The Word of a Child. Janice Kay Johnson

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      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.

      On the whole, they hadn’t changed since his day. Haircuts and clothing styles were a little different, but not the basic insecurity that was the hallmark of these young teenagers.

      He didn’t see a girl hurrying by who would have been as calm as Tracy Mitchell, talking about the first time her computer teacher exposed himself to her.

      The crowd was thinning out, the next bell about to ring. Connor shoved away from the post and through the double doors into the tall A building with its Carnegie-style granite foundation and broad front entrance steps. Stragglers on their way to class cast him startled looks. He was an alien in their midst, an adult who wasn’t a teacher or a known parent. He smiled and nodded when they met his eyes.

      Tracy could be lying, all right. She wouldn’t be the first teenager who’d decided an allegation of sexual molestation was the way to bring down an adult she hated.

      But Gerald Tanner was also the classic nerd who had probably been hunched over his computer when his contemporaries were developing social skills. Not to mention fashion sense. Even Connor, who didn’t give a damn about clothes, had shuddered at his polyester slacks, belted a little too tight and a little too high on his waist, and the short-sleeved white dress shirt and tie. Okay, Tanner didn’t have a plastic pocket protector, but the black-framed glasses made him slightly owl-eyed. Who wore a getup like that these days? Hadn’t he ever heard of contact lenses?

      The point was, Gerald Tanner fit the profile of a guy who felt inadequate with women his own age. Here were all these teenagers, as awkward as he was with the opposite sex, the girls developing breasts, experimenting with makeup, learning to flirt and to flaunt what they had. What could be more natural than the realization that he was more powerful than they were? That he could fulfill his fantasies without having to bare himself, literally or figuratively, with a real woman?

      Connor reached the top floor and paused briefly outside a classroom with its door ajar. The teacher was talking, but damned if any of the kids seemed to be paying attention. Some of them were studying, one girl was French-braiding a friend’s hair, a couple of guys were playing a handheld electronic game, while others drifted around the room. Connor shook his head in faint incredulity. In his day, you were in deep you-know-what if you were caught passing a note, never mind openly playing a hand of poker in the back.

      The teacher raised her voice. “Everybody got that assignment on their calendar? Remember, the rough draft is due Tuesday.”

      One or two students appeared to make notations in open binders.

      Still shaking his head, Connor moved on.

      What kind of teacher was Gerald Tanner? Did he wear any mantle of authority? Or did the kids see him as a computer geek, too?

      Connor’s stride checked as it occurred to him that maybe times had changed. This was Microsoft country, after all, and Bill Gates was the Puget Sound area’s biggest celebrity. Hell, maybe jocks weren’t the only object of teenage girls’ lust these days. Maybe visions of the next computer billionaire danced in the heads of thirteen-year-old girls.

      He’d have to ask Mariah.

      Her door stood ajar, too. She sat behind her desk, papers spread across the surface, a red pen in her hand. Her concentration seemed complete. Connor wondered if she’d forgotten he was coming back.

      But, although he didn’t make a sound, he was no sooner framed in the doorway than her head shot up. For a moment she stared at him with the wide-eyed look of a doe frozen in car headlights. Was she afraid of him?

      But then she blinked, her face cleared, and he told himself he’d imagined the fear.

      “Detective. I thought maybe you’d gotten lost.”

      “Just avoiding the rush.”

      “Smart.” She started stacking the assignments, her movements precise, the corners all squared. “What can I do for you?”

      “Tell me what you know about Tanner.”

      “Gerald?” Her hands stilled momentarily, then resumed their task. “Well…not very much, actually. As I said in Mrs. Patterson’s office, I didn’t even know whether he was married. We simply haven’t become that personal.”

      Connor sat as he had that morning on a student desk in the first row. “Is he shy?”

      “Um…” She considered. “No, not really. He’s friendly in the teacher’s lounge. He’s surprisingly funny.”

      Okay, Connor thought, torpedo the stereotypes. Horn-rimmed glasses did not mean a man was humorless; skinny arms did not mean he was pathologically shy.

      “We’ve sat together to eat lunch several times, especially since we’ve started a discussion on doing a joint project coupling writing skills with Internet research.”

      “Have you seen him teach?”

      She pursed her lips as she thought. Connor was annoyed to find himself fixated on the soft curve of her mouth. Scowling, he tore his gaze away.

      “Only briefly. Generally, of course, he isn’t lecturing like I might do. The students work on computers, beginning ones on keyboarding skills, more advanced on computer animation or simple programming. So he tends to be wandering, looking over their shoulders, responding when they ask for help.” She shrugged. “That kind of thing.”

      “Do they pay any more attention to him than the students down the hall—” Connor nodded toward the next classroom “—are to that young blonde?”

      Mariah started to rise to her feet. “Is she having trouble?”

      He waved her back. “If СКАЧАТЬ