I put my hand on Ali’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Stick to the facts,” I said. “No name-calling. Address Mrs. Dalton.”
Ali wasn’t happy, but he nodded and told Mrs. Dalton that Putnam had grabbed him while he sat on the wall and pushed him back, hard. If he’d let go, Ali would have dropped close to six feet to the concrete and probably would have been gravely injured.
“But I didn’t let go,” Putnam said. “I pulled you back. It was a joke. Saved your life. Jeez.”
Ali said, “He did pull me back, and he did say, ‘Saved your life.’ But then Coulter stuck his face in mine and started talking trash about my dad.”
“So you head-butted him?” Tate’s mom said bitterly. “You can’t do that. They were fooling around, but you took it as a chance to really hurt someone.”
“Like father, like son,” Tate said.
“It’s true,” Putnam’s father said. “Ali didn’t have to punch George in the throat. The game was over, and he suckered my boy.”
“George was still choking me after I head-butted Coulter,” Ali said, looking Mrs. Dalton right in the eye. “I feared for my life. I swung for his face, but I hit him in the throat.”
“Feared for your life?” Putnam rasped. “Are you kidding?”
“Did you have hold of my collar when I hit you, George?” Ali said. “All the other kids have gone home, but I know someone must have seen it. They’ll back me up eventually, so tell the truth now.”
Putnam opened his mouth angrily, painfully. He hesitated, swallowed hard, and said, “I might have been holding your collar, but I never choked you.”
“Never?”
“No.”
Ali unbuttoned several buttons on his shirt and then spread the lapels. There were raised welts around his neck.
“Clear sign of attempted strangulation,” I said.
“What?” Putnam’s father cried. “That’s BS. You could have done that when you were in talking to him!”
Ali held out his phone, said, “I may be nine, but I’m not stupid. I took pictures in the bathroom an hour ago. A bunch, all time-stamped. So case closed. This was self-defense, or should we take you all to court and sue for batteries?”
I hid my smile and said, “That’s multiple counts of battery.”
“Oh,” Ali said, grinning. “Right.”
There was a long silence in the room. Finally Mrs. Dalton said, “George? Coulter? A five-day suspension.”
“Are you serious?” Coulter’s mother whined.
“No,” Putnam’s father said.
“Yes,” Mrs. Dalton said. “And if they’re ever involved with something like this again, they will be expelled from Washington Latin.”
“I’m writing the board of overseers about this,” Putnam’s father said. “Five days for them and nothing for the kid who did the damage? I don’t think so.”
“I didn’t say that,” Mrs. Dalton said, and she looked at me and then my son. “Ali, a three-day suspension.”
“What?” he cried. “It was self-defense.”
The headmistress was unmoved. “You signed a code of conduct when you enrolled in Washington Latin. That code says, among other things, ‘No fighting will be tolerated under any circumstances. None.’ Remember?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts,” she said, looking at me. “He signed the contract. So did you, Dr. Cross, and your wife.”
“Yes, we did,” I said. “And we will abide by it.”
“Dad?”
“Case closed,” I said.
Chapter 38
The next morning, after a long jog with Jannie and an excellent shower, I went down to the kitchen with Nana Mama and poured a mug of coffee for Bree. She shuffled to the table, yawning and running on fumes. There’d been a gang fight the evening before, three dead on top of a homicide caseload that was already bulging with backlog. She hadn’t gotten home until two and now she had to turn around and go back in for a meeting with the chief at nine.
I put the coffee in front of her.
“Bless you, baby,” Bree said, smiling weakly. She sipped the coffee.
“I’ll be your barista anytime,” I said.
“So tell me about Ali.”
“Humph,” Nana Mama said, and she went back to stirring eggs for a scramble.
I took a seat across from my wife. “Well, he was like a little pro arguing his defense in there. Very logical. And it was his idea to lay a trap for them by not mentioning the neck welts to Mrs. Dalton before then.”
“A regular Perry Mason,” Nana Mama said, and she didn’t mean it in a good way. “Fighting on the school steps. That would not have happened back when I was a vice principal. Never.”
My grandmother, dressed in her quilted blue robe, still had her back to us and was whipping the eggs furiously. Bree shaped an O with her lips and tried not to smile.
“Nana,” I said, “what was Ali supposed to do? Let himself be choked to death?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said sharply, and she turned to face me. “I’m just concerned for your son’s reputation, which takes a long time to build.”
Hearing echoes of similar things she’d said to me over the years, I said, “Yes, ma’am. That’s a fact.”
“Long as it takes to build, a reputation can die in two seconds, Alex,” she said, and she made a shh sound of disgust.
“I know that, and honestly, Nana, I think Ali did the right thing, considering the circumstances, and he’s getting punished for it, so he’s learning the world can be unfair sometimes.”
“I agree,” Bree said. “In a lot of ways, Ali’s reputation will only be stronger after this. I mean, he’s nine years old, and he stood up to bullies who were twelve. Be proud of him, Nana. He did good even if it meant getting suspended.”
My grandmother looked perplexed. I got up and hugged her. “Sometimes you have to break the rules. Sometimes you have to protect yourself.”
Nana Mama held herself rigid at first, but then she melted and hugged me back. “You know I don’t like fighting.”
“I do.”
“Where’d he learn to fight like that?”
“He says from YouTube videos on Krav Maga, the Israeli fighting system.”
“Maybe his time on the Internet should be limited?”
“I agree,” I said and kissed her sweet old head.
My cell phone rang. I let go of my grandmother and answered. “Alex Cross.”
“Bernie Aaliyah, Dr. Cross,” he said gruffly. “It’s Tess. She’s barricaded herself in her bedroom. She’s got a gun, and I’m afraid she’s going to kill herself if you don’t come talk to her.”
Chapter 39
Suspended DC Metro Detective Tess Aaliyah lived in a duplex row-house walk-up near downtown on a street heading from renovation toward gentrification. Dumpsters squatted in front of three or four other row houses on the block; hammers and saws popped and whined inside them.
A circular saw squealed nearby, masking the sound of me climbing up to Tess’s front porch. Her father opened the door before I could ring the bell, and he limped out to shake my hand. Bernie Aaliyah was pale, and his face was scratched and bruised. I could see everything from fright to anger in his eyes.
“I told you I’d get Tess the help she needed, Dr. Cross,” Bernie said in a low, agitated voice. “And I tried in the best way I knew how. But she got real defensive when I suggested the evaluation. When I told her it was for her own good, just to know what’s what, she went out of her mind. She attacked me, scratched me, and hit me with something that knocked me on my ass.”
He shook his head in disbelief and sorrow. “Tess was always like her mother, always levelheaded, even as a little girl.”