Lola Catron didn’t seem to want visitors. We pushed the doorbell for Apartment 3 a bunch of times before we heard her finally make her way down the stairs. Then she pulled up the curtain hanging loosely over the front-door window, saw us standing on the porch, and let the curtain drop.

“Go away,” she said.

“Mrs. Catron,” Clemens yelled. “We’d like to talk to you.”

She peeked out again. She was dressed in a robe, and it was afternoon.

“I said, go away.” She coughed, a hacking cough. “Go away.”

Clemens and I looked at each other.

When Ruby Graham was shot, Lola Catron and her daughter, Monique, lived in an apartment on Homestead Street, right around the corner from the blue mailbox. During the trial, Monique testified that after hearing gunfire, she ran to her front window. She testified she saw a man dressed in an Adidas running suit run past her apartment down Homestead. The man, she said, tucked a pistol into his waistband as he ran. The prosecutor, Frank Flanagan, then asked Monique if she saw that man in the courtroom. Monique pointed to my daddy, seated at the defense table with his lawyer. “You certain of that?” Frank Flanagan said. “Yes,” Monique replied. “I’ll never forget those eyes.” Frank Flanagan nodded, smiled, and returned to his chair. “Thank you,” he said. “No further questions.”

I stared into the curtained window. “We can’t go away, Mrs. Catron.”

Mrs. Catron peered at us from one corner. Her eyes seemed stuck on Clemens. Her mouth was clamped shut, her jaw jutting out.

Without turning my head, I said, “Clemens, I have an idea.”

“Okay,” he said.

“You go back to the street. Give me a minute here.”

“Huh?”

“Just give me a minute. You go wait on the sidewalk.”

Clemens shrugged, turned, and backed off the front porch. Mrs. Catron’s eyes stayed on him, following his every move.

“Mrs. Catron?” I said.

She looked at me. But not with the same hardness she had for Clemens.

“Can I talk to you?”

Mrs. Catron fiddled with the lock, then cracked open the door.

Nodding in Clemens’s direction, I said, “He’s not police.”

“No?” Mrs. Catron said. She opened the door wider.

“No,” I said.

Mrs. Catron sighed. She looked like the sigh was going to turn into another hacking cough, the way her chest heaved and her eyes widened, but nothing came out. She said, “I’m so tired of police.”

“Me too, Mrs. Catron,” I said. “Me too.”

She opened the door wider.

I stepped into the entryway.

“His name is Clemens,” I said. “He’s not police. He’s a friend. We want to talk to you about something.”

“What might that be?”

“Something from the old neighborhood, Mrs. Catron.”

She didn’t say anything, just shook her head slowly as if whatever she was thinking pained her. She turned away and headed toward the stairs. She took the first step. I worried that was it, that she wasn’t going to see us. But then her right hand flicked out from her side a few times. She was waving me to follow.

I waved to Clemens to come in.

We followed Lola Catron up three flights of stairs to her apartment. Slowly. When she stopped on the third-floor landing, I figured it was so she could catch her breath. But it was something else. She stepped carefully around a darkened area in the hallway. She pointed to the deep red stain in the wood floor.

“My son’s blood,” she said. “Died right here. Last year. Two bullets.”

Mrs. Catron pushed open her door, shuffled across the room, and dropped into a couch. “Police have been too big a part of my life,” she said.

We stepped over the bloodstain and followed her into the living room.

“Still sick to death,” she said. Mrs. Catron got settled and looked at us. “Call me Miss Lola,” she said.

We said we would.

She ran her fingers through her hair, which was wiry and gray and needed a good brushing. Her robe was floral, and she had thick padded slippers on her feet. On the table in front of her lay a pack of Winston cigarettes. The ashtray nearby overflowed with butts. The big-screen TV across the room was turned on to a daytime soap. Miss Lola used the remote to turn the volume down.

“Sick to death,” Miss Lola continued.

I sat on the edge of an end chair, and Clemens sank into another. It was clear we were going to have to wait for Miss Lola, let her talk.

“The shooter chased my son, Robert, into the house and up the stairs. Can you believe that? Then right outside my front door. Bang. Bang. No place is safe anymore. Robert died on the landing.” Miss Lola let loose a wail.

“Right . . . on . . . the . . . landing.”

She pulled a clump of tissues from the pocket of her robe and dabbed her eyes. “The police after — no way to treat a mother.” Raided her apartment, she said, tore apart Robert’s room, questioned her all night and into the next day. “Wouldn’t leave me be,” she said. “You’d think I done it.”

Miss Lola pointed to the TV and said, “Later they wouldn’t tell me nothing — it was on the news I learned about the arrest. Two boys from Geneva Avenue, belonged to a gang. Reporter on TV said Robert owed them money and wouldn’t repay it. Police the reporter interviewed kept calling my boy Stinger. Like that was his name. But not to me it wasn’t. He was Robert. My Robert.”

Miss Lola reached for the pack of cigarettes. “Too much police in my life. Too much.” She lit a cigarette. The cough started after the first puff.

Clemens waited until Miss Lola was breathing evenly.

“Sorry for your loss,” he said. I nodded along with him.

“Still traumatized,” Miss Lola said.

Clemens cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “Police is what we wanted to ask you about. Not about Robert, though. Longer ago than that — 1988, to be exact. We want to ask you about the police and your daughter, Monique.”

Miss Lola looked up toward the sky and moaned. I thought she might faint.

“I got so much pain as it is,” she said. “Why Monique?”

Clemens continued. “Monique was a key witness in a murder trial.”

“Don’t need to remind me of that,” Miss Lola said. Her look hardened. “I was there the whole time, right by my baby’s side, doing the best I could to take care of her. Police, they had no right doing what they did, condition she was in. They wouldn’t leave her alone. It’s like they moved in, lived with us.”

“That’s what we’re interested in — the police.” Clemens sat forward in his chair, clasped his hands, and explained to Miss Lola that he was a reporter with the Boston Globe. He said he was following up on things he’d heard about the police and the way they handled witnesses in the Ruby Graham case. “We’d like to talk to you about what you remember, and we’d like to take some notes.”

Clemens reached into his back pocket and pulled out not one but two slender spiral pads. Printed across each were the words Reporter’s Notebook. He handed me one, along with a pen. I flipped mine open, and as Clemens began scribbling something into his, I looked at the blank page and wrote “Miss Lola” along with the date. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Miss Lola hesitated a moment, took a puff on her cigarette, and then crushed it out in the ashtray. “Well, I didn’t see nothin’,” she began. “I was inside my bedroom when it happened. Monique, she was in the living room, resting on the couch. Before you know it, they be on my steps. Police after the killing were like buck wild. Crazy. Banging on doors. Monique was in no condition for that.”

I couldn’t help but interrupt. “Miss Lola, you keep saying ‘condition.’”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clemens look at me. He gave me a little nod.

“What kind of condition?” I asked.

“She was not well.” Miss Lola choked up. “My poor baby.”

Gently, Clemens asked her to explain what was wrong with Monique.

Miss Lola collected herself. She said, “We were living at 72 Homestead, just Monique and me. Tiny apartment on the first floor. Robert, just a toddler at the time, was staying with my sister. To help me out, so I could work.

“That winter Monique began getting very severe headaches. They came out of nowhere. She was in pain. Constant pain. I’d have to sit up all night and hold her head in my arms. I was taking her to the doctor, but they didn’t know what to make of it. Just give her some medicine. Then, in the spring, one day Monique collapses and falls flat on her face. She just lay there on the living room floor. I thought she was dead. The ambulance brought us to the emergency room at Boston City, and that’s when we finally got the diagnosis.”

“Which was?” Clemens asked.

Miss Lola stared off into space. “Cancer,” she said.

I was scribbling as fast as I could in my notebook.

“Monique began doing treatments,” Miss Lola said. “It’s why she was resting on the couch when the girl was shot on the blue mailbox around the corner. Monique had just had another round of treatments. She was resting.”

“So Monique was in treatment when Ruby Graham was shot?” Clemens said.

Miss Lola nodded.

“Did the police know your daughter had cancer?”

“Of course they knew,” Miss Lola said. Her face hardened like before, agitated. “I told them she was ill. They didn’t care. Cancer had nothing to do with her mouth.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Police were after her from day one to testify. Would not stop. She told them detectives first time they came around she’d gotten up from the couch and gone to the front window after the shooting started. Said she saw someone run past. Detectives wanted her to identify who it was. But Monique said she didn’t know.

“That wasn’t good enough. Detectives came back the next day, spread a bunch of police photos out on the table in the kitchen. They told Monique to pick out the face of the shooter. Monique tried her best. I know she did, even though her head ached and she was rubbing her temples the whole time.

“But Monique couldn’t. Didn’t get a good look, she said.”

Clemens and I exchanged glances.

“Detectives were not happy,” Miss Lola said.

Clemens asked, “You recall the detectives’ names?”

Miss Lola shook her head. “If you said a name, maybe I’d remember.”

“Boyle?” I said. “Detective Richie Boyle.”

Miss Lola huffed. “Yeah. That’s it. Boyle. He’s the one always seemed so worked up and in a hurry, reminded me of a pot of water about to boil over. It’s how I remembered his name.”

“What happened after that?” Clemens said.

“Wouldn’t leave us alone. Mr. Boyle and others kept coming around the apartment, harassing us. Like I said, after that shooting, police were running around the neighborhood wild, wanting to arrest somebody for shooting that girl. They even wanted me to see something I didn’t see. Kept sayin’, ‘You were home — you got to have seen something.’ Kept threatening to take me to court, subpoena me, if I didn’t cooperate. But they backed off all that nonsense with me after they had Monique look at the photo array a second time.”

“What happened the second time?”

“Detectives spread out the photos, like before. But this time a guy in a suit and tie had accompanied them. Kinda fat guy, acted like he was in charge.”

“Name?” Clemens interrupted.

“I don’t know,” Miss Lola said. “It’s hazy, so many years now. But I do remember Monique was scared. Police never let up after the first meeting. Followed us everywhere we went, saying, ‘We got to talk. We got to talk.’ My poor baby couldn’t take it. She was ill. She was scared.

“So this second time, photos are on the table, and the man in the suit is pointing to one of the photos. It’s Romero Taylor. The man’s pushing my girl: ‘C’mon Monique, you sure you don’t recognize him? You sure?’ he’s saying. He won’t stop, keeps askin’ her that question, until suddenly he changes his tune. Now he says, ‘That guy, he’s the one, right? You can help us, Monique. He’s the one?’

“Monique is under so much pressure. She nods yes. The guy in the suit gets all excited, saying, ‘Thatta girl, thatta girl.’ He starts walking around the room, slapping the detectives, like he won the lottery. ‘Look at those eyes,’ he tells Monique as he starts waving the Romero Taylor photo. ‘Never forget those eyes.’”

I put my pen down. “It’s what Monique testified to at trial.”

“Don’t I know it,” Miss Lola said. “I was there. Monique was a ghost by then. Pale. Worn down by the treatments. Barely anything left of her. She would have said anything that man wanted her to say. She was depleted.

“And six months later, my baby’s gone. Fifteen years old. She’d been so scared, the way they harassed her. Wasn’t cancer alone that killed her. Police did, far as I’m concerned.”

It went quiet in the room. Miss Lola reached for the pack of cigarettes, lit another.

“Why now?” she asked. “This is so long ago. Why?”

I felt like it was my turn to speak up. “Romero Taylor is my daddy,” I said.

This gave Miss Lola pause. She stopped pulling on a puff.

Clemens said, “We believe Romero Taylor was framed by the police and prosecutor. We need evidence, though. We need to find the witnesses used at the trial to convict him, talk to them. We started with Monique.”

“Monique is dead,” Miss Lola said.

The quiet came back. Miss Lola’s face had turned hard again. She took a long puff. She turned to look right at me. “You seem like a very nice girl,” Miss Lola began. “But I’m gonna be honest with you. Romero Taylor? He’s dirt to me.”

My body stiffened.

“One-stop drug store back then, that Romero Taylor. Real slick. Kids buyin’ any kind of drug from him — hustlin’ Romero Taylor with that line he was famous for: ‘If you pass me by, you won’t get high.’ Thought he was some kind of street poet. But he was a poison peddler, nothing more. My nephew overdosed on something Romero sold him. My nephew nearly died. Spent three months in the hospital.”

I realized my hand was frozen in place over my reporter’s notebook.

Miss Lola continued. “Maybe you think they framed him, and maybe they did, but he almost killed my nephew, and he probably did kill some boy or girl with the poison he sold. So, you see, far as I’m concerned, he’s right where he belongs, in prison.”

“We heard that already,” I said, the words coming out weakly. “From police. Richie Boyle. He was saying if my daddy’s not good for the Ruby Graham murder, he probably killed someone else, so he’s where he should be.”

Miss Lola said, “Whaddya know. Seems me and the police agree on somethin’.” She shook her head slowly. “Can’t imagine ever saying that.”

Miss Lola took a puff.

I closed my notebook. My body felt heavy.

“One more thing, Miss Lola?” Clemens said.

Miss Lola sighed deeply.

“The cancer?” Clemens said. “What kind?”

“Brain,” Miss Lola said. “In her brain. Called cerebral —”

“Excuse me, Miss Lola,” Clemens interrupted. “Trell,” he said. “Can you get this?” It was like Clemens was shaking me awake. “Trell?”

I opened my notebook.

Miss Lola continued, “Cerebral astrocytoma. A-s-t-r-o-c-y-t-o-m-a. Not something you forget, the name of your daughter’s killer.

“Now,” she said, “I need rest. You need to go.”