The Color of Death

Worried about Colm after seeing him threatened at the diner, Belle takes a bus to his house, having found his address on the law-school prep books he loaned her. She feels anxious about showing up uninvited, but Colm answers the door looking disheveled, uncharacteristically grim, and smelling of alcohol. 

Belle explains her concern, but Colm dismisses it as a bad day at work, admitting that he was removed from a major case. He invites her inside, and she asks to use the restroom. In the hallway, she sees photos of Colm with a beautiful woman, including a wedding picture. Belle then mistakenly opens the door to a fully furnished nursery. Shocked and humiliated by the discovery of his family, she flees the house without another word, leaving a confused Colm behind.

Colm stands stunned by Belle’s abrupt departure. He realizes that she must have opened the door to the nursery. Overwhelmed by the loss of his family and now his career, he experiences a mental-health crisis and continues drinking heavily. 

Bones arrives, aware that it’s a difficult anniversary for Colm. Bones tries to offer comfort, but Colm begs to be left alone, hurting his friend’s feelings. After Bones leaves, Colm searches for more alcohol and finds old beer in the garage. He stumbles into his car and, feeling that his life is in a “free fall,” starts the ignition, intending to die by suicide.

JD and Knox are surveilling Colm’s house from a van. JD grows concerned when she no longer sees any activity. They drive past the house, and JD hears a car engine running inside the closed garage, realizing that Colm is attempting suicide. She instructs Knox to pull over and, disguised in a delivery uniform, approaches the house. 

While peeking through a window, JD sees Colm unconscious in the driver’s seat. After a moment of relishing Colm’s suffering, JD decides that for him to die now would be “the easy way out” (239). She opens the garage door, turns off the car, and takes the keys. As they drive away, JD tells Knox that she wants Colm to suffer more, revealing that she once attempted suicide the same way, but the car ran out of gas.

Colm awakens in his car, sick and disoriented, slowly recalling his suicide attempt. The doorbell rings, and Mae lets herself in with a key. She confronts him about his self-destructive behavior, which he admits was a selfish act of giving up. Colm confesses his deep guilt over the deaths of his wife and daughter and the nightmares that torment him. Mae tells him that he can’t continue living this way and insists that he come with her to a facility to get help. She threatens to call Bones to physically remove him if necessary. Defeated, Colm agrees, and Mae helps him pack.

Bones waits for Belle outside the diner and approaches her during her break. He explains that Colm wanted to apologize for his behavior. Belle says that an apology isn’t necessary but expresses that she felt foolish for not knowing Colm had a family. Bones gently corrects her, clarifying that Colm’s wife and daughter are dead. Shocked and full of regret, Belle asks Bones to convey her sympathy to Colm. Bones refuses, insisting that Colm needs to hear her voice and that she should tell him herself. He advises her to treat Colm normally when he returns, without pity.

Five days later, Colm is in a treatment facility and feeling a renewed sense of purpose, though he remains worried that his replacement, Dillon, will wrongly prosecute Lucas in Rachel’s murder case. 

When a phlebotomist named Sandy draws Colm’s blood, her ring accidentally tears her latex glove, causing a stream of blood to streak across her arm and onto the floor. The sight triggers a sudden insight about the murder case. Realizing that he has solved an important piece of the puzzle, Colm rushes to a phone and makes an urgent call to Irene to ask for a favor.

Colm waits by the fence of the mental-health facility for Bones to arrive. Though hesitant about the plan, Bones throws a rope over the fence as instructed. Colm quickly climbs over, narrowly evading facility orderlies who rush toward them. 

Once they’re safely in Bones’s car, Colm explains the situation: The preliminary hearing for Rachel’s case is in two hours, and he has new DNA evidence that proves that Dillon is making a terrible mistake with his plan. Unable to reach Dillon or Cindy, Colm has decided to retake the case to prevent a miscarriage of justice. Bones turns on his lights and sirens and speeds toward Colm’s house so that he can get a suit.

Colm arrives at the courthouse just as the preliminary hearing for Martin and Lucas is beginning. He tries to give the new forensics report to Dillon and urges him to request a delay, but Dillon rebuffs him, accusing him of trying to steal the spotlight. 

The hearing proceeds under the stern Judge Nancy Mayweather. Dillon’s case quickly falters due to a “Bruton problem,” a rule preventing co-defendants from incriminating one another. Under this rule, Judge Mayweather threatens to dismiss the charges. To save the case, Colm stands and walks to the prosecution table, announcing himself for the State alongside Bickler. He then stuns the courtroom by calling Lucas to the stand and granting him full immunity from prosecution, thereby compelling him to testify. Cindy reluctantly allows the move but warns him that his career is on the line.

Now immunized, Lucas testifies that he went to Rachel’s salon on the morning of the murder to ask her out on a date. Colm establishes that Lucas cut himself shaving and used tissues from his father’s bathroom, which he treated with a styptic pencil. Colm then presents a new report showing that bloody tissues found at the crime scene contained Lucas’s DNA as well as trace elements of shaving cream and styptic pencil. Lucas confirms that Rachel was alive when he left. 

The defense then calls Martin’s wife, Tiffany, who swears that the family was all home at four o’clock in the afternoon on October 22. In his cross-examination, Colm systematically dismantles Tiffany’s alibi using evidence from cell-phone data, security footage, and an auto-reply text she set up on her phone. He reveals that Tiffany’s large diamond ring tore through a pair of gloves found at the scene. Upon closer examination, Rachel’s blood was found trapped in the ring’s setting. Confronted with the evidence, Tiffany angrily rants over Martin’s infidelity after she had sacrificed her life for him. She then invokes the Fifth Amendment to stop incriminating herself. Colm has her arrested.

Now exonerated, Martin is at a hotel bar at Garden City Beach. A beautiful woman named Crystal tries to buy him a drink, but Martin, wary after his affair with Rachel, turns her down. As he heads to the elevator, he feels strangely dizzy and realizes that his drink must have been drugged. He gets on the elevator with another man and asks for the 15th floor, but the elevator descends to the basement. As the doors open, the other man looks at him and smiles. It’s Jean Boucher, Beau Landry’s security chief and enforcer.

Bones visits the law office of the deceased Frank Hastings and confronts the receptionist, Charlotte, about the suspicious circumstances of Frank’s death, pointing out that she knew the date he died before it was publicly released. Cornered, Charlotte admits that Frank was meeting a lawyer at the remote cabin where his body was found. She explains that the lawyer was furious because Frank intended to file a formal disciplinary complaint against him. When Bones demands a name, Charlotte tells him that the lawyer was Colm Truesdale.

Sometime later, Colm sits with Belle outside the diner, feeling a sense of peace and purpose. He’s slowly healing, realizing that his grief doesn’t have to be a permanent state of misery. 

Belle is ecstatic, telling Colm that her parents’ disability application was approved thanks to his help. She then reveals that she took a practice LSAT and asks if he would be willing to tutor her. Colm smiles and warmly agrees. They sit together, enjoying the quiet moment.

From a corner booth inside The Junction, JD watches Colm and Belle at the picnic table. JD is filled with anger at seeing Colm happy and recovered from his grief. Muttering that she should have let Colm die, JD takes out a deck of cards, tears the king of hearts in half, and thinks of Colm as the “Suicide King.” She then pulls out the queen of hearts and draws a noose around the queen’s neck. When Belle comes to JD’s table to take her order, JD reads Belle’s name tag and introduces herself as “Jane.”