Page 28 of The First Gentleman

Sitting in a booth is retired detective Eddie O’Halloran. He has a stout build and a red face that suggests his blood pressure is somewhere in the stratosphere.

Garrett gets a cup of coffee while O’Halloran works his way through two glazed doughnuts.

“You ask me,” says O’Halloran, “Dunkin’ started going downhill once they quit making crullers. Then they really fell off a cliff when they dropped theDonutsfrom the name. Morons.”

“Maybe they’re trying to appeal to a more health-minded clientele,” says Garrett. “But yeah, I miss those crullers too.”

O’Halloran grins. “Let’s get to it, all right? Suzanne Bonanno.Hard to forget a case involving a Patriots player and a gorgeous cheerleader. What’s it been, fifteen years now?”

“Seventeen,” says Garrett.

O’Halloran swallows a doughnut morsel, then wipes his fingers on a napkin. “So it started as a missing person case, which was hard when the person supposedly missing was a grown-ass adult.”

“Harder still when the investigation wasn’t even initiated for forty-eight hours, right?”

“Those first forty-eight hours are critical,” O’Halloran says.

“And crimes that are not solved in that critical period are less likely to be solved at all.”

“Not impossible, but less likely, yes. By the time her mother reported her missing, and we talked to the cheerleading staff, her roommate—”

“The roommate was Amber Keenan, right?”

“Correct. Another Pats cheerleader. Actually, herfutureroommate. Suzanne was supposed to move in the day she went missing. Since she was still a resident of Seabrook, we kicked it back over to the cops in New Hampshire, thinking they’d have better luck, her being a local. They interviewed the mother, who tipped them to the fact that Suzanne’s boyfriend was Cole Wright. Which was supposed to be on the down-low. Did you check with Seabrook? Or the FBI? We asked them to get involved too.”

“I called,” Garrett says. “No one would talk to me. Same with the FBI. They both said the files were unavailable.”

“Meaning ‘missing.’” O’Halloran smiles. “I hate when that happens.”

“So what went on with the investigation?”

“Even though we gave it to Seabrook, Suzanne’s mother kept calling us twice a day,” O’Halloran says. “We put out a press release for theGlobe,theHerald,and the local TV stations.Canvassed the neighborhood. Nothing. Then Suzanne’s sister, Teresa, came in—drunk or high—and ups things. She told us she heard Wright making threats against Suzanne just before she disappeared.”

“Right,” says Garrett. “She told me the same thing. You didn’t believe her?”

“Like I said, she was kinda loopy. Unreliable.”

“What happened with the Cole Wright interview Seabrook did?” Garrett asks.

“I guess they cleared him,” O’Halloran says. “Then he was off to some high-end sports clinic in LA to get his knee rehabbed.”

“And we all know how that worked out,” says Garrett.

O’Halloran shakes his head. “Yeah. Damn it. Great player. Magic hands. I was hoping we’d get another season or two out of him.”

“You never talked to him yourself?”

O’Halloran polishes off his second glazed. “Nah. Like I said, we’d already kicked it over to Seabrook. They didn’t need my fat Irish ass interfering.”

“What happened then? Did they follow up?”

“You know how it is—burned hot for a few weeks, then died down. No sightings, no body, no new leads. Then a couple of suburbanites got gunned down at Downtown Crossing, and poor Suzanne went into the cold-case file.” O’Halloran folds his meaty hands together and leans toward Garrett. “And now you, my friend. After all this time. Why the sudden interest?”

“I’ve got some new information,” says Garrett.

“About what?”

“About Cole Wright,” Garrett says. “Some rumors from back in his college days have resurfaced. It’s making me want to look at the original case files.”

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