“Didn’t you tell your father that you thought Gabe was part of these robberies?” Sutter asked me.
“Yeah?” I said, looking at Dad. I guess they’d been talking about it. “But there’s some reason that’s making him do it, I’m positive.”
“And now you’re saying Mr. Qualls is also involved somehow?” Sutter asked. “Even though Gabe is missing?”
“That’s the weird part,” I said. “I haven’t really figured it out yet.”
I saw the way they’d looked at each other when I used the word “investigating,” and it ticked me off, to be honest. I knew my investigation wasn’t real compared to theirs, but the fact was, I’d learned a thing or two since I started, including a few things even they didn’t know until I told them.
“Where did you go after you left the Qualls’s house?” Olayinka asked.
“To Cedric’s,” I said. “We hung out, talked about the Gabe stuff, and played some Outpost. Then I came home for dinner.”
Sutter was still scribbling notes.
“And were you home all night?” Olayinka asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Can you vouch for him?” Olayinka asked Dad. “Or is it possible he could have snuck out?”
“Oh, come on,” Dad said, but Olayinka just waited, and Dad went on. “I was asleep, so if I had to swear, then no. I can’t say for sure.”
“Has he ever snuck out before?”
Dad looked at me again. “Have you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I mean, yeah. But I didn’t sneak out last night, I swear!”
“I believe you,” Dad said, and looked at the detectives.
“Okay.” Sutter closed her notebook. “I think that’s everything we need for now.”
A minute later, we were on our way out of there. I didn’t know if I’d just gotten myself in deeper, or if I was in the clear, or what. But there was one thing that kept scratching at my brain all the way home. It was something Gabe said to me when I talked to him online that night. He’d said it would be better “for both of us” if I stopped trying to find him.
For both of us?
I didn’t think about it at the time, but now it made a whole new kind of sense. Because Mr. Qualls was nobody you wanted to mess with, and that was as true for Gabe as it was for me.
I could see it clearly, now. And just about a day too late.
IN THE CAR, Dad let me have it.
“We need to talk about this detective work of yours,” he told me. “Mr. Qualls might be dangerous, which you already knew. In fact, it concerns me more than anything that you did know that and you still went back to the house.”
“I brought Cedric,” I said. “I didn’t go by myself.”
“Do you really think that’s going to make me feel any better?” Dad asked. “It just puts two of you in a place that you shouldn’t be. This isn’t a game, Ali.”
“I know that!” I shouted back. As soon as it came out, I felt sorry for yelling, but it was too late to stop. This whole thing was spilling up and out of me now, like it or not.
“Gabe’s my friend!” I said. “And it’s like nobody cares. I mean, I know they’re doing their jobs, but it’s been three weeks. More than three weeks! And I’m the only person who’s actually talked to him. You want to know the truth, Dad? It shouldn’t be that way. Those detectives should be doing their jobs and finding him. Why is it taking so long? Why isn’t anyone…”
My throat closed around the words before I could finish. I wasn’t even seeing straight. Then my eyes filled up with water.
“Why isn’t anyone finding my friend?” I asked.
Dad pulled over in front of an apartment building on 3rd Street and put the car in park.
“Come here,” he said. He gave me a big hug, and I kind of emptied out, crying as hard as I ever have. I was just really, really stressed. And I was sad that my friend wasn’t getting the attention he deserved.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that about the police.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Dad told me. Then he sat back and looked at me across the seat. “You want to know something? I was so angry about how a case was going one time, I punched a mirror in the bathroom at work. I even cried that day.”
“You did?” I asked. It was a lot easier for me to imagine Dad punching something than it was to imagine him crying. Not that he’s some super-tough Luke Cage kind of guy. But at the same time, he is pretty tough.
“One of the hard things about this work is not taking the job too personally,” Dad said. “Most days, I can do that. But every once in a while? Not so much.”
I’d talked to Dad about his job a million times, but he’d never said any of this before.
“You have everything it takes, Ali,” Dad went on. “If you want to be a real detective someday, then that’s exactly what you’re going to be. It’s when you stop caring that you have to worry.”
I wasn’t crying anymore, but there were still tears on my cheeks, and I wiped them on my sleeve. I took one of those shaky breaths and tried to refocus while Dad pulled away from the curb. Then we were driving again.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said.
“In the meantime, I’m putting you on hold,” he told me. “No more investigation on this one. No more going anywhere near the Qualls’s house. And no more secrets. You have a tendency to go all in, Ali. There’s no halfway for you, and that makes me nervous. Actually, no, it terrifies me.”
“It does?” I was learning all kinds of new stuff about Dad.
“Yes, it does,” he said. “We have one missing kid already. I will not take any chances on you becoming the next one. No more of this investigation for you. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I got it.”
But at the same time, I wasn’t 100 percent sure I was making a promise I could keep.
THAT NIGHT, I met Cedric, Mateo, and Ruby in Outpost for a gaming session. But also a truth session.
“Look out!”
“I’m looking! Where are they?”
“Straight up!”
I looked up and saw a squadron of ultralights with flamethrowers passing right over the treetop base station where Lowkey-Loki, Blackhawk, Cagey-B, and I had taken up a position. A column of fire shot right at me and I had to drop down to the lower branches just to avoid getting flamed right out of the game.
“We’re not going to be able to hold this,” Ruby said. I looked again and saw the three of them returning fire, but the treehouse itself was burning up. Flaming branches and pieces of lumber were falling past me already.
“We need to ditch!” Cedric said.
“Guess I’ll have to rebuild that treehouse,” Mateo said. Like that didn’t happen all the time. The whole point of the game wasn’t about staying in one place. It was about adapting.
A few minutes later, we’d all reconvened on the beach, with a huge lake spread out in front of us. Ruby had already requisitioned a sweet-looking airfoil, too, so we hopped on and headed for another shore.
“Hey, listen, you guys,” I said. “I need to catch you up.” I’d been putting it off, because I didn’t know how they’d react to this, but the longer I waited, the worse it was going to get. Also, it seemed easier to do this over a headset instead of face-to-face.
“What’s up? Something with Gabe?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “A whole lot, actually.”
“What about him?”
I counted to five, just to make sure I still wanted to do this.
“I talked to him,” I said. “A week ago.”
“Say what?” Mateo asked.
“How?” Cedric asked.
“Inside Outpost,” I said. “He tracked me down. I got the entry code for his bunker, and he left me a message about when to meet. Which is what we did.”
“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” Cedric said. “What do you mean, meet?”
I could tell they weren’t exactly pumped about the fact that I’d been keeping secrets. But
I couldn’t stop now, they had to hear it all.
“I mean, he logged in as some other avatar, just like you thought he might. And we met in that bunker,” I said. “He wanted someone to know he was okay, or at least… you know. Not gone.”
Not dead is what I meant, but I didn’t want to say that.
Now I felt like an idiot for holding back this long, even though at the same time, I would have felt just as bad if I’d broken my promise to Gabe right away.
“I’m not saying it was the right thing to do,” I told them. “I don’t know if there was a right thing. I was just trying to see if I could get a few things figured out first—”
Ruby cut me off. “Whatever, Ali,” she said. “I’m out.”
“What do you mean, out?” I asked. But then Blackhawk disappeared from the screen in front of me. She’d been the one driving that airfoil, and it spun out now and came to a stop on the water.
“Mateo, tell her to get back online,” I said. “At least let me explain.”
But that’s as far as I got with him, too. On-screen, I saw Cagey-B turn to face Cassius Play. Then he raised his plasma and fired, point blank.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” I said, too late. He’d already vaporized me right out of the game.
“What’d you do that for?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer.
“Mateo just bounced,” Cedric told me. “I’m in here by myself now.”
“I’ll log back in,” I said. “Be right there.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Cedric told me. “I’m gonna go.”
“Come on, man. You, too?” I asked. I thought if anyone was going to understand how this was for me, it would be Cedric. But I guess not. It felt more like I was circling the drain, going down, down, down.
“I’m not mad,” Cedric said. “Not like those guys. It’s just… I don’t know, bro. I’m not really sure what to think.”
In other words, he was mad.
“Yeah, okay. Text me if you want to get back on,” I told him.
“Sure,” he said, even though we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Then he disconnected, and I just sat there, feeling as alone as I’d felt since this whole crazy, stupid situation started. I’d basically messed this up for myself by keeping secrets—from the police and my friends. Then, I’d messed it up even more by telling the truth. I seriously didn’t know where that left me, or what I was supposed to do about it now.
Whatever it was, though, I’d be doing it on my own.
“ALL RISE FOR the honorable Judge Felicity Lautner,” the bailiff called out, and everyone rose to their feet.
The judge, a tall white woman with a lace collar on her robe, smiled curtly out at the room as she ascended to the bench.
“Please be seated,” she said. Alex took his seat, and then a deep breath, too. Next to him was Deirdre Tennant, his criminal attorney. As much as it was possible to be ready for something like this, they were.
The Washington DC Superior Court was in a vast, white concrete building next to MPD headquarters on Indiana Avenue. Alex had been here dozens of times, if not hundreds. But never like this. The grim look on Bree’s and Nana’s faces said it all as they sat quietly waiting. This trial couldn’t be over soon enough.
On the other side of the room, June and Melissa Yang, the wife and daughter-in-law of Stanley Yang, sat nearer the prosecutor’s table. A seven-woman, five-man jury was seated on the far wall, under a large vintage photo of the Washington Monument.
“Let me thank you all ahead of time for your efficiency,” Judge Lautner began. “I’ve looked over the briefing documents, and don’t expect this should take more than a few days to complete.”
Alex was glad to hear it. DC judges were notoriously cautious about having their cases overturned on appeal, and most preferred to take their time. Trials in Washington generally took longer than anywhere in the country. But not on Judge Lautner’s watch.
After Ms. Tennant entered Alex’s not-guilty plea and both lawyers made their opening statements, the Yangs’ attorney, Robert Sheinken, called his first witness.
It began with an assistant medical examiner who had responded to Mr. Yang’s fall on that fateful day in June. Under Mr. Sheinken’s questioning, the AME reported that the bruises found on Mr. Yang’s arms could easily have come from some kind of tussle or struggle before he’d fallen.
On cross-examination, however, Alex’s lawyer, Deirdre Tennant, got the doctor to freely admit that those bruises could have also come from the fall itself.
Up next, Mr. Yang’s wife, June, testified in a halting voice about hearing an argument on her front porch that day. As far as she could tell, she said, Alex had been aggressive from the moment he’d arrived, and then rude and dismissive when she’d come outside to find her husband unconscious on the sidewalk.
Alex’s heart clenched as she spoke. He’d been giving CPR to Mr. Yang when his wife came out, and yes, it was entirely possible that he’d come off as rude in the moment. Still, it was hard to watch this woman in so much pain, even as she testified against him. If nothing else, the fact that she hadn’t actually seen Mr. Yang’s fall meant her testimony was only worth so much to the prosecution.
Finally, Alex himself was called to the stand. He wasn’t required by law to give testimony. The Fifth Amendment guaranteed that. But it was important to Alex that Jannie, Damon, and Ali know he had nothing to hide. He wanted the court to hear his story, and his legal team had reluctantly agreed.
Once Alex was sworn in, Robert Sheinken adjusted his red-striped power tie, stood up, and walked slowly toward the witness stand.
“Detective Cross,” he said, “can you describe what happened on the afternoon of June thirtieth in front of Stanley Yang’s home?”
“Sure,” Alex answered. He’d been over it in his mind every day for the last six months. There was no forgetting it now. “I came to ask Mr. Yang a few follow-up questions about his son’s murder charge. When I got there, Mr. Yang was understandably upset, and things turned tense very quickly. Then, as he came out through the screen door, he pushed me straight back. I remember that I stumbled, and I took three steps toward the stairs.”
“And you didn’t fall,” the attorney said.
“No,” Alex answered. “But Mr. Yang continued to advance on me at that point—”
“Where was your police weapon?”
“Holstered at my side,” Alex answered.
“Okay. Please continue.”
“Mr. Yang advanced, and I stepped to my right, to get out of his way—”
“Excuse me?” Mr. Sheinken interrupted. “You were at the very top of the porch stairs as Mr. Yang came toward you, and you stepped aside?” He spoke the last two words as though stepping aside were a crime and not a normal impulse.
“That’s right,” Alex answered. “Mr. Yang was quite agitated, and—”
“Did it occur to you that he might not have seen the stairs behind you?”
“Not in that moment, no,” Alex answered. “It all happened in a second, maybe two. That’s when Mr. Yang lurched forward and fell off the porch.”
“How far from him were you at this point?”
“Not far. Maybe two feet,” Alex asked.
“Would you say you were less than an arm’s reach away?” Sheinken stepped toward the witness stand and extended his hand until it was just shy of Alex’s chest. “This close?”
“Yes, I’d say so,” Alex answered. He knew where the attorney was going with this. There was nothing to do but tell the truth.
“And what kept you from reaching out to grab Mr. Yang, or to stop him from making that fall?” Sheinken asked.
“I did reach,” Alex answered. “If my reflexes had been a fraction of a second faster, we wouldn’t be here today.”
The prosecutor turned to face the jury now. “And did you touch him in any way, Detective Cross?”
“My hand brushed off his arm,” Alex answered.
“So it’s possible t
hat as you reached out, you may have even pushed him,” he said.
“Objection, your honor!” Deirdre Tennant was on her feet now. “Mr. Sheinken is wildly speculating here.”
“Sustained,” Judge Lautner answered from the bench. “Mr. Sheinken, would you care to rephrase that?”
Robert Sheinken didn’t miss a beat. “My point, Detective Cross, is that you showed up at the Yangs’ home as an officer of the law. You initiated a conversation you knew would upset Mr. Yang, and yet—”
“Objection! Is there a question here?” Tennant called out.
Judge Lautner gave a stern glance to the prosecutor. “Is there, Mr. Sheinken?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m just about there,” Sheinken answered, and turned on Alex again. “You engaged in a contentious conversation with Mr. Yang, by your own description. And at that charged and emotional moment, you failed to protect Mr. Yang when he came toward you. In fact, Detective Cross, you cleared the way for Stanley Yang to fall down those stairs. So my question is simply this: Is all of that accurate?”
Alex resisted the temptation to grit his teeth in front of the jury. Robert Sheinken knew exactly what he was doing.
“Detective?” he prodded.
“That’s physically accurate, but it has nothing to do with my intention,” Alex answered. “I wish I’d been able to stop that fall, but I couldn’t.”
“I see,” Sheinken said, as he turned away once more. This last part was just for the jury. “So while I can’t prove malicious intent here, it does seem to me that you had everything you needed to keep Mr. Yang safe, Detective Cross—”
“Your honor!” Tennant called out. “At what point does this monologue end? Is Mr. Sheinken auditioning for a movie or making his case?”
“That’s quite enough, Mr. Sheinken,” the judge said.
“I’m done, your honor. No further questions,” the attorney said, and walked back to his table without another glance. The twelve jurors, likewise, seemed to avoid Alex’s eyes when he looked over.
Maybe testifying had been a mistake. Maybe even a fatal one. The sense of it dropped like a stone into Alex’s gut.
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