glass-framed newspaper clippings, brochures and tidbits of maritime history.

  The restaurant was decorated in keeping with the history, the windows looking out at the rocky shoreline small-paned, the walls hung with ship's antiques. Brass navigational instruments, spyglasses, wheels and anchors all had the unmistakable patina of a century or more.

  Seafood was the specialty, but they made some damn good pasta here, too. Mariah ordered a sea bass dinner, and he went for a pesto shrimp pasta he'd had before. The wine arrived, and they were left with candlelight and each other's company.

  The moment of truth.

  They both spoke at the same time, then laughed awkwardly when their words tangled. "You first," she said.

  "I just wondered if Zofie was okay with this."

  "Sure. She remembered meeting you at the soccer field. It was the cold s'mores that stuck in her mind. Why wouldn't I want to go out with someone willing to take a niece and nephew for a picnic on a cold October Sunday?"

  "I'm glad I met her approval." Connor hesitated. "You haven't told her…"

  "Are you kidding?" Mariah looked shocked at the idea. "For one thing, kids her age have big mouths. She'd probably tell Daddy all about the man Mommy had dinner with." She couldn't hide a small shudder.

  Connor frowned. "Does it matter if he finds out?"

  "I'd rather he didn't," she said frankly.

  His frown deepened. "Are you afraid of him?"

  Her pause bothered him.

  "No, of course not," she said, a beat too late. "I think it would hurt him to find out that, of all the men in the world, I chose to go out with you. You humiliated and threatened him. My being with you—" She gestured helplessly. "He'd see it as a slap in the face."

  "Is it?" Connor couldn't stop himself from asking.

  Her entire spine stiffened. "What do you mean?"

  "You did say you haven't dated since the divorce. Did you choose, maybe subconsciously, to go out with me as a way of showing him?"

  Her nostrils flared. "Showing him what?"

  He shrugged. "I don't know. That he doesn't have any say over what you do? That you think he was guilty?"

  Her narrowed eyes told him he was blowing it big time. "Do you realize how nasty and petty you're making me sound? Do you really believe I'm incapable of telling my ex-husband what I think? That I'd resort to 'showing him' in such a hurtful way?"

  He felt like scum. "No," he said. "I guess it's my own inadequacies speaking. I've been wondering ever since you agreed to have dinner with me why you did. Why me?"

  She stared at him for an unnervingly long time, seeing more, he suspected, than he was ready to bare.

  "Maybe you're the handsomest man who has asked."

  He made an impatient gesture.

  "And the most persistent."

  "I can be pushy," he admitted.

  "And you kissed me. That helped."

  "It did?"

  She gazed seriously at him. "The truth?"

  Connor reached out and gripped her hand. She turned it to meet him palm to palm.

  "You've opened my eyes. Made me take another look at my choices and my life. Freed me, a little, from the guilt I've been carrying."

  "So you're grateful," he said grimly.

  She shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again. "Yes. No. It's…" Her mobile face showed her struggle for words. "You've stirred me. And, um, I'm attracted to you. Because of Simon, you're the last man I should be dating. But here I am anyway."

  Gaze lingering on the color flaring in her cheeks, on the rich depths of her eyes and the delicate curve of her jaw, he said softly, "Thank you."

  She wrinkled her nose at him and removed her hand from his. "Tonight was supposed to be about you, not me. How did you manage to dissect my motivations again?"

  Reassured for the first time that she shared the uncomfortable, maybe inconvenient, attraction he felt, Connor was able to grin. "You're so easy to rile."

  She tried to glower. "Oh, thanks."

  Their salads arrived, and conversation lightened as they ate. Connor told Mariah about his family as they appeared on the surface: three brothers, all cops, only the older one married and with children, their mother a lifelong presence in their lives.

  "Is your father dead?" Mariah asked.

  "Since I was a kid. Nine. He was murdered."

  "Murdered?" she echoed in horror. "How? Why?"

  "Dad was a loan officer at a bank. Some nut walked in, sprayed the place with bullets and walked out. Dad and two others were killed, a twenty-one-year-old teller was paralyzed for life and a couple of customers were injured." He was silent for a moment, remembering his mother's profound grief and his own childish bewilderment. "They never caught him."

  "So you don't even know if your father was a target, or if it was random."

  "You got it. That was tough on my mother." Understatement. "She couldn't understand, mourn, move on. She kept waiting for the who and why, only nobody could tell her. Dad died because…" He grimaced and held out his hands, palms up.

  Tiny crinkles formed on her brow. "Is that why you all became police officers? To exact the justice and closure your family never had?"

  He moved his shoulders uneasily. "That's the tidy answer. Probably even true."

  She cocked her head to one side. "But you don't like it?"

  On a spurt of frustration, he said sharply, "It's a ridiculous goddamn reason to choose a career."

  Mariah looked thoughtful. "It beats chance, which is how most people wander into a career. At least motivation that personal implies a purpose. Even a passion."

  "I used to think I had both. I'm not so sure anymore." Connor was shocked to hear himself admit as much. His brothers were his best friends, and he hadn't done more than hint to them at his increasing dissatisfaction. When he said, "I'm starting to hate my job," they took it as hyperbole, and he hadn't corrected them.

  "What's changed?" she asked simply, pushing away her salad plate.

  He leaned forward. "Some of your accusations pretty much nailed my problems with what I do. I'm a destroyer. It has to be done—nobody should get away with abusing a child or raping a woman. But the fact is, I often can't prove my case. Whether I do or not, I leave chaos in my wake. Doubts, fear, recriminations, guilt, marriages irretrievably shattered, kids taken from their parents…" He rotated his head to ease the tension in his neck. "I break. I don't pick up the pieces."

  She'd have been within her rights to say, I told you so. Instead she said with quiet sympathy, "But how could you? That's not your job."

  "No," he said. "It's not. And, as you pointed out, that was my choice."

  Their dinners arrived, and as they ate he talked more about growing up, raised as much by John as by his mother, who'd worked two jobs to pay the bills and put food on the table.

  "Sometimes I rebelled at having a brother only a few years older giving me orders, but I idolized him, too. He claims Mom influenced him to become a cop, but I can't say the same. She was hardly ever home. No, me, I followed in John's footsteps—four years at the University of Washington, then I applied for a badge. By that time, I'd been hearing big brother's stories. Hell, it was inevitable."

  "And Hugh?"

  "Oh, he was gung ho from the time he was a little kid. Like John, he got from Mom the idea that if cops had really done their jobs, Dad's murderer would have paid. Or maybe the shoot-up wouldn't even have happened, because the wacko would have been in jail for something else.
There had to be warning signs. Hugh is on a mission to ensure the bad guys don't walk, so they can't commit evil another day."

  "You make him sound like John Wayne."

  Connor gave a grunt of laughter. "Actually he's sinfully good-looking and likes to play on his days off. Usually with a pretty blonde, although a redhead or two have slipped in there."

  "What about you?" Mariah asked quietly. "You've never been married?"

  He shook his head. "Just never came up."

  "You haven't become … soured on marriage, after what you see in your job?"

  "Maybe more cautious," he conceded. "Mom never remarried. I guess I'd like to be sure I've found my once-in-a-lifetime partner before I take the plunge."

  She nodded and bowed her head, pushing food around with her fork.

  "Do you still love him?" Connor asked abruptly.

  She looked up, eyes widening. "No! We've been divorced for three years."

  "You might have left him only for Zofie's sake."

  "How could I love a man I thought might have…" She stopped.

  "But do you think he did it?"

  "I don't know!" she cried. "I've said that a thousand times. I just don't know!"

  Connor set down his fork. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

  "It's all right." Suddenly she sounded weary. "Of course you wonder. I don't even understand myself what I thought or guessed or knew. All I'm sure of is that if I had loved Simon the way I should have, I would never have doubted him and I certainly wouldn't have feared for Zofie. So … do I love him? No."

  The last word was clipped, tight. Don't ask me any more. But he heard grief in her conclusion, too, and some self-doubt he couldn't clearly make out. She'd already suggested that she judged herself because she hadn't stood by her husband.

  Connor regretted fiercely that he hadn't been able to answer her questions for her. Like his mother, Mariah Stavig found it hard to live without that closure she'd talked about.

  "Do you miss him?" he asked.

  "Simon?" Emotions passed like ghosts across her face. "At first I did. It was hard to become a single parent overnight. When you're used to being married, suddenly being on your own is scary. There's nobody to talk to in the same way, nobody to count on if your car breaks down or you get sick or…" She made a face. "But I was the one who did the talking. Simon was the strong, silent type. I realized somewhere along the way how little he ever actually communicated to me. He didn't feel as if he needed to explain himself. Not ever. So, after you came that first time, it was like him just to turn the TV back on and pretend nothing had happened."