“Teenage rebellion is sometimes hard to understand,” Laurie offered. She wanted to steer the conversation away from the boy’s appearance. One of her worries was that the Cassidys would request to see the pictures of their son that had been taken on his arrival at the morgue. Such photographs were not fit for any layperson to see, much less a parent.

“Trouble was, he was no longer a teenager,” Chester said. Shirley nodded in agreement. “But he’d gotten in with the wrong crowd. They all had that Nazi stuff. And then they started going around beating up on people who were different, like gays and Puerto Ricans.”

“That’s how he got in trouble the first time,” Shirley said, speaking up for the first time. She had an unexpectedly high, strident voice.

“I understand he’d had difficulties with the police,” Laurie said. She started to relax. It seemed as if the Cassidys merely wanted to talk. Laurie could appreciate that kind of urge, considering their grief and bafflement at their son’s untimely death. The only problem was that there were things that Lou and Agent Tyrrell had told her about the victim that she wasn’t in a position to disclose, such as the fact that he’d been cooperating with the authorities as part of a plea bargain.

“We heard that some awful things had happened to Brad from our daughter, Helen,” Chester said. “Brad had come down here recently to stay with her in the city. But she couldn’t tell us very much about the details of his death. That’s why we came ourselves from where we live upstate.”

“What would you like to know?” Laurie asked. She was hoping she could speak in generalities.

The husband and wife glanced at each other to see who should go first. Chester cleared his throat: “One of the things we wanted to know was whether he was shot.”

“He was,” Laurie said. “Most definitely.”

“I told you so,” Shirley said to Chester, as if the news validated her position in an argument. “For all they who taketh the sword shall perish with the sword: Matthew twenty-six.”

“Do you know what kind of gun it was?” Chester asked.

“No,” Laurie said. “And I’m not sure we’ll ever know. The bullet, of course, will be examined, and if a particular gun was believed to be involved, it could be implicated.”

“Was he shot only once?” Chester asked.

“We believe so,” Laurie said with less emphasis. She was uncomfortable giving more than sketchy details, since Brad’s homicide was under investigation.

“Then maybe it wasn’t one of his guns,” Chester said to Shirley. “If it had been, then he probably would have been hit many times.”

“Did your son have a lot of guns?” Laurie asked.