“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.