He found four girls.
Four girls who had made the varsity cheer squad at Westfield High School in the last three years, while Madison Cross was on it, and who had left it before the end of their first season. A sophomore named Sofia Reyes, who quit in October of the first year after what the school paper described as a training accident. A junior named Destiny Moore, who quit in November of the same year, no reason given. A sophomore named Grace Kowalski, whose father, he noticed from a different page, worked as a custodian for the school district, who left the team the following September after a fall during practice. And a junior named Kenya Bell, who had transferred into Westfield last year from a school in Norfolk, whose name appeared on the varsity roster in the fall and was gone by the winter.
He looked at their photographs on the old roster pages. Four girls. One Latina. One Black. One whose father pushed a mop at night in the halls of the building her teammates' parents had paid to build. One Black girl from Norfolk, a military town, a Navy town, whose last name he recognized, because he had served with a Chief Petty Officer named Raymond Bell in two thousand and eleven.
He sat back in the chair in the motel room in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and looked at the four photographs on the screen for a long time.
Then he picked up his phone, and scrolled through his contacts, and found the number for Chief Petty Officer Raymond Bell, retired, and called it, even though it was eleven-forty at night, because some things should not wait until morning.
The Chief answered on the second ring. They talked for forty minutes. When Malcolm hung up, his face had no expression on it at all.
The last call he made that night was the hardest one. He had found the number in the staff directory on the school's website, a cell phone, listed for parents and athletes, with a note beside it that said Please text before calling. He did not text. It was nearly midnight. He called anyway.
She answered on the fourth ring, sounding wide awake.
"Dana Williams."
"Coach Williams, my name is Malcolm Johnson. I'm Alana's father. I apologize for calling so late."
There was a short pause.
"Commander Johnson," said Coach Williams. "I was hoping you'd call."
He had not told her his rank. He did not ask how she knew it. He suspected she had looked it up, the same way he had been looking things up all night.
"How's her ankle?" the coach asked.
"Sprained. Three weeks. She'll be fine."
"Good. I'm glad." Another pause. "She's the best tumbler I've seen in eleven years of coaching, Commander. I want you to know that. I want you to know I saw that. Before."
"Before what, ma'am?"
The line was quiet for a long time. When the coach spoke again, her voice was lower, and slower, the voice of a woman who had been sitting up alone in her kitchen for several hours thinking about something.
"I didn't see it happen," she said. "I want to be honest with you. I was looking at my clipboard. I looked up and she was already falling. I didn't see who put the water there." She took a breath. "But I've been coaching at Westfield for six years, Commander Johnson. And in those six years, I've lost four good girls in their first season. Training accidents. Falls. Bad luck. Personal reasons. And every time, I told myself it was bad luck. Because it was easier. Because the alternative was something I couldn't prove and couldn't fix, and because the people involved had a great deal of power over my program, and over my job." She stopped. "I'm not proud of that."
Malcolm said nothing. He waited.
"The new wing has cameras," said Coach Williams. "Security cameras. In the gym. Four of them. In the corners of the ceiling. They were installed when the building went up. They record twenty-four hours a day to a server in the athletic director's office. I've never asked to see the footage. Not once in six years. I never wanted to know." She paused again, and when she went on, her voice had hardened into something that Malcolm Johnson, who had spent nineteen years among people who made decisions under pressure, recognized immediately. "I asked to see it tonight. At eight o'clock. The athletic director owes me a favor. I watched it in his office."
"And?"
"And I'd like to send it to you, Commander," said Dana Williams. "If that's all right. I think you should see it before you come in on Thursday. And I think, after six years, it's time somebody besides me knew what I've been pretending not to know."
* * *