The Word of a Child (7 page)

Chapter
3

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M
ariah Stavig's face
was gently rounded, far from classically beautiful. She
lacked the dramatic cheekbones or lush mouth that were currently in vogue. Her
extraordinary eyes, gold and brown with flecks of green, framed by thick dark
lashes, more than compensated, in Connor's opinion. She had delicate features,
pale, creamy skin and thick, dark hair worn in a loose knot on her nape.

Her face of all others had haunted him for years.

Now she stared at him with the intense dislike he had seen
in his dreams. "Precisely what does that mean?" she asked sharply.

Still dogged with frustration and the bone-deep knowledge of
wrongdoing, because he
had
played a part in destroying her marriage, Connor said,
"It was a question. Nothing more. Why you?"

"My students trust me," she said stiffly.

He half sat on a student desk in front of hers, letting one
leg swing. "Tracy Mitchell is a seventh-grader. Right? You've had her now
for … what?" He pretended to think. "Seven, eight weeks? I gather
she's not a top-notch student. How many students come through here a day? Be
honest. How well can you even know the girl in that length of time?"

"Not as well as I do some of my eighth- and
ninth-graders, of course. But Tracy is … noticeable. She dresses and acts older
than her age. She's smart but not a good student. She tends to talk back, speak
out of turn, exchange loud comments with friends at inopportune moments. But
sometimes there's also something a little … sad about her. Do I know her
well?" Ms. Stavig tilted her head. "Not yet. Do I know why she's the
way she is? No, but I can guess, having talked to her mother several
times."

"Already?" He hoped he didn't sound as surprised
as he was. "She a real troublemaker?"

"No. Simply an underachiever. I find it best to ride
herd on kids from the beginning." Her mouth firmed. "Now tell me what
you meant to imply. What possible bearing does Tracy's choice of me as the
teacher to tell have on anything?"

"I thought maybe rumor told her you had escaped
marriage to a sexual molester. That she assumed you would be sympathetic and
not question her motivations or the … details of her story."

Emotions flashed across Mariah Stavig's expressive face
before she narrowed her eyes. "But, you see, most people at school didn't
know Simon. I have no reason whatsoever to think Tracy Mitchell was aware that
my ex-husband was accused of sexual molestation. And if she did know, she would
also know that I supported him when he said he was innocent."

"Did you?"

She ignored the question, although anger flared in her eyes.

"In fact, she would know that I think this kind of
accusation rather resembles a witch hunt. Too often, it's all emotion and
little truth. If she were smart, she would have chosen another teacher. When I
realized what she wanted to talk to me about, I almost asked her to do
so."

"And yet," he mused, "you did listen and you
went to your principal."

Her face became expressionless. "I am legally obligated
to report Tracy's story."

"If you weren't?" He leaned forward. "Would you
have told her to forget it? Maybe suggested she just ask to change classes?
Chalk up the sex to experience? How
would
you have handled it, Ms. Stavig?"

She bent her head as if in rapt contemplation of her hands,
flattened on her desk blotter. "Tracy's situation is … different."
She spoke very quietly. "Of course I would have taken action."

He didn't say,
Just as
I had to take action.
He
didn't have to. She looked up, shame staining her cheeks.

"I do realize that you had to do your job." Now
her hands knotted on the desk before she seemed to notice and moved them to her
lap, out of sight. Her voice was low, halting. "I'm sorry for what I said
earlier. It's not your fault Lily accused Simon or that you couldn't prove
either his guilt or innocence. I do know that."

Now he felt like crud. This whole interview had been about
him. He'd desperately wanted her to say just this, and manipulated her until
she did. If he had never seen Mariah Stavig before, he would have approached
her very differently.

"No," he said abruptly. "I'm sorry. You have
every reason to harbor … bitterness toward me. Probably I should have bowed out
of this investigation because I knew that. Instead I've been making little
jabs, just to see a reaction."

She stared, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
"Why?" she whispered finally.

Connor closed his eyes for a moment. "Because I
couldn't take the way you looked at me yesterday. As if I were another kind of
monster."

"Why did you care?"

He could barely make himself meet her gaze. "Because I
do have a conscience, believe it or not. I knew what I'd done to you, the
decisions I'd left you to make. Every day I leave people to make those
decisions. You were … symbolic, I suppose."

"You wanted me to say it wasn't your fault."

His grunt was meant to be a laugh. "Yes. How small we
can be."

"Yes," she said softly. "We can be, can't we?
My decision to leave Simon was mine alone. But I wanted to blame somebody so I
didn't have to take responsibility. The funny part is, I can hardly remember
the social worker from CPS." She made a ragged sound. "Not even her
name. That is funny. I chose
you
to hate."

Brows together, Connor studied her in genuine perplexity.
"Why?"

Her gaze skittered from his. "I don't know. I didn't
even realize…" Her breath escaped. "No, I do know. You dominated.
Compared to you, she was a shadow. And then there was the way you said it.
'Even in a whisper, Zofie's daddy, was clear as a bell.' You see, I remember
that, word for word."

He swore.

Mariah gave a crooked, sad smile. "That's why I hated
you. Because you were Lily's voice."

"I'm sorry," he said again, inadequately.

"No. You did what you had to do." Visibly
composing herself, she glanced at the clock. "My next period students will
start arriving in just a few minutes. I'm afraid we've wasted our time."

He shook his head. "I don't think so. We had to get
past this."

She gave him a brief, almost vague smile.
Class dismissed.
"I'm
going to eat my lunch, very quickly, if you don't mind."

"No. Listen. Can I come back later? After your last
class, maybe? Or do you have to pick up Zofie right away?"

Pulling a sandwich out of her brown paper bag, Mariah shook
her head. "I do have that planning period, remember."

"Oh, right. One o'clock?"

She agreed.

He stood. "I'll get out of here, then, so I don't start
whispers."

Mariah looked surprised and as innocent as he suspected at
heart she was. "Nobody is talking about Tracy yet."

What he'd meant was that they might whisper about
her.
He
didn't say so. "Good. I want to get to her friends before she can. Her
mother promised she wouldn't let her call any of them until I say it's okay.
I'll do some interviews here at school, others tonight in the kids'
homes."

Her brow creased. "I'm not sure I know who her best
friends
are.
Her crowd, sure, but if she had a really close friend…"

"I'm sticking around school today to talk to some of
her other teachers, too."

"Oh. Of course." She tried to smile. "Poor
Gerald."

"Maybe." Connor hadn't made up his mind yet.

He left, then, to hit up the next teacher on his list.

The consensus among the faculty, he found, was in agreement
with Mariah's brief sketch of the girl. "A smart mouth," the math
instructor said. All equivocated when asked about her academic potential.
"She's got the ability," conceded the social studies teacher
grudgingly. "If she'd ever pay attention."

Several had also had meetings with her mother. They were
guarded in their assessment, but having met Sandy Mitchell, Connor could read
between the lines. She was apparently still married to the long-missing
husband, which didn't stop her from replacing him with a rotating succession of
men. She claimed to want the best for her daughter, but she let Tracy baby-sit until the wee hours on school nights, wrote excuses for skipped classes and
apparently paid more attention to her current boyfriend than she did to whether
her daughter had missed assignments or flunked tests.

When asked how truthful they thought Tracy was, each and
every teacher hesitated. But once again, there was general agreement.
"Hard to say," the social studies instructor said at last.
"She's darned good at making up excuses for late assignments. I bought a
few of them before she tried one too many."

Her art teacher was a standout. This was the one class where
Tracy excelled. Even Connor could see real talent in the sketches Jennifer
Lawson showed off. "Look at her clay project compared to the other
kids'," she said, leading him back to a worktable beside a kiln.

He studied the rows of squat pots, as yet unglazed,
constructed with coils. Only one had character and unexpected grace; it was
both taller and narrower than the others, the neck taking an intriguing curve.
Connor indicated it, and Ms. Lawson nodded.

"She's very focused in here. I don't get the excuses
from her I know the other teachers do." She added simply, "Tracy
Mitchell really has artistic ability. I hope she chooses to use it."

Tracy
's
mother had given permission for him to read her daughter's school file,
starting with a pre-kindergarten assessment—"bright and eager"—and
ending with the sixth-grade report card, which consisted of
Bs
and
Cs
.
There had been up years and down years, he discovered; teachers who had seen
promise in the girl and worked hard to cultivate her enthusiasm and ability,
and teachers who had disliked that "smart mouth" and early budding of
sexuality.

Nobody particularly noted lying as a problem. Yeah, she
probably made up excuses for undone homework, but what kid didn't? Connor knew
he had.

His one interview with the girl had left him undecided.
Usually he had a gut feeling. Strangely, this time he didn't. Sitting in the
living room of the apartment where she lived with her mom, she had told her
story in a disquietingly pat way. But then, Connor had reminded himself, this
was the third time in one afternoon she'd been asked to tell it. Wouldn't be
surprising if it didn't come out by rote after a while.

If she was lying, she was smart enough not to let any
smugness or slyness seep through. He had detected some real anger at the
teacher, but not the distress a girl raped at her age should feel. If she was
already sexually active, the actual act might not have disturbed her as much as
it would have your average thirteen-year-old. Even so, how much experience
could she have? Shouldn't she be traumatized?

But he wasn't making assumptions too quickly. Sometimes the
trauma was buried. It could take time to claw its way to the surface. Or, hell,
maybe she'd seen her mother trading sex for favors over the years, so this
swap, a grade for a quickie, had seemed normal to her, something a girl did.

Could she, at thirteen,
not
be
traumatized by forced sex with a man three times her age?

Connor was more depressed by that possibility than by any of
the others. Damn it, a thirteen-year-old was a kid. A little girl, who
shouldn't be seeing R-rated movies, far less be numbingly sophisticated about
sex.

Anyway, assuming she was that sophisticated, why had she decided,
after the fact, to tell her drama teacher what had happened? Because she was
upset? Or because Gerald Tanner hadn't kept his side of the deal? Say, he'd
decided she should put out a few more times if she wanted that passing grade?

The bell rang. Knowing better this time than to try to force
his way up three flights of stairs against the lemminglike plunge of the
middle-schoolers toward their next classes, Connor waited outside in a covered
area. Shoulder propped against a post, he watched thirteen- and
fourteen-year-olds flirt, gossip with friends, struggle to open ancient metal
lockers and act cool.