"I told you. I want you to look." Malcolm leaned forward slightly in the chair. "I want a formal investigation. Not a meeting. Not a talk with the girl's parents behind a closed door. An investigation, in writing, under your district's own policies on harassment and student safety. I've read those too. They're good policies. Somebody worked hard on them. I'd like to see them used." He paused. "I want those four girls contacted. Respectfully. Through their families. If they want to talk, someone should listen this time. If they don't, that's their right. I want the footage preserved. I want my daughter safe in this building while it happens. And I want it to be done properly, by the people whose job it is, so that nobody can ever say afterward that it was done because somebody's father showed up in a uniform and made a scene."
"And if the board objects?"
"Then the board objects," said Malcolm. "In public. On the record. In the minutes. Where everyone can read them."
Harrison let out a long breath. It sounded almost like a laugh, though there was nothing funny in it.
"You've thought about this," he said.
"All night, sir."
"Can I ask you something, Commander? Off the record."
"You can ask."
"Why not just go over my head? Superintendent. State Department of Education. You obviously know how. You could have done it before breakfast. Why come to me?"
Malcolm was quiet for a moment.
"Because you're the principal," he said. "This is your school. Those are your students. All of them. Including the one in that video." He nodded at the laptop. "Where I work, when something goes wrong in a unit, you go to the man in charge of the unit first. You give him the chance to fix it. Most of the time, if you give a man that chance, and you give him the truth, and you don't back him into a corner, he'll do the right thing. Most of the time." He paused. "I'd like to believe you're most of the time, Mr. Harrison."
The principal looked at him. Then he looked down at the four names on the desk.
"And if I'm not?"
"Then I'll go over your head," said Malcolm Johnson simply. "Monday morning. With everything. And I won't come to tell you first." He did not say it like a threat. He said it like a man reading a weather report. "But I don't think I'll need to."
There was a knock on the half-open door.
They both looked up. Harrison's secretary was standing in the doorway, looking more strained than before. Behind her, in the outer office, stood a small, wiry woman in navy track pants and a white polo shirt, with short gray hair and a whistle on a lanyard around her neck, holding a manila folder against her chest with both arms.
"Mr. Harrison, I'm sorry, Coach Williams says she—"
"I'm sorry to barge in, Gerald," said Dana Williams, stepping past the secretary into the office without waiting to be asked. Her face was pale and set. "I know you're in a meeting. I know who it's with. That's why I'm here." She turned to Malcolm and nodded once. "Commander."
"Coach."
"I wrote it up." Coach Williams held out the manila folder to the principal. "All of it. Last night. Six years. Every girl I lost, every report I filed, every report I should have filed and didn't. Dates. Names. What I saw. What I told myself I didn't see." Her voice shook very slightly and then steadied. "I'm attaching it to my incident report from yesterday. And I'm requesting a formal review of the tryout under the district's student safety policy. In writing. Today." She set the folder on the desk on top of the sheet of paper with the four names. "And if that costs me my job, Gerald, then I guess it costs me my job. I've been coaching for twenty-two years. I'll find another one. But I'm not losing another girl because I was afraid to look at a camera."
Gerald Harrison looked at the folder for a long moment. Then he looked at the coach, and then at the commander, and then at the photograph on the wall of the young man in the cap and gown.
Then he reached out and picked up the folder, and opened it, and began to read.
Nobody spoke for several minutes. The coach stood by the door with her arms folded. The commander sat in the chair with his hands on the laptop. The principal read, slowly, turning the pages, his lips pressed together. Once he stopped and closed his eyes for a second and then opened them and kept reading. When he got to the end, he closed the folder and laid both his hands flat on top of it, as if to keep it from blowing away.
"All right," he said. His voice was very quiet. "All right. I'm opening a formal investigation. Today. Under the district policy. I'll notify the superintendent this morning, in writing, and the district's Title IX and student safety coordinator. Madison Cross will be informed through her parents that there is an investigation, and that she is not to have any contact with Alana outside of class while it is ongoing." He looked at the coach. "Dana, I want the footage preserved. Both copies. And the server backup."