Chapter 11

Cutter escorted Tawny through the doors to the interior of the police station. The office Maury and Alicia used was cramped, but it wasn’t formal and cold, like the interview room was. One of the things Alicia had accomplished after attending the state academy was to convince the chief that using a room as a formal interview room was worth ‘wasting’ the space as an office. Maury was at home, on call, waiting to cover anything else that came up on the weekend, so that Alicia could give her full attention to the case. He did not feel left out at all. He’d been a detective in Julian for fifteen years, and had been embroiled in plenty of exciting cases. He thought of Alicia as a daughter, of sorts. It was her turn to work 72 hours straight and ruin her stomach with unending cups of coffee and hastily procured junk food.

Tawny was actually upset, at this point. She had basically worked herself into a state of unease and, once her emotions got fired up, the irrational cause of all that was unimportant. The fact that nobody would tell her what was going on was also part of that. Nobody wants to be kept out of the loop when a “loved one” has been arrested by the police, even if they have a pretty good idea of what the justification is.

She was seated at the chair beside Alicia’s desk and Cutter offered to get her a cup of coffee.

“I don’t want a cup of coffee,” she said, breathing slightly faster than normal. “I want to know why you arrested my husband!”

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” said Alicia, who was trying to establish a woman-to-woman bond. “It’s going to be very difficult for you to hear, though, and I want to warn you about that.”

“Did he murder somebody?!” gasped Tawny. She was acting again. She had done the things she thought she would be expected to do, but now she had no clue as to how to “go on with the show.”

“No. It’s not that bad,” said Alicia. She paused, trying to form her next words carefully. Cutter just bulled on ahead. He wanted this woman mad at her husband, so that she’d give consent to search. Idly he wondered why in the world Stevens (or any man) would cheat on a woman like this. She was fucking gorgeous!

“Your husband, acting in his official capacity as the principal of the high school, disciplined certain female students by requiring them to service him, sexually,” he said.

Tawny’s eyes did get round, which Alicia noticed, but they got round because of the bluntness of the man’s information, not the quality of it.

“What?” She assumed, correctly, that this was the correct response.

“He made a handful of girls have sex with him,” said Cutter. “He caught them doing something they didn’t want anybody else to know about and then traded them his silence about it for them having to have sex with him,” said Cutter. “He was under surveillance, tonight, when we caught him in the act.”

Tawny sat back. What was going on inside her was part of her autonomous nervous system, and beyond her control. What she was thinking at that point was: “He’s caught! It worked! I’m free! I’ll never have to lie under the troll again!” Following closely on those bursts of uncontrollable thought came, “I can see Bobby again! Bobby and I can be together again!” Her mind was filled with visions of what “We can be together again” could mean.

What this did to her body was also out of her control, as her autonomous nervous system reported to the body, “All is well. You can calm down, now. The emergency is over. No fight and no flight will be required.”

Basically, Alicia saw the woman relax. She actually slumped in the chair. The funny thing was that she didn’t get pale, or stop breathing, or show signs of stress of any kind. News like this should have galvanized the woman. Alicia was all too aware of how the autonomous nervous system works, and what she saw was relief, rather than the reaction to news that would have shattered most women.

“You knew,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes alert, now.

“What?” asked Tawny, who was just then beginning to get conscious control over her body back.

“You knew he was doing this,” said the detective.

Cutter folded his arms. He hadn’t been paying attention to the woman’s behavior, but he also knew that Alicia Ironsides was a sharp cookie. He hadn’t minded working with her at all, thus far, something rare when he had to deal with local law enforcement. Now his experienced eyes pinned on the beautiful woman for reasons other than just enjoying her appearance.

“Of course not,” she said, weakly. She had not expected this at all, and she didn’t know how to respond. Her autonomous nervous system continued to betray her.

“I think you did,” said Alicia. “The question I have is, why didn’t you come forward and say something? Were you in it with him?”

Tawny knew how to respond to that question.

“Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Well, then, why didn’t you say something? Did you feel like those girls deserved it?”

“No girl deserves that!” snapped Tawny. She had just succumbed to a tried and true interrogation technique. “No girl deserves what he did to them!”

“Then help me understand why you would allow it to go on,” said Alicia, her tone now calm. “You had to have a good reason. I know you did. But we need to know that reason, so you don’t get pulled into this as an accessory. He’s going to jail for a long, long time, Tawny. I’d hate to see you in the same prison.”

Cutter nodded, but not because he agreed with the comment. He was even more impressed with Detective Ironsides. She was a damn fine interrogator.

“I had to,” moaned Tawny.

“Go on,” urged Alicia.

“If I’d just told somebody, they wouldn’t have believed me. I needed proof. I had to get proof.”

Cutter got it right away.

“You’re the one who left that disk at the police station,” he said, firmly.

Tawny almost succumbed too much to good interrogation practices. She almost said, “No, Bobby did that.” But she deflected at the last second and just nodded.

“As soon as I had the disk, I hoped it would be enough and that somebody could stop him.”

“We stopped him tonight,” said Alicia. She had mixed feelings about this woman allowing girls to be raped, but at the same time she fully understood how unlikely it was that merely reporting him would have led to anything ... anything at all. All the woman would have done was destroy her marriage. Her husband would have had time to get rid of any evidence, and intimidate the victims into remaining silent. It would then have been her word against his. Without the video evidence, nobody would have believed that a man of Stevens’ stature would have done something like this. The perpetrator would have gotten off scot free.

“I’m glad,” said Tawny, who slumped even further. “I feel terrible about letting him do that.”

“You didn’t let him do anything,” said Alicia, who was turning things back into an interview from the interrogation it had so recently been. Like Cutter, she knew this woman’s cooperation could help the investigation radically. “I’m going to need to talk to you in much more detail, but there are things we need to do right now to make sure he gets what he deserves. Will you promise to cooperate when we talk in the future?”

“Of course. He might be my husband, but he’s scum and he belongs in prison,” said Tawny.

“Do you know who the girls are on the disk you gave us?” asked Cutter.

“Yes. I substitute at the school and I know them all,” she said. “I put their names with the disk I sent you.”

“We need a little more detail about the girls.”

“Of course. Do you have a pen and paper?”

Alicia jerked. The woman even sounded like a teacher!

“The first one I recorded is Emma Jardeen. I had seen him doing that to Mandy Nichols before that when I went to the school to see why he was working so much overtime.”

“Why didn’t you stop it right then?” Asked Cutter, who was thinking about this woman being on the stand, in court.

“I didn’t think of it then,” admitted Tawny. “I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t screaming or pushing him away. It looked consensual but I knew it was wrong, anyway. All I could think about was getting proof of it.”

“You mean getting it on video,” said Alicia.

“Yes. I know I should have gone in there, but I thought Mandy had seduced him, or something. She didn’t act all upset about what he was doing.”

“So you set up a camera,” said Cutter.

“Yes. I bought a nanny cam and hid it in a book on his shelf.”

“Is it still there?”

Tawny nodded.

“So we’ll find it when we search his office?”

Tawny nodded again.

“Okay. Will you let us search your house for any evidence that might be there?”

“What would you look for?”

“Guys like this like to collect souvenirs,” said Cutter. “He might have recorded it, himself. It could be on his computer.”

“You can look, but he has a password on his computer,” said Tawny. “I don’t know what it is.”

“Our technicians can deal with that,” said Cutter. “I’m going to search his office, first. Then I’ll do the house. I don’t want you trying to help with that. Not until I’m there. Will you promise to wait?”

“I wouldn’t know what to look for,” said Tawny.

“Okay, then. Go home. It might be morning before we can get to that. Okay?”

“Yes,” said Tawny. “I’m glad you caught him.”

“We wouldn’t have been able to if it hadn’t been for that disk you gave us,” said Alicia. “I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”

“Thank you, but I’m already over that. I know my marriage is a thing of the past. I’ve already worked through all that.”

“I’m still sorry,” said Alicia.

“I have a question,” said Tawny.

“Shoot,” said Cutter.

“How should I act when this all gets in the public view? I don’t want people to think I didn’t care about those girls.”

“Are you going to divorce him?” asked Alicia.

“Of course. But shouldn’t I wait until he actually goes to trial? Wouldn’t that seem like the normal thing to do?”

“There is no normal when it comes to things like this,” said Alicia.

“I’ve talked to family members who insist on believing their son or husband is innocent, even after he confesses and pleads guilty in court,” said Cutter.

“Well, I’m not doing that,” said Tawny, her voice flat.

“It’s up to you,” said Alicia. “I don’t know if you’ll have to testify in court or not. The video you took may be pivotal to getting our own evidence in.”

“How soon will you know?” asked Tawny. “I can’t appear to be loyal to him and then turn around and admit in court that I knew what was going on before that.”

“I see your problem,” said Cutter. “We’ll try to keep that disk anonymous, but if we are asked in court if we know where it came from, we can’t lie about that.”

“Then keep me as your secret weapon,” said Tawny. “I just won’t say anything about it. I’ll pretend I don’t want to talk to the media. I’ll say I just want to be left alone.”

“That might work,” said Alicia. “For sure, once this breaks, the media will show up in droves. This is going to be a big case, and it’s going to get attention state wide, if not further.” She fiddled with her pen. “Now, who are the other victims? If you know how old they are, that would be helpful, too.”

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