SK01 - Waist Deep (23 page)

“Things can get worse?
More bullshit?”

He shook his head.
“No.
Not unless there is some sort of major social upheaval, anyway.
What I mean is that the taboo itself can cease to be a taboo and so it ends that way.”

“Like what?” Yvette had moved in close to LeMond once more, shifting around until he sighed again.

LeMond closed his eyes and started to lay his head back again.

“Like what?” Yvette repeated.

He popped open one eye and grinned lasciviously.
“Well, like oral sex, for instance.”

Even from the fence, I could see the surprise on her face.
“What about it?”

“Look how it’s changed,” he said.
“Fifty or sixty years ago or so, it was something only a prostitute would do.
A respectable woman never would.”

“No way.”

“It’s true.
It was a huge taboo.
Then, slowly it became acceptable, even expected, for women of all walks of life.
Now, it’s so casual that some people don’t even consider it sex.”

“It isn’t,” Yvette said.
“Not really.
It’s like making out, only a step farther.”

LeMond shrugged.
“So the taboo is no more.
That particular oppression has ended.
But if you were living in the early 1900s as man and woman and wanted to have some oral sex, you’d better keep it to yourself.
That’s how you cast off the bullshit but keep up the protective pretense.
Now do you see?”

Yvette nodded deeply, as if he were the Buddha and had just uttered the secret of life.
He smiled at her and she smiled back.
Then the rocking began again in earnest, followed by the sloppy kissing and groping.
I dropped off the fence and next to that
bastard’s
Porsche.

4
0

I stood shivering next to the fence.
I desperately wanted to unlatch the gate and break up the little love-fest in the hot tub.
Even though the sight of Yvette’s naked body
looked like she was a grown woman, it was equally clear from their conversation
she was under age
. A
nd probably a student.
If I was right, I had LeMond by the balls.
Whether that would help me find Kris or not was another matter.

On the other hand, if she wasn’t a student or if
I was wrong and
she actually was eighteen and I went barging into his back yard, he could call the cops and have me arrested for burglary.
And there’d be nothing to stop him from doing so.
I could end up in the
c
ounty
j
ail, where I’m sure the
re
’d be more than a few people from both sides of the fence who would remember me from my days on the job.
That could get unpleasant.

I should just get into my car and go.
Then I’d keep this trump card in my hand and figure out just exactly how to play it to my greatest advantage.

That’s what I should do.

That would be the smart play.

What I did was swing the gate open and
march
into Gary LeMond’s back yard.

4
1

“I just want to know one thing, Gary,” I said, striding toward the hot tub.
“Are you tutoring her or is she tutoring you?”

Both heads snapped in my direction.
LeMond’s eyes
bulged out at me.
Yvette gave a strangled scream and pulled away from him.
She stood up to get out of the hot tub. Steam poured off of her lithe body and water streamed down it.
I tried to ignore her small, pert breasts and the wet, black patch between her legs, but it was impossible not to look.
I settled for keeping a straight face.

LeMond stared at me in disbelief.
His face vacillated between panic and rage.

I stopped about five feet from the hot tub.
“Really,” I said.
“I want to know.
From the sound of it, you’re tutoring her.
But from the looks of it—”

Yvette must have realized that she was completely nude and standing only knee-deep in the hot tub.
She dropped like a rock back into the water up
to
her neck and huddled next to LeMond, looking like the child she probably was.

“Gary, who is this?”
Her voice was frantic.

I stared at LeMond, watching the battle between panic and rage continue on his face.

“What do I do, Gary?” Yvette whined.
“What do I—”

“Shut up,” LeMond told her without looking at her.
“Go in
to
the house.
Get dressed and go home.
Say nothing.”

Yvette glanced from LeMond to me, still frantic and now a little hurt.

“Do it now!” LeMond said, raising
his
voice just a little, but putting an edge in it.

Yvette started at his tone
, then swallowed and rose out of the water.
I tried to ignore
her nude body as s
he grabbed a white terry cloth robe that was next to the hot tub and hurriedly put it on.
The she shuffled into the house, leaving a watery trail on the stone path.

As soon as the door closed, LeMond asked me, “What the hell are you doing here?”

I gave him a cold smile and gestured toward the door.
“At least this one can drive, eh?”

He said nothing, glaring at me.

“With Kris, it must have been harder to arrange these little
soirées
.
I don’t suppose you could have her
dad
drop her off, could you?”

“What do you want?” LeMond said, his eyes cold with hate.

“Right now?
I want to kick your ass.”

LeMond snorted.
“I’m not too worried about that.”

“You should be.”

“No,” he said.
“You should be the one who’s worried.
Worried that I’ll call the cops and you’ll go to jail for trespassing.”

“Call away,” I said.
“I’ll go for the piss-ant trespassing and you can go for rape of a child.”

His eyes widened slightly.
“I-I didn’t rape anyone.”

I stepped closer to the hot tub.
“Do you have any idea what the law is in this state, Casanova?
Consent is not an issue.
Age is the issue.”

LeMond’s mouth tightened.

“How old is Yvette?” I asked him.
“Not old enough that you’d want her parents to know about this little hot tub adventure, is she?
Not even old enough that you’d want the cops in on the knowledge, either.
So go ahead and call them.
They’ll come and arrest us both.
We can even share a car to jail.”
I moved to the edge of the hot tub, staring directly into LeMond’s glaring eyes.
“But once we get to County, I want my own cell.
I won’t share a cell with a sex offender.
You know what the other inmates do to sex offenders, don’t you?”

“I am not a sex offender,” LeMond said, biting off each word.

I shrugged.
“Jail or your job.
If the cops come tonight, I see trouble with one or the other.
Or both.”

The front door slammed and few moments later, a car door.
Then an engine fired to life and drove away.

“Hope her parents don’t wonder about her wet hair,” I said.

LeMond’s glare didn’t soften.
“They’re out of town,” he said.
“Do you think I’m stupid?”

“You don’t want to know what I think of you.”

“I couldn’t care less.”

I nodded.
“That’s right.
It’s all part of ‘society’s bullshit,’ isn’t it?”

“You should go,” he told me.
“Your chips in th
e game just left the table. I
f you don’t go now, I will call the cops.”

I shook my head.
“No, I don’t think so.
You really think Yvette would hold up that long under a little police questioning?
You think she really hasn’t
already
told this delicious little secret to some of her girlfriends?”

LeMond tried to appear unmoved, but I saw uncertainty in his eyes.

“Your little affair is a house of cards,” I told him.
“One good gust of air and it will all tumble down.
A little looking and the cops will find out about Kris.
And all the others.”

I watched him for a reaction.
He didn’t react to Kris’s name or my accusation about the other girls.
In the law enforcement arena, his lack of denial was considered
a tacit admission of guilt. It was
a signal to blaze forward, because a confession was in the works.
Of course, that was all cat-and-mouse interrogation science.
You’d never get to say in court, “Well, I accused him and he didn’t deny it.”

But I didn’t need a court of law.
Standing in his backyard, next to his hot tub, I had Gary LeMond pegged for the scumbag that he was.
I made up my mind right then that he was going to answer for it, one way or another.

Not tonight, though.
He might not call the cops because of what I had on him, but I wasn’t going to call for them, either, because of what he had on me.
He might only think it was a puny trespass charge, but I knew better.

“Tell me about Kris,” I said, “and I’ll go.”

LeMond stared at me in appraisal.
“You’ll go?”

I nodded.

“And you’ll tell no one about this?”

I thought about that.
“How old is Yvette?” I asked.
I knew she was at least sixteen
because she drove
, but—

“Seventeen,” LeMond said.
“Eighteen in May.”

I thought about how college professors routinely slept with their students all across the country.
Guys in their forties or fifties bedding down eighteen and nineteen
-
year
-
old nymphs just glad to be out from under
mom
and
dad’s
tyrannical rule, even if that escape
was funded on those same tyrant
s
’
dime.
I’m sure
LeMond
would say that what he
was doing with Yvette wasn’t a whole lot different than that.
Just one shade of grey away, really.

When I didn’t reply, LeMond sputtered, “Jesus, you saw her.
She’s a woman.
She knows what she’s doing.”

I had a mental flash of Yvette’s bare
form
.
Suddenly, I was sick to my stomach
with shame and disgust
.
I thought for a moment I might throw
up right into LeMond’s hot tub. Instead, I
blamed
it on the remnants of my hangover
and a greasy hamburger, b
ut I knew the
source was right in front of me
.

“Fine,” I said.
“I won’t say anything to anyone about Yvette.
But you
will
tell me everything you know about Kris Sinderling.”

LeMond ran his hand nervously across his mouth, then nodded.

“Do you know where she is?” I asked.

He shook his head.
“No.
I have no idea.”

“Why did she run away?”

LeMond shrugged.
“I don’t know that, either.
I told you everything I knew when you came to the school.”

“Not everything.
How long were you sleeping with her?”

LeMond paled slightly.
“That was a mistake, okay?”

“How long?”

He sighed.
“A few months.
And only a few times.”

“How’d it happen?”

“Drama,” he said.
“I cast her in a play I’d written.
It was a single part, so there was a lot of coaching necessary.
We worked together after school in the theatre.
One day…things were kind of intense and it just happened.”

“
Sixteen
,” I said coldly.
“She’s
sixteen
.”

“I
know
that,” he snapped.
“But Kris was special.
She had an ageless quality to her and—”

“Spare me the line,” I interrupted.
“I’m not interested in what lets you sleep at night.
I want to know why she ran away.
Did she find out about Yvette?”

He shook his head.
“No.
Everything was fine.
With us, anyway.”

My stomach clenched again when he said that
word
.
Us.
I f
ought down the nauseous feeling
.
“She didn’t run away for no reason at all,” I said.