“I… I can’t play today.”
So she had sat on the stage watching the other girls play. Ignoring them when they asked her why she didn’t join in, or made comments about her and made up nasty reasons why she couldn’t play, all of which were much closer to the truth than anything the teachers had suggested. She’d even fallen asleep once watching the gym class, resting her eyes for just a moment… waking to find an angry boys’ basketball coach shaking her awake.
“You’re not supposed to be here. You should be in your next class by now. What are you doing sleeping here?”
Tamara knew that her teacher had decided to teach her a lesson. To face the natural consequences of falling asleep, having all of the boys laugh at her and tease her.
When things had gotten really bad, when she was constantly missing morning classes to throw up in the girls’ room, failing to hand in any work, in such a fog that she didn’t know which class she was supposed to be in when the class change bells rang, then they had hauled her in front of her guidance counselor. Then he suddenly had time to meet with Tamara to give her dire warnings about the direction her life was going. Before she went to the Bakers, she had been getting all A’s. By then, her grades had all fallen to F’s. Her counselor was sure she was drinking and on drugs and had lectured and cajoled her, trying to get her to admit it.
Why would she have told any of them what Mrs. and Mr. Baker were doing to her? Or to the babies? Why would she humiliate herself like that? She was so beaten down and exhausted, she would have done anything to get out of there.
Anything.
“I told them other things. They never cared. I wasn’t going to tell them I let him… do what he did to me. To the girls. I was supposed to take care of them. To protect them. How could I protect them against him?”
“Did Mrs. Baker know? Did you talk to her about it?”
“Talk to her?” Tamara saw Mrs. Baker’s bleached blond hair falling tousled around her face, the cruelty in her face, the predatory eyes and sharp lines of her face. The woman had slapped and pinched Tamara as often as she talked to her, punctuating each command or criticism with physical punishment. Such casual cruelty. Which was nothing like when she was truly mad about something and she took Tamara downstairs to where no passersby would be able to hear Tamara’s screams. To the cement-floored room Mrs. Baker kept stocked with whatever she might need to teach Tamara the error of her ways and train her to perform her duties in a satisfactory way. The woman was a demon, but they just kept letting her go.
“So Mrs. Baker might not have known at that time that Mr. Baker was hurting the children.”
“She knew,” Tamara said with certainty. “That’s why they got me. So that he could get what he wanted and she wouldn’t have to worry about him touching the babies.”
“Did she say that? Did either of them say that?”
“No.”
“So that’s only conjecture.”
“I know what happened. He was on to me the first day I got there. He didn’t wait one day before he started moving in.” She opened her mouth to say more, but the words were strangled in her throat. She cleared her throat a couple of times and looked around for a drink, but no cup or bottle of water had been provided.
Ritter waited for more, then shrugged, deciding she was done.
“I’m sorry for what you went through with them, Tamara. No one should have to put up with being treated like that.”
She appreciated that he at least attempted to apologize to her. Few other adults had shown her any sympathy for what she had gone through. And rightly so, as she had gone from being the prey to being the predator. No one had sympathy for a predator.
“They never had to serve any time,” Tamara told him. “Not one single day for what they did to me.”
“That’s not right.”
Tamara nodded.
“When did you become aware that he was interfering with the little children as well?”
Tamara wished there were a window to look out. She would have given anything to be able to look outside and just watch the cars drive by or the birds flying in the sky. Anything but having to see Mr. Baker standing before her. She shifted in her chair, wishing she could throw up again. Wishing there were some escape for her. She got up and paced across the room, her guts tied too tightly in knots to sit any longer.
“It wasn’t all at once… and it wasn’t real obvious. You had to be paying attention. But if you did…” Tamara gulped. She put her hands on the wall to brace herself. Leaned her forehead against it. “When he got Corrine ready for bed… bathed her, cuddled with her while he told her stories… if you watched his hands…” Her voice cracked. “Or when he was changing Julie. Wiping her. Putting cream on her…” Tamara clutched her stomach and turned around so that her back was against the wall, leaning on it to hold herself up. She breathed heavily. “At first I thought… I was just imagining. But I wasn’t. Every chance he got, he was touching them. Even if I was in the room, or Mrs. Baker was. He just… pretended he was taking care of them like a good daddy. And they loved him. They weren’t scared of him, didn’t ask for someone else to give them baths or put them to bed instead of him. They didn’t cry.”
“Did you ever confront him? Accuse him?”
“No!” Tamara wiped at the corners of her eyes. “I was twelve years old!”
Surely he could understand the position she was in. She’d had no other home or family. Mr. Baker using her and Mrs. Baker beating her at the slightest hint of laziness or opposition. Their threats about what would happen if she had to leave there. Where she would end up if she told her social worker. She had been tired and sick and scared and frantic to find some way out. Any way to escape.
“And Mrs. Baker? Did she ever say anything to him about it? Tell him to stop?”
“Mostly, she would just look at him, and he’d give her this smirk like it was all a big joke… sometimes she’d tell him to cut it out, and then he’d complain about how she was neglecting him, how she never showed any interest in him. She’d tell him to get me to help him out…” Tamara swore. She rubbed her aching head. “I didn’t get it then… I was such a baby, so naive, I missed all of the stuff they weren’t saying… but when I look back at it now…” She shook her head. “They were so sick. So, so twisted.”
Ritter nodded his agreement. His face, rather than being sympathetic like before, was blank. He didn’t get red and embarrassed like he had at first. He didn’t try to apologize to her. He just looked… sickened. Tamara put her face in her hands. She didn’t cry, but she just couldn’t look Ritter in the face.
“You realize, don’t you, that the jury is going to have a hard time believing you. The fact that you never suggested this to anyone until after going back and kidnapping Amy…”
“I recorded him. When I went back and they had Amy. I recorded them on the baby monitor, her telling him not to touch her. I gave it to the police.”
“But they can’t see what’s happening. It’s only your interpretation of what was happening.”
“I saw him do it before! And Mrs. Baker was there. She’s testifying.”
“She’s cut a deal for that testimony. And you’ve cut a deal for the kidnapping charges. You can see how it might look to the jury like the prosecutor is railroading him, bribing the two of you to testify against him.”
“That’s not true!”
“That’s how they’re going to see it.”
“What am I supposed to do, then? What am I supposed to say?” She was glad to have anger displacing the horror of those memories. It was better to be angry than to be a victim. She was justified in the rage that boiled up in her. After all that had been done to her, she was right to be angry.
“All you can do is tell them the truth, like you’re telling me. I’m just warning you what you’re going to face. You have a lot of strikes against you as a witness. The defense is going to try to pull your testimony apart. They’re going to try to make it sound like you’re respo
nsible for letting it happen.”
Tamara glared at him, letting the anger simmer, but he held her gaze, eyes steady. Tamara let her breath out slowly and nodded.
“Okay.”
“Don’t try to dress it up. Don’t try to justify yourself or embellish what he did. Just keep your testimony true and straightforward.”
Tamara nodded again. She looked toward the door, anxious to get back to her bunk and to bury it all away again the best she could.
“We’re not done,” Ritter warned, understanding the look.
“What else?” Tamara snapped.
“The other case.”
“Oh.” He had told her that there were a couple of cases, but it hadn’t really sunk in. “Is it Mrs. Baker? Am I supposed to be testifying against her too?”
“No. The other case is unrelated.”
“What is it, then?”
Again, the show of shuffling papers and looking at his file as though he couldn’t quite remember the details of the case.
“You are subpoenaed as a witness in the case of assault against Mr. Quentin McClure.”
Tamara stepped toward Ritter and leaned on the back of her chair. “Coach McClure? Did he… survive? It’s not murder, just assault?”
Ritter nodded, his eyes curious.
“Is he… is he okay? I mean… is he in hospital still? Is he… better?”
She was hopeful and dreading his answer at the same time. She didn’t want to have been involved in a murder or in leaving Coach McClure in a coma or disabled, but at the same time, she didn’t want him preying on anyone else.
She shuddered, remembering Glock’s words after the attack.
“You were worried about that scum molesting Lotta or other girls? I took care of it. He’s never gonna do that again. You don’t have to worry.”
“You killed him!” Tamara protested.
“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. Won’t know until we hear the news tomorrow. But either way, he’s not going to be hurting anyone else again anytime soon.”
Tamara had been sure at the time that Glock had killed McClure. The scene had been horrific. She was sure that no one could have survived the bludgeoning that McClure had taken and survive.
But Dr. Eastport had once chattered cheerfully to Tamara about how hard human skulls were, after examining Tamara’s head injury to make sure he didn’t have to have her sent to the hospital after an incident.
“You never know, from one person to the next, how sturdy or fragile their skull is. You can’t tell by looking at a person and the size or shape of their head how thick and solid it is. Some skulls will fracture like an eggshell. Others… I once examined a fellow who was hit in the head with an I-beam on a construction site. The blow threw him twenty feet and put him out cold. But he was conscious by the time the ambulance got there and, other than a bruise and a headache, there was no appreciable damage. Not even a hairline crack.” Dr. Eastport lifted the ice pack to examine the swelling knot on Tamara’s own head. “You, my dear, may be thankful that you do not have an eggshell. Your head is at least as hard as the average skull, if not harder.”
“Great.”
“Tamara.”
Tamara closed her eyes, trying to stay in the moment, with Dr. Eastport in the infirmary, having a lighthearted conversation while he treated her. But Ritter pulled her back to the present.
“Tamara, did you hear me?”
She rubbed her head. “Yes! No, what did you say?”
“Please pay attention.” He looked at his watch. “I don’t know how much more time I’ll have.”
“Sorry.”
“McClure is out of hospital. On disability. He’s doing therapy, but they don’t know how much function he’ll recover.”
“So…” she tried to unwind his words. “He’s okay? He’s getting better?”
“He’s well enough to be out of the hospital,” Ritter’s voice was sharp. “I don’t think there’s any likelihood that he will go back to his old job again.”
“I hope not! He should be behind bars, not at home!”
“I know there are rumors going around—”
“Rumors?” Tamara’s voice rose. “Those weren’t rumors! He got one of the girls on the volleyball team pregnant! And he was messing around with another one of them. Who knows how many years he’d been doing it. How many girls’ lives he ruined!”
“Unless he was inappropriate toward you, I don’t think we can assume his guilt. He hasn’t been tried—”
“I saw with my own eyes. It’s not just a rumor.”
Ritter pressed his lips together. “Tamara, I don’t know all of the details of this assault, but it’s my understanding that you are not being charged with being an accessory. If you start saying things like that on the stand… you’re just asking for them to lay charges against you too.”
“I’m not saying anything that isn’t true,” Tamara growled.
“That’s not the point. My point is, if you get up on the stand and spout about how he deserved what he got, you can expect retaliation. You don’t have a deal on this one. There’s nothing to stop them from charging you at any time. So you’d better be careful what you say when you get up on the stand.”
“Fine.” Tamara slid into her chair, her knees wobbly. She didn’t want him to see how weak she was. “I’ll keep my big mouth shut.”
“You still need to talk. You still need to testify as to what happened. I’m just warning you, keep it calm and don’t start throwing around accusations, or you’re going to end up in front of a judge as well.”
“I got it.” Tamara bit off each word.
He sat there, looking at her without speaking. Tamara hunched her shoulders over and rubbed her head. She just wanted so much for it to be over, so she could go back to her room, close her eyes, and pretend it had never happened.
“So… this isn’t Coach McClure’s trial,” she said, slowly understanding what Ritter was saying. “This is about Glock.”
“Uh—Kayla Spielman,” Ritter said, looking at his papers.
Tamara knew that Spielman was Glock’s last name. That was what the guards had called her, rarely acknowledging the nickname she preferred. Tamara had never actually heard her first name before. Kayla. It was foreign, something that didn’t belong to her. Even Collins and the TV news hadn’t called her Kayla, but referred to her as Glock Spielman.
“Yeah… Glock is what she goes by.”
“Is testifying against her a problem?”
It was obvious from the tone of his voice that he thought it would be. They had gone to see McClure together. Tamara had associated with Glock even though she was out on parole and not supposed to have anything to do with felons.
“The two of you were friends?” Ritter pressed.
“No… she was… she was my cellie here for two years. My cellmate. For two years.” Tamara knew she was repeating herself, but no other words would come to her. Glock wasn’t her friend. That wasn’t how it worked. Tamara was guilty of taking Glock to the school to talk to McClure, but she hadn’t had a clue what Glock had really had in mind.
“I assume since you weren’t charged, that the prosecution had reason to believe you either weren’t involved or would testify against Spielman in court.”
Tamara’s mind was racing. Was she up to testifying against Glock? They were no longer in the same facility, so Glock couldn’t retaliate. She would be in prison a long time for what she had done to Coach McClure. And for threatening to kill Tamara’s parole officer. Could Tamara be sure that Glock wouldn’t be able to reach out to her through other inmates in the system?
“I never hit Coach McClure,” she told Ritter. “I only went there to talk to him, to get him to confess to what he did to Lotta and Holly. Glock said if I could get a recording of him admitting it… we could put him away. That’s why I was there. Not to hurt him.” She shook her head and closed her eyes, as if that would stop the images from coming back to her. She had been paralyzed, unable to do anythin
g to stop Glock. Even if she tried, she knew Glock was bigger, stronger, and crueler than Tamara could ever be. She could just as easily bludgeon Tamara as McClure. Tamara wouldn’t have stood a chance. Not without guards there to stop Glock.
She had screamed and screamed at Glock, but that was all she could do. Helpless and hopeless. She couldn’t believe that was what Glock had been planning from the beginning. And she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t seen it coming. Of course Glock had been planning to hurt McClure. Glock wasn’t the type who talked things over. Tamara had been an idiot not to have seen it.
“No…” Tamara shook her head, unable to stop the beating playing out in front of her eyes again and again. “No…”
“No, what?” Ritter asked.
Tamara got farther away from the scene, until she couldn’t really see it anymore. She could just hear the blows falling, over and over again, the dull thuds of the heavy trophy landing against McClure’s skull. Glock’s grunts of effort. Tamara realized that her hand was hitting the table, punctuating the memory. Hitting it for every time Glock hit McClure. She caught her fist in her other hand and held it still.
“No, what?” Ritter repeated.
“No… I never hit him. I never intended to hit him. That was all Glock.”
“And you’ll testify in court. You’ll tell them what she said and did. How she planned it herself and that you didn’t take part.”
Tamara nodded. “Yeah.”
“It might be hard for people to believe. That you didn’t know what you were getting into, I mean. That you didn’t hit McClure as well, the two of you together.”
“But I recorded it,” Tamara said. “I recorded the whole thing. They’ll play it. They’ll hear me yelling at her to stop.”
Ritter raised his brows.
“If they have that kind of evidence, why is this going to trial? Why doesn’t Spielman just take a plea? Save the taxpayers the expense of a trial.”
Tamara snorted. “Glock never did anything for anyone else’s good. She only does what she wants.”
Tortured Teardrops (Tamara's Teardrops Book 3) Page 16
