The Word of a Child (6 page)

Somewhere.

She picked the wadded-up message from the otherwise empty
waste can, smoothed it out on the desk and dialed the number.

"Detective McLean."

"This is Mariah Stavig. You asked me to call."

His voice was calm, easy, deep, and agonizingly familiar.
"I wondered when you have a break today so that we could talk."

"I take lunch just after eleven. Or I have a planning
period toward the end of the school day."

"Eleven?"

"School starts at 7:20." Why did he
think
she was
returning his call so early?

He made a heartfelt comment on the hour, with which she
privately agreed; students would learn better with another hour of sleep. But
Mariah said nothing except, "You must start work early, too."

"Actually I just got up." He yawned as if to
punctuate his admission. "This is my cell phone number."

"Oh." Oh, dear, was more like it. Obviously he
wasn't at the moment wearing one of those well-cut suits he favored. More
likely, pajama bottoms sagged low on his hips, if he slept in anything at all.
An image of Connor McLean bare-chested tried to form in her mind, but she
refused to let it.

"Eleven, then," he said. "Where do I find
you?"

She hesitated for the first time, hating the idea of him in
here. But the teacher's lounge was obviously out, late October days, however
sunny, were too chilly to sit outside, and short of borrowing another teacher's
classroom—and how would she explain that?—Mariah couldn't think of another
place as private as this.

"I'm on the top floor of the A building. Room
411."

"Can I bring you a take-out lunch?"

Annoyed at his thoughtfulness, she was glad to be able to
say, "Thank you, but I packed one this morning."

"See you then."

She pressed End on her phone and stashed it again in her
tote. Her heart was drumming. Ridiculous.

The door to the classroom rattled, and she glanced up to see
a couple of blurred faces in the mottled glass. Startled, she saw that the
clock had reached seven-fifteen without her noticing.

She let in the eager beavers. Probably eager not for her
brilliant instruction, but for the chance to slump into their seats and achieve
a near-doze for a precious few minutes before she demanded their attention.
Most did, however, drop last night's assignment into her in-box as they passed
her desk.

This ninth-grade crowd was reading
Romeo and Juliet.
She was
big on Shakespeare. She'd let them watch the updated movie version last week,
the one with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio and guns and swimming pools,
which she personally detested as much for what it had left out as for the
interpretation. But she'd found it effective with the kids, helping them to
understand that the words were timeless. Now she was making them read the
original, not cut to suit the constraints of moviemaking budgets and filmgoers'
limited attention spans.

Tracy
wasn't
in her seat for Beginning Drama. Was she too scared or embarrassed to come to
school now that the cat was out of the bag? Or had her mom made her stay home?
The principal might even have suggested she take a day or two while the police
investigated.

The class passed with Tracy's empty desk nagging at Mariah.
The bell had rung and students were making their way into the hall traffic when
Detective McLean's head appeared above theirs. Under other circumstances Mariah
might have been amused as he tried to force his way upstream in a hall so packed,
kids shuffled along in file with their backpacks protectively clutched tight.
Stopping to visit with friends was impossible, the equivalent of an accident
during rush hour on a Seattle freeway.

His progress would have been even slower on one of the lower
floors. This was the bottom of the bottle, so to speak, tipped up to empty.
Students were fleeing it for the commons or the covered outdoor areas where
they could hang out for the lunch hour.

"God Almighty," the detective muttered when he
finally stepped into her room. "What if there was a fire?"

"That," Mariah said, "is our worst fear.
There is a fire escape on each end of the building, which would help, but since
going down that would be single file, evacuating all four floors would still
take way too long."

He looked back at the stragglers in the now-emptying hall
and frowned. "The fire inspectors have been here between classes?"

"What are they going to do? Condemn the building? Where
would we go?"

He growled something and closed the door on the hubbub.
Mariah fought an instinctive desire to step back. Connor McLean was a very
large man, easily six-two or six-three, with bulky shoulders to match. While
she watched, he strolled around her classroom reading quotations, scrutinizing
photos, smoothing a big hand over a desktop just as she'd done earlier.

"Place hasn't changed at all."

She raised her brows. "Since?"

"I went here. Smells the same, even."

"I like the smell." She was sorry immediately that
she'd let herself get personal.

He inhaled. "Yeah. Creates instant memories, doesn't
it?"

Yes. Yes, that was exactly it. Floor polish and books and
chalk dust could release a kaleidoscope of memories of herself behind one of
those student desks. The rustle of a note being passed, the wonder of the
passage a teacher read with deep feeling, the stumbling recitation of a report
before bored classmates, the glow of seeing a huge red
A
—good
work!—on the top of her paper. Days and weeks and years spent in classrooms
like this, the time happy enough that she had chosen teaching as a career. No
wonder she loved the smell of school.

"Yes," she said stiffly. "I suppose it
does."

He stood before the window for a moment, looking out.
"This town doesn't change."

"The strip malls and Target and Home Depot weren't here
when you went to Port Dare Middle School."

He gave himself a shake, as though ridding himself of
memories she wasn't so sure were good. "No, or the developments in the
outskirts. But the view from here hasn't changed an iota."

"Unless we tear down all the Victorian houses or allow
new development on the waterfront, it never will."

Detective McLean turned abruptly, his gaze focusing
intensely on her. "You didn't grow up in Port Dare, did you?"

She wasn't sure what business it was of his, or why he
cared, but answering seemed harmless. "No. I'm actually from California. Sacramento. I came to college up here, met my husband and stayed."

"Where did you go?"

Was he going to check her college transcripts?
"Gonzaga, in Spokane. Then Washington State University for a masters
degree."

He made an interested sound as he strolled to the front of
the room. "Why Port Dare?"

She looked at him steadily. "Simon found work
here."

"You're still married?" He sounded casual, as if he
didn't care. And why should he?

"No." Acid corroded her voice and her heart.
"You did manage to destroy my marriage. Is that what you wanted to
know?"

A muscle jumped in his cheek, but he didn't look away.
"I hoped you were divorced. For your little girl's sake."

Mariah tasted bile. "Now Zofie gets to spend weekends
with her daddy. Without Mommy around at all."

A frown gathered his brow. "He gets unsupervised
visitation?"

"Of course he does!" She stared at him with
dislike. "You never even arrested Simon. You never proved a thing."

"It's almost impossible when the victim is a child that
young."

She clutched the edge of the desk for support, listened to
her voice shake. "Then what's the good of making accusations you can never
substantiate? If there is no sperm, no witnesses, why start something you can't
finish?"

His mouth twisted. "How can we not? He might have given
something away. You might have been able to prove your husband was never alone
with the child and her identification of him was wrong. You and he had a right
to know he had been named. Would you really have wanted to go on with your
marriage in ignorance? Maybe have had more children with him?"

The sound that came from her was nearly a sob. "I don't
know! How can I even remember life before you came and spread doubts like …
like salt in a field?" Mariah drew a shuddering breath and fought for
composure. "I hate what you did to Simon and me and Zofie. I had to say
that once. Now let's do what you came for and not talk about the past again."

"It's my job." Did he sound hoarse?

"We all choose how we spend our lives." She, in
turn, was cold, unforgiving.

"Someone has to stop child molesters and rapists."

"Just know that you do bad along with the good."

He gestured toward the rows of empty desks and said
scathingly, "Don't you ever let down a student? Maybe not connect, because
you don't want to change how you present your material? Could it be you're so
sure everyone should appreciate Shakespeare, you ignore those kids who can't
read well enough. Or, hell, maybe you don't listen, because you're too busy or
you don't like that student anyway?" He stalked toward her, predator
toward prey. "Fail her on a test, when she needed you to understand that
her mom walked out last week and she's cleaning house and doing the laundry and
putting dinner on the table and taking care of her little brothers and crying
when she should be sleeping? Maybe just failed to reach a kid, period, no
matter how hard you tried? You've never done any of that?"

She winced inside. What teacher didn't have regrets? Who was
perfect? But she hadn't chosen a profession where she destroyed more often than
she built.

Chin high, face frozen, she asked, "Are you admitting
that you 'failed' my family?"

That betraying muscle beneath his eye jerked, but he said
quietly, "If I failed anyone, it was Lily Thalberg."

Now Mariah did flinch. Sometimes she almost forgot Zofie's
small playmate, the child who had started so much when she whispered,
"Zofie's daddy."

"You believed her."

"Yes."

"Did you ever question her identification of my
husband? I mean, seriously question it?"

"Did I consider that she might be transferring the
terror from her own daddy to someone else's? Is that what you're asking?"

"I…" She swallowed. "Yes. Or from her grand-daddy,
or…"

"Or someone. Anyone but your husband."

Her mouth worked. Put that way, she sounded childish. Blame
anyone but Simon. "He didn't … he couldn't…"

Harshly, Detective McLean said, "And yet, you left
him."

"Yes." Now she froze inside as well as out.
"To my eternal shame."

He let out a ragged breath. "Ms. Stavig…"

"No." She straightened behind the desk. "It
is far, far too late for recriminations." Not for guilt. Never for guilt.
"I shouldn't have started this. I'm going to ask you to leave if this is
what you came to talk about."

He moved his shoulders as though to ease tension. "You
know it isn't."

"Then tell me what you need to know."

"So you
can
ask me to leave?"

"So that my students don't still find you here when
they arrive for class in—" she glanced at the clock "—twenty-five
minutes."

His gaze followed hers to the clock and he muttered an
incredulous oath. "That's not long enough."

Although he would loom over her, Mariah pulled out her chair
behind the large teacher's desk and sat. "I suggest you take advantage of
that time," she said crisply.

Frustration and something else showed in his gray eyes.
"All right," he said abruptly. His tone took on an edge, a sneer.
"Here's a question, Ms. Stavig. Why do you think, when Tracy Mitchell
decided to tell her story, she chose
you
of all teachers to hear it?"