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

by Matty Dalrymple

  *****

  When Ann and Mike were in college, their parents were killed in a car accident. They received a considerable inheritance, one that, had they been willing to live quite modestly (which they weren’t), could have relieved them of the need to work. They sold the house they had grown up in and for several years after they graduated from college had shared a much smaller rented house in West Chester. But when Mike, who by this time had established his credentials as a financial planner, bought the townhouse he now shared with Scott, Ann had started looking for properties in the Adirondacks and soon found exactly what she was looking for—a two story log cabin on seven acres on the shore of Loon Pond.

  One of the many things that had attracted Ann to the cabin was that it appeared to be “clean.” But over time she began to think that there was a spirit, not in the house itself but in the woods surrounding the house. When she was walking in the woods or chopping wood or throwing a toy into the pond for her dog, Beau, to fetch, she would sometimes get a sense of being not alone, of being observed, but there was never any other manifestation accompanying this sense—not the colors, sounds, or scents she was used to experiencing. Sometimes she thought it could be the spirit of a person who was so long dead that only the faintest whisper of their essence remained. Sometimes she thought she was just imagining things.

  In casting about for a way to occupy her time, Ann began working on developing her skills in oil painting, an interest that had begun in high school with a gift of painting supplies from her father. Now she mainly painted Adirondack wildflowers and other vegetation. A few mornings a week, usually weekdays when the Adirondack Park trails were less busy, she would load Beau and her camera into her car to scout subjects for her paintings. When she found what she was looking for and had gotten a digital image that pleased her, she would spend the next few days capturing the image in oil. As her skills grew, and with Mike’s encouragement, she started shopping the paintings around to local galleries, using the name Kay Near. The paintings sold well and Mike had expanded the business by having note cards of the paintings printed. Ann was starting to experiment with small landscape paintings as well; one she had done of a Chester County barn had sold recently at a gallery in West Chester.

  Ann’s cabin, being surrounded by trees, was too dark to serve as a studio and the Adirondack Park regulations prevented her from building on the one reliably sunny part of the property—on the shore of the pond—so several years before she had bought a twenty acre lot a few miles from her cabin that had a cleared area at the height of the land giving excellent views of the surrounding mountains. She had a studio built—a twenty by thirty foot space surrounded on three sides by large windows, with a small kitchen and bathroom tucked into the fourth side.

  Mike loved the studio and when he visited they would often spend the day there with a cooler of beer, cooking burgers on the grill and playing horseshoes while Scott fished in the river that bordered the property.

  But Ann’s favorite location, after the dock, was the fire pit near the cabin, created with rocks she had collected from the woods and surrounded by three worn Adirondack chairs. In the evenings, she and Mike and Scott would sit—fanning themselves with newspaper pages from the kindling supplies or huddling in their coats, depending on the season—roasting hot dogs or marshmallows. Beau especially enjoyed the hot dog roasts and would scootch closer and closer to the fire, drooling copiously, until Ann gave him a hot dog which, rather than wolfing down immediately, he would take to a sheltered area under the screen porch where he would settle into a smooth-packed, Beau-shaped depression in the dirt and nibble on delicately. Mike enjoyed teaching Beau music-themed tricks, such as touching his paw to his muzzle in a canine salute when Mike whistled “Reveille” and playing dead to “Taps.” He had tried, with the help of some peanut butter, to teach Beau to lick Ann’s cheek when he whistled a bar of “Kiss Me” by The Cranberries but the closest Beau got was to snuffle Ann’s ear.

  Chapter 18

  Joe Booth left Philadelphia for the Adirondacks early the next morning and reached his destination a little before 4:00. He followed his GPS’s instructions from the two lane state highway to a gravel turnoff and began skirting the large “pond” that was one of the hundreds of bodies of water in Adirondack Park. He followed the road to its end and then continued on past a small “Private Drive” sign. About fifty yards further on, up a gradual incline, was a dirt parking area, one of its two spaces occupied by a Subaru Forester, its edges marked by birch logs. From here Joe could see the sparkle of water down a steep, tree-covered slope while the view in the other direction, up the hill, was blocked by a bank of fluffy, bright green ferns. About twenty yards diagonally down the hill and joined to the parking area by a series of log steps stood a two story log house.

  Joe stepped out of the car and as he slammed the door a large, shaggy German Shepherd-like dog appeared from behind the ferns and came trotting toward him. He opened the car door, ready to retreat into the car, but the dog stopped about ten yards from him and gave a sharp bark, then stood motionless, eyes fixed on Joe.

  “Good boy,” said Joe experimentally. “Are you a good boy?”

  “Usually,” said a voice from beyond where the dog stood and now Joe noticed a woman leaning on the axe, a pile of split firewood at her feet. Her stance seemed relaxed at first glance but Joe noted the tightness of her grip on the axe handle and a tautness in her jaw. She was wearing an old Rush concert t-shirt, cargo pants, and heavy hiking boots. Her reddish blonde hair was held back in a ponytail, wispy tendrils curling at the nape of her neck.

  “Friendly?” said Joe.

  “It depends.”

  Joe reached into his pocket and held up his badge. “Joe Booth, Philadelphia police.”

  There was a long pause and then the woman gave a short, sharp whistle and the dog sat down.

  “Thanks.” Joe put his badge away. “Are you Ann Kinnear?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to speak with you if you don’t mind.”

  There was another long pause. Finally she said, “OK,” and started down the slight hill from where the chopping block stood, carrying the axe.

  “Would you mind leaving that up there?” said Joe.

  She shrugged and sank the axe into the chopping block. She came down to the parking area, pulling off leather gloves. When she reached Joe she said, “Yes?”

  “Could we sit down somewhere?”

  “Could I see your badge again?”

  Joe pulled out his badge and handed it to her; she examined it for a moment and handed it back.

  “We can go in the house.” Ann gave a long ascending whistle and the dog trotted over to her side as they walked down the hill to the house. Ann unlocked the door with a key on a string around her neck.

  “I’m surprised you bother to lock up way out here,” said Joe.

  “Better safe than sorry,” she replied.

  They walked into the tidy-looking kitchen of the cabin. Straight ahead, a counter-height breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the dining area which was walled with windows giving on to a screened-in porch through which Joe could see the water at the bottom of the hill. To the right a short hallway led from the kitchen to what looked like a living room, a section of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves visible from the kitchen. Off the hallway were doors that Joe guessed led to a bathroom on the right and the basement on the left. A flight of stairs at the center of the house led to the second floor.

  The dog sat down on a rag rug in the kitchen, still watching Joe attentively.

  “Nice looking dog,” said Joe.

  “Thanks.”

  “Shepherd?”

  “Mostly.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Beau. Have a seat.” She motioned to the table in the eating area. Joe took a seat but she remained standing in the kitchen on the other side of the breakfast bar, her arms crossed.

  Joe took a small notepad and a pen out of his shirt pocket. �
��I understand you were in Philadelphia recently.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell me what you were doing there?”

  “It would help me if you told me why you’re asking me these questions.”

  “I’d rather get the answers to my questions first.”

  “How did you know where I live?”

  “Your brother told me.”

  Ann raised her eyebrows. “My brother would hardly give directions to my house to someone without letting me know.”

  “He said he was going to call you.”

  Ann pulled her cell phone out of a holster clipped to the waistband of her pants and glanced at the display. “No messages.”

  “Check your voicemail. Or, better yet, call your brother.”

  Ann arched her eyebrows skeptically then speed dialed voicemail and heard the voice intone, “You have two unplayed messages.”

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  The first message was from the morning of the previous day. “Hey, I got a call from a guy named Joe Booth, he’s a detective with the Philly police. I checked him out and he’s legit. He heard about what happened at the Rittenhouse Square house and wanted to talk with you about it. He asked for your address and I didn’t realize until after I had given it to him that he was actually planning on driving up there. He wouldn’t give me any details because it’s part of an active investigation. I’m thinking the house was a crime scene. Might be a PR opportunity in this. Anyway, I’ll try you back again later.”

  The second message was from the afternoon. “Hey, A., it’s me. Do you have your phone turned off? Anyhow, hopefully you got my earlier message, I’ll try you again later.”

  According to the incoming message log, Mike had called again in the evening but had not left a message. Ann hit redial on the last message. The phone rang then went to Mike’s voicemail. “Hey, it’s me. I got your messages, didn’t want you to worry, everything’s fine, my phone’s been acting up per usual. I’ll call you back later.” Ann replaced the phone in the holster and turned to Joe. “OK, what do you want to know?”

  “Tell me what happened at the house near Rittenhouse Square.”

  “My brother and I were there with clients. Did he tell you what we do?”

  “I read your web site and a couple of other articles about you.”

  “OK. Well, these clients were considering buying the house and they wanted to know if it was … haunted. I could tell without even going in the house that there was something wrong with it and I told them that. I told them I wasn’t going to go in but they were insistent so I left.”

  “What was it that was wrong?”

  “I don’t know, I just knew it was bad.”

  “But you couldn’t tell what had caused it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think you could if you went in the house?”

  Ann sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s not like I see things happening like a movie playing.”

  “But your web site says that this sense you get,” Joe glanced down at his notebook, “the colors or the sounds or the smells, comes from when a person dies.”

  “Yes.”

  “So if you had that reaction to that house, it probably means someone died there, and since it was so strong that it was probably recently, right?”

  Another pause. “Probably.”

  Joe tapped his pen vigorously on the notepad then stopped himself. “Do you know what happened there?”

  “No, I told you, I don’t see details.”

  “But you could find out details if you wanted to,” he said cautiously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean a couple of internet searches and you could probably find out what happened there. Or at least get an idea of what might have happened there.”

  “If it’s so easy, why don’t you just do that?” she said testily.

  “Because I already know what might have happened there, my problem is that I have to prove it.”

  Ann blew out her breath. “Sorry. To answer your question, both my brother and I have a policy not to read any news that might end up having a bearing on a current or potential engagement. Which means I know a lot about international news but practically nothing about anything going on in the eastern half of the United States.” Joe raised his eyebrows and she shrugged. “It’s a strange profession.”

  Joe sat back in his chair to look at her. She looked small and forlorn, barricaded behind the breakfast bar, her arms crossed. He realized she was telling him these things without any expectation that he would believe her.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like you to come back to Philly and go through the house and tell me what you sense.”

  “You’d like me to do that? It’s not an order?”

  “No, it’s not an order, I don’t think the department would look kindly on issuing a warrant to bring a …” He stopped.

  “Psychic?”

  “Is that what you call what you do?”

  “No, but that’s what a lot of people call it.”

  “Well, anyhow … it’s a request, not an order. I also can’t reimburse you for the trip, but your brother seemed to think it might be good publicity if something comes of your participation in the investigation.”

  Ann looked out the dining room windows toward the water. “What do you think happened at that house?” asked Ann.

  “I’d rather not say until you’ve been through it.”

  “So do you often go to ‘psychics’ for help with your investigations?”

  “Well, I did try more traditional methods first but I keep coming up on dead ends.”

  “So you’re desperate.”

  Joe shrugged. “I’m willing to try less traditional methods.”

  “How do you propose I get in the house?” asked Ann.

  “You had a deal with your clients to go through the house. Tell them you’re willing to do it now.”

  *****

  After Joe left, with a recommendation from Ann for where he could get dinner before starting back to Philadelphia (Ann wondered if he was planning on making the round trip in one day), she called Mike.

  “Hey, you need a new phone,” said Mike.

  “I know, I’ll look into it. Joe Booth was just here.”

  “Did he ask about the Rittenhouse Square house?”

  “Yes. He seemed interested in the fact that I got the sense of something bad having happened there recently.”

  “He told me he was investigating a disappearance,” said Mike.

  “He wants me to go back, to go through the house and let him know what I think.”

  “Well, you’d get no argument from me there,” said Mike. “We still owe the Van Dykes a visit, and if we can help the police with an investigation and get some PR out of that, that’s icing on the cake.”

  Chapter 19

  Some years before, Mike had been contacted by a producer from the History Channel named Corey Duff who was producing a show called Talking with the Dead about people who have claimed to be able to communicate with the departed and how they have been accepted or rejected by society. Duff had read about the Barboza incident, as well as a similar event that had taken place a few years later involving a lost hiker in Wyoming whose body Ann had found, and wanted to interview Ann. Mike explained that Ann did not “talk with the dead” in the sense of engaging in a conversation with them but Duff was still interested and they arranged an interview in a conference room in a Lake Placid hotel. Ann rarely gave interviews, leaving the public side of the business to Mike, but to Mike’s surprise she agreed to appear on camera.

  Duff was a skilled and encouraging interviewer and Ann talked at some length about the Barboza tragedy—talked more, in fact, than she ever had before, even to Mike—and discussed some of her other engagements in what had become a sort of consulting practice after she and Mike had graduated from college.

  Ann’s
interview ended up on the cutting room floor during editing for Talking with the Dead but the following year Duff produced a follow-up show called The Sense of Death and not only used Ann’s interview but also arranged for an additional segment featuring Ann. Without providing her with any information in advance, he arranged visits to three locations where someone had died within the previous few months—one a home where an old man had choked to death on a piece of pizza, one the roadside site of a car accident that had killed a teenage girl, and one a convenience store where the middle aged male owner had been shot and killed during a robbery.

  At the first location Ann correctly identified the kitchen as the place where someone had died, specifically in the area by the sink, a fact Duff himself had not known until he investigated further after Ann’s visit. Ann guessed at a choking death because the sense was one of surprise and then panic—the spirit seemed to be inhabiting the house out of a sense that “it wasn’t his time yet.” The home’s current owner said that late at night—the time the old man was thought to have died—they sometimes heard banging coming from the kitchen which they had always attributed to the plumbing.

  Ann got nothing at the site of the car accident. When Duff explained the circumstances of the death to her, she speculated that it was because there was nothing that tied the girl to that location; when she died she had probably passed on immediately to whatever lay beyond the dimension Ann could sense. And what was that? Duff has asked. Ann said she had no idea, her sense of the dead did not extend that far.

  At the convenience store, Ann sensed anger—a bright red aura and a bitter, skunky smell. She told Duff she sensed someone whose spirit was waiting to even a score, to get revenge. In fact, the brothers of the dead man, co-owners of the store, sold the store not long after Ann’s visit, saying that they too could sense the anger—although its manifestation was not as physical for them as it was for Ann—and that being in the store was too upsetting for them.