The Tallest Suspect

The marker that went missing was the good one. The black one, the one that did not squeak and did not run dry, the one Principal Halvorsen kept on the ledge of the big whiteboard in the front hall and used only for important things, like the number of days left until the winter concert.

On the Tuesday, it was not on the ledge.

By Tuesday afternoon, there was an assembly.

Principal Halvorsen stood in front of the whole of Grade 2 and half of Grade 3, and he was not, if you watched him closely, entirely talking about a marker.

“Things,” he said, “do not simply disappear. Not in a well-run school. A well-run school is a place where a thing stays where you put it.” He was a large, tired man, and lately there had been too many children in the building and not enough building, and portables in the yard, and a letter from the board he had not answered, and somewhere under the marker was all of that. “Someone has taken it. And we are going to find out who.”

Kabir raised his hand, because he was the class representative, and a representative represents.

“Are we suspects?”

“Everyone is a suspect,” said Principal Halvorsen, “until the marker is found.”

“Then I represent the suspects,” said Kabir, and stood up, “and I have some questions.”

“You may not question me. I am conducting the investigation.”

“Someone should check your work,” said Tyler, from the side, where he had appointed himself court reporter and had the black book open to a clean page.

“When did you last see the marker?” Kabir asked.

Principal Halvorsen, who had run this school for twenty years and had never once been cross-examined by a seven-year-old, answered before he had decided to. “This morning.”

“Where?”

“On the ledge.”

“Was the ledge locked?”

“Ledges do not lock.”

“So anyone could reach it. Including you. Especially you. You’re the tallest one here.”

The assembly turned, as one, to consider the principal, who was, indisputably, the tallest suspect in the room.

“Did you see it leave the ledge?”

“No.”

“Did anyone see it leave the ledge?”

“No,” said Principal Halvorsen. “That is the point of an investigation.”

“But nobody saw it go,” said Kabir. “You didn’t see it go. We didn’t see it go. So we don’t actually know it was taken. We only know it isn’t there. Those are different. One of them has a thief in it. The other one is just a marker that isn’t where you thought.” He said it gently, the way he said everything that took the ground out from under a grown-up. “In a notorious city, everyone reaches for the thief. But most of the time it’s the other one.”

The assembly murmured. Two hundred children were discovering, all at once, that the trial had turned around and was facing the other way.

Principal Halvorsen did what cornered investigators do, which was to look for someone smaller to point at.

“You,” he said, to a boy in Grade 3 named Cody, who had once been caught with three erasers that were not his. “You have a history.”

“Objection,” said Kabir.

“You can’t say objection. You’re seven.”

“I’m the representative. I represent Cody now. He looks like he needs one.” Kabir turned to the accused. “Cody. Do you have the marker?”

“No,” said Cody.

“Did anyone see Cody take it?”

“No,” said the assembly.

“Then all Cody has is a history,” said Kabir, “and a history isn’t a marker. If it was, we could arrest anyone who’s ever done anything. We could arrest everybody. This is a notorious city. Everyone here has a history.” He looked around, satisfied. “That’s why you don’t use it. You use what you can see. And nobody can see Cody with the marker, because Cody doesn’t have the marker.”

Cody, who had come to the assembly braced, the way you learn to brace when you have a history, sat down faintly stunned at having been, for the first time in his life, defended.

Principal Halvorsen tried a search. He made the front row empty their pockets onto the gym floor, and the pockets produced: a rock, a different rock, a folded drawing of a dog, eleven cents, and a small plastic dinosaur missing one leg. No marker.

“That’s evidence,” said Tyler, of the dinosaur, hopefully.

“Of what,” said Kabir.

“I don’t know yet,” said Tyler. “I’m keeping it open.”

And Kabir looked at the principal, who was sweating over a lost marker in a way that no one sweats over a lost marker, and understood that the marker was not the thing the man had really lost. So he stopped looking for the marker, and started, gently, to look for the thing underneath it.