Page 68 of The First Gentleman

CHAPTER 64

Seabrook, New Hampshire

A s the night deepens, Detective Sergeant Marie Gagnon leans on the Reverend Bonus Weare memorial rock.

She’s wondering what his sermon on this spot was about.

Brotherly love? Do unto others?

Thou shalt not kill?

Forty feet away, under a battery of lights, a small backhoe is excavating a section of loose soil.

The forensics team wanted to wait until morning, but Gagnon pulled rank.

If this really is Suzanne Bonanno’s grave, it’s already been disturbed once.

She wanted the area secured and searched pronto.

Gagnon is usually not big on anonymous tips, but there’s a lot about this case that doesn’t fit normal patterns.

She and a couple uniforms found the spot the caller had pinpointed, and they could see it had been dug up recently.

That’s when she mobilized the crime scene team.

A few yards from the rock, two state police investigators in white coveralls gently sift the excavated dirt through screens.

Vicki Barnes from MCU is documenting the whole process with her camera.

Seabrook cops poke through the bushes with flashlights looking for anything that doesn’t belong.

Gagnon looks up as a tall man in khaki pants and a plaid shirt lopes up the path toward the site.

One of the cops steps forward to stop him.

“It’s okay,” Gagnon calls out.

“He’s with me.”

It’s not every night that a deputy attorney general shows up at a crime scene dig, but Hugh Bastinelli lives just twenty minutes away, and Gagnon gave him a call.

She figured he’d be interested.

“I know this spot,” Bastinelli says as she waves him over.

“I hike here on the weekends. I’ve taken selfies with my kids in front of this rock!”

“I checked the municipal records,” says Gagnon.

“The summer she went missing, this part of the park was closed for renovation and regrading. The ground was all torn up. Wouldn’t have been hard to make a fresh grave seem like part of the work.” She points to the backhoe.

“When the foliage was replanted, the site over there was pretty much hidden.”

Bastinelli looks at the members of the forensics team, hard at work.

“Have they found anything useful?”

Gagnon leads him over to a folding table and holds up an evidence bag.

“Well, they found this right off the bat.”

Inside the bag is a dirty tennis bracelet with red gems.

Bastinelli leans in for a closer look.

“Think it’s hers? Was she wearing it when she went missing?”

“We would know that,” says Gagnon, “if gremlins hadn’t made off with the case files.” She puts the bag back on the table.

“The bracelet was just a few feet down, so maybe it’s not connected at all. Could be somebody dropped it recently. They also found some fibers that might be from the sheet the bones were wrapped in. Same color.”

“Who called this in?” asks Bastinelli.

“Wish I knew. Female. Thirties, maybe. Wouldn’t give her name, but her directions were on point.”

“Somebody who was involved?”

“Maybe somebody who knows who was. Maybe somebody who wants closure—without the liability.”

Vicki Barnes walks over with her digital camera.

Gagnon makes the intros.

“Sorry we’re ruining your night,” says Bastinelli.

“No worries,” says Barnes cheerfully.

“Detective Gagnon does it all the time.” She holds up her camera so the digital screen faces up.

“Take a look at this.”

At first, the frame looks just like a square of dark dirt.

But when Barnes zooms in, a small whitish-gray shard comes into view.

“Is that what I think it is?” she asks.

“The ME will know for sure,” says Gagnon.

“But I’d bet on a phalanx or a metatarsal—a toe or a piece of the foot.”

Bastinelli shakes his head.

“Jesus.”

Gagnon gives him a tight smile.

“See what you miss sitting in that fancy office?”

“Detective!” one of the forensics sifters calls.

“You need to see this!”

Gagnon walks over with Barnes and Bastinelli.

The young woman in the white suit is holding something in her gloved hand above the sifting screen.

Gagnon snaps on a fresh pair of gloves and takes the object carefully between two fingers.

It’s a man’s wristwatch with a broken band.

“Squirt it, please,” says Gagnon.

“Gently.”

The woman in the white suit picks up a small squeeze bottle from the table and sprays a fine mist across the face and back of the watch.

Dirt drips off in small muddy trickles.

Gagnon angles the watch toward one of the scene lights.

“Look. There’s something on the back…”

The woman in white does another quick misting.

Gagnon gently wipes the back of the watch clean.

Barnes clicks away with her camera, her lens just inches from the object.

Bastinelli leans in.

“Look at the date!”

June.

Twenty-four years ago.

Below the date is a filigreed inscription:

TO CW

FROM BC,

WITH LOVE

“Bag!” Gagnon calls out.

Another member of the forensics team hustles over with a transparent sleeve.

Gagnon carefully lowers the watch in, then removes her gloves.

She leans toward Bastinelli.

“CW,” she whispers. “Cole Wright?”

Bastinelli shrugs.

“Or Christopher Walken. Or Charlie Watts. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“Okay,” says Gagnon.

“I won’t if you won’t.” She’s doing her best to keep an open mind.

But she can’t help making connections.

It’s what she does.

Gagnon rubs her hand across the bagged tennis bracelet.

Call it intuition, but she has a strong feeling now about who was wearing it.

I see you, Suzanne. I see you.