The Word of a Child (11 page)

"Kind of. I guess." She tossed her hair.
"Does it matter?"

"Just curious what he'd done or said at that point to
make you think that."

She gave a shudder. "He's always
helping
you at
your computer. Which means he can hang over your shoulder and breathe on your neck
and 'accidentally' bump his mouth against your cheek. Any of the girls can tell
you."

It was true. She was grossed out when he came up behind her
and practically hugged her so he could put his hands on the keyboard to each
side of her hands. He smelled. And the other day, when he helped her, she
suddenly wanted to scream. It reminded her— She gave another shudder. He was a
creep. After the way he had totally humiliated her in front of everyone, he
deserved
to lose
his job!

"When did Mr. Tanner first—" Detective McLean
seemed to choose his words carefully "—become interested in you?"

"I don't know." Tracy looked down at her hands.
Her knuckles were white, and she realized her fingers were clenched on the
bathrobe. She couldn't seem to relax; it was like her hands were frozen in a
death grip. "School only started September third."

"Uh-huh." He waited.

When? "Um … I don't know. Like, maybe after the first
week or two, he kept wanting to help me. And talk to me after class."

"Did he have any legitimate reason to keep you after
class?"

"What do you mean, legitimate?" Weren't babies
legitimate
if
their parents were married and bastards otherwise?

"Real. Something he could defend to the principal.
Say—" his gaze was sharp "—missing assignments, or a bad attitude in
class, or…"

"I'm really slow at keyboarding. Mr. Tanner
claims
I'm not
doing enough of his little tests, where you type like DFG over and over. Or
something. I can't help it if I'm not very good at it. Who wants to type anyway?"

In this honeyed voice, Mom said, "Now, Tracy, you know
how many jobs require typing and computer skills. What do you think you're
going to do, become a movie star?" The last had a little snap, like the
end of a whip uncurling.

Tracy stared at her sullenly. "I want to be an
artist."

"We've talked about this. You have to be
practical…"

The cop interrupted her. "Ms. Lawson showed me some of
your work. You have talent."

She was angry at herself for feeling a flush of pleasure.
All he was doing was buttering her up.
I'm
your friend,
he was saying.
Trust me. I'll help you get out of this mess. Just admit
that you're lying.

He led her through her story again. Three weeks ago, Mr.
Tanner had touched her breast when he kept her after class. He told her she was
really pretty, so much more grown-up looking than the other girls. He was
having trouble thinking of her as a student.

The next time, he took her hand and made her feel him and
then unzip his pants and do other things. When she tried to make an excuse to
leave, that's when he said she was flunking his class, but that could change.

She tasted blood and realized she was gnawing on her lip.
"And I thought, it wasn't so bad. For a good grade."

Her mother said absolutely nothing.

Tracy
swallowed. "Only then, the next time, he made me do it. And it hurt, and I
hated it. And so I told."

He asked her why she'd chosen to talk to Ms. Stavig, and she
said because she didn't know any of the teachers that well, but Ms. Stavig
seemed nice and an eighth-grade friend told her Ms. Stavig was the best if you
ever needed help.

Finally, after what seemed forever, the cop got up to leave.
His eyes serious, he said, "I know this is hard for you. I'm sorry, Tracy. Please believe me. But sometimes people do lie, and Mr. Tanner is telling me one
thing and you're telling me another. My job is to be absolutely certain who is
telling the truth. So you'll have to be patient with me."

She nodded numbly.

"Then we'll be talking again," the cop said, and
left.

Tracy and her mother sat without talking or moving for a
long time.

Tracy
broke
first. She jumped to her feet, screamed at Mom, "There! Are you
happy?" and ran to her room.

Chapter
5

«
^
»

M
onday morning
, when
Mariah walked into the teacher's lounge, a dozen low-voiced conversations
stopped and then started again only after everyone checked out the new arrival.
She'd never seen so many of the teachers and staff in here at once except for
special luncheons.

Pouring a cup of coffee, pretending to a casualness she
didn't feel, she asked Jennifer Risotti, the Family Life teacher, "Why the
buzzing?"

The tall brunette sipped her coffee. "I hear you know
more than the rest of us."

"Oh, dear," Mariah said involuntarily.

"Is Gerald really being investigated?"

"I'm afraid so. And, no," she said hastily,
forestalling the next question, "I really can't say anything else."

"So you do know."

"I know Noreen hoped it could be resolved over the
weekend."

Resolved,
she
thought with distaste, escaping the lounge and taking her coffee up four
flights to her classroom. What an unemotional, euphemistic word for the
completion of an ugly process that would leave everybody involved forever
tainted. For Gerald Tanner, none of this would ever be resolved.

By lunchtime, she knew he wasn't teaching today.

A substitute had taken over his classes. Tracy, too, was
still missing from her desk in Drama.

Mariah was just taking her brown-bag lunch from her tote bag
and debating whether to go to the office and find out what was going on, when
Noreen Patterson came in.

"Do you have a minute, Mariah?"

"Of course." She continued unwrapping her egg
salad sandwich.

The principal shut the classroom door and came to her desk.
"I wanted to keep you abreast of the investigation. Perhaps you've heard
that Gerald isn't here today. I felt it best to suspend him with pay for the
moment."

How quickly a man's life could be destroyed.

Hiding the flash of mingled anger and guilt, Mariah asked,
"Do you know any more?"

"No, and I made plain to him that I was taking this
action primarily to protect him from whispers."

"You heard from parents all weekend," Mariah said
dryly.

Noreen Patterson grimaced. "Unfortunately." She
chose the same desk as had Detective McLean and sat, her green-and-blue
broomstick skirt pooling around her. "There's simply no way I can have him
continue to teach with this kind of allegation outstanding. It's terribly
unfair to him, I know. But what can I do?"

Mariah was silent for a moment. "There wasn't anything
else you could do, I suppose."

"I don't know him well. I can't even say, 'Look at this
man's record in his twenty years of teaching in the Port Dare district.'"
She looked unhappily at Mariah. "My instinct is always to back up my
teachers, but this time…"

Mariah nodded.
This
time, the allegation is too ugly. The students too vulnerable.
That was what the principal meant. And it was true.

"In this country, we're supposed to be innocent until
proven guilty." She made a sound. "That's a naive thing to say, isn't
it?"

"No." Noreen Patterson looked her age and more
today. "No, it isn't. This is the only crime where the accusation alone
has almost as much weight as a conviction."

Mariah made herself take a bite of her sandwich. When she'd
swallowed, she asked, "Is he angry?"

"Oh, yes." The principal gave a heavy sigh.
"How do you know if a man is capable of something like this?"

She tried to sound detached. "From the outside, I'm not
sure you can ever tell. Even if you think you know him well."

She must have given herself away, because Noreen looked at
her strangely. "You sound as if you've experienced something like this
before."

Mariah bit her lip. "My ex-husband was accused. It was
never proved. Simon said…" She tried to smile. "Well, you can guess.
It was pretty much the same thing Gerald said. The word of a child against his.
How can anyone ever know?"

Compassion in her eyes, Noreen said, "How painful for
you."

"For all of us," she said quietly. "At least
Gerald doesn't have a wife and child to lose."

"No." Expression troubled and soft, the principal
said, "I'm sorry you got involved in this. I didn't realize."

"I'm okay." She ate another bite, didn't taste it.
"Has the police officer learned
anything?"

"He says it can easily take weeks for this kind of
investigation."

"Weeks." Mariah imagined Gerald Tanner's torment.
What was he doing, sitting home in some bleak apartment staring at the wall,
scared, envisioning the loss of his teaching certificate and his reputation?
Seeing jail bars closing behind him?

Noreen sighed and struggled out of the student desk.
"I'd better let you finish your lunch. I just wanted you to know what was
happening."

Mariah nodded numbly. "Thank you."

"If you need … support, come and talk to me."

She tried another smile and nodded.

By the end of the day, she'd heard other rumors. Detective McLean was on campus talking to students and teachers again. Kids were getting called to
the office so he could ask them questions about Mr. Tanner and Tracy and the dance last week.

Somehow, she wasn't surprised when he appeared shortly after
her last student of the day gave up explaining why he'd been too busy that
weekend to write his book report and left in a sulk.

She was turning off the overhead when he said from the
doorway, "Ms. Stavig?"

"Detective McLean," she said resignedly, and
released the screen to roll up.

In absentia, he was an imposing presence on the campus.
People were scared, awed. He turned heads and provoked whispers wherever he went.
Turning, she half expected him to be diminished in person: smaller than she
remembered, less commanding.

But, no. He strolled into the room as though he intended to
make himself unthreatening. Hands in the pockets of corduroy slacks, he held
his shoulders slightly hunched and his expression was conciliatory. Somebody
should tell him it didn't work, she thought unkindly. He was a big man, with
the shoulders of a laborer. And yet he moved with the grace of an athlete and
the wariness of the cop he was. His head was always turning, his eyes sharp.
He'd scanned the room, missing nothing, before looking at her with that
amiable, I'm-a-regular-Joe look.

"More questions?" she asked.

"Nah." He paused to read a quotation on the wall
and gave a brief laugh. "Mark Twain is one of my favorite writers."

"Is he." She erased the page numbers of an
assignment from the board.

"Not Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.
Roughing It,
and
Life on the Mississippi.
And his essays. There's nothing like laughing even as you're
wondering if he didn't just insult you."

She was almost disarmed. "A literate cop?"

"You're surprised?"

"I would have said it was an oxymoron."

He winced. "Ouch."

Mariah sighed. "You want something."

"No." He picked up and set a student desk back
into the row. "Just wondered how you are. Have you been fighting off the
curious all day?"