Beach Wedding(43)

“Walks like a duck...”

“Precisely. I can’t believe this. Think Dateline would do a piece based on your book?” Pete said.

“Who knows? Maybe even a movie,” I lied.

Actually, that might not be a total lie, I thought.

The press probably would want to do something. Especially if I actually managed to slip Hailey’s elegant wrists back into a lovely set of cold steel cuffs.

“A movie? Imagine? My wife would go nuts.”

He patted at his gut.

“Me and Dempsey here need to start running around the block. Gotta get ready for my close-up, huh? Oh, did you talk to Robert yet?”

I peered at him. I’d practically memorized Kelsey’s files, and there weren’t any Roberts in it.

“Robert? Robert who?” I said.

“Robert Holm. He was Noah’s good buddy from the city. They played poker together and went fishing. One night, they knocked back a bottle of something and ended up putting an ATV in the ocean.

“Robert was so freaking mad when Noah died. They said he got into a little scuffle with one of Noah’s brothers in the parking lot at the wake. He hated Hailey’s guts, as well. I remember him at the funeral. He seemed really ripped up. More than Hailey and the rest of Noah’s family combined.”

“Who was he to Noah? A family friend?”

“Yeah, he was his roommate in college or something. He was a good guy. He was a lawyer, people said, but he was just a normal Joe six-pack kind of guy like you and me. He was funny. He would bust Noah’s balls mercilessly. He knew Noah and his family really well. He’ll be jazzed to spill the beans. He was Noah’s pal. I can’t believe you haven’t spoken to him.”

Spoken to him, I thought. I haven’t even heard of him.

Pete smiled.

“See how I’m helping you now? You tell the producers, I’m the man. This crazy Rican wants major screen time.”



57

The heavy road construction on the Grand Central Parkway was somewhere between East Elmhurst and Astoria Heights, and in the blinding glare of its construction light cart, a battle was underway.

It was between an old dump truck and a black Maxima, and they were playing chicken to see which vehicle was going to be the next one through the bottlenecked shoulder ahead of me. I had my money on the Maxima at first, as I’d heard the guy scrape the guardrail twice. But then the dusty dump truck just kept coming, kept upshifting and downshifting and shrieking his old brakes in his valiant quest to edge forward while somehow keeping his door-sized fender from touching the Nissan.

As I watched them go neck and neck and centimeter for centimeter to see who was going to shave a millisecond off their commute, you’d think I’d be frustrated.

On the contrary. As a native Long Islander, even after all these years, there was no amount of road rage and no volume of city traffic that could faze me in the slightest.

Which was why I had woken up so early that morning for my drive into the city to interview Robert Holm.

It was about 8:30 when I arrived at his Midtown office on the sixth floor at the New York Catholic Archdiocese building on First Avenue and Fifty-Sixth Street.

It was only when he opened the door to his small office and I saw the collar that I realized that the small bald fireplug of a man was actually Father Robert Holm.

“Yeah, surprise,” he said as he sat me down and closed his door. “I’m a priest. It’s been three years now. I started out here as a lawyer doing social work, but then one thing led to another. This God guy is pretty relentless. If you stay around Him long enough, He starts to get His hooks in.”

Holm’s office was tiny, but it had good furniture, especially the desk, a dark shining mahogany number with a tooled red leather top and ball-and-claw feet. His view looked north up First Avenue at the on-ramp for the traffic-filled Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. The priest silenced the honking horns by shutting a window and insisted on making us some French press coffee.

As he was pouring me a cup, a hard smack of thunder exploded from somewhere in the muggy steel-and-glass Midtown blocks to the west like a car bomb. Rain began pelting at the window as he sat.

“So you and Noah were roommates?” I said.

“Yes, Mr. Rourke. We were roommates at Dartmouth.”

“Actually,” I said, sitting up a little straighter. “Before we get going, Father, I have a little confession to make.”

“Ha ha, confession, priest, that’s pretty funny. What is it?”

“I’m not a writer. I’m a cop.”

He peered at me. “Why are you telling people you’re someone who you aren’t?”

“My father was the ADA who prosecuted Hailey Sutton and lost all those years ago. I’ve reopened the cold case and intend to get her retried. But I don’t want her to know just yet. I need to gather evidence. If she figures it out, she’ll pull up the drawbridge. She’ll start paying people off to keep their mouths shut.”

“Like last time.”

“Exactly. Also, I’m actually a Philly cop and really have zero jurisdictional authority up here in New York.”

“I see. You’ve been telling people you’re a writer to try to sneak up on Hailey Sutton?”

“Yes.”

He laughed.

“Good,” he said. “You keep doing that. Just might work.”