Page 72 of The First Gentleman

CHAPTER 68

Concord, New Hampshire

D etective Sergeant Marie Gagnon takes a chair across from the deputy AG’s desk.

It’s been a week since their nighttime chat at the grave site, and Bastinelli wants an update.

He doesn’t waste any time.

“So, Marie, where do we stand?”

“Without the original records, I’m mostly working blind,” Gagnon says.

“I’ve been able to put together some bits and pieces from talking to a couple of the old investigators, but you know how that goes.”

“I do,” says Bastinelli.

“Memories get porous.”

Gagnon glances down at her laptop.

“I talked to a retired detective named Foster down in Fort Lauderdale. He sounded a bit wonky, but he’d kept some of his original notes. Said he interviewed a stadium attendant who said she heard Cole Wright talking rough to Suzanne once. Saying, ‘I’ll wring your neck,’ or something like that.”

“Did his memory include the attendant’s name?”

Gagnon nods.

“Stacey Millett. She’s a coach at a girls’ school in Milwaukee. I called her. She still tells the same story. But she doesn’t know if Cole was serious. She says he might have just been talking tough. And she volunteered that she’s a big supporter of President Wright.”

“That doesn’t help,” says Bastinelli.

“Easy to impeach her testimony. What about the watch?”

“We found a serial number stamped along the ridge of the watch face. Traced it back to a New York manufacturer, Zahn Fine Watchcraft. Nice watch, but hardly a Rolex. It was shipped to a jewelry store in Hanover, New Hampshire, twenty-four years ago.”

“So the timing lines up.”

“I can do better than that,” says Gagnon.

“The store was Schmitt’s Jewelers. Still in business. Third-generation German family. Meticulous recordkeepers.”

“So they know who bought the watch?”

“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.