“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 the game just left the table. If 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 tyrants’ 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, Iblamed it on the remnants of my hangover and a greasy hamburger, but 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 fought down the nauseous feeling.“She didn’t run away for no reason at all,” I said.
“No,” LeMond answered.
I glared at him, my nausea and anger brewing together into a growing fury.I breathed deeply through my nose to quell the emotion, but it did little to stem the tide.
After a few moments, LeMond squirmed slightly.“She was a little upset about the play being cancelled,” he said.
I nodded, remembering our conversation at the school.The principal had wanted a play with more acting roles.
“How upset?”
He shrugged.“Not so much that I ever thought she’d hurt herself.Or run away like she did.”
I didn’t answer, considering the possibility.She was sixteen years old and wanted to be a star.Her big chance comes along and she works hard at it, only to see the opportunity jerked away.How big of an event would that be in her life?How devastating?
It made some sense.It might be why she ran way.It didn’t explain the jump to flirting with prostitution, but it explained the runaway.
“I care deeply for her,” LeMond was saying.“I really do.It wasn’t just sex for me.And I tried to console her.I held herwhile she cried and-”
My hand shot out and caught him behind the head.I grabbed a fist full of his wet hair and twisted his head to the side.
LeMond yelped and I punched him hard in the face.
Once.
Any more than that and I wouldn’t have been able to stop.
I leaned in close to his face.I hoped he could smell the onions and coffee on my breath from lunch.A trickle of blood rolled out of his nostril and across his upper lip like a thin, red mustache.
“Your days of screwing your students are through,” I told him, my voice barely containing my fury.“I catch even a whiff of it after tonight and I go to the police.You get me?”
LeMond nodded, but there was not enough fear in his eyes for my taste. I snapped another punch into his delicate face.I left him there, in his hot tub and bleeding from his nose, and stalked back to my car.On my way, my stomach clenched again. This time, I let loose its contents, spewing puke all over the hood of LeMond’s Porsche.
42
The next morning, Cassie was back.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling her mysterious smile with that slightly crooked tooth just on the edge of it.“Usual?”
“A double,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows lightly.“Tough night?”
I nodded and grunted at the same time and she started to fix my Americano.
Peering over the side of LeMond’s fence had been tough.So was admitting that I liked the sight of Yvette’s body and then hating myself for it.