I didn’t think I could take any more, but Nora was not done. She pulled out more stuff from the files — more original documents and some newspaper clippings. She pulled the main Boston Police Form 26 that officers responding to the scene had filed later that night. Using her finger, Nora moved from box to box on the form to show me the information the officers had typed in. The box for Time of Incident was filled in with “8:47 pm.” The box for Victim’s Age was filled in with “13,” and Ruby Graham’s occupation was listed as “Student.” In addition to the section devoted to the victim, there was a section titled Persons, which meant suspects. The number 1 was typed into the box for Number of Perpetrators, and the answer “No” was typed into the box labeled Can Suspect Be Identified at This Time? In a bunch of boxes devoted to describing different things about a suspect, such as race, age, build, or weight, the same answer appeared: “Unknown.” The only thing known about the shooter was contained in a box labeled Special Characteristics (including Clothing). In this box, the officers had typed “Dark Adidas Running Suit & Halloween Mask.” Police had little to go on, that much was clear.

Next, Nora came to a section where the officers briefly described the situation, which she read aloud. “Officers responded to a radio call for a child shot at 118 Humboldt Ave. On arrival, officers observed large crowd near corner and a young black female lying on the ground in front of mailbox bleeding from gunshot wound to the rear skull area. Victim’s mother was at the scene at this time. Ambulance #5 with Conley and Drew responded and transported victim to Boston City Hospital, where victim was pronounced dead at 9:34 pm by Dr. Shah.”

That was it, the official account of Ruby’s killing in four sentences, and I could feel myself taking short breaths. Nora pointed to a list of names of other police who were there. “You see that?” Nora asked. “You see who showed up?”

I looked at the list under the heading Responding to Scene and saw that Boston Police Commissioner William Dewey, Police Superintendent Tom Evans, and three deputy police superintendents were there. “It’s the entire top brass,” Nora said, “and believe me, they were not working at that hour. They were having dinner, keeping cool someplace, and doing whatever they did with family or friends. But once this call came in, without a doubt they all responded. You know why?”

Nora pulled out a newspaper clipping and pointed to the first paragraph of the news story about the shooting, which read, “A thirteen-year-old Roxbury girl was shot and killed last night while sitting on a blue mailbox, the youngest victim of street gang violence in the city’s history.” Nora kept poking her finger at that line of the story. “That’s why,” she said. “That’s why the brass turned out. Every murder is horrible, of course, but this one, the killing of Ruby Graham, was beyond the pale, as if the violence in the city had crossed some kind of boundary line: Ruby was both an innocent bystander in a beef between two street gangs and also the youngest shooting victim ever. Her murder caused an uproar.”

Nora then began flipping through a stack of newspaper clippings to prove her point. “Ruby became an instant symbol for all that was wrong that summer — the drugs, the guns, the gang wars and violence. The city was rocked by this kind of lawlessness.” Nora showed me one headline in the Boston Herald. It read, “Win Drug War for Ruby!” and the story was about Ruby’s funeral. “‘Nearly one thousand mourners offered their tearful good-byes to thirteen-year-old Ruby Graham yesterday as outraged community leaders called for a renewed fight against the drug war that took her life.’” Nora shook her head. “People were scared,” she said, “and they wanted action.” She pointed to parts of the newspaper story where some city officials were calling for the deployment of the National Guard in Roxbury because things were so out of control and Boston police couldn’t protect them.

“The National Guard — can you believe it? Soldiers in the streets of Boston?” Nora shook her head again. “The police were under a lot of pressure. Every day the story was all over TV and radio, and on the front pages of the newspaper — stories about the investigation and its lack of progress, and about the community growing almost hysterical, demanding justice. The situation got strange fast, and dangerous — a feeling in the city something like the Salem witch trials. The police seemed obsessed with making an arrest no matter what.”

I knew what Nora meant when she mentioned the witch trials. We had studied them in history class. The whole thing was so creepy, the fact that settlers in the 1690s in Salem, Massachusetts, got so freaked out that actual witches might be around that they hanged a bunch of women and girls without any of them getting a fair trial. I learned that panic is a scary thing.

Nora pulled out another newspaper story tracking the investigation in the days after the murder. The headline read, “Police Net Closing In on Girl’s Killer.” The story opened: “An army of police working around the clock is closing in quickly on the killer of a 13-year-old girl who was hit by a stray bullet, officials said yesterday.”

“See what I mean?” Nora said. “Pressure on police, the clock ticking.” Nora put her hand on another newspaper in the pile and paused before pulling it out.

“Then there’s this,” she said, spreading open the paper and running her hand across the front page like she was smoothing a wrinkled sheet. The headline was the biggest yet on any of the papers Nora had shown me. “RUBY KILLER JAILED!” screamed the words in big block letters across the front page. Nora grumbled something about how awful the media could be. “‘Ruby killer jailed,’” she repeated. “What a headline. What about innocent until proven guilty?” Nora let the question hang there and then shrugged. “But no one seemed to care. The cops had caught the shooter. It was like the city breathed a big sigh of relief. People could sleep again at night.”

I looked at the newspaper and saw a picture of Ruby’s face next to the article. The photograph must have been taken at a birthday party when she was younger, because she didn’t look thirteen. I could see the collar of a dress with a flowered print, and there was a bow in her hair. She was smiling brightly. She looked nice, this girl on the blue mailbox who had been shot and killed.

Next to the photograph was the news story that began, “Romero Taylor, a Roxbury gang member with a history of drug dealing, sits behind bars in the Charles Street Jail this morning, charged with the senseless killing of a 13-year-old girl on Humboldt Avenue a week ago.” I could feel a chill race up my spine.

“But why?” I asked.

Nora said, “What?”

“Daddy. Why him?”

Nora said, “That’s exactly what I need to explain next: Why Romero Taylor?”

In the days following the killing, she said, police canvassed the Roxbury neighborhood and tracked down kids who had been socializing on the street corner that night. Some of them told the cops that about an hour before the shooting, they’d seen Romero Taylor walk by. “No big deal, right? Your dad and mom — and you, just three months old — were living not even a block away, in the apartment above the store.” But one of the kids said something that made the cops sit up and pay attention. “One kid said Romero Taylor was dressed in an Adidas running suit.”

The police perked up. “Homicide detectives had already learned that the shooter was dressed in a black Adidas running suit. So when police heard your daddy wore Adidas, it was like some huge breakthrough. Like they’d discovered the gun with your daddy’s fingerprints on it. Which, of course, they hadn’t. Not even close. They never found the gun. But they treated the clothing info like that, and whammo! The focus was suddenly Romero Taylor. He was the prime suspect, a drug dealer who, the police theorized, had gone to settle a beef with Humboldt and by mistake killed a little girl. It was like the detectives had blinders on — from that moment, they only wanted to get Romero Taylor, put together a case against him.”

Nora turned again to the front-page newspaper story about Daddy’s arrest. “And they got their man — in just a few days!” She jammed her finger angrily at the story’s middle paragraphs. “Here,” she said. “Look at this, the talk at the big press conference announcing the arrest. Here, right here, where the district attorney — Frank Flanagan is his name — is speaking to reporters.”

“He the one who ran for mayor a few years ago?” I asked.

“That’s right — and he lost.” Nora seemed glad about that. “You interested in politics?”

“Not really. It’s just Daddy mentions his name sometimes.”

“He’s a piece of work, Frank Flanagan,” Nora said, “always running for something. Heck, he just announced he’s going to try a second time to get elected mayor.” Nora did not seem glad about that. “Anyway, this shooting went down when Flanagan was first letting on he was power hungry — that he had his eyes on the mayor’s office. So, after Ruby Graham was killed, he came out swinging, promising a quick arrest, selling himself as a crime fighter on a warpath who considers criminals maggots. That’s his word — maggots. He talks openly about the pleasure he gets from ‘hurting the people who hurt people.’ Those are his words. In the story right here — look at the way he’s boasting to the media about your daddy’s arrest: ‘We have many, many witnesses,’ he’s saying, ‘who have identified Romero Taylor as the gunman who shot young Ruby Graham.’”

Nora moved her finger farther down the story. “This other quote is from Richard Boyle, the lead homicide detective on the case. He’s the one who put the cuffs on your daddy.” Nora read the paper: “‘Taylor is a known drug dealer,’ Boyle said during the press conference, ‘and a member of the Castlegate Boys.’”

I was slumping farther into the couch.

Nora noticed. “You okay?”

“Not really,” I said.

Nora gave me a hard look. I guess it was her lawyer look.

“You need to know this,” she said. “I told you — and it gets worse, because next came the trial and the ‘many, many witnesses’ Frank Flanagan bragged about who were waiting to testify against your daddy. You see, they never recovered any physical proof — the gun, the mask, things like that — so Flanagan’s case was built on testimony from kids, each saying something that pointed to your daddy. It’s like a puzzle, with each kid providing a piece, and when you had all the pieces, it showed your daddy did it.”

I was puzzled.

“Here’s what I mean,” Nora said. “The biggest pieces came from three kids Flanagan called to testify, all three being from the neighborhood. Their names are Juanda Tillery, Monique Catron, and Travis Golson.

“Juanda Tillery: She wasn’t with Ruby and the other kids at the mailbox, but she testified that a little before the shooting, she had walked past Romero Taylor on the street. Not only that, but she also said he was wearing a black Adidas running suit. Juanda testified she knew Romero and that they began chatting. She said that another young man then came along and asked Romero if he wanted to go off and party with him. Juanda testified that Romero replied, ‘Naw, I got some business.’ Juanda said the man teased Romero, urging him to party instead, but that Romero shook him off and insisted in a real serious tone, ‘Can’t. I got to do this. It’s business.’”

Nora stopped to take a breath. I think she wanted this to sink in.

“Then there was Monique Catron,” Nora said. “Monique lived with her mother in an apartment on a side street off Humboldt. She testified that after hearing gunshots, she rushed to her front porch and saw a man hurry by, ‘putting a gun inside his pants.’ Monique then testified that when Detective Richard Boyle showed her photographs of nine different men and asked her if she could identify the man with the gun, she pointed to Romero Taylor. Monique told the jury, ‘I’ll never forget those eyes, because they was like staring right at me.’

“Last came Travis Golson,” Nora said. “Travis testified that on the night Ruby Graham was shot, he’d seen Romero outside an apartment house a few blocks from the crime scene. Travis testified that Romero had a pistol on him. Travis also said he overheard Romero asking another man where he could find two of Humboldt’s leaders. Travis further testified that he met up with Romero later that night, after the shooting, and that Romero was acting ‘strange’ and had ‘ditched’ the pistol.”

Nora stopped there. “That’s it — the key eyewitness testimony about your daddy before and after the shooting. When you put the pieces of the puzzle together, you have your daddy armed with a pistol asking for the whereabouts of the Humboldt Raiders while saying he’s got some business to take care of; you’ve got him hurrying away from the crime scene stuffing a gun in his pants; and you’ve got him later acting nervous and telling someone he’s ditched a weapon.”

Nora said, “The jury took only an hour to find him guilty of murder.”

It felt like there was no oxygen left in the room.

“It’s bad,” I said. Everything Nora said had sounded so real. Those kids — Juanda, Monique, and Travis — had really gone to court. Each had sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and taken together, like pieces of a puzzle, the way Nora said, it sounded true. Had Daddy maybe done something terrible? The thought scared me. “It sounds really bad,” I said.