Beach Wedding(31)

“Don’t I, though?” he said with a grin as he patted at his close-cropped gray hair. “I keep telling my wife how lucky she is to have her own personal Denzel with a gun and a badge around.”

I laughed as I helped Marvin toss his kayak into the back of an old faded red Nissan pickup.

“You’re a cop, too, I hear,” Marvin said as we sat on the tailgate. “Your dad sure would be proud of you, son. Be proud of all of you guys. Tom most especially. Not because he hit it big. But because he’s finally getting married. He was always worrying about him. That boy drove him crazy. Just crazy.”

I laughed.

“You can say that again,” I said.

“So, Terry. What’s up?” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see you until the wedding. What can I do you for? Looking for some sea kayaking tips?”

“Well, Marvin, I was wondering about something,” I said. “About your and my dad’s old case, the Sutton case.”

He blinked at me, looked truly surprised.

“The Sutton Slay?”

I nodded.

“Now that I’m back home, I was thinking about giving it a fresh look,” I said.

“Is that right?” Marvin said to me after another long moment. “You’re a cop where now again? Boston? No, Baltimore?”

“Philly,” I said.

“Philly,” he said. “They don’t have enough work for you to do down there in the City of Brotherly Love, huh? All those crimes solved? And aren’t you on vacation?”

“The case is pretty ripe for a new looking over, wouldn’t you say, Marvin?” I said. “I was wondering if you could walk me through it from your perspective as the homicide lead. See if I can get a better picture.”

“You sure you want to do that, Terry? Get into all that old stuff?”

I smiled.

“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, Marvin. But I’ve made up my mind. In fact—”

I handed him a photograph I’d taken from one of Xavier Kelsey’s dossiers.

“I’ve already started my cold-case investigation.”

“What’s this?”

“That’s Jailene Mercado’s house,” I said.

“Hailey Sutton’s maid? Our star witness?”

I nodded.

He whistled loudly at the five-bedroom, five-thousand-square-foot house.

“It’s down on Jupiter Island in Florida,” I said. “She paid one million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it. Records show she owns it outright. She lives there with her daughter. It’s got a view of the water, too.”

I handed him another photograph of her garage.

He whistled again.

“A Range Rover and a Merc. Doing well for herself. So, you’re thinking this proves what? Somebody paid her off?”

“Well,” I said, “she didn’t hit Lotto, and she doesn’t have a job.”

He handed me back the photos.

“What do you see coming out of dredging all this stuff up? Putting Hailey Sutton back on trial?”

“It had crossed my mind,” I said. “It was a hung jury, after all.”

“Sure was hung. By design. Power put its fist down. You don’t think it can do it again?”

“What’s wrong, Marvin?” I said, looking at him. “I thought you’d be excited about this.”

Marvin looked at me, then at the water, then back at me. He opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

“What’s up?” I said.



42

“Terry, if you’re going to even think about doing this, you need to know a couple of very important things. First and foremost is this. There’s a lot—and I mean a lot—of wacky stuff going on around here right now. Especially with the local DA’s office and the Suffolk County cops.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bad stuff is happening, Terry,” Marvin said as he stood from the tailgate and took a look around the parking lot to make sure we were alone.

“Folks looking the other way. People getting their palms greased. There’s always been a bit of graft, but never like this.”

“I don’t understand. How does this affect me reopening the case?”

“Because the DA, the not-so-honorable Nathan M. Wheaton, is the son of a bitch who personally decides who gets tried, or in Hailey Sutton’s case, retried, around here. That piece of garbage goes to all the society parties and is known for working far harder weaseling his way out of prosecuting a case against the powers that be in the Hamptons than he does in court. Wheaton actually worked with your father. We both hated that rat son of a bitch. Your dad especially.”

“So that means what?” I said.

“It means that photo is a good start, but it won’t be enough to chicken wing that slimy piece of work into calling for a new trial. Not even close.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“And not only that,” Marvin said, holding up a finger. “You start poking around about Hailey Sutton and her rich friends, you’re going to have to look out for Wheaton’s troops.”

“Troops?”

“The county cops. They’re just running wild, I hear. The department has never been in such bad shape.”