“Ma’am, do you have the right person here? I don’t think I wrote about Alonzo.”

“Sure you did. I got your name right here. You said he stuffed her in the trunk and that’s some motherfuckin’ shit right there.”

Then it came together. The trunk murder from last week. It was a six-inch short because nobody on the desk was all that interested. Juvenile drug dealer strangles one of his customers and puts her body in the trunk of her own car. It was a black-on-white crime but still the desk didn’t care, because the victim was a drug user. Both she and her killer were marginalized by the paper. You start cruising down to South L.A. to buy heroin or rock cocaine and what happens happens. You won’t get any sympathy from the gray lady on Spring Street. There isn’t much space in the paper for that. Six inches inside is all you’re worth and all you get.

I realized I didn’t know the name Alonzo because I had never been given it in the first place. The suspect was sixteen years old and the cops didn’t give out the names of arrested juveniles.

I flipped through the stack of newspapers on the right side of my desk until I found the Metro section from two Tuesdays back. I opened it to page four and looked at the story. It wasn’t long enough to carry a byline. But the desk had put my name as a tagline at the bottom. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the call. Lucky me.

“Alonzo is your son,” I said. “And he was arrested two Sundays ago for the murder of Denise Babbit, is that correct?”

“I told you that is motherfucking bullshit.”

“Yes, but that’s the story we’re talking about. Right?”

“That’s right, and when are you goin’ to write about the truth?”

“The truth being that your son is innocent.”

“That’s right. You got it wrong and now they say he’s going to be tried as an adult and he only sixteen years old. How can they do that to a boy?”

“What is Alonzo’s last name?”

“Winslow.”

“Alonzo Winslow. And you are Mrs. Winslow?”