The Word of a Child (5 page)

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.