Before we left Nora’s office that morning, Nora called the Boston Globe and asked for the reporter named Clemens Bittner. I could tell right away that he didn’t pick up. Nora left a message on his voice mail, a frown crossing her face as she put down the receiver.

“That is one grumpy dude,” Nora said.

I asked what she meant.

“His voice,” Nora said. “Not that I should complain. I’ll never win any Miss Manners awards, but this guy — whoa.” Nora imitated the reporter’s phone voice for us. “Bitt-ner,” she said, her voice dropping to a growl that sounded like rubbing rocks together. “Leave a message, if you want. No promises.” Nora looked at us. “That was it. Click. Nothing like, ‘I’m away from my desk.’ Or, ‘Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.’ Nothing. Just a couple of grunts and the dial tone.”

In my mind I pictured Clemens Bittner as a wrinkly, hundred-year-old man, his eyes barely open.

Later that day when Ma checked in, Nora said the reporter hadn’t called her back. Nora tried again the next day. She tried again the day after that, and over the weekend, too. When I showed up to Nora’s office on Monday, she shrugged. “Nothing,” she said.

Another waiting game! This time waiting to see if a newspaper reporter would simply do the decent thing and return a telephone call. Waiting, waiting, and more waiting — it was driving me nuts!

“It is very strange,” Nora said. “I don’t know what to do.”

I was standing in Nora’s office, trying to think of something. My mind was blank. Then a question popped into my head: What would Mattie Ross do? Just like that: if Mattie were in my shoes — or my Nike 2000 runners, to be more specific — what would she do?

Nora asked, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we don’t want to wait for Clemens Bittner to call us.”

The next morning, I didn’t go to Nora’s office. I decided instead to take the T to the Boston Globe. If Clemens Bittner wasn’t calling Nora back, I would go and see him myself. That’s what I’d figured Mattie would do. So that’s what I should do, too.

For breakfast I ate a couple of peanut-butter-crunch sports bars. It’s maybe the one good thing I learned during my year at the Weld School, from the track coach. She was always talking about eating a balanced diet and staying hydrated.

The day was sunny and already hot. When I left our apartment, I was wearing my knee-length running shorts with a short-sleeved green T-shirt, mint-colored socks, and, of course, my Nikes. I was taking a shortcut down Castlegate Road to the Orange Line station when someone called out.

“Yo, Trell!”

I turned to see who was yelling. I rolled my eyes. Oh, no, I thought.

“Trell! It’s Paul. Paul Parish.”

“I know who you are.”

I hadn’t seen Paul Parish for at least a year, and that was okay by me, because in school before I switched to the Weld, the only reason he ever talked to me was to mouth off.

Paul had closed the gate to his uncle Thumper’s walled-in compound and was coming toward me. I looked past him over the fence at his uncle’s fortress. The three-story Victorian was painted green with neon-orange trim, the same colors on the Jimi Hendrix T-shirt I’d seen for sale in the corner market. Mounted on each first-floor window were heavy black iron grills, like prison bars. Usually window grills were to keep anyone from breaking into some place, but on Thumper’s I wasn’t so sure. His bars were maybe to keep anyone from escaping.

At this early morning hour, all was quiet, in a creepy way.

“Hey, Trell,” Paul said, catching his breath as he hustled over. He was wearing a white T-shirt over a pair of baggy, torn blue jeans that were too big and too long. The cuffs dragged on the sidewalk.

I didn’t say anything.

“Long time,” Paul said. He smiled.

I gave him a look.

“How you been?” he asked.

I turned and began to walk away, but he kept up with me.

“Really, Trell. How you been? You likin’ that new school?”

I was expecting something mean to come out of his mouth, but nothing did. He smiled at me, a smile that seemed genuine, and he was standing there waiting for me to say something. It was like he wanted to have a real conversation. He said, “It’s the Weld, something like that, right?”

“How’d you know?” I said.

“When you didn’t come back to school, I asked around.”

Before I could say anything, a shiny black Mercedes-Benz came sweeping in from around the corner, its tires screeching. The car braked sharply right in front of Paul’s house. With its darkened windows, there was no way to see who was inside. But we could hear loud voices. The passenger door flew open, and out climbed Paul’s uncle, Lamar “Thumper” Parish. Thumper walked around the front of the car. He was screaming at the driver the whole time, and he was jabbing the air with his finger like he was thrusting a knife.

My eyes widened. Thumper Parish, the way he moved, stirring up street dust like a cyclone, sure made a statement. He was tall and angular like a basketball player. The black nylon jacket he was wearing, with matching workout pants, was unzipped and flapping as he walked, revealing a flat and muscled stomach.

I couldn’t make out exactly what Thumper was saying, except he was warning the driver he had better quit screwin’ up, that he had one job and only one job, and there were no excuses. Thumper stopped beside the driver’s-side window and pounded on the glass until the window rolled down. Thumper reached inside, grabbed the driver by the neck, and pulled hard. A pair of silver sunglasses, made of thick plastic, popped off the driver’s face. The glasses rattled across the pavement.

Thumper pressed the driver’s face down sideways against the open window, and the driver’s eyes bulged. I could see the driver had a big, ugly, red scar running from above his left eye down onto his cheek. Thumper bent closer and began screaming into the driver’s ear, “You understand me, bro? You got it? Do your job. Just do your job!”

Thumper stopped, as if he sensed he was being watched. He turned quickly and saw Paul and me. He dropped his hold on the driver and pushed him back inside the Mercedes.

“What you doin’, Paulie?”

Paul did not reply. Thumper stood tall and straight, staring at us.

“Who you?” He meant me. Thumper tilted his head, like he was figuring something out. It made me a little nervous. He barked, “You Romero’s kid?”

Like Paul, I didn’t reply.

Thumper’s face was twisted up, like a fist, and tired looking. His eyes were rimmed in red. His teeth were unnaturally white, like he’d gone to the dentist to have them worked on and polished.

Flashing those teeth, he stared at Paul. “Get inside,” he ordered.

To me he said, “You, girl. Get outta here.”

I could still feel my heart beating when I took a seat on the T, and it wasn’t until I switched to the Red Line and got off at the newspaper’s stop that I felt normal again. The newspaper was located on a street running along Dorchester Bay, which feeds into Boston Harbor, and I got there after about a five-minute walk. The front entrance was modern looking, made of big panes of glass framed in steel, and I entered through turnstile doors you push and go around in a circle. Filene’s has the same kind of doors, and when I was little and shopped there with Ma, she always had to wait for me, her mouth tight in annoyance, as I just kept going around. It was the closest thing I had to an amusement park ride.

But this was no time to be doing that, so I just pushed my way into the lobby and let go of the door and watched it keep turning without me. Grown-ups were coming and going; the place seemed pretty busy, and behind a security desk I could see an escalator rising to a second floor. Seated at the front desk was a round-faced man wearing glasses, dressed in a navy-blue shirt with a badge on it.

“I’m here to see one of your reporters,” I said. “Name is Clemens Bittner.”

The man didn’t look up from the newspaper he was reading, which I couldn’t help notice was not the Globe but, instead, was the other paper in town, the Herald, a paper shaped differently from the Globe — a tabloid is what I’d heard people call it — and that looked different, too. The Herald always had huge headlines and big pictures on its front page, as if the world was ending every day. It was the Herald, by the way, that ran the headline I’ll never forget after I came it across in Nora’s files, the one about Daddy’s arrest that said “RUBY KILLER JAILED.”

I tried talking louder. “Bittner? Clemens Bittner?”

The security guard still didn’t look at me, but this time he did nod in the direction of a telephone that sat at the edge of his desk. I stepped over to the phone and saw an employee directory of names and numbers next to it. When I dialed the one for Clemens Bittner, the phone began ringing — and ringing. Right away I began thinking I was going to get his voice mail the way Nora did, but then a real voice came on the line. Except it wasn’t a man’s voice.

“Boston Globe city room,” said a woman in a businesslike but friendly way.

“I was calling for Clemens Bittner,” I said.

“You have reached Mr. Bittner’s line,” she explained. “This is the switchboard at the message center in the newsroom. We pick up a reporter’s call when they don’t.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Is Mr. Bittner there?”

“Not at the moment.”

I wasn’t sure what to do next.

“Would you like me to put you through to his voice mail?”

She was at least trying to be helpful, not like the security guard.

“No, that’s all right,” I said.

“I could do that if you’d like,” she said.

“The thing is, Mr. Bittner doesn’t seem to ever return calls.”

I thought I could hear the operator chuckle. She said, “It is true. He is not the best when it comes to following up.”

I kind of liked talking to the operator. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course, young lady.”

Young lady? I guess my voice was a dead giveaway. If I was going to be taken seriously, like someone older, this was something I was going to have to work on. “Do you know when Mr. Bittner will be in?” I tried to make my voice sound deeper and older.

“That’s not so easy to answer. Oh, hold on a minute.”

The line went quiet, and then the operator came back. “Sorry about that. I had to take another call.”

“When will Mr. Bittner be in?”

“Oh, yes. Hmmm. Ordinarily, that’s a pretty straightforward matter with most reporters. But Clemens, he’s different.” The operator paused and then continued, “What I can tell you is that he does not work days, so you won’t be reaching him now.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“The day shift,” she said. “We have reporters working shifts around the clock. Most of them work during the daytime, or the day shift. Clemens is different; he works nights, from midnight to eight a.m. We call it the graveyard shift.”

“Graveyard? As in dead bodies?”

The operator chuckled again. “Yes, like that. Clemens works the graveyard shift.”

I began thinking. “So, if that’s when he works, if I call after midnight, I’ll reach him?”

“Well, again, that’s not so easy to say. In theory, yes — because Mr. Bittner is on the job then. But Mr. Bittner, he’s very hard to reach, and if you’ve tried leaving him messages, I think you have an idea of what I mean.”

“But I could call after midnight,” I said, “and maybe get him?”

“Wouldn’t that be past your bedtime?”

Before I could protest and tell her I was not some little girl, she said, “Okay, honey, I’ve got to go now, the board’s lighting up.”

Ma was asleep in her bedroom and had no idea about my plan to stay awake past midnight. I tried to keep busy reading magazines but actually dropped off to sleep. I awoke around one o’clock, startled. The lamp by my bed was still on, and I heard a police siren through my open window. I was sleepy, and it took me a second to remember what I was supposed to do. I felt some panic, like I’d missed something, even though the operator had told me the graveyard shift lasted from midnight to eight a.m. I picked up the cordless phone I’d sneaked into my room from the kitchen and dialed Clemens Bittner’s number. It rang and rang, and, as I feared, it went to his voice mail. I heard the unfriendly mumbled message Nora always got.

I hung up. What was it with this guy? I called him again, and again got his voice mail. I hung up and dialed again. I could feel myself getting really annoyed as I listened to the ring, fully expecting my call to go again to voice mail.

Instead, a voice growled, “Yeah.”

“Oh,” I said.

I was shocked. Then I remembered about my voice, and dropped it down as low as I could as I said, “Is this Mr. Clemens Bittner?”

“This is Bittner. Who’s asking?”

“My name is Trell Taylor.”

“You the one been dialing my phone nonstop, giving me a headache?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a story for you.”

Clemens Bittner grunted. That’s all. Just a grunt. I took a deep breath and started telling him the things I’d rehearsed — about Daddy being in prison for murder, except he’s innocent and didn’t ever murder anybody. I told Clemens Bittner this was a really big story that he could work on and write for his newspaper. I tried to keep my voice deep as I spoke, but the more I talked about Daddy’s situation, the more I got worked up and my voice rose to its normal high.

Clemens Bittner interrupted me. “What’s his name?” he asked.

“You mean my daddy?”

“Whoever,” he mumbled. “This guy, the one you say is innocent.”

“Romero Taylor. It’s a famous case.”

“Never heard of him.”

“It’s been in your newspaper plenty of times,” I said.

“I’m telling you the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

I didn’t know what to say, and there was silence between us.

Then he said, “Who’d he kill?”

The question made my stomach turn. “He didn’t kill anybody, Mr. Bittner.”

Clemens Bittner repeated the question. “I’m askin’ because maybe if the case is so famous, I’d recognize it that way.”

“Ruby Graham,” I said.

There was a long silence.

“You still there?” I asked.

“The girl on the blue mailbox.”

His words came out flat and slowly. His voice had lost its crust.

“You know about her?”

“August 20, 1988.”

“The day she died, yes. How’d you know that, Mr. Bittner?”

“I have my reasons” is all he said.

Then there was a quiet between us, so I continued.

“I was wanting you to write about my daddy. You see, the articles about him are all wrong. Somebody needs to write the truth, and the lawyer for my daddy says you’re the one who could set the record straight.”

“How old are you?”

It wasn’t the question I was expecting. “What’s the difference?”

“How do you know to talk like that — ‘set the record straight’?”

“I don’t know. I read a lot. I’ve been helping my daddy’s lawyer.”

“Well, here’s what I think: it’s way too late for you to be up. Get to bed.”

Then he hung up. I couldn’t believe it. I just held the phone, hearing nothing but the dial tone.