My eyes popped open. I could still hear Mattie Ross crying for help, but her voice was fading quickly. In my mind I could see her, down in the dark pit, stuck on a crevice. Surrounded by skeletons. Worse, the rattlesnakes. They hissed. Moved closer to her. I was watching from the surface, helpless. Feeling panicked, my mind racing. Where was Rooster Cogburn? Where was he? He was supposed to save her.

Then Mattie was gone. I breathed hard, awake now, and my forehead was wet. I wondered if the sweat from escaping Tracey Dailey’s had just stayed with me during my nightmare about Mattie from True Grit. My body felt stiff. I hadn’t moved an inch on the couch.

The room was pitch-black, except for a tiny light near the kitchen sink. I had no idea what time it was. I began hearing another voice, and it belonged to Clemens. He was standing by the sink, talking quietly into the phone. He was talking to Ma.

I pretended to be asleep.

“No, I don’t think you need to come over,” Clemens said. “Really. She’s fine. I know. I know how upset you must be. But let’s let her sleep. In the morning, we’ll deal, get to the bottom of what happened, where she’s been. Really, she’s okay.”

Clemens was running his fingers through his hair, pacing.

“Okay,” he said. “I promise. I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

I stayed asleep. Didn’t move an inch. Clemens gently put the phone down. He slumped into a kitchen chair. He sat still. The apartment was totally quiet. I realized I was holding my breath. Elbows on his knees, Clemens leaned forward, buried his face in his hands. He made a muffled sound. His shoulders shook.

I sat up, and a bed sheet I hadn’t noticed slipped off my back.

“Clemens?” I said.

Clemens froze.

“Were you crying?” I asked.

Clemens lifted his head. I could see moisture around his eyes glistening in the dim kitchen light.

He sighed deeply. “I wake you?”

“You crying?” I said again.

Clemens rubbed his thighs, stood up and came over. He sat down on the coffee table across from me. He shook his head, and his hair twirled, like string.

“Hey, Trell,” he said.

I studied him. “You were crying.”

Clemens half smiled, an awkward, almost sheepish smile. “I don’t know, Trell.” He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “maybe a little bit.”

Clemens took his third giant breath and made a loud half growl, half groan, like he was trying to get something out of his system. He looked at me and said, “They just came. I got off the phone with your ma, and the tears just came. Trell, we were worried.”

Clemens was wound up, and he started talking about what he’d been through the past few hours and the feelings he’d had that spun him all around. He said after he was handed a copy of Monique’s death certificate at the State Office of Vital Statistics, he stood there just staring at it. “Then bingo! — I knew we had nailed down something big to help prove your daddy’s innocence. I practically ran out of the office, in a hurry to show Nora, you, and your ma. It was like I was flying across the parking lot. I got into my car and let out a shout, and that’s when I recognized it. The way I used to feel when I’d uncovered a crucial piece of information. It’s a terrific feeling, a big-time high, and, like fuel, it keeps you going so you can push for more, knowing that now you’re really on to something important.

“Trell, I’d lost all of that. Hadn’t known that feeling in years. It was history, and I was done. But driving back to Nora’s office, I got the rush. And it caught me off guard at first, and then I realized something else. I realized it was because of you these past weeks. Working with you on your daddy’s story.”

Clemens stopped to catch his breath.

“But that’s a good thing,” I said. “Right?”

Clemens’s eyes widened.

“Not if someone gets hurt.”

He glared at me. Then he looked away. His voice choked up.

“Then your ma calls Nora’s, looking for you. She was certain you’d be with us. But you weren’t. We told your ma you were supposed to be at home — that’s where I’d dropped you off. Now we all got frantic. Nora stayed at the office in case you showed up, your ma stayed put at home, and I started driving around, searching for you. Driving all over the neighborhood, and that amazing rush I’d just been feeling was completely gone. The pendulum swung the other way. I’m in a panic instead. Freaked out that something’s gone terribly wrong, that maybe something has happened to you. I recognized that feeling, too, Trell. When you lose someone important.”

I knew he was thinking about his son, Peter. I felt bad.

I said, “But I’m okay.”

“I see that now,” Clemens said. “But your ma. Nora. Me. We were crazy worried. Trell, where have you been? What the heck were you thinking?”

I told him about going over to Tracey Dailey’s place. Right away I could see Clemens was not happy. His face tightened into knots. I kept trying to emphasize the good part. The fact that Tracey and Boo — I told him about Boo — were with Daddy when Ruby Graham was shot. “They verified Daddy’s alibi. It’s more good information.”

Then I got to the part about Thumper Parish.

“I guess he knows we’re going around, asking questions,” I said.

“You think?” Clemens said impatiently.

“Why does he care?”

“I don’t know,” Clemens said sharply. “I don’t know.” Clemens was upset. “But what I do know is we’re in over our heads. We have no business — you have no business — getting mixed up with Thumper Parish.”

“But —” I said.

Clemens was shaking his head. “No buts. It’s gotten too risky.”

“No,” I said.

Clemens looked at me hard.

I tried to get myself calm, collect my thoughts. It wasn’t like the whole Thumper thing hadn’t been scary. It was. And it was real. Not like my nightmare with the snakes and skeletons. But Tracey Dailey was real, too, and so was the alibi. I felt shaky, but when Clemens began to waver, something else inside me took over.

I said, “I’m sorry I went over there alone. I’m sorry about that, but there’s no way we can stop. Not now, Clemens.”

Clemens sat still and let me make my argument.

“We got the alibi,” I said. “Tracey and Boo will help us when the time comes. I really think that. We got proof about Monique Catron, that no jury in its right mind would believe her testimony if they had known she had brain cancer and her memory was messed up.”

Clemens still didn’t say a word.

“C’mon, Clemens,” I said. “We’re into a big story. We only need to get to the other two witnesses that Frank Flanagan used to convict Daddy. Keep going. Find Juanda Tillery and Travis Golson. We can do it.”

Then it came to me. “We gotta be persistent,” I said. “It’s what you said, the day we first talked. You said a reporter had to be two things: curious and persistent. You think I forgot? You said a reporter’s got to overcome obstacles. Persist.”

I could see in Clemens’s face that I was making some headway.

“Journalism 101,” I said. “Reporter’s got to be determined. Persistent.”

I gave him the goofiest smile I could.

“Maybe add one more thing: careful,” he said.

I waited.

“Do I get an A?”

Clemens huffed. He pointed to a clock. “It’s the middle of the night.” He began walking toward his bedroom. “Let’s sleep on it. Talk in the morning.”

I must have slept like a rock the rest of the night. When I awoke, Clemens was already up, seated at the table with a cup of coffee. The sun shone through the big kitchen window, the one that used to be covered until I pulled its shade open the first time I was in the apartment. Since then, I don’t think Clemens had pulled it shut once.

“What time is it?” I asked, stretching my arms over my head.

“Top of the mornin’,” Clemens said.

“Stop,” I said. I was thinking he sounded like Big Vinnie and his “Mornin’ Glory.”

Clemens smiled but didn’t look my way. He had his laptop open and was staring at the screen while his fingers pecked away on the keyboard.

“It’s almost nine,” he said.

“Wow.” I hadn’t slept that late ever.

“Your ma should be here any minute.”

I wandered over. To Clemens’s left was a copy of the morning Boston Globe. To his right, some papers were spread out. The newspaper’s front page caught my eye. It featured a photograph of Frank Flanagan at a campaign rally. He was cheering at the audience, with his fists raised above his head. To me, he didn’t look like a nice man. But it was obvious plenty of other people thought differently. The news story next to the photograph was headlined: “Flanagan Leads in Mayoral Primary.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Clemens noticed me studying the article. “That’s our guy,” he said, not looking up from the keyboard.

I read the beginning of the story.

“Says here a new poll puts Frank Flanagan out front in the primary.”

“Way out front,” Clemens said. “He’s the next mayor, looks like.”

“But what about the November election?”

“Look at the poll numbers,” Clemens said. “If he wins the primary with the kind of margin the polls are showing, it’s over. November will be a mere formality. Right now, it’s Frank Flanagan’s race to lose.”

“That’s depressing.”

I looked across the keyboard to the sprawl of papers and notes.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh,” Clemens said. He stopped typing and finally looked at me. “Getting some notes down. Working out some thoughts. I figured it’s about that time.”

“Time for what?”

“To start roughin’ it out.” He paused. “We’re getting to critical mass.”

I made a face, told him he had to explain what that meant.

“Last night, what you said, about Monique, about the alibi,” he said. “It made me assess where we’re at. Don’t get me wrong. We’re not done. We still have Juanda Tillery. Travis Golson. Still plenty to do. But I learned a long time ago that on a story like this one, it’s never too early to start roughin’ it out.”

He could tell by my frown I was still puzzled.

“Like the story of mine you told me you read — the one about Tony Rosario and the fatal fire, where I showed he didn’t do it. It’s not like I waited until the last minute — the night before publication — to whip up a story from all the information I’d gotten over the weeks and months before. No way. If I’d waited until the end to organize everything, a lot of which was complicated, it would have felt like being dumped in the middle of a forest with no way out.”

I was starting to get it.

“So, with these kinds of projects, when you reach a certain point —”

“Critical mass?” I interrupted.

Clemens nodded. “Exactly. Critical mass — when you realize you have enough information to base a story on. You want to take that and start roughing out an outline.” Clemens paused and scratched his head. “Maybe look at it this way: our story is like a house. But you can’t build a house without a floor plan, and that’s what I’m doing now, with what we’ve got so far. Going over everything, writing memos, jotting notes. Basically designing a floor plan for the story that will come once we finish our reporting.”

I was fully awake now.

Clemens turned his attention back to his papers and resumed typing. “Your notebook handy?” he asked. “I want you to check if you got some quotes I missed when we were with Miss Lola. When she was describing Monique picking out your daddy from the photo array police had put in front of her.”

I felt my back pocket where I kept my reporter’s notebook. But it wasn’t there. I worried I’d lost it running from Tracey Dailey’s. I rushed to the couch and fumbled around the cushions. Then I spotted it, underneath the tangled sheet.

“Got it,” I said. I began flipping through it and summarizing my notes.

“Miss Lola, she was describing the pressure they were putting on her daughter to pick out Daddy’s photo.” I skimmed a little farther. “Wait, here, this is the part, what I think you want. Miss Lola was saying the guy in the suit got real excited when Monique finally did what he wanted — pick out Daddy — and he starts cheerin’, ‘Thatta girl! Thatta girl!’ She was saying the guy began slapping the detectives’ backs, acting like he’d won the lottery or something.”

Clemens typed fast. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s good.”

We worked side by side until there was a knock at the door.

It was Ma.

Clemens let her in, and Ma blew past him. She was steaming mad. She plopped her bag down on Clemens’s coffee table. I braced for the storm. Even closed my eyes.

But then it didn’t come. Ma was furious. Just not at me.

“Nora called,” she announced. She was walking in circles. “She got a call last night from the prison — regarding Romero.”

My stomach turned. “Ma, what?”

“Daddy’s in solitary,” Ma said. Her jaw was clenched. There was fierceness about her I wasn’t used to seeing. “They went after him.”

Ma pounded the table with her fist.

“They?” I said. “Who’s ‘they’?”

Clemens said, “Start at the beginning, Shey. What happened?”

Ma gathered herself. “It was early evening,” she said, “and Daddy was in the dining hall, sweeping the floor. The room’s basically empty, kitchen crew gone. Daddy’s been doing this job seems forever. He likes it, the quiet and all.

“Suddenly the overhead lights start going off. Flick, flick, flick, one row at a time. It gets dark. Daddy’s looking across the room, spots two guys in the shadows moving quickly his way. He can’t tell who they are, or what’s up, but he knows it’s trouble when one whispers his name and says, ‘Got something for ya, Romero Taylor. Message from Thumper Parish.’ The two start rushin’ at Daddy.”

I nearly screamed.

Ma put her hands on her hips. “Thing about your daddy, he knows how to take care of himself. He starts swingin’ the big broom like a sword, keeping the two men away. Meantime he starts kicking chairs over, banging on the tables, making the biggest, loudest ruckus he can to draw the guards’ attention.”

“Is Daddy okay?”

Ma nodded. “Yes, he’s okay, Trell, he’s okay. Nora said he got a few bruises and cuts, but guards came and broke it up before it got past bein’ a scuffle. The thing is, they threw Daddy in solitary. Four weeks. No visits.”

“No visits?”

“No visits.”

The three of us stood there. I was thinking about Thumper Parish. Thinking Thumper Parish was starting to turn up everywhere.

Ma was thinking about Thumper, too.

“Thumper don’t seem to want us looking into Daddy’s case,” she said.

Clemens gave me a look, and that’s when I spoke up, told Ma about Tracey Dailey and Thumper’s surprise arrival at her apartment over on Geneva Ave. I didn’t try to sugarcoat it like I did with Clemens, tell her it was great Tracey vouched for Daddy’s alibi. Just told her in a straightforward way.

Ma listened. Didn’t move an inch. I couldn’t tell what was going on with her. I figured it was not good. Thumper ordering two guys to make a move on Daddy. Thumper at Tracey’s. You add it up, I figured Clemens and I were finished. Thumper here. Thumper there. Thumper everywhere. I heard those rattlesnakes from my dream again, hissing in my head. It was true; this had all gotten pretty scary, and I could understand it, Ma saying we were gonna have to quit.

“Can’t do this,” Ma said.

When she said that, I figured I’d guessed right. We were done.

But I was wrong.

“Thumper Parish can’t do this,” she continued. “He can’t scare us off.” The words came out of Ma so matter-of-fact, her eyes hard, like steel.

“I don’t know why he don’t want us pokin’ around,” she said. “Don’t care. Your daddy, he’s the one I care about. And it’s gone on long enough. He don’t belong in solitary, don’t belong in prison — and you two been gettin’ the proof. No stoppin’ now,” she said.

It was resolved. I felt thrilled and scared at the same time. I looked over at Clemens. He was nodding gently. He’d been quiet during Ma’s talking. Had to. He knew this was Ma’s call. But Clemens was no longer the guy I’d found slumped over asleep in his car that morning in the parking lot of the newspaper. We were working up a critical mass.

Ma wasn’t finished, though. She turned on me. “YOU,” she shouted. “You do not do any more — whatcha call it, reporting — ALONE. You two stick together.”

It was an easy promise to make.

The three of us let out huge breaths, acting strangely giddy, like we all knew we’d gotten over some kind of hump together. We could get back to work.

“I have something else,” Ma announced. She made a big show of reaching into her bag, rummaging around, and pulling out — a reporter’s notebook!

“Ma!” I said, shocked.

“What?” She gave me a look. “You the only one who gets to have one?”

“No, but I —”

Clemens said, “I gave it to her. You never know.”

“That’s right. Never know,” Ma said mockingly. She opened the notebook. “Let’s see. Juanda Tillery.” Ma made a show of licking her finger, flipping through the notebook. “My girls at church, they got back to me. They came up with where Juanda Tillery is livin’.”

Clemens pumped a fist. “Unbelievable,” he said. He shook his head, impressed with Ma’s detective work. “I wish I’d known years ago about your church crew. They coulda helped me plenty. Who would think they got better street intel than police?”

“Yeah,” Ma said. “But that’s the good news.”

“What else?” I said.

“Still nothing on Travis Golson,” she said. “The girls, they tried everything. Got no clue as to where he’s at, or if he’s at anywhere. He’s their mystery man. Stumped.”

Clemens took it in, grimacing. “And he’s the big one,” he said. “The big piece in the puzzle Frank Flanagan put together for the trial. Travis testifying he saw Romero before the shooting, carrying a pistol and saying he had business to take care of. Testifying he saw Romero after Ruby Graham was shot, acting hyper and saying he had to ditch the gun. That was the icing on Flanagan’s cake.”

Clemens rubbed his chin. “We get to Travis, he recants, says none of that was true, it’s game over. Flanagan’s case against Romero collapses into a pile of lies.” The more he spoke, the more intense Clemens became. “Shey, can the church girls keep at it? Keep shaking the trees?”

“Of course,” she said.

“We need Travis,” he said.

Ma tore the sheet of paper from her notebook and handed it to Clemens.

Clemens looked at the address, then handed the paper to me.

I read Juanda Tillery’s address: 22 West Selden Street.

“You know where that is?” he asked.

I nodded. “Lower Roxbury, in Mattapan.”

Clemens shut his laptop, put it to sleep.

“Let’s go,” he said.