It was Derek who answered the door when I rang. He froze. Just gawped at me with his big dumb syrupy brown eyes until I finally said, “Hi, Derek.”

“Hey, Andy.”

The Yoo kids had always called Laurie and me by our first names, a permissive practice I never quite got used to and which, under the current circumstances, grated all the more.

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

Again, Derek seemed unable to formulate any answer at all. He stared at me.

From the kitchen, Derek’s dad, David Yoo, called, “Derek, who is it?”

“It’s all right, Derek,” I reassured him. His panic seemed almost comical. Why on earth was he so rattled? He had seen me a thousand times.

“Derek, who is it?”

I heard a chair scrape along the kitchen floor. David Yoo came out into the front hall and, with a hand placed lightly around the back of Derek’s neck, he drew his son back away from the door. “Hi, Andy.”

“Hi, David.”

“Was there something we can do for you?”

“I just wanted to talk to Derek.”

“Talk about what?”

“About the case. What happened. I’m trying to find out who really did it. Jacob is innocent, you know. I’m helping prepare for the trial.”

David nodded in an understanding way.

His wife, Karen, now came out of the kitchen and greeted me briefly, and they all stood together in the doorway like a family portrait.

“Can I come in, David?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“We’re on the witness list, Andy. I don’t think we’re supposed to talk to anyone.”

“That’s ridiculous. This is America-you can talk to whoever you want.”

“The prosecutor told us not to talk to anyone.”

“Logiudice?”

“That’s right. He said, don’t talk to anyone.”

“Well, he meant reporters. He didn’t want you running around making conflicting statements. He’s just thinking about the cross-examination. I’m trying to find the tru-”

“That’s not what he said, Andy. He said, don’t talk to anyone.”

“Yes, but he can’t say that. Nobody can tell you not to talk to anyone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“David, this is my son. You know Jacob. You’ve known him since he was a kid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, can I at least come in and we’ll talk about it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

We locked eyes.

“Andy,” he said, “this is our family time. I really don’t appreciate you being here.”

He went to close the door. His wife stopped him, holding the edge of the door, imploring him with her eyes.

“Please don’t come back here,” David Yoo told me. He added, weakly, “Good luck.”

He removed Karen’s hand from the door and gently closed it and, I could hear, he slid the chain into the lock.

I was greeted at the Magraths’ apartment door by a dumpy, pie-faced woman with a frizz of unsprung black hair. She wore black spandex leggings and an oversized T-shirt with an equally oversized message stamped across the front: Don’t Give Me Attitude, I Have One of My Own. This witticism ran six full lines, drawing my eyes southward over her person from wavering bosom to detumescent belly, a journey I regret even now.

I said, “Is Matthew here?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I represent Jacob Barber.”

A blank look.

“The murder in Cold Spring Park.”

“Ah. You his lawyer?”

“Father, actually.”

“It’s about time. I was beginning to think that kid was all alone in the world.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s just we been waiting for someone to show up here. It’s been weeks. Where’s the cops already?”

“Can I just-is Matthew Magrath here? That’s your son, I assume?”

“You sure you’re not a cop?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Probation officer?”

“No.”

She put a hand on her hip, tucking it under the little skirt of fat that circled her waist.

“I’d like to ask him about Leonard Patz.”

“I know.”

The woman’s behavior was so strange-not just her cryptic answers but the oddball way she looked up at me-that I was slow to grasp what she was saying about Patz.

“Is Matt here?” I repeated, anxious to be rid of her.

“Yeah.” She swung the door open. “Matt! There’s someone here to see you.”

She shuffled back into the apartment as if she had lost interest in the whole thing. The apartment was small and cluttered. Posh a suburb as Newton is, there are still corners that working people can afford. The Magraths lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in a white vinyl-sided house subdivided into four units. It was early evening, and the light inside was dim. A Red Sox game played on an enormous, ancient rear-projection TV. Facing the TV was a mottled, mustard-colored plush armchair, into which Mrs. Magrath dropped herself.

“You like baseball?” she said over her shoulder. “ ’Cuz I do.”

“Sure.”

“You know who they’re playing?”

“No.”

“I thought you said you liked baseball.”

“I’ve had some other things on my mind.”

“It’s the Blue Jays.”

“Ah. The Blue Jays. How could I forget?”

“Matt!” she blasted. Then, to me: “He’s in there with his girlfriend doing God knows what. Kristin, that’s the girlfriend. Kid hasn’t said two words to me all the times she’s been over here. Treats me like I’m a piece of shit. Just wants to go running off with Matt like I don’t even exist. Matt too. He only wants to be with Kristin. They got no time for me, the both of them.”

I nodded. “Oh.”

“How’d you get our name? I thought sex victims are supposed to be confidential.”

“I used to be with the DA’s office.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, I knew that. You’re the one. I read about you in the papers. So you seen the whole file?”

“Yeah.”

“So you know about this guy Leonard Patz? What he did to Matt?”

“Yeah. Sounds like he groped him in the library.”

“He groped him in the balls.”

“Well, the-okay, there too.”

“Matt!”

“If this is a bad time…”

“No. You’re lucky he’s here. Usually he goes off with the girlfriend and I don’t even see him. His curfew’s eight-thirty but he doesn’t care. He just goes off. His probation officer knows all about it. I guess I can tell you that, can’t I, he’s got a probation officer? I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t know what to tell anyone anymore, you know? DYS had him for a while, then they sent him back. I moved here from Quincy so he wouldn’t be around his friends, who were no good. So I came here ’cuz I thought it would help him, you know? You ever try to find a section-eight apartment in this town? Pfft. Me, I don’t care where I live. It doesn’t matter to me. So you know what? You know what he says to me now? After I do all this for him? He says, ‘Oh, you’ve changed, Ma. Now you moved to Newton, you think you’re fancy. You wear your fancy glasses, your fancy clothes, you think you’re like these Newton people.’ You know why I wear these glasses?” She picked up a pair of glasses from a table beside the armrest. “ ’Cuz I can’t see! Only now he’s got me so crazy I don’t even wear them in my own house. I wore these same glasses in Quincy and he didn’t say a thing. It’s like, no matter what I do for him, it’s never enough.”

“It’s not easy being a mother,” I ventured.

“Oh, well, he says he doesn’t want me to be his mother anymore. He says that all the time. You know why? I think it’s because I’m overweight, it’s because I’m not attractive. I don’t have a skinny body like Kristin and I don’t go to the gym and I don’t have nice hair. I can’t help it! This is what I am! I’m still his mother! You know what he calls me when he gets mad? He calls me a fat shit. Imagine saying something like that to your mother, calling her a fat shit. I do everything for this kid, everything. Does he ever thank me? Does he ever say, ‘Oh, I love you, Ma, thank you’? No. He just tells me, ‘I need money.’ He asks me for money and I tell him, ‘I don’t have any money to give you, Matty.’ And he says, ‘Come on, Ma, not even a couple a bucks?’ And I tell him I need that money to buy him all these things he likes, like this Celtics jacket he had to have, for a hundred fifty bucks, and like a fool I go and buy it for him, just to make him happy.”