But all that does nothing but support the conclusion that the body in the pit was Suzanne’s. Gagnon is still nagged by the fact that the bracelet was found near the top of the grave and not with the bones below. But as she and Bastinelli had discussed, the bracelet could have been disturbed by whoever dug up the bones and deposited them in the trunk of the Sentra.

Gagnon rereads the interviews she conducted with Felicia Bonanno and the Foxborough worker, Stacey Millett. Both women talked about Cole’s overbearing manner, but a football player with an aggressive personality isn’t exactly a shocker. And of course, Felicia has a reason for blaming Cole for her daughter’s death. She admitted that she’d never trusted him. Besides, Brenda Connelly Monroe, the coed who’d gifted Cole the watch at Dartmouth, said he was a total sweetheart. Not exactly a convincing pattern.

Gagnon clicks through archival photos of Cole Wright after he joined the Patriots, looking for pictures of him wearing the watch. But most of the photos show him in his football gear, no fashion wrist wear permitted. And in the few shots she can find of him in a suit, his cuffs cover his wrists.

The watch could have been lost or stolen sometime after he graduated. That would be an easy thing for Wright to claim, anyway. And who could prove him wrong?

And now there’s a new file on her desk, about a murder in Boston last week. Amber Keenan, onetime squad mate of Suzanne’s on the Patriots cheerleading team. No leads there so far, according to the Boston detective Gagnon talked to.

Two dead cheerleaders, seventeen years apart. Is there a connection, Gagnon wonders, or is it just coincidence that Suzanne’s body was found around the same time?

Gagnon’s desk phone rings. She picks up. “Detective Gagnon, Major Crimes.”

“Detective, this is Jan McHenry, from Icon Labs in Boston.”

For a second, Gagnon can’t place the name. Then it comes to her. “Right! The sheet fibers.”

“Correct. Sorry it’s taken us so long, but we were able to trace the dye and the fabric to Formosa Industries in Taipei, Taiwan. They have a proprietary weave and confirmed that that specific blue dye was used in a limited run of sheets and pillowcases about twenty years ago. And they offloaded the whole supply to one buyer, Walmart. Under the name Regal Soft Touch Bedsheets.”

Fueled by two cups of office coffee, Gagnon can feel her synapses firing. Some days, detective work is like the children’s card game concentration. You turn over cards, two of them each time, trying to find a matching pair. The trick is to turn over the first card and remember where you saw its match.