Page 72 of The First Gentleman

“They do. Brenda Connelly. She was a Dartmouth student at the same time as Cole Wright. Now she’s a successful tech exec, though she came from family money.”

Bastinelli lights up. “Brenda Connelly. BC! Those were the initials on the back of the watch, right?”

“Yes. It’s Brenda Monroe now. I tracked her down through the alumni association. She said she and Cole dated for a few months freshman year.”

“So why the watch?”

“She says Cole was always late. It was a little joke between them. And it was a very nice watch. Even after they broke up, she remembers seeing him wear it. It’s not like it was a wedding ring,” says Gagnon. “And it sounds like Brenda might have dumped him, not the other way around.”

“Any threats or violence with her?”

Gagnon shakes her head. “Brenda says he was a perfect gentleman. Just habitually tardy. Even with the watch.”

Bastinelli leans back in his leather chair. “So let’s paint the picture. Theoretically, Cole Wright keeps a watch from an old girlfriend, Brenda. Later, he dates Suzanne Bonanno. They fight. He strangles her and loses the old watch in the dirt while he’s digging her grave. Seventeen years later, somebody exhumes Suzanne’s bones and pays a driver to bring them to a property Cole Wright owns nearby.”

“I assume the bones were headed there,” says Gagnon. “Until Herb Lucienne overserved himself.”

“That’s a twisted little tale,” says Bastinelli. “Anything to place Wright or Suzanne together in the park while she was alive?”

Gagnon shakes her head. “Her mom said the last time she saw Suzanne, she was heading to the Walmart to buy some stuff for her new apartment, and Wright was going to meet her there and take her out for dinner someplace. She doesn’t remember the name of the restaurant. No other record of their movements that night. I don’t even know where they interviewed Wright or if they checked his car. Like I said, I can’t find the original case files. Property records say he lived in North Attleboro at the time.”

“What about the bracelet?”

“It was Suzanne’s for sure. Her mother confirmed it the day after we found it. She gave me a DVD showing her wearing it.”

“Anything on the sheet she was wrapped in?” asks Bastinelli.

“We sent some fibers to a lab in Boston. Nothing yet.”

Bastinelli slaps his hand on his desk. “Goddamn it! We need something I can take to Jen. You know she’ll be under the microscope on this.”

New Hampshire attorney general Jennifer Pope is Bastinelli’s boss. Gagnon knows her reputation as a tough prosecutor. But she was appointed by Madeline Wright’s predecessor, the head of the opposing party. Law enforcement and politics are supposed to be kept separate, but they never are.

“We can’t afford to be sloppy on this, Marie. We need something solid to rest this case on. We need to connect some of this evidence. When you shoot this high, you get only one chance.”

Gagnon rises to leave. “I’m on it. Don’t worry.”

Strong words. But the truth is, Gagnon is very worried. She’s working without the original case files. Her evidence is inconclusive. And the potential target of her investigation is literally in bed with the most powerful person in the world.

Right now, her case isn’t even a hill of beans.

It’s a pile of sand.

CHAPTER

69

Brooklyn, New York

In the kitchen, I’m poking at a plateful of fresh waffles and crisp bacon. I think I’m done with coffee for a while, but Mama’s on her third cup of the morning.

“Good to see you eat, girl.” She’s sipping from an MTA mug that belonged to Pops.

My father worked on the parts of the trains that nobody ever sees. Sometimes he’d sit me in the cab of one of the railroad cars and I’d pretend that I was driving the train into a deep long tunnel. He said I always wanted to run things.

“Thanks, Mama. Delicious, like always.”

Actually, I can hardly taste a thing. It’s like all my senses have been dulled or turned off. For a while there, I was afraid that I would shut down completely and never recover. But Mama’s waffles are starting to bring me back.

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