By Friday, the district had assigned an investigator named Carl Nguyen, soft-spoken, meticulous, carrying a messenger bag that looked heavier than it needed to be. He interviewed Isaiah with Naomi present. He interviewed Briggs with a union representative present. He interviewed Connor, Emily (reluctantly), two other clarinetists, and the aide who had arrived after Naomi. He requested footage. The auditorium cameras, he reported carefully, covered the house seats and the side exits but not the podium itself. The hallway camera showed Naomi entering at 12:06. It showed Briggs exiting at 12:11 with Kellerman. It did not show the hold.
Absence, Naomi thought, was also a kind of evidence.
Briggs's written statement grew more polished with each revision. He emphasized safety. He emphasized Isaiah's "oppositional posture." He mentioned, in a sentence that made Naomi's teeth ache, that Isaiah had been "increasingly defiant this semester" and that "prior redirection had not been successful." When Naomi asked for those prior write-ups, the school produced two emails: one about forgotten music, one about talking during warm-ups. Neither described defiance. Both described a twelve-year-old being twelve.
Marta Okonkwo, when Naomi finally sat in her office and laid the timeline out like a case file, listened without interrupting. Marta had grey at her temples and a habit of tapping a pen against her lower lip when she was angry on someone else's behalf.
"You can go internal," Marta said. "Complaint, investigation, maybe a letter in his file, maybe training. Or you can go external—OCR complaint, civil claim for battery and intentional infliction, press if you want leverage. Or you transfer Isaiah and try to outrun the bruise."
"He loves that clarinet," Naomi said.