Janice Kay - The Word of a Child

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 good-night 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.