Page 19 of The First Gentleman

But today we’re chasing down another kind of injustice.

“Judd,” Garrett says, “we’re here to follow up on Cole Wright, what we spoke about on the night of theStolen Honorsigning.”

Judd rubs his chin. “It was Cole’s senior year. Couple guys I worked with were cleaning up after a homecoming party. A real disaster zone. Rumor was that during the party, Cole Wright had raped a girl. The underground campus newspaper was supposedly going to run a story about it, but it never got published.”

“Do you know why?” I ask.

Judd shrugged. “Word is the reporter was threatened.If you run that story, you’ll have to dictate your next one, because your fingers will be broken. Something like that.”

“What about the student who was assaulted?” I ask. “Did she report it to the campus police or the administration?”

“Not that anybody knows of,” says Judd.

Garrett says, “You said you knew somebody down in Foxborough who knew something about the other matter. The cheerleader who went missing.”

A nod. “That’s right. My cousin Manny York. He worked for me one summer on campus. He had a talent for landscaping that helped him get a job at Gillette Stadium the year after Cole joined the Pats. The pay sucked, but Manny got everything he wanted from the job and then some. Got to know a lot of the players.”

“What did Manny think of Cole?” I ask.

“Cole was a first-round pick from a school that’s not exactly known for athletics.” Judd covers his Dartmouth Lone Pine with his palm and says in a low voice, “Sorry, Big Green. From what Manny said, Cole had a real attitude, got into a few scrapes. Then he decided to sneak around with Suzanne Bonanno, one of the cheerleaders, which wasn’t allowed.”

I glance at Garrett. “How did Manny know?”

“From what Manny told me, it was an open secret that Suzanne had broken up with her long-distance boyfriend, and Cole swept right in. They’d been dating only a few months when she disappeared.”

I ask, “What happened then?”

“The cops told the Patriots front office about the relationship, but the team decided to keep it under wraps. Didn’t want the bad publicity. The cops cleared him in her disappearance, but two weeks later, when the team got the report from California on Cole’s knee, they released him anyway.”

“Any chance you know the name of Suzanne’s former boyfriend?” Garrett asks.

“Italian name,” says Judd. “Tony something or other.”

“When can we talk to your cousin in Foxborough?” I ask, hoping for a primary source. “Can you arrange it?”

Judd shakes his head. “’Fraid not.”

“How come?” Garrett asks.

“Manny’s dead.”

CHAPTER

16

Our next stop in Hanover is an off-campus student residence, a three-story yellow wood-frame house. The president of the United States once lived here? Wow.Which room was hers?I wonder.

Students in jeans and sweatshirts are lounging on saggy furniture, staring at laptops and cell phone screens, when Garrett and I walk in. Garrett gently taps a student on his shoulder until he looks up and pulls out his earbuds. “Yeah?”

“Excuse me,” he says. “I’m looking for the person who runs this place.”

The young man eyes us both, then jerks his thumb to the right. “Office on the second floor of the building next door. Her name is Laurie. Blond. Glasses.”

As we leave, I can hear various sounds behind closed doors, from muffled music to a young man’s voice repeating a phrase in French. Garrett leads the way next door to a Cape-style house turned administrative building. We walk up a narrow center staircase to the second floor.

A skinny girl with a neck tattoo slips by us on her way downstairs as we reach a door markedOFFICE. It’s open.

In the tiny space, a small woman in her thirties with straight blond hair and round glasses is tapping on a laptop at a beat-up wooden desk surrounded by shiny metal file cabinets.

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