Chapter 5 - The Funeral Was Built Before the Fire
Dr. Andrew Bennett hired a criminal-defense attorney before investigators ever reached his office.
That told Michael nothing legally.
It told him plenty emotionally.
The original Connecticut crash file showed badly burned remains recovered from Emily’s vehicle. Identification had relied heavily on dental comparison because conventional visual identification was impossible.
Bennett had signed the comparison.
But Emily said he had never been her dentist.
Her actual dentist practiced in Brooklyn.
“Then how did Bennett have your dental records?” Michael asked.
“He didn’t.”
Investigators obtained the answer from the original evidence log.
Bennett had brought comparison films himself.
He claimed they had been forwarded from Emily’s dental office.
Emily’s dental office had no record of sending them.
The hidden truth was beginning to surface.
The funeral had not simply followed a mistaken identification.
Someone had manufactured the identification process.
Michael’s investigator Ben Shaw contributed something smaller but equally troubling.
Three months before Emily disappeared, Victoria’s family office paid Bennett $85,000 for “executive dental consulting.”
There was no executive dental program.
Victoria’s attorney called it an unrelated concierge-health expense.
The special committee disagreed and added it to its review.
Emily, meanwhile, remembered something from the Tahoe house.
Bennett had visited her once.
Not as a dentist.
He had examined an infected cut on her wrist.
“He wouldn’t look at me,” she said.
“Did he know who you were?”
“He called me Mrs. Harrington.”
Michael walked to the hospital window.
For two years he had hated himself for accepting a closed casket.
Now he understood the casket had been part of the mechanism.
Emily watched him.
“There’s more.”
Michael turned.
“Before Bennett left, I heard him arguing with Victor downstairs.”
“About what?”
“He said, ‘This was supposed to last six months.’”
Michael frowned.
Emily continued.
“Victor said, ‘Victoria changed the timetable.’”
Six months.
May you like
Emily had been imprisoned for two years.
Whatever the original plan had been, it had changed after she disappeared.
