The Sense of Death: An Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel (The Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels Book 1)

by Matty Dalrymple

  “Maybe you need something that belonged to her—you know, like a bloodhound sniffing a piece of clothing from the person it’s tracking,” said Mike.

  “Great idea,” said Ann. “Let’s get her varsity jacket and I’ll smell it.”

  Mike ignored her. “Let’s go back to where the cars are.”

  Rob was leaning on his parents’ car, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the ground, while his parents stood a little distance away talking with a police officer.

  “Any news?” said Mike to Rob.

  Rob looked up. “Oh. Hey. No, no news.”

  Mike looked past Rob into the window of the car. “Did you guys bring anything of Beth’s with you? You know, like clothes, in case she needs fresh clothes when you find her?”

  “No, I guess the emergency people will have blankets and stuff.”

  Mike leaned closer to the car window. “Hey, is that her bat?”

  Rob looked in the back seat of the car. “Yeah.”

  “Could I borrow it?” said Mike.

  “What do you want that for?”

  “I’m nervous about wild animals,” said Mike. “I’d feel better if I had a weapon.”

  Rob laughed mirthlessly. “Sure, Rambo, why not.” He got the bat out and handed it to Mike.

  Mike tucked the bat under his arm and headed back into the woods, followed by Ann. When they were out of sight of the parking area he handed her the bat.

  “Here, maybe this will help.”

  They resumed their wandering through the woods, stopping around noon to eat a picnic lunch. When they were done Mike packed up the lunch things.

  “Mike, I don’t know what you expect me to do with this,” said Ann, gesturing toward the bat.

  “I don’t know either but I figure it can’t hurt.”

  After another hour or so they stopped for a rest and the exercise, warm air, and buzzing of insects began to make Ann drowsy.

  “You can take a nap if you want,” said Mike, getting comfortable against the trunk of a tree.

  “Maybe just for a few minutes,” said Ann. It was pleasant in the woods with the light filtering through the leaves and the sound of squirrels crashing through the undergrowth. Ann made a pillow of her backpack and closed her eyes, her hand, at Mike’s urging, resting on Beth’s bat.

  She woke up to a rush of air around her and a sudden darkness as if in an eclipse. Mike snored beside her, seemingly unaware of the change. Rather than the nausea which had begun to accompany her sensings, she felt a sharp stab of pain in her temple. She heard the distant wail of the siren for a moment but it was oddly muffled. For a moment the bat under her hand felt almost like a living thing and then that sensation too passed. The air seemed to turn cold for a moment and then it was still and the darkness lifted, leaving Ann unsure of whether it had been caused by the light or by her eyes. Her heart was beating hard.

  “Mike,” she said in a raspy voice and, when he didn’t wake up, repeated louder “Mike!”

  “What is it?” he asked groggily.

  “We’re too late.”

  They walked through the woods, Ann holding the bat and Mike now carrying both their backpacks. They would head in one direction for a time and then Ann would shake her head and turn in a different direction. They had originally started by circling the area around where they had stopped to rest but gradually Ann led them away from there, somewhat closer to the area where Beth’s car had been found. She seemed listless but Mike kept urging her on. “Maybe it’s not too late, A.,” and she would gaze around, choose a direction, and head off again.

  About an hour later they came across a low outcropping of rock and Ann began climbing back and forth, like a retriever searching for a ball in tall grass. Finally she stopped in front of a small slit between two of the rocks, seemingly too small for a person to fit into.

  “In there,” said Ann, pointing.

  Mike shone his flashlight into the opening. “It does look like it gets bigger a couple of feet in there.” He cupped his hands at his mouth. “Beth! Hello! Beth?”

  Ann sat down on a rock near the opening to the cave. “You don’t need to do that. She’s dead.”

  Mike stood with his fists on his hips, looking around. “Crap, I should have brought some spray paint, then I could mark the trees,” he said. They heard the faint wail of the siren. “Listen, I’m going to go back and get someone, are you all right to stay here?” Ann shrugged. “OK, listen for me and yell when you hear me.” Mike pulled off his t-shirt, tore it at the side seam, and then tore a strip off it. He started off in the direction of the siren and, when almost out of sight of the cave, tied the strip to a tree. Ann could hear him tearing another strip off as he continued toward the parking area.

  Ann picked up a stick and began absently digging in the ground at her feet. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m not a bloodhound. I’m a cadaver dog.”

  *****

  The rescue crew found Beth’s body about 100 feet from the mouth of the previously undocumented cave. It appeared that she had slipped and fallen into a side cave, breaking her leg and several ribs and rupturing her spleen. The walls of the side cave were steep and slippery and it would have been a challenge even for an uninjured caver to make her way out. She had survived the initial fall but had eventually succumbed to internal bleeding, hypothermia, and dehydration; the medical examiner estimated she had died only an hour or so before she was found. Ann could have told him exactly when Beth had died.

  The Philadelphia television station did a story about the psychic teenager who had led searchers to her friend’s body and the national news picked it up. In the week after Beth’s body was discovered the story ran on CNN as well as the ABC and NBC affiliates in Philadelphia—always accompanied by a shot of Ann’s senior class picture since her parents kept the media away from her. The story even inspired a David Letterman Top 10 list (“Ten Reasons to be a Teenage Psychic”). One enterprising reporter intercepted Mike on his way home from school and found him only too willing to talk which resulted in Mike being deprived of car privileges for a month.

  Chapter 6

  A man knocked on the door of the Firth house on a late morning about a week after Elizabeth Firth had been reported missing. He was in his mid-forties but looked older, tall and heavy-set—the body of a former athlete who has become less athletic as the years have passed—with graying, somewhat unkempt hair and observant hazel eyes. The door was opened by a woman he knew to be the housekeeper, Joan.

  “Joe Booth, I have an appointment with Mr. Firth.”

  “Certainly, come in,” she said and stood aside to let him pass. She closed the door on the cold February air. “Can I take your coat?”

  “Thanks.” Joe shrugged out of his heavy wool coat and handed it to her.

  “Mr. Firth is in the library. Right this way,” she said, crossing to a partially open door on the left side of the entrance hall. She poked her head in. “Mr. Firth, Mr. Booth is here.”

  “Thank you, Joan,” said a voice from the room and Joan gestured Joe into the room.

  Biden Firth came around from behind a large mahogany desk and shook hands with Joe. He was almost as tall as Joe, but at least ten years younger and fitter, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. A first glance brought to Joe’s mind an actor of the Cary Grant era—dark hair cut short and carefully combed, clothes that, even as Joe noted familiar brand logos, hung on Firth’s frame as if tailor made. But the movie star quality was undermined by eyes ringed by dark circles, made more prominent by his pale complexion, and by a lack of the grace and ease that marked the classic Hollywood heartthrob.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Joe. “I wish it were under happier circumstances.”

  “Yes.” Biden gestured to the chairs by the window. “Have a seat.”

  They sat in the antique chairs and Joe pulled a small notepad and pen from his shirt pocket.

  “I appreciate you taking the time to see me. I know you’ve spoken to a number of people from the
department but I’ll be taking over the investigation now and it’s always helpful to get the information first-hand.”

  Biden sighed. “Why are they sending you now? What happened to Detective Deng? He seemed … diligent.”

  Joe had been assigned to the case when Elizabeth’s father, unhappy with what he saw as a lack of initiative on the part of the police in pursuing the case, had contacted the commissioner to express his frustration. The commissioner had promised to assign a more senior investigator—Harry Deng had made detective only a year before—and Joe, with twenty years on the force and a solid track record of case resolution, had drawn the assignment.

  “He has other responsibilities and the commissioner wanted someone on the case who could devote full time to the investigation. That’s me.”

  Biden sighed again. “Well, I hope you got all the information I gave to Deng.”

  “Yes, I did, but it’s helpful for me to hear it first-hand,” Joe repeated, his pen poised over the notepad, looking like a grade schooler awaiting an assignment. “If you could tell me what happened ...”

  Biden looked out the window. “My wife and I had an argument. It got quite heated and she threw a drink in my face. As I told Detective Deng, I slapped her. I had never done that before. Anyhow, she stormed out.”

  “Where did the argument take place?”

  “Here in the library.”

  “Did you try to follow her when she left?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a back door?”

  “Yes, but she left by the front door.”

  “Did she hurt you during your argument?”

  “No.”

  “Because we found a paper towel in the wastebasket under the bar that had some blood on it. It wasn’t Elizabeth’s and it matches your blood type.”

  Biden sighed. “I stabbed myself with my letter opener.”

  “Opening a letter?”

  “No, just fooling around with it. My hand slipped.”

  Joe nodded and jotted a note on his pad.

  “Did your wife put a coat on when she left?”

  “Yes, she got her coat out of the coat closet and went out the front door. I could hear her. Anyhow, it took me a little while to calm down but when I did I called her cell phone but I heard it ringing in the kitchen and realized she hadn’t taken it with her. When it seemed as if she wasn’t coming back right away I called the hotel where we were scheduled to attend a charity dinner to let them know we wouldn’t be coming. I also asked the housekeeper to stay the night to take care of our daughter.”

  “You weren’t worried about her at this point?”

  Biden rubbed his hands together. “It wasn’t the first time we had had an argument and she had stormed out. I figured she had gone to a hotel, she had done that before.”

  Joe nodded encouragingly.

  “The next morning I called the credit card company to see if the card had been used. They said it hadn’t been. Then I tried calling a couple of the hotels I thought she might have gone to but they wouldn’t give me any information. Then I thought she might have gone to her parents’ place at the shore—they don’t have a land line so I couldn’t call. So I drove out there—Harvey Cedars, New Jersey. She wasn’t there so I called some of her friends to see if they had heard from her. They hadn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to call the friends first instead of driving all the way to the shore?”

  “I didn’t want to spread the word that we had had an argument unless it was absolutely necessary. Plus, at that point, I still wasn’t really worried and I didn’t mind the idea of a drive to the shore. After I had called all the friends I thought she might be in touch with I figured I’d head back.”

  “Do you recall what time you left for the shore?”

  Biden considered. “About 10:00 in the morning I would think. Joan and Esme were here, they might remember.”

  “Esme Brouwer, she’s the nanny?”

  “Yes.”

  Joe made a note in his notepad. “And what time did you get to the shore house?”

  “Around noon.”

  “And what time did you leave there?”

  “I would guess I left the house about 3:00, I stopped to grab a bite on the way back.” He gave Joe the name of the establishment.

  “Between 12:00 and 3:00 did you do anything at the house other than call Elizabeth’s friends?”

  “I looked through some boating magazines first. I was trying to decide if it was really necessary to call them.”

  “When did you start getting worried?”

  “When I couldn’t find anyone who had heard from her.”

  “But you still stopped for lunch on the way home.”

  “I was hungry. I was still trying to decide what to do.”

  “Any other stops on the way back?”

  “I stopped at a car wash because my car was dirty from the drive.”

  Joe hadn’t heard that detail from Harry. “Self service?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Joe got the location of the car wash from Biden.

  “And what time did you arrive home?”

  “Around 7:00 in the evening.”

  Joe flipped a page in his notepad.

  “What did you and your wife argue about?”

  “We disagreed about an investment I had made,” Biden said tightly.

  “What was that investment?” asked Joe.

  “Is this really necessary? I can’t imagine it has any bearing on her disappearance.”

  “Probably not, but it’s best to get all the facts on the table. You never know where connections might exist.”

  Biden shifted in his chair. “It was a restaurant that a friend of mine from college was opening. He had gotten Alain Broussard from Etoile as the chef.” He glanced expectantly at Joe who looked blank. “Well, anyway,” said Biden, “I wanted to help him out and she didn’t approve.”

  “I understand restaurants are risky propositions,” said Joe.

  “So I’ve been told,” said Biden coldly.

  “And that’s what you argued about?” asked Joe.

  “Yes.”

  Joe jotted a note in his notepad. “How would you describe your relationship with your wife?”

  “Generally fine, a bit tense lately.”

  “What would you say was causing the tension?”

  Biden shrugged. “My wife can be a difficult woman. I suppose every man says that about his wife at one point or another. Hell, I’m sure she says the same about me. But she is a woman who is used to having her own way and I think that always causes some tension in a relationship. But it’s not necessarily grounds for murder. ”

  Joe looked up from his notepad at Biden.

  “That’s what you’re trying to determine, right? Whether I could have killed her? Isn’t the husband always considered a suspect?”

  “Everyone’s considered a suspect until we rule them out.”

  Biden nodded tiredly.

  “But I think you’ll understand why I need to ask this question,” Joe continued. “Do you know what the terms of your wife’s will are?”

  “Jesus,” Biden muttered. “I realize you have to explore this type of thing but couldn’t you be a little more subtle about it? She might still be alive.”

  “Sorry,” said Joe.

  “No, I don’t know what the terms of her will are. Her money came from her family and I would assume that anything she has would go back to them.”

  “What about the house?”

  Biden stood up so quickly that Joe, startled, also stood up. Biden strode to the desk, picked something up, and stood hunched over it, with his back to Joe, for a moment. When he turned back to Joe, he placed the object, which Joe could see was a slender pen or mechanical pencil, back on the desk. His left hand, held stiffly at his side, was closed in a fist.

  “Uh, are you all right, Mr. Firth?” asked Joe cautiously, trying to get a better look at Firth’s hand.

  “
The house was a wedding present from my parents,” Biden said dully. “Is there anything else, Detective?”

  Joe tucked the notepad and pen back in his shirt pocket. “No, nothing else right now. I’m sorry for the intrusion. I’ll keep you informed of our progress.”

  He took a step toward Biden to shake his hand but Biden was turning back to his desk. Joe executed an awkward little bow at Biden’s back and then exited the library to the foyer, pulling the door closed behind him. He looked around for where Joan might have put his coat but in a moment she appeared with it.

  “Thanks,” said Joe, shrugging into the coat.

  “Any word about Mrs. Firth?” asked Joan in a whisper.

  “No, nothing yet. How is Mr. Firth holding up?”

  “Oh, you can imagine—quite distraught but keeping up a brave front.”

  Joe nodded. “I’d like to talk with you at some point, could I get your contact information?”

  She gave him her phone number and address, then Joe headed back out into the cold February day.

  *****

  Joe’s next stop, in Chestnut Hill, was to the home of Elizabeth Firth’s friend Lydia Levere. Joe was running early so he decided to make a stop at a Wawa for coffee. He negotiated the traffic at the gas pumps, found a parking spot on the sunny side of the building under the chain’s flying goose logo, and, having procured a medium hazelnut coffee flavored with plenty of sugar and half-and-half, pondered his meeting with Firth. Firth’s stature—both physical and social—lent him a superficial air of authority, but there was an underlying lack of confidence that Joe suspected would have existed even if he weren’t being interviewed by the police, and a coldness that seemed odd in a man whose wife had disappeared a week ago.

  When Joe arrived at the Levere address, he found a house that looked like a traditional center-hall colonial except on a huge scale. When Joe knocked on the large, intricately paneled front door with the large, shiny brass knocker, Lydia herself opened the door. She, like the Elizabeth Firth Joe had seen in photos, was very thin but taller with light brown hair done in an intentionally tousled style. She was wearing pre-distressed jeans and a tight white scoop-necked t-shirt under a black leather blazer.