Mr. Lewis held his cap in both hands.
Halloway stood several feet away, watching them with visible irritation.
The moment Diaz finished, Mr. Lewis approached me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You tried to check the room.”
“Not hard enough.”
His voice carried the weight of someone who had repeated that sentence to himself.
“You could not know what was happening,” I said.
He glanced toward Halloway.
“I knew something wasn’t right.”
Before he could continue, Diaz called him back to clarify part of his statement.
Mrs. Gable had still not returned.
Halloway claimed she had gone home because she felt ill. Sergeant Mercer informed him that an officer would contact her immediately.
Then Mercer inspected the storage room.
I stayed outside with Emma, but from the doorway I saw shelves crowded with athletic cones, folded mats, boxes of paper, and cleaning supplies. There was no interior handle on the door, only a flat metal plate.
The light switch was outside in the corridor.
Mercer tested the door twice.
Each time, it locked automatically when it closed.
“This room should not be used for student supervision,” she said.
“It isn’t,” Halloway replied. “Today was an isolated lapse in judgment.”
