Murder, She Wrote: Murder in Red: Murder She Wrote Series, Book 49 by Jessica Fletcher & Jon Land

Author:Jessica Fletcher & Jon Land [Fletcher, Jessica & Land, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The police cars were still rimming the stately Good Shepherd Manor in force when Mort and I arrived, equally mixed between the Newburyport town police and the Massachusetts State Police, a few with their lights still churning.

A state trooper, who looked big enough to be a pro football player, manning the entrance denied us entry at first, fortunately not asking for my name or reason for being there. He radioed a superior who was overseeing the potential crime scene and, after reciting the explanation behind Sheriff Metzger’s presence, received permission for Mort to come upstairs. I followed along sheepishly, waiting for the officer to call out something like “Just a moment there,” or “Where do you think you’re going?” but he never did.

A state police captain whose name tag identified him as Barnes met us in the hallway a bit down from Tripp’s room, where all the activity was centered, discomfiting me with a harsh stare focused my way.

“Sheriff Metzger, please tell me this isn’t who I think it is.”

“In the flesh, Captain, and well acquainted enough with the victim to potentially be of substantial assistance to the case.”

“At this point, Sheriff,” Barnes said, his gaze continuing to focus on me, “there is no case and Tripp Van Dorn is only the deceased, not a victim. Our preliminary assessment is that his death was due to suicide.”

“Would you mind if we took a look, Captain?” I asked quietly. “You see, I was very close with the young man’s mother, who also recently passed. If nothing else, I can formally identify the body in her absence.”

Barnes looked at Mort, then nodded to both of us, a single nod. “Just to ID the body, so we’re clear on that.”

“We are,” I said.

“She is,” Mort followed.

Inside the room, Tripp Van Dorn had maneuvered his wheelchair so that his face was pressed flush against the sheer curtain inside the open drapes. The television was still on, tuned to a movie station with the sound muted, making me wonder what the last thing Tripp had watched might have been, and if that had had anything to do with him rolling his wheelchair against the window on an angle that pressed the sheer curtain against his face. At that point, his breath acted like glue in pinning the material to his nose and mouth, ultimately suffocating him.

“I’ve got to admit,” Barnes was saying, “I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.”

There were five others squeezed into the room, two uniformed officers from Newburyport and three state police crime-scene techs measuring distances and taking samples of pretty much everything, whether innocuous or not.

“According to the log,” Barnes resumed, “a night nurse had given him a sleeping drug just after midnight when he couldn’t sleep. She found him this way four hours later on her rounds.”

“You think he requested it to facilitate the process, make it harder to change his mind,” I presumed.

“Until something suggests otherwise.”

Tripp’s body was canted forward, so the back of his head was

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