Redemption of a Sex Offender

“I thought you said you were from Ohio,” she said.

“I did. I am from Ohio,” he responded, moving to the window to check the parking lot again. The white Celica was gone.

“All the art is Southwestern,” she commented.

“When I got out of prison, I moved to New Mexico,” he said. “I studied with one of the Shamans at the Pueblo del Orinico.”

“That would explain it,” she said. “How long were you there?”

“Nineteen months. They kicked me out in May, just in time to start looking for a job.” He sat down in the chair, as far away from her as possible.

“Kicked you out?” she echoed.

“Nathan said he’d taught me everything he could and it was time to continue my journey,” he responded simply, just the facts. “He said I could go back when the time was right.”

“And how will you know when the time is right?” she asked.

“Probably when I feel like I don’t need to go back,” he responded. “A lot of the Pueblo belief structure is like Zen Buddhism.”

“Why did you go to New Mexico?” He looked at her in the dim light and saw fascination, curiosity. Erica Johnson was actually interested in him.

“It was a long way from Ohio.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on his thighs. “I’d never seen a real Indian before, and I needed to start over, so it seemed appropriate. Jesus went into the desert to find himself, too, when he figured out he wasn’t who he thought he was. I liked the precedent. The Celica’s gone.”

With that almost-auburn hair and her height, she would stick out like a sore thumb in the pueblo. Like he had. He wondered what name they would give her, since his had translated to Big Yellow Hair Guy. He’d been grateful at the time that they’d left out White.

“You want me,” she said, sounding breathless. “Don’t even try to deny it.”

“Yes, I want you,” he agreed equably. He looked up and she was right there. “But I don’t . . . date . . . my colleagues. Period.”

Her eyes were so big, so dark and blue. He could drown in them, stare into them while he moved between her thighs and pushed into that tight, wet, heat, watch them squeeze closed when he pushed her over that invisible border between reality and orgasm. No, dammit.

She had her back against the sofa – he could turn her around and bend her over it, cupping those generous breasts and biting into that incredible curve at the base of her neck as he fucked her from behind. Slowly at first, soft, gentle thrusts to find the center of pleasure inside before he moved one hand as she began to arch her back and found that pouting bud of exterior pleasure.

NO! Stop it, Hilliard.

Sure, he could screw her into next week. And then what? Start planning futures? Start leaving stuff at her house until he was moved in? You’ve been down this road before, asshole, and there’s an insanity plea at the end of it.

“Why not?” she asked, all innocence and sensuality, all warm curves and big eyes and that mouth.

Don’t do this to me.

“Because it’s insane,” he replied savagely. “And I’m not insane. Not anymore.” He stood, grabbed her by the elbow – elbows were safe – and steered her to the door before the fantasies could get any more out of control. “Go home, Johnson. You’re a nice woman. Not my type at all.”

She dug in her heels when they got to the four-foot square of tile that marked the entry. “I’m tired of being nice,” she snapped.

“I’m sure you are,” he responded evenly. “It can be very draining. But you’re not going to be wicked with me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to call Trixie.”

She frowned. “Who’s Trixie?”

“Just a cheap hooker I know. She lets me fuck her in the ass for no extra charge.” There, he’d said it, the big word, the one that the old Hilliard would never have used in front of a lady.

He leaned down menacingly and looked her in those enormous – now frightened – blue eyes. “And she swallows,” he added for good measure. “As much as she can, anyway.”

He watched Johnson swallow, probably trying to get rid of the lump of fear in her throat. She flicked out the tip of her tongue to moisten her lips and it was all he could do to keep himself from lunging for her. “Go get Tanner out of your head and then read a Jane Austen or something,” he snarled, opening the door and pointing to the stairs.

She stared at him for at least a full minute before she turned to the door with her shoulders slumped in defeat. She was breathing strangely, too, like she would start crying in a minute. Because of him. God, he was even slimy when he was desperately trying to do the right thing. What the hell did she see in him anyway?

He slammed the door when she was safely in her car with the engine started and stalked back to the second bedroom he used as an office. He put on a Staind CD and tried to grade history papers, but his mind wouldn’t stay focused. He needed to get Johnson off of his case, and telling her wasn’t working.

She wasn’t listening, just like Lila hadn’t listened – only the exact opposite, so it must have been more like the way he hadn’t listened. Shit. Maybe he could show her something. Like his arrest record. Like his sentencing. Like his therapy notes. Except he didn’t have any of that, just the release paperwork and the sexual offender registration card.

On Saturday morning, he realized he needed to talk to Nick. He couldn’t call Nick Truman, Christ, that was the last person in the world he could call.

No, he needed to talk to Nick. With shaking hands, he dialed the telephone number of the Truman Brothers’ garage. Mike answered the phone and he asked for Nick using the fewest possible words.

“Nick there?” A minute later, he heard the familiar, kind of irritated voice.

“Eddie Hilliard,” he said. “You got any pictures of Lila’s injuries?” He heard the hesitation, could almost feel Nick’s muscles tensing to slam down the receiver.

“Why?” came the terse response, full of suspicion.

“I need to show them to somebody. Erica Johnson. English teacher I work with. She’s been coming on to me, even though I told them all I have a screw loose the first day I showed up here.” Eddie swallowed. “She’s not listening, and it’s making me nervous. I need to know I’m not losing it again. I thought maybe if she could see what I’d done, it would scare her off.”

“You think I would keep that kind of thing?” Nick demanded.

“What about Atchison? I didn’t have his phone number,” Eddie said. Fred Atchison had arrested him, would have the case file. “Were there any photographs taken?” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t want to hurt anybody else, Nick. I’ve got enough on my conscience as it is.”

“Oh, Hell.” Nick made an angry sound. “I’ll ask him. What’s your phone number?” Eddie rattled off his home number. “Where the hell is 208?” Nick asked.

“Idaho,” Eddie responded. “I work at Ahsahta High School.”

“They’re letting you teach?” Nick sounded outraged.

“I’m a stalker, not a pedophile,” Eddie spat back as the Staind CD ended and Incubus started up. The opening riff was always soothing, and he felt some of the tension ease out of his neck. “And I’ve tried pretty goddamned hard to get beyond that.”

“What the hell is that noise in the background?”

“Music. I’ll send you a copy. Christmas present,” Eddie said. He knew Nick was into oldies like Fleetwood Mac; maybe a little alternative would broaden his horizons.

“Don’t bother. I’ll see what I can come up with.”

“Thanks. I mean that.” Eddie paused for a second. “How’s Katie?”

“What?” Nick sounded genuinely shocked.

“How’s Katie?” Eddie repeated. “Little rat on stilts? Kind of cute in a too-much-espresso way?”

“Who the Hell are you and how did you get Eddie Hilliard’s voice?” Nick demanded.

Eddie had to laugh. “I’ll never tell,” he responded, “but you’d have to check most of the Southwest for pods, Nick. Let me know if you get evidence I can show Johnson.” He hung up feeling a lot better about life. He was going to teach history, he was going to teach football, and he wasn’t going to get involved with a woman, ever again, because he was dangerous.

No matter how soft she was. Damn straight.

Or how well she fit in his arms. Right.

Or how good she smelled, or how big her eyes were, or how luscious her mouth looked when she parted her lips and stared up at him.

Oh, shit.

“Honor your feelings. What you feel is real and has great merit to your soul,” he quoted Nathan Winddancer. So what did he feel? Right now, it seemed to be equal parts of lust, concern, fear, and . . . lust. That wasn’t good.

Add to that the fact that she was in trouble and he wanted to protect her from what was coming with Tanner, and it really wasn’t good. He couldn’t get involved with her without facing a lot of things he didn’t think he was ready for, and he really couldn’t just sit back and ignore it. It was no longer part of his nature to ignore something unpleasant – what part of that his shrinks hadn’t seen to, Nathan had.

She was waiting for him in the athletic office off of the boys’ locker room on Monday morning, the blinds delicately closed so she couldn’t see the kids suiting up for first period PE.

“What are you doing here?” he asked calmly. “Home room is in about ten minutes and I have to change.”

“I need to talk to you,” she said. She sounded scared and her face was too white. “I found this on my windshield this morning.” She offered him a greeting card envelope with shaking fingers.

He didn’t want to touch it, but he took it from her and slid out the card – it was a picture from the Kama Sutra, showing two elegant Indian people having sex in an unlikely position. He didn’t even know where someone could get a card like that.

He opened it and there was a message scrawled inside in Mitchell Tanner’s sloppy hand: “This could be us, baby.” It wasn’t signed.

“I didn’t leave this on your car,” he said, quickly sliding it back into the envelope and handing it back to her. Great. Now it had his fingerprints on it.

“I know you didn’t leave it, Hilliard,” she said in a tone of exasperation. “The Tanner kid left it – it’s the same handwriting as his exams.”

“Take it to the police,” he said. “Stalking is illegal in Idaho, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.” She bit her lip. “I don’t want to go to the police. I mean, he’s only 18, he probably thinks this is just provocative. Or sexy, or something.”

Maybe, if he hadn’t chosen a drawing that looked actively painful for the woman involved. Eddie rubbed the back of his suddenly tight neck.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“How do I make him stop?” she asked back.

“My ex-girlfriend beat the shit out of me with a two-by-four,” he said. “Of course, I’d just broken into her house and tried to kill her dog the day after I’d attacked her in a parking lot after dark, so she had a reason.”

Johnson’s face got a lot whiter, something he hadn’t thought was possible. “You attacked her in a parking lot?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said carelessly. “Had to. She was sleeping with the guy she was going to marry, and she wouldn’t listen when I told her she belonged to me, just kept saying she was in love with somebody else and I should leave her alone.”

She backed up a step. “I mean, what are you supposed to do with a woman who won’t listen when you tell her exactly how she’s going to spend the rest of her life?” he continued with a casual gesture. “You have to make her listen, even if you have to hurt her to do it. Or hurt her dog. You have a dog, Johnson?”

She took another step back and he folded his arms over his chest to keep from reaching for her.

“I have a cat,” she all but whispered.

“That’s what you’re dealing with,” he told her softly, seriously, trying to make her understand. “I don’t know how to make him stop stalking you. He may not even understand that he is stalking you. I didn’t.”

“That’s . . . that’s . . .” she couldn’t seem to get any more words out.

“Really crazy,” he finished for her. “And really scary. Something for the police, not for the JV coach to pull the kid aside and chat with him about. He wouldn’t get it, anyway, if he’s that far gone. I suppose I could beat the shit out of him, but he wouldn’t get that, either, and I’d be assaulting a student for no good reason.”

“No, you couldn’t do that,” she agreed quietly. “I’ll take it to the police.”

“Great. Make sure you tell them you showed it to me first.”

“Why?”

“My fingerprints are on it. I’m a registered sex offender with a history of stalking. Why do you think?”

She looked at the card, safely concealed in its plain pale-blue envelope. “Oh,” was all she said.

“Now get out of here, so I can change,” he said, pulling open the hallway door. “I have a class on the third floor I have to get to.”

December

It was the last day of classes before Christmas break when she worked up the nerve to go looking for him. She found him in his classroom, loading books into the leather backpack, his braided hair throwing off golden glints in the winter sunlight.

He’d started to dress more casually for classes when he took over the junior football team, and he was wearing a dark blue rugby shirt with the sleeves pushed up almost to his elbows. Erica cleared her throat and he looked up, his eyes warming when he saw her.

“I brought you a Christmas present,” she said diffidently, holding out the small package in front of her as an offering. He went still, and his expression changed.

“You didn’t need to do that,” he said softly, not moving any closer. “I don’t have a present for you.”

“That’s the beauty of Christmas,” she said, shutting the door behind her and walking into the room. His eyes flicked to the closed door and back to her. The closer she got to him, the more alarmed he looked. “I can give whatever I want to – to whoever I want to.”

“Shouldn’t that be whomever?” he asked, carefully backing around the desk to keep it between them and covering the action by picking up another book.

“Not in current usage,” she replied. “Are you going home for the holidays?”

He looked startled. “No, my parents are visiting my little sister in Florida this year.” He looked at the book. “Actually, I haven’t been back to Ohio since they let me leave.” He turned the backpack and shoved the book in with a little more force than was necessary, somehow communicating that he didn’t want to go back there ever again.

“Okay,” she said. “Here. Open your present.”

Hesitantly, he took the package from her and stared at it for a moment before gently removing the wrapping paper, careful not to tear it. Then he carefully opened the box and pulled it out.

“A rock,” he said without expression.

“Turn it over,” she responded.

“Kokopelli?” He looked up from the rock into her eyes. “Do you know any of the lore about this particular figure?”

“From what I’ve read, he’s a cross between Johnny Appleseed, Coyote, and Don Juan,” she said. “And he plays the flute, too.”

February

A woman’s scream split the night air, coming from the parking lot. Eddie dropped his saddlebags and slammed the door shut to make sure it locked, then sprinted for the area where Johnson normally parked, icewater in his veins.

Valentine’s Day. He got around the corner of the building just in time to see Mitch push up the full wool skirt and rip off Erica Johnson’s underwear exactly the way he’d fantasized about doing himself. Except that, in his fantasy, she wasn’t trying to do grievous bodily harm and being effectively held in place against the hood of her car.

Tanner had one hand on her wrists, holding her down, while he was opening up his jeans with the other hand and keeping her hips pressed down against the car at the same time. To her credit, Erica was giving him a lot of trouble.

Rage made Eddie’s ears ring with a peculiar silence, and time seemed to slow down the way it did when he meditated. He knew Tanner was telling her to shut up, just relax and enjoy it, Erica was screaming again, Tanner was pulling his genitals out of his pants in preparation to rape her, but he couldn’t hear it, not really.

Then he was at the car and Tanner was flying through the air to land with a solid thud on his shoulders. A small, evil part of Eddie’s mind was almost sorry the little shit hadn’t broken his neck.

He tossed his cell to Erica before he turned his back on the half-naked woman on the car and told her to call 911, watching for Tanner to get up. The kid lay stunned for maybe 15 seconds, then shook his head and scrambled up off of the ground.

“Don’t take another step toward her, Tanner,” he growled.

“Why, coach? Is that pussy yours?” Mitch sneered. “Little wholesome for a guy like you.”

Eddie couldn’t hit him; it would be too much like what he’d done to a little man once before. Except that other guy hadn’t been about to ram his meat into an unwilling woman.

“You’ve got a lot to learn about life, Tanner,” he said. “And you’re about to get a very hard lesson. You’ve got a nice tight ass. I give you 24 hours before somebody named Killer comes in it.”

Tanner tried to look tough, but his eyes were scared in the parking lot light. “Like you’d know a lot about it,” he said with bravado.

“I’ve done time,” Eddie informed him, grim. “And I’ve seen snot-noses like you taken to medical bleeding out the butt from the receiving end of exactly what you just tried to do to Ms. Johnson.”

“Oh yeah? Where did you do time?” He was still trying to sound tough, but he looked even more scared.

“Ohio State Correctional Facility, two to five.” Eddie advanced on the younger man slowly, and Tanner backed up. “I’m a registered sex offender, Mitch, just like you’re going to be. Only I’m big and mean, pretty boy.”

Mitch tried to run and Eddie caught him easily, grabbing the back of his neck and hauling his right arm up behind him.

“You’re slow, kid,” he hissed at Tanner’s back. “You think it’s fun to rape a teacher?” He could hear a siren in the distance, getting closer. They’d be there in a minute or two, and he could turn the kid over to them.

“The bitch wanted me!” Tanner yelled. “She’s been coming on to me since school started!”

“Nice try,” he hissed, “but I know about the notes you’ve been sending her. I know about how you’ve been following her around. And so do the cops.”

He turned the kid around and frog-marched him back to the car where Erica was huddled inside with her arms wrapped around herself, shaking. At least her skirt was back down where it belonged, although her underwear was now a purple satin rag in the parking lot.

Purple. He’d known she wasn’t a white-cotton kind of woman. When he got closer, he saw her eyes widen and glanced down at the kid, surprised to see that his fly was still open and his penis hanging out.

“Jesus, Tanner, put your dick back in your pants.” The kid fumbled awkwardly with his left hand, but got himself covered just as the patrol car pulled up beside Erica Johnson’s Outback.

“Coach Hilliard?” the officer questioned when he got out of the car, “What’s going on here?” Great, the police knew him by sight. Just what he needed.

“I interrupted this slime as he was about to rape Ms. Johnson,” Eddie explained as tersely as possible. “I’ll be in to make a statement as soon as I make sure she’s okay.” The cop looked at where Erica was still holding herself and shaking, locked in her car, then back at Eddie.

“Okay. She’ll need to press charges, though,” he said in an even voice. “Was there penetration?”

“I don’t think so, but if I’d been a few seconds slower, there would have been,” Eddie said. “Cuff the little shit.” He shoved Tanner at the cop, who smoothly pulled the kid around and applied handcuffs, then patted him down for weapons and took possession of a Leatherman.

Eddie turned his back on them and went over to the driver’s side door. Erica unlocked the door and opened it, but didn’t get out.

“Thank you,” she said, and her voice was shaking, too.