Time to tell the victim’s parents. The worst part of the job. The one you never got used to. Yesterday, it had been another family. Today, here he was again.
(4:24 p.m.)
Greystone Heights rose out of the city like an old verdict. Gates with spearpoint finials, Italian cypresses shivering in the wind, façades the color of rotten teeth watched Frank’s SUV nose up the hill. Rick’s head throbbed in time with the wipers. The light had gone thin and pewter; the fog hanging low made the Gothic mansions look suspended in a jar of formalin.
The Coles’s manor sat back from the road behind ironwork and a gravel crescent. Its pinnacles and arched windows broughtback the convent at Ebondridge from two days ago—similar bones, only wealthier, stripped of austerity and dressed up in old money. A butler with a funereal tie opened before Frank’s knuckles met the polished brass. Beeswax and aged paper wafted from the hall. Rick clocked the umbrella stand, the hunting prints, a grandfather clock gnawing away the seconds with genteel patience.
They were shown to a library with books marching in neat ranks and a fire burning for appearance more than heat. Persian rug, wingback chairs the color of chestnuts, a drinks cart with crystal that made you think twice about touching it. Family photographs in silver frames: a boy in prep-school stripes; a crew team on a river; a Christmas card where everyone smiled with their teeth. Rick didn’t see anything past eighteen.
Mr. Cole lowered his newspaper when they entered, then folded it crisply across his knee. He nodded, more a formality than a welcome, and stayed seated on his sofa without offering a handshake. Tailored navy, club tie, the kind of posture that said his spine had learned early not to bend.
Perched on the settee, Mrs. Cole barely looked up from her arrangement on the low table, fingers adjusting stems in a crystal vase until each tulip obeyed its appointed angle. Pearls at her throat, hair lacquered into an immovable wave, a face composed like a hymn sung through clenched teeth.
Frank did the introductions, the card, the careful tone that years of death notifications had carved into him. “Mr. and Mrs. Cole, I’m Detective Burton. This is Detective Slade. I’m afraid we have difficult news. May we sit?”
Mr. Cole gave a small nod. His wife glanced from Rick to Frank. The clock ticked.
“We’ve recovered a body positively identified as your son, James,” Frank continued, voice even. “I’m so sorry.”
Rick had given bad news in kitchens that smelled of burnt food and dish soap. In cramped living rooms where mothers clung to him and fathers broke down because they didn’t know how else to stand. He’d been cursed at, prayed over, even hugged. But he’d never been met with this—polite nods and the faintest tightening around the mouths, like he’d just told them the cleaning lady had quit.
“I see,” Mr. Cole said, tone flat enough to iron a shirt on. “Well. Thank you for informing us, detectives. But our son was dead to us long before this.”
Frank blinked. “Sir—”
Mrs. Cole inhaled, very slowly, smoothing an imaginary crease in her blouse. “Jimmy has not lived under this roof for some time.”
“He hasn’t lived according to anything for some time,” Mr. Cole added, selecting each syllable. “When he chose his vices, his perverted lifestyle, he made his decision. And we made ours.”
Rick heard those wet sobs again—the Burns’s living room, the mother folding in on herself—and felt the old aggravation snap its chain. This room had air, rugs, a fire. No one here was going to break apart; they’d been braced against it for years. His jaw clenched. “That ‘lifestyle’ was your son being himself.”
Frank jumped in before he could say more. “We understand this is a shock. We’ll need to establish recent contacts, places he might have stayed, any friends he—”
“We wouldn’t know,” Mr. Cole said. “We ceased contact when he made it clear he intended to persist in… degenerate behaviors.”
Mrs. Cole’s gaze came up, calm as porcelain. “He was given every advantage. We offered treatment. A chance to correct course. He refused. We will not be made to feel at fault for his choices.”
Rick tasted acid on his tongue. He’d been keeping himself in the tight box all week, and the lid was starting to buck. “Your kid was butchered,” he snapped, voice rougher than he intended. “Whatever ledger you keep on him—drugs, men, bad decisions—it doesn’t balance out like this. He needed his parents.”
“Rick,” Frank warned, a low brake applied under the table.
Mr. Cole’s head snapped up; the butler shifted in the doorway, an eclipse sliding across the sun. Color rose in Mrs. Cole’s throat, her manicured fingers flying to her chest. “Detective,” she said, thin, “you are a guest in our home.”
“And I’m telling you your son is dead,” Rick shot back. “Cutting him off doesn’t make you principled. It makes you bigoted, judgmental cowards who abandoned him when he didn’t fit the brochure!”
Mr. Cole’s lip twitched like he was considering calling a lawyer. Mrs. Cole stood, trembling not with grief but offense. “Get out,” she hissed, voice shaking with the effort of keeping it level. “Get out of my house!”
Frank was already up, apology smooth and practiced. “Mrs. Cole, Mr. Cole, we’re sorry for the intrusion. We’ll have our victim services coordinator reach out regarding arrangements and contact for the medical examiner. If you recall anything that might help, please call me directly.” He set his card on the polished mahogany like an offering.
“Fucking stuck-up cunts,” Rick muttered, halfway to the door before the butler could get there. The hall’s chill licked at him; the grandfather clock cleared its throat.
Out in the driveway, he reached for a cigarette, striking the match against the cherub’s marble ass at the end of the balustrade. The first drag burned like penance, smoke curling into the cold evening air. The air smelled of wet stone and clipped hedges; the fog was rolling in heavier now, erasing edges. Somewhere down the slope, the rest of the city was livingand bleeding. Up here, they just sealed their wounds in marble. He thought of the Burns’ kitchen, a mother breaking like wet paper, and felt something primal and mean swipe its claws inside his chest.
Frank joined him after a minute, the butler closing the ornate front door behind him with the care of a man who didn’t want to make it slam. “They hadn’t spoken to him in almost five years,” Frank said, coming down the steps, fists deep in his coat pockets. “No calls. No emails. Nothing. We’ll get school records, trust accounts, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Rick flicked ash to the shingle. “They were never going to help. Not with anything that mattered.”
Frank studied him. The concern didn’t sit easy on his face, but it was there. “You all right?”
