“Go on.”

The sergeant scowled down at his drink. “You’re not going to like any of this—probably won’t believe it even. But this is the way it was. All I’m telling you is what we have from the statements the two women gave.”

“Go on, Sergeant.”

“According to Miss Madera, she fixed your boy a big lunch. He ate it. They drank some wine. And then they went to bed.” Rider’s eyes fell away from Hook’s, and he drained the last of his manhattan. “Nothing happened,” he went on. “According to her, your son was impotent. He couldn’t get it up.”

“I know the word,” Hook said.

“So your son became depressed. He started drinking vodka instead of wine and late in the afternoon he either passed out or just fell asleep, and didn’t wake up till around eight in the evening. Mrs. Rubin was home by then—she works for a public relations firm in town. She wanted to kick your boy out, she says, but Miss Madera wouldn’t do it. She—Madera—tried to be nice to him, she says, and talk with him, but he started drinking again. He called himself a fake and a fag, and said he always had been a fag and had never even admitted it to himself, but he knew it now and he couldn’t live with the idea. She couldn’t reason with him, couldn’t even talk with him, so she went to bed. Around eleven. Mrs. Rubin was also getting ready for bed. She says she’s used to Miss Madera picking up strays—that the girl’s just got too big a heart for her own good. Mrs. Rubin didn’t like it that your son was there and drinking, but it didn’t bother her too much either. His whole generation are crybabies, she says. So when he kept talking about having nothing to live for, it didn’t really faze her.”

Hook broke in, unable to keep from repeating the phrase. “Nothing to live for?”

Rider nodded. “That’s what he kept saying, that he had nothing to live for. But Mrs. Rubin says it didn’t bother her because he was drunk. ‘Just a drunk kid feeling sorry for himself’—I think that was how she put it. Anyway, she went into the bathroom to do whatever it is women do before they go to bed. And when she came out, he wasn’t where she’d left him in the living room. He was gone. She went out onto the wood deck that runs across the sea side of the house. And then she saw him. He had gone down the steps from the deck and had walked right out to the edge of the cliff above the beach. As she watched him, he drew back his arms—” The sergeant drew back his own arms, demonstrating. “And he jumped. Without saying a word.”

The sergeant settled back, studying Hook for a reaction, which Hook was sure showed in his eyes. From the beginning of the policeman’s tale, the first mention of the sex and impotence, Hook’s anger had been growing, until now it was all cold rage.