The Word of a Child (19 page)

Staring fiercely down at her pack, Tracy said, "Mom
hasn't found anybody yet."

"Do the boyfriends ever … bother you?" Ms. Stavig
said it delicately, as though it weren't really a subject fit for Tracy's ears, but as if she felt she had to ask.

Bother her.

She tried to look blank. "What do you mean?"

Surprising Tracy with her bluntness, Ms. Stavig said,
"Make sexual advances."

"Like … like Mr. Tanner did, you mean?" His name
stack in her throat, but she forced it out.

The teacher pushed her soft brown hair back from her face.
"More or less. Have any of them … oh, looked at you the way Mr. Tanner
did, before he made advances?"

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

«
^
»

C
onnor 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 conversation 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?"