“Well, I guess it’s going to take a thousand and one,” I said.

  WE MET ONLINE at Gabe’s home base every night now. It was like our regular thing. We barely even played Outpost anymore.

  That Wednesday, Gabe was the first to report in. He’d done some deep diving, and according to him, this ex-boyfriend of Dee-Cee’s was named Orlando Fletcher.

  “How’d you figure that out?” Mateo asked.

  “You’ve just got to know where to dig,” Gabe said. He could do more with Google than anyone I knew. “I’m pretty sure he’s working at a place called Nubuilt Garage in Southwest. Unless it’s a different Orlando Fletcher.”

  “No, that sounds right,” Ruby said. “I think he’s some kind of mechanic.”

  “When did he and Dee-Cee break up?” I asked.

  “She kicked him out about two months ago. Zoe practically threw a party when she did,” Ruby said. “Hey, and speaking of parties, Dee-Cee’s having one at their house on Saturday. Z got out of the hospital last night, and this is like a welcome home thing. But also a thank-you for everyone who’s been helping out. She wants you all to come.”

  “Seriously?” Gabe asked. You could tell he wasn’t used to getting invited to things.

  “I wonder if any famous people will be there,” Mateo said. “Dee-Cee know anyone with the Wizards?”

  “Yeah, cause that’s the whole point,” Ruby said. “So you can get yourself an autograph.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  I was glad to hear Zoe had gotten out of the hospital, but I also wanted to stay focused on what we’d been talking about.

  “So anyway,” I said, “we already have means and motive on Orlando. Now we just have to think about opportunity.”

  “Say what?” Cedric asked. “Is that some kind of detective thing?”

  “Actually, yeah.” It was something I’d picked up from Dad, listening to him talk about all his different cases over the years.

  “We know Orlando Fletcher owns at least one gun,” I explained. “In other words, he had the means to do this. And since Dee-Cee kicked him out, I’m guessing he wasn’t too happy about that. Which could give him a motive.”

  “Why would he go after Zoe, then?” Gabe asked. “Why not Dee-Cee?”

  “Maybe to get back at her?” I said. “I don’t know, but the real question now is whether he had the opportunity to fire that shot.”

  “In other words, does he have an alibi, or could he have been at Anacostia Park on Saturday at four-fifteen?” Ruby said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Cedric, you want to go over to Nubuilt Garage with me this weekend and see what we can find out?”

  “You know it,” Cedric said.

  If our team had a head of security, Cedric would definitely be it. He was always up for anything. He was also a foot taller than me and looked like a high schooler. Exactly the kind of kid you want at your six when it counts.

  “Next question,” I said. I had my laptop with me, and I was making notes the whole time. “What about Zoe’s dad? You get anywhere on that, Gabe?”

  “Not really,” he answered. “Dee-Cee’s Wikipedia page says she was married to someone named Stephen Knight for eight years. But I can’t find anything on him. It’s like he doesn’t exist. Not online, anyway.”

  “Weird,” Cedric said.

  “Zoe’s never said anything about him?” I asked.

  “Not to me,” Ruby answered.

  “Gabe, can you keep looking?”

  “Yeah.” I could already hear him keyboarding in the background.

  “Who else are we looking at?” Mateo asked.

  “Well, we know Dee-Cee and Darnell were at the park at the right time,” I said.

  “And I think Kim was there, too,” Ruby added.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Zoe’s aunt,” Ruby said. “She’s Dee-Cee’s sister. You met her at the hospital.”

  “So that’s who that was,” I said. I remembered the lady who came in with Dee-Cee and Darnell, but she’d mostly hung back that day.

  “Kim lives with them and takes care of Zoe when Dee-Cee’s on the road,” Ruby said. “But Ali, she’d never do something like this in a million years. Same for Dee-Cee.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “This is about people of interest, not suspects. There’s a difference. And since I’m about ninety-five percent sure Zoe knows the person who did this to her, we shouldn’t rule anyone out until we have actual proof. That’s just good investigative procedure.”

  “Dude, you are such a geek,” Mateo said.

  “Geeks are gonna rule the world,” Gabe said.

  “Yeah, well you’d know,” Cedric said, and we all busted out laughing.

  So maybe we were just a bunch of kids, but I felt like we were actually getting somewhere, working together like this. Dad would call it old school. He’s always saying how detectives these days act like free agents and spend more time working on their computers than they do with one another.

  Not me, though. Because if old school was good enough for Alex Cross, then it was definitely good enough for me.

  Hopefully for Zoe, too.

  ALEX CROSS WAS parked at his desk on the third floor of MPD headquarters when word came around. Detective Matheson was bringing in a suspect on the Zoe Knight shooting.

  According to the desk sergeant, it was Orlando Fletcher, the ex-boyfriend of Dee-Cee Knight. Everyone knew Alex had a stake in this one, and also that Matheson tended to keep his cards close to the vest.

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” Alex told Sergeant Rook. “Where are they taking him?”

  “They’re just getting started up in the fourth floor interview room,” Rook said. “But you can watch from down here.”

  The interview room cameras were all patched into the building’s Wi-Fi, and accessible from computers on the third, fourth, and basement levels. Alex didn’t waste any time. He slipped right down the hall to the nearest observation suite on the north side of the building.

  Three desktop screens provided the only light in the tiny room. Alex took a seat in the gloom and logged on to the system. After entering his password, a grid of small black-and-white video feeds appeared, and he clicked into the one for Room 4C.

  It showed him a wiry, fit-looking man—presumably Orlando Fletcher—sitting at a metal table across from Detective Matheson. Fletcher’s posture was a picture of indifference. One arm crossed his chest with the other hand on his chin, while his left leg jutted straight out from the chair where he sat.

  “I’m going to start with the most obvious question,” Matheson was saying. “Where were you on Saturday afternoon?”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide, man,” Fletcher responded.

  “So then answer the question,” Matheson said.

  “It’s like I already told you,” Fletcher said. “I was home watching tennis all afternoon.”

  Matheson barked out a short laugh. “I don’t know, Orlando. You don’t seem like the tennis type.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t seem like…”

  “What?” Matheson said.

  “Never mind.”

  Fletcher had obviously been about to say something he was going to regret. So he wasn’t a complete loose cannon. But he was here for a reason.

  “So you’re telling me you were home all afternoon on Saturday, and that nobody saw you, or even talked to you the entire time?” Matheson asked.

  “It’s what I said, isn’t it?” Orlando shot back.

  “When was the last time you saw Dee-Cee Knight?” the detective asked next.

  Fletcher ran a hand over his chin and left it there. When he spoke, it was through his fingers.

  “I don’t know, man. February something. It was the day I moved out of that house.”

  “The day she kicked you out,” Matheson corrected him. “Sounds like you two had a pretty rocky relationship, including a couple of police calls to the house.”

  “Whatever. I ain’t seen her since.”

  “What about her daughter, Zoe?” Matheson said.

  “Nah,” Fletcher said, shaking his head. “Why? She done something, too?”

  Matheson ignored the question. He stared at Fletcher for a long time and let the silence ride. Or maybe he was just figuring out his next move.

  Eventually, the detective stood up to leave the room. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Like I got a choice,” Fletcher said, just before the heavy metal door slammed closed, locking him inside.

  While Alex waited for whatever came next, he logged in to a second computer and pulled up Zoe’s case file. There was nothing inappropriate about reading departmental records, and it certainly wasn’t against the rules.

  Matheson probably wouldn’t like it, Alex thought. But that was Matheson’s problem.

  According to the case notes, multiple witnesses had seen Dee-Cee Knight in the wings of the music festival’s main stage at the same moment that the city’s ShotSpotter program had recorded a single gunshot that day—the same one that had broken Zoe’s wrist.

  Which meant Dee-Cee was in the clear. It wasn’t surprising, but it was good news all the same.

  Darnell Williams and Kim Lafountain—Dee-Cee’s manager and sister—were more up in the air. Both of them had been at Anacostia Park, but their whereabouts at the time of the shooting were unconfirmed.

  Meanwhile, it didn’t look like Detective Matheson had enough on Orlando Fletcher to hold him much longer. Certainly not enough to book him into custody. Alex was going to be very surprised if Fletcher didn’t walk within the hour.

  Still, it was progress. And if Alex had to guess, he would have said that Detective Matheson was correct in his suspicions.

  Orlando Fletcher had “primary suspect” written all over him.

  THE NEXT DAY, Zoe was back at school. She was like a mini-celebrity, and everyone was happy to see her, but Ruby and her girls kept tight around her all morning.

  I didn’t even get to talk to Zoe until just before fourth period. And even that was by accident. I was coming down the back stairs for gym and heard her voice before I even saw her.

  “Okay, that works,” she said. “I’ll see you at four. Love you, Daddy. All right. Bye.”

  That word—Daddy—jumped right out at me. We’d just been talking about this. Even Ruby didn’t know anything about Zoe’s father.

  I leaned over the railing and saw her in the back corner. We’re not allowed to use our phones in school, so I guess she was hiding out.

  “Hey!” she said, and came to meet me at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you yet. It’s been a minute.”

  “No worries,” I told her. I mean, yeah, I wanted to talk to Zoe all the time now, and not just because of the investigation. But it wasn’t like I expected to be her top priority. “How’s your arm?”

  “Itchy,” she said, and waved that pink cast at me. “I’ve got to deal with this thing for six weeks. I can barely even text.”

  I pointed at her phone. “Were you just talking to your dad?” I asked. I couldn’t help throwing out the question. I was too curious.

  “Nah,” Zoe said, like it was nothing. “Why?”

  “No reason,” I said. “Must have heard wrong.”

  But that was the thing. I hadn’t heard wrong. And I was pretty sure she knew that I knew it, too.

  The question was, why did Zoe need to lie about her dad? And more important, did it have anything to do with the other secrets she’d been keeping?

  Or, was I just sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong? That was completely possible, but there was only one way to find out. Already, I had a new idea bubbling up in my brain.

  Meanwhile, a bunch of people were coming down the stairs now. When Zoe saw them, she picked up her backpack and took a step toward the main hall.

  “I’m late for math,” she said, even though the bell hadn’t rung yet. It seemed obvious to me that she wanted to get out of there. Maybe because I’d asked one too many questions. “You’re coming over on Saturday, though, right?” she asked.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll see you then,” she told me.

  “See you Saturday,” I said.

  But I had a secret of my own now, too. The truth was, I’d be seeing Zoe a lot sooner than Saturday night. More like three-thirty that afternoon when school let out.

  And if everything went the way I wanted it to, she wouldn’t even know I was there.

  THAT DAY IN social studies Mrs. Achebe checked in with everyone about the big reports we were supposed to be writing.

  “You should all have your topics approved by this Monday, so you can start writing next week,” she said. “And let me remind you, this project counts for one-third of your final grade.”

  I still hadn’t decided on a topic. It was hard to come up with anything I felt passionate about, which was supposedly the idea.

  “Mrs. Achebe?” Patrice said. “Can I do something a little different?”

  “Depends on what you mean,” Mrs. Achebe said.

  “You’re always asking us what we can do to make things better in the world, and I have an idea. I want to work on a resolution to submit to the mayor’s office and use my report to document the process.”

  “Intriguing,” Mrs. Achebe said. “What do you want to propose in your resolution?”

  “It’s about gun violence,” Patrice said. “I think the police department needs to be held to account for every shooting in the city. ’Cause they obviously don’t treat every case the same, and they should.”

  I could see where this was going, and I knew it was going to turn into something if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. So I just stared at my desk, trying to think about something else.

  “This is a very timely subject,” Mrs. Achebe said. “Go on.”

  “I’ve been reading about this stuff since what happened to Zoe Knight,” Patrice said. “A lot of people are really mad because the police aren’t working on Zoe’s case. And everyone knows the police don’t care about Black people in this city.”

  There it was. I pulled my lips in and bit down hard.

  “I heard they already closed the file on this one,” Eddie said.

  “I believe it,” Patrice told him.

  “Patrice, we’re not going to peddle in rumors here,” Mrs. Achebe said. “This is a journalism assignment. You need to back up anything you put in there with research and facts. Are you down for that?”

  “Definitely,” she said. “I already know that seventy-eight percent of gunshot victims in Washington are Black, and that the investigation rate is crazy low. That’s a fact.”

  “The case closure rate is low,” I said, before I even knew it was going to come out. “Not the investigation rate. There’s a difference.”

  Everyone turned to look at me. They already knew Patrice and I had some friction about this stuff.

  “Ali, don’t even,” she said, like I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about.

  Eddie Cruz jumped in next, because I guess he couldn’t stand not being an idiot for one more minute, either.

  “So then why aren’t they even trying to solve Zoe’s case?” he asked.

  “They are,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “Just like they ‘investigate’ all the others. Right before they bury it and forget about it.”

  I was feeling more heated by the second. And not because they were wrong about everything. They were just wrong about Zoe.

  And in a way, they were wrong about me, too.

  “You don’t know anything about it!” I said. “You don’t even know any real police!”

  “Ali, calm down,” Mrs. Achebe said.

  I didn’t want to calm down. I wanted to flip my desk and walk out of there. But I couldn’t afford a trip to the principal’s office right now. It was almost three-thirty, and when that bell rang, I had somewhere much more important to be.

  “Ali, no offense, but you’re just like the same song, playing over and over,” Patrice said. “Black folks have all kinds of reasons not to trust the cops, and you’re acting like just ’cause your dad works for the department—”

  That’s when I exploded.

  “You think I’m stupid?” I said. “You think my dad hasn’t been pulled over by some White cop for no good reason? You think my sister doesn’t get followed around stores all the time, like she’s just there to shoplift? How many different ways do I have to say it? I get it. I’m not an idiot.”

  I could tell that Patrice, and Eddie, and probably some others were rolling their eyes at me. I had zero cred with them. I wished Gabe, or Cedric, or Mateo, or Ruby were there to stick up for me. Because I was sick of doing it for myself.

  “All right,” Mrs. Achebe said. “Everyone just take a breath. Right now.”

  So we did, literally. Mrs. A always means what she says. Even her shirt spoke the truth. It said, BLACK HISTORY DIDN’T START WITH SLAVERY. Mrs. Achebe is always teaching with everything she’s got.

  “This is an important conversation,” she said. “But I’m not going to let it turn into a shouting match. Patrice, you’re more than welcome to write about this issue, as long as you stick to the facts. And it’s not going to be about Zoe Knight, either. That’s not your story to tell.”

  I was glad she said that last part, at least. Then, before anyone could get in a final word, the bell rang, and the school day was over.

  I picked up my stuff and bolted.

  “Ali?” I heard Mrs. Achebe calling after me. “Ali? I’m not done talking to you.”

  But I was already gone.

  ONCE I’D BLASTED out of social studies, I ran down the hall, down two flights of stairs, and out the front of Washington Latin. I needed to be one of the first people outside, so I could take up a position across the street without anyone noticing.

  By the time most of the school was pouring out through the main doors, I was on the top row of the playing field bleachers, watching out for Zoe.

  When I spotted her, she was coming out with Ruby and Adele Freeman. Even from a distance, I could tell Zoe wanted to get away. She kept looking up the street and nodding at whatever Adele was saying.