RUBY: Look who’s talking.

  ALI::-)

  ALEX CROSS ROLLED Ali out of bed just after ten o’clock that Sunday morning. It was a good hour later than Ali usually got up on weekends, but he looked exhausted all the same.

  “You all right?” Alex asked.

  “Just up late,” Ali said. Still, he perked up fast enough once he heard where they were going.

  The father-and-son day Alex had planned began with a late breakfast at their favorite spot, Armando’s. Ali ordered his usual, a tall stack slathered in berries, maple syrup, and whipped cream, with thick-cut bacon on the side. A less-than-healthy meal once in a while wasn’t going to hurt anyone, especially without Nana there to see what the boy was scarfing down.

  After that, they walked over to Nationals Stadium to see the Nats take on the Phillies. Now that the hometown team had added World Series Champs to their résumé, attendance was way up, with a capacity crowd of eighty-two thousand expected that afternoon.

  Just outside the stadium, they passed a man in a ratty coat, mismatched shoes, and no socks, kneeling on the sidewalk with a cardboard sign.

  HUNGRY. ANYTHING HELPS.

  “Dad, can I have a dollar?” Ali asked.

  Alex gave him a five instead. “Now you, too,” he told his son, and Ali coughed up a dollar of his own.

  As they made their way inside and over to section 132, just off the first base line, Ali was mostly quiet. Something had obviously taken root in his mind. Alex suspected it had something to do with the panhandler.

  And then, sure enough, just after they got to their seats, he spoke up again.

  “Hey, Dad? Do you know anything about those homeless camps around the city?” he asked.

  “I know they’ve been controversial,” Alex said. “Especially these so-called cleanups they’ve been doing. Why do you ask?”

  “I think I’m going to write something about it for my social studies project,” he said.

  “Good topic. How’d you land on that?”

  Ali paused, and shrugged. “I don’t know. I heard some people talking about it at school, and it just kind of stuck, I guess. I was wondering if I could interview you about it.”

  “Happy to do what I can,” he told Ali. “But just so you know, the police are only on-site for those cleanups as a security detail. It’s the Office of Health and Human Services who really call the shots there.”

  Ali pulled out his phone and punched in a note to himself. “So there’s nothing the police department can do about how they run those things?” he asked.

  “Other than being respectful and keeping the peace, no,” Alex told him. “I can help you get in touch with HHS, if you want to start there. I’m sure somebody will talk to you.”

  Ali went quiet again after that, and the game got underway. Stephen Strasburg threw a quick strikeout, but then gave up a single to the Phillies’ Bryce Harper.

  Even then, Ali barely responded to the play. His mind was clearly somewhere else. “Hey, Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know if they have anything new on Zoe’s case?” he asked.

  That was the question Alex had been expecting all morning. He took his time now, and thought through what he knew about the investigation.

  Dee-Cee Knight had been cleared of any suspicion. Orlando Fletcher was clearly at the top of Detective Matheson’s suspect list. But none of that was public information, even if Ali did have some personal involvement.

  “You know there’s a lot I can’t tell you,” Alex explained. “But do you have any specific questions?”

  “Well, yeah,” Ali said. “Do they know if Detective Matheson has any suspects?”

  “I think he does,” Alex said, without going into any detail. “But now I’m curious. What do you think? You’re the closest thing they’ve got to an eyewitness.”

  Ali seemed to ponder the question, ignoring the game for another several seconds. “I don’t think it was a random thing,” he said. “I think the shooter was probably someone Zoe knows.”

  It was impressive how often Ali could read a situation and come to the same conclusion that Alex had. The boy’s constantly running mind made him a natural investigator—for better or worse. It also made him something of a worrier.

  Ali took a deep breath then, like he was making way for what had really been on his mind all along.

  “It just seems like I keep hearing people hating on the cops and saying how none of them care about Zoe’s case,” Ali said. “And I know that’s not true. I mean, I get it. I know there’s a lot of bad stuff police do all the time, but whenever I try to tell someone there’s more to it than that, it’s like they don’t want to listen.”

  “People are angry for a lot of good reasons,” Alex said. “For some of them, it doesn’t matter if there’s more to the story. Not in the case of actual police brutality, or other mistreatment. But you know that, too.”

  “That’s what I try to tell them at school,” Ali said. “I get it. This is complicated. But just because I’m a cop’s kid doesn’t mean I can’t see straight about it all.”

  Down on the field, a sudden double play turned the top of the inning into the bottom, and the game moved on.

  Alex tried to move on, as well.

  “Speaking of Zoe, are you two a thing now?” he asked.

  “Nah,” Ali said, almost immediately. It was about as convincing as a cat with canary feathers coming out of his mouth.

  “Well, if you ever need advice on girl stuff—”

  “Dad…”

  “Okay, okay.”

  In some ways, Ali had always been an open book and easy to read. But these days, he was showing a more private side, like a lot of kids his age. It was as though Ali had moved half into shadow, and the details of his life were getting harder to see, for Alex.

  So it was difficult not to give the subject just one more try.

  “She seems like a great girl, anyway,” Alex said. “But then again, what do I know? I’m a thousand years old. Girls hadn’t been invented when I was in middle school.”

  Ali shrugged back impatiently, even as a smile seemed to fight its way onto his face. Apparently, there was only so much he could keep inside. It was nice, like watching the sun come out.

  “Thanks, Dad,” he said. “And yeah, she really is kind of awesome.”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to smile. This was turning out to be a great day, after all.

  THAT WEDNESDAY MORNING, I was coming out of math when I saw Zoe standing there waiting for me.

  “Wassup?” she said. “You get my text?”

  I guess she used her phone in school a lot more than I did. I usually played by the rules and kept mine off, at least during class.

  “Not yet,” I said, and she motioned at me to follow her around the corner, away from everyone else. Truthfully? I thought we were about to kiss again. But that’s not how it went.

  “You still want to help?” she asked. “Because that sweep is happening over on K Street today.”

  “Oh… that,” I said, catching up.

  “What’d you think I was going to say?”

  “Nothing,” I told her. “Anyway, yeah. I can help.”

  “Awesome. Meet me over in front of that CVS on the corner in like five minutes,” she said. “I don’t think we should try and leave together. I’ll go through the cafeteria, okay?”

  “Um…” I said.

  Up until then, I’d thought she was talking about going after school, which was risky enough. But now I realized she was talking about skipping school. And that was a whole other thing.

  I’d ditched a couple classes before, but I’d never left the building like this, in the middle of the day. Five minutes from now, I was supposed to be in English, giving my oral report on New Kid. It’s an awesome book, and I actually wanted to be there for it.

  But meanwhile, I’d already told Zoe I’d do it, and the fact was, I wanted to. Not just to impress her. I really did want to help.

  “Ali?” she asked, waving a hand in front of my face.

  “Sorry. Yeah, I’ll see you out there in five,” I said, and we split up.

  I hustled straight down the stairs, covering as much ground as I could before the fourth period bell. That’s when the halls would clear out, and I wanted to be gone by then.

  Pretty soon, I was on the covered walkway behind the building, where they had some trailers set up as temporary classrooms. Behind that was a fence with a gate we weren’t supposed to use, but the gate chain was long enough that someone my size could squeeze through. Kids did it all the time.

  So just as I heard that fourth period bell from inside the school, I was sliding out to the sidewalk on Thirteenth Street.

  I kept moving, too. It was still possible someone might spot me, so I put my head down and sprinted over to meet Zoe around the corner. She was exactly where she said she’d be when I got there.

  “I called an Uber,” she told me. “Two minutes.”

  I’m not allowed to have Uber on my phone, or even a credit card, but I guess that’s how it rolled in Zoe’s world.

  “Does your mom know you’re doing this?” I asked.

  “She knows I see my dad sometimes,” she said. “But I don’t tell her every time I go.”

  Which I guess was a no. At least we were in the same boat that way.

  A minute later, the car pulled up. We got in, took off, and I reached over to hold her hand in the backseat. Which she let me do. It was nice.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  I had a ton of questions about what to expect, and what we were actually going to be doing when we got there, but I didn’t want to sound all needy about it.

  Meanwhile, I was wondering if Mrs. Gordon would let me make up my book report, and if I was going to get a detention for skipping.

  I was also thinking about everything I’d seen at that camp on K Street the last time. And about everything that had happened there, too.

  “Do you think that girl Mikayla is going to be around?” I asked. Mikayla was the one part I was most nervous about. I didn’t want any trouble, and she seemed like the type to go looking for it.

  “Don’t worry about Mikayla. It’ll be fine,” Zoe told me. Which was easy for her to say. She wasn’t afraid of anything, as far as I could tell. “We’re just going to help some people get packed up and out of there. Don’t overthink it,” she said.

  “See, but overthinking’s my specialty,” I said. It got a laugh, and made me feel a little bit less nervous.

  Not that it mattered anymore. Because unless I was ready to jump out of a moving Uber, there was no turning back now.

  WE MADE A quick stop on the way, at a food truck Zoe knew about. They sold something called Breadcoin, which we were going to give to people at the camp. Each one was worth $2.20 at a bunch of different places all over the city where you could get food. Zoe bought a whole pocketful of them.

  “People gonna be too busy this morning,” she said. “This way they can pick something up for themselves later.”

  She really did care, and not just about her dad, I could tell. Other than skipping school, I felt like I was doing a good thing, in a lot of ways.

  When we got to the underpass on K Street, everything was different than before. A lot more people were around, breaking down tents and packing their things into shopping carts, bags, and boxes.

  At the end of the row, Zoe’s dad already had his tent down. Zoe ran over and gave him a hello hug.

  “Daddy, this is Ali. We’re here to help,” she told him.

  “You shouldn’t be here, T-bird,” he said. “The two of you ought to be in school.”

  “This is for school. Ali’s writing a report,” she said.

  Mr. Knight just gave Zoe a look.

  “Well, we’re here now,” she said. “What do you need?”

  He smiled then, and you could tell he was glad she was there. “Hold that bag open for me, please,” he said, and pointed at his big duffel.

  Even with the cast on her arm, Zoe was able to help him start packing away his tent and get ready to go.

  “So you’re writing a report?” Mr. Knight asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your angle?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Daddy used to write,” Zoe said. “That’s how he and Momma met. He reviewed one of her shows for Rolling Stone.”

  “What’s Rolling Stone?” I asked, and Mr. Knight looked at Zoe like, Where’d you get this guy?

  “Only the greatest music publication of all time,” he said.

  “You should look him up,” Zoe said. “His pen name was—”

  “Cameron Thompson,” Mr. Knight said. “I fancied myself a novelist back then, and thought I’d save my real name for that.”

  Which explained a lot, I realized. That’s why Stephen Knight hadn’t shown up on Gabe’s web searches.

  Zoe had already told me that her dad had a job, but I only knew that he worked at a soup kitchen. It sounded like he’d had a whole other career, too. Until he didn’t. I wondered how he got from there to here, but I didn’t want to be all nosy about it. I was learning plenty, just by being there.

  Even Mrs. Achebe would have approved. Not about the skipping out part, but this was exactly the kind of hands-on research we were supposed to include for our reports. It couldn’t just be stuff we got off the web.

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  Mr. Knight pointed toward the other end of the tunnel. “Go see if Elizabeth needs anything,” he told Zoe. “I’m in good shape.”

  So we walked back up the row, and gave out those Breadcoins along the way. Zoe answered some questions for me, too.

  “Where are they all going to go?” I asked.

  “Wherever they can,” she said. “That’s why a lot of these camps are near train and bus stations.”

  It was all so complicated. I couldn’t imagine living on the street and trying to manage all my stuff that way, making sure nobody took anything, and trying to have a job, all at the same time.

  I mean, I’d always known there were people experiencing homelessness, obviously. I see them almost every day in my neighborhood. But now it all seemed way more real.

  “What about stuff like bathrooms?” I asked. “Where do they go? Or is that a stupid question?”

  Zoe didn’t mind, though.

  “Wherever they can,” she said. “Union Station, or… well, to be honest, you probably don’t want to know. And you can’t keep a lot of food sitting around, either, because the rats come after it. Either real ones, or the human kind.”

  “People don’t watch out for each other down here?” I asked.

  “Some do,” Zoe said. Which obviously meant that some didn’t.

  The good news was I hadn’t seen Mikayla around. Maybe she’d already packed up and gone. It was hard to know, because some of the carts and boxes looked like they’d been left behind. Or else people were just finding a spot first and then coming back for them. I wasn’t sure.

  Eventually, we got down to the old lady from the other day. The one Zoe had brought a sandwich to. She had her own tent and some stuff in a big box sitting next to a little rolling cart on the sidewalk.

  “Elizabeth, this is my friend, Ali,” she said. “He can give you a hand if you want.”

  “Oh, bless you,” she said. “This box is way too heavy for me.”

  I wondered what she did when she was on her own. She wasn’t as old as Nana Mama, but that’s who I thought about. If I knew my great-grandma was living on the street and struggling to get by like this, it would break my heart in a million places.

  “Where are you going to take your stuff now?” I asked, getting that box into the cart for her.

  “Tonight, I’ll probably just keep moving,” she said. “I’ll see if I can’t come back here tomorrow.”

  “You can’t sleep in a shelter?” I asked.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “Depends on the shelter. Last time I slept inside, someone took my good shoes and all they left me were these.”

  I’d already noticed the ratty old high-tops she was wearing. The sole on one was flopping around and I could see her toes on the other foot. The whole thing made me really sad. Mad, too. Nobody deserved to live this way.

  And it was all about to get worse.

  A lot worse.

  JUST WHEN I was helping Elizabeth get the last of her stuff jammed into that cart, she looked at something over my shoulder and pressed her mouth shut tight.

  “Mm-hm. Here we go,” she said.

  Two city trucks had just pulled over on the side of the underpass. Some people in green coveralls got out and started putting orange cones along the lane of traffic closest to the sidewalk. A second crew was doing the same thing on the other side of the street, where there was another row of tents and people packing up.

  A couple of cop cars had rolled in, too, and parked at either end of the tunnel. I could see some officers stationing themselves outside their cruisers. For security, I guess. But I understood why the folks who camped here might not see it that way.

  “You almost packed up?” one of the workers asked Elizabeth. “It’s after eleven.”

  “Don’t got much choice, do I?” Elizabeth said.

  “No, ma’am,” the guy told her. He wasn’t being mean, but he wasn’t exactly being nice, either.

  Then I heard someone yelling. “Hey! That’s mine!”

  It was Mikayla, I saw. A worker had just grabbed one of the carts that had been sitting off to the side and he was dumping all the stuff into the back of his truck. Maybe Mikayla had gone off to find a new spot, I don’t know, but now she was back for it. And it looked like she was too late. I felt sorry for her, actually.

  “Calm down,” one of the guys in coveralls said.

  “You try calming down when I take that truck of yours,” Mikayla told him.

  People were coming over to see what was going on.

  “Mikayla?” Elizabeth asked. “What’s up here?”

  “These people think they can take my stuff—”

  “Technically, we can,” the guy said. “You’ve all been duly warned—”