Hush Little Girl

by Lisa Regan

  Josie leaned into his hand. “I wanted to believe it was true—that we’d had our fill of bad luck. Noah, Lorelei was fiercely protective of her kids. I know I only spent a little over an hour with them, but it was obvious. I can’t see her letting either of them out of her sight.”

  What she didn’t say was that she was afraid of what they’d find at Lorelei’s home.

  Before he could respond, Gretchen rapped against the driver’s side window. Both of them looked at her. With one hand she spoke into her cell phone, but with the other she signaled toward Griffin Hall. Trinity strode toward the vehicle, a look of fury flashing across her face. Jogging to catch up with her was her boyfriend, Drake Nally. He was an FBI agent with the New York City field office. Josie had worked with him on a case in the past. While he wouldn’t be able to lend any help with local murders, Josie hoped he’d be able to calm Trinity down. But Josie knew that was a tall order, given that Trinity was a force to be reckoned with.

  Noah must have sensed Josie’s thoughts. He said, “This isn’t good.” He opened the passenger’s side door. “You go with Gretchen. I’ll run interference.”

  Gretchen hung up and got into the car as Noah jogged over to Trinity and Drake. Josie watched him put his hands up and block her way as she tried to step around him. Drake circled her and stood shoulder to shoulder with Noah, keeping her at bay.

  As they pulled away from Griffin Hall and down the long, winding drive that led from Harper’s Peak to the road at the base of the mountain, Gretchen said, “You two aren’t getting married today, are you?”

  “No,” Josie said.

  Gretchen sighed. “No one is going to be happy about this, you know.”

  “We know,” said Josie. “Make a left.”

  Gretchen turned left onto the road. “When I say no one is going to be happy about this, I mean your families are going to be pissed. You know that, right?”

  Josie said, “Would you want the memory of your wedding day to be one in which a child was murdered at the venue?”

  “Good point,” said Gretchen. She held up her phone. “Take it. Hummel texted me a photo of that… thing Holly was holding.”

  Josie grabbed the phone and swiped until she found the text message from Hummel. The item looked like a doll that a very young child might make. A pinecone made up the body. Two acorns had been affixed to it to look like bulging eyes. Tiny twigs had been tucked into the folds of the pinecone to make a nose, mouth, and then arms and legs. Had it not been found on the body of a dead girl, it might be comical. Instead, it only roiled the acid in Josie’s stomach. It didn’t look like anything a twelve-year-old girl would make or have with her. Obviously, whoever had staged her body on the overlook had purposely left it with her, but who had made it? Why had they left it?

  “Creepy, right?” Gretchen said.

  Josie leaned forward and dropped the phone onto the front seat. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s up here on the left.”

  Gretchen slowed the vehicle. “What’s up here on the left? There’s nothing out here.”

  “There is,” Josie insisted. “Pull onto the shoulder. Over there.”

  Gretchen stopped the car in the middle of the deserted road. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Just pull over!” Josie exclaimed.

  With a shake of her head, Gretchen pulled the car onto the grassy shoulder of the road. Josie leaned forward between the seats again and pointed toward their left. “There,” she said. “There are two sycamore trees, about a car’s length apart. Pull through those trees and you’ll see a driveway.”

  Gretchen did as Josie asked and maneuvered her vehicle between the two trees. Ahead, two metal posts came into view. A chain ran from one to the other and hanging from it was a sign that read: “No Trespassing.”

  Gretchen said, “These people live here? This is how you get to their house?”

  Josie said, “Lorelei said she liked her privacy.”

  At the time, Josie had found it a little bit odd, but she certainly hadn’t thought there was anything sinister behind Lorelei’s insistence on privacy. She was a woman living alone with two young girls.

  Gretchen stared ahead at the chain. “She liked her privacy, or she was hiding from something? Or someone?”

  Josie saw a barely perceptible shiver ripple through Gretchen’s frame. She knew a thing or two about hiding from dangerous people.

  “I’m not sure now,” Josie admitted. “Nothing seemed amiss when I was here. Lorelei just said she liked to live ‘off the grid’ as much as possible.”

  “Like a doomsday prepper?” Gretchen asked.

  “No, not like that,” Josie said. “She wasn’t building a bunker or anything. It was more like she grew a lot of her own food. There’s a big garden and greenhouse behind the house. You’ll see. She told me she homeschooled her kids. Also she said she didn’t allow electronics in the house.”

  “No electronics. Even television?”

  “Not till they got older, she said. She had a laptop, but the girls weren’t allowed access to it. I was able to get cell service when she brought me here. I think because it’s close to Harper’s Peak.”

  “I would say that whole set-up sounds weird, but that’s how I grew up. Not the homeschooling, but the lack of technology. I mean, we had TV and landlines, but that was it.”

  The longer they spoke, the greater the uneasiness building in Josie’s stomach grew. Had Holly snuck out of the house? If so, why? Had she gone to meet someone? How many people did she have access to while she was being homeschooled? Did Lorelei even know she was gone? Josie said, “You want me to get the chain?”

  Gretchen raised a brow. “In that dress? No. Hang on.”

  She got out and unhooked the chain, setting it to one side so that their vehicle could pass.

  “The house is about a quarter mile up this drive,” Josie said once Gretchen was back in the car. The drive was merely two ruts in the mud made by the wheels of Lorelei Mitchell’s pickup truck. The house came into view. It was a charming, two-story stone home with a peaked roof made of red tin and a spacious front porch. A small wooden log normally used for garden edging had been sunk into the ground to mark the separation of the dirt driveway and the front yard. Paving stones led the way to the porch steps. Gretchen parked beside the truck and turned the engine off. “Seeing as you’re dressed like that, why don’t I try the door and you wait here,” she told Josie.

  “Sure,” Josie said.

  Gretchen gave her a dubious look but got out and headed toward Lorelei’s front door. Josie wriggled out of the back seat and stood next to the car. Her white heels sank into the dirt. She took a deep breath, adjusting her dress. It was nearing late afternoon, and the sun shone brightly through the trees overhead. A heady floral scent wafted through the air. Josie had no doubt it came from the tightly packed flowerbed in front of the porch. She listened to Gretchen knock and call out Lorelei’s name.

  No response.

  The feeling of uneasiness turning Josie’s stomach went into overdrive. She glanced at the truck. The shotgun was no longer hanging from the cab window. But it wouldn’t be if Lorelei was home, Josie remembered. In January when they’d arrived at this very spot, she had watched Lorelei climb into the rear of the truck’s cab and lift the small back seats to reveal a gun safe tucked beneath them. It was so cleverly disguised, it merely looked like it was part of the black metal base of the seats. Lorelei had used a key from her keychain to unlock it, slide her shotgun and boxes of ammunition inside, and secure it again before turning the seats back down. Josie would never have known it was there.

  Gretchen knocked harder this time, and Josie heard a loud creak. “The door’s open,” said Gretchen. She moved closer to the open door and tried calling Lorelei again.

  Josie hobbled over to the truck and peered inside. On the headrest of the driver’s seat was a bloody handprint.

  “Shit,” Josie said. Hitching her dress up, she scrambled toward the other side of the truck. Ano
ther bloody handprint marred the truck’s door handle. While the rest of the front looked undisturbed, the back seat was a different story. The seats were up and the lid of the gun safe was mangled. From where Josie stood, it looked as though someone had used a heavy object to smash in the lock mechanism and then pry open the safe. Lorelei’s shotgun was gone.

  Josie turned, her feet already trying to run toward Gretchen, but her heels got stuck again. She fell forward, catching herself with her palms. Slipping her feet out of her shoes, she left them behind and clambered up the front porch steps. “Gretchen,” she called. “Something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong.”

  Four

  Gretchen went back to her vehicle and retrieved her phone from the front seat. Josie moved close enough to look over her shoulder and see that she was texting both Mettner and the Chief to request back-up and the Evidence Response Team. Tucking the phone into her bra, she leaned back into the car and took a gun from her clutch purse. Handing it to Josie, she said, “This is my service weapon. You’ll use this one.”

  Taking the Glock, barrel pointed downward, Josie said, “You brought this to my wedding?”

  Gretchen grimaced. “I bring it everywhere. It’s nothing personal. Come on.”

  She led Josie around to the trunk of the car and popped it open. She pushed aside a few emergency supplies—ponchos, first aid kit, jump starter, and flashlight—to reveal a small metal rectangular-shaped box with a silver lock on it. Josie knew at once it was where Gretchen kept her personal gun. Metal jangled in Gretchen’s hand as she searched for the key. Once she found it, she opened the box and pulled out a Ruger Security-9 together with a full magazine. She palmed the magazine into the gun and chambered a round with expert precision. Keeping the barrel of her gun toward the ground, she said, “What are we talking about here? What kind of weapon did this woman have?”

  “A Winchester 1200,” Josie answered.

  Gretchen’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Then she said, “Okay. You’ve been in this house before. You’ll take the lead.”

  Josie nodded.

  They could have stayed outside and waited for back-up, but so far what they knew was that one of the home’s residents had been murdered; there were two bloody handprints at the scene, and one missing shotgun. The front door had been left open. If Lorelei or Emily were still inside and one or both of them were injured, waiting for back-up could be the difference between life and death. Josie and Gretchen had to go in and make sure that no one in the house needed aid. Neither of them stated the other obvious issue: the killer could potentially still be inside.

  Josie said, “Take off those heels.”

  Without hesitation, Gretchen kicked off her taupe heels and followed Josie up the front steps. They positioned themselves on opposite sides of the door, elbows tucked against their bodies, pistols pulled in close to their torsos but at the ready.

  “I’m going left,” Josie said.

  Gretchen nodded. She would go right. Reaching forward, Gretchen pushed the door open, and Josie stepped through it smoothly and quickly, immediately moving left while Gretchen went right. Her feet, snug in sheer pantyhose, moved lightly and silently along the left side of the room. Her eyes followed the barrel of her gun, her mind cataloguing things in rapid-fire fashion. Old yellow couch and loveseat. Beanbag chairs.

  Gretchen swept the other side of the room, moving in sync with Josie until they met at a doorway to what Josie knew was a dining room. A rushing started in her ears. Her heart raced. Gretchen fell slightly behind her, waiting on Josie’s lead. In law enforcement, doorways were known as the fatal funnel because when you were clearing a structure, they became a choke-point where officers were most vulnerable and most likely to die. Josie took a second to try to slow down the adrenaline shooting through her veins. “Right,” she said quietly to Gretchen.

  Gretchen squeezed her shoulder, indicating she understood the plan. Josie moved into the dining room first, moving to the right while Gretchen moved to the left, eyes and gun barrels panning each corner of the room for any threats. Again, Josie’s mind quickly catalogued what she saw. Dark wooden table taking up most of the room. Four chairs. Two tucked in, one pulled slightly out, and the last knocked on its side. Markers, sketch pads, and a coloring book scattered across the table and the floor. A bowl of cereal overturned on the hardwood floor. Droplets of dried blood leading to the next choke-point. This doorway was narrower.

  Again, Gretchen moved in tandem with Josie, staying a slight step behind her. “Left,” Josie said as she moved into the kitchen. Gretchen went the opposite way, her eyes and gun barrel focused on the corners that Josie was not covering.

  The kitchen was as she remembered it. Countertops and cabinets lining the walls. A large island counter in the center. Decorated in gray with red accents. Large windows at the back of the house overlooking the back porch and garden. Dried herbs hanging upside-down over the sink. There were also things that hadn’t been there before. Broken glass shimmered on the tile floor. The refrigerator door dented inward. A smear of blood with two brown, curly hairs stuck to one of the corners of the countertop. Below that, a cascade of dried blood running down the side of the counter and splattering across the floor. Josie’s eyes kept searching, following her gun.

  “Back door,” she said tersely, indicating that it had been left ajar. “Footprints.”

  Josie counted three of them—two that looked to be from large, likely male, sneakers, and one smaller barefoot print, all in crimson.

  “Body,” Gretchen said.

  Keeping her weapon ready, Josie took a wide arc across the room to the other side of the island, avoiding the blood as best she could, and drew up beside Gretchen. “Shit,” she breathed.

  Barefoot and clad in a pair of distressed jeans and a white peasant blouse, Lorelei lay face-up on the floor. Her arms were thrown wide, a smattering of bullet holes in her chest. Whoever had shot her had used the buckshot at close range. Josie looked around, noting the spent shotgun shell on the floor near Lorelei’s feet. A pool of congealed blood spread beneath her body, some of it having soaked into her unruly brown and gray curls. A gash had opened up on one side of her forehead, along her hairline. The blood was now dry and flaky. Her face was frozen in a look of shock and horror that threatened to derail Josie’s emotions.

  “Emily,” Josie choked out. “Let’s go.”

  Gretchen stayed in position while Josie took a quick glance out the back door. No discernible threats. Josie skirted the body, not wanting to disturb the crime scene any more than they already had, and went back to the living room. Josie’s heartbeat sped up again as they climbed the steps, pistols pointed upward. She had to concentrate on not tripping over her dress. On level ground, it swished lightly over the floor, but stairs were another matter. Josie stayed in the lead, Gretchen behind her, her own gun angled away from Josie’s line of fire. Their bodies were nearly touching, and Josie felt comfort knowing that Gretchen, who had twenty years on the job, had her back.

  Over the sound of her own breathing and pounding heart, Josie heard a thud. Both of them froze near the top of the steps. Josie wanted to run, to rush ahead to see if someone was still in the house, if Emily was alive, but she quelled the urge. In these situations, smooth and steady was safest. In a quiet voice meant only for Gretchen, Josie said, “Right, hallway,” indicating that at the top of the stairs was a hallway—another dangerous narrow point for officers clearing a house—and that she would take the right side.

  Again, Gretchen’s hand squeezed Josie’s bare shoulder, signaling for her to proceed. Josie reached the landing and turned right, registering a dim, carpeted hallway. Gretchen lagged a step behind, taking the left wall.

  “Open door,” Josie said, as they came to the first door in the hall. They cleared any open doors first. This one was the bathroom. Empty. No blood. No signs of struggle. The next door was open as well. This one was Lorelei’s bedroom. As they cleared it, Josie took in the details: king-sized bed with messy
blankets, one wall of closet space, one wall of windows. A small dresser with a mirror on top. Clean squares along the edges of the mirror told Josie several items had previously been tucked in there. Photographs, most likely. As they moved out of the room, Josie saw the torn corner of a color photograph still stuck under the edge of one side of the mirror. She didn’t have time to think about who had taken them.

  They moved back into the hallway, clearing each one of the remaining rooms. One was extremely large, decorated in various shades of purple with a twin bed on each side. Next to each bed was a small white desk and dresser. One side of the room held a few dolls, toys, and stuffed animals while the other held mostly books and art supplies. Emily and Holly, Josie thought. They’d shared a room. Beside what Josie guessed was Holly’s desk, a large swath of the wall had been painted with chalkboard paint and framed with wood trim. A plastic cup on the floor held various colored chalks. From a small string affixed to one side of the wood trim hung an eraser. The wall itself was decorated in colorful drawings. Josie could easily tell which had been drawn by Holly and which had been drawn by her younger, less practiced sister. Dogs, frogs, horses, stick figures, happy faces, hearts, and rainbows told the story of two happy girls—completely at odds with the two crime scenes Josie had seen so far today.

  The last room in the house was painted a bland tan color. It, too, had a section painted as a chalkboard, but there were no drawings, no chalk, and no eraser. A bare twin mattress lay in the center of the floor. The closet had no door. It was barren. On one wall was a poster of a man rock-climbing above the word ‘Perseverance’, and on the wall opposite, what looked like an angry child’s drawing. A face with jagged, torn features had been drawn in black marker and then scribbled over with blue and red. Neither of the remaining bedrooms showed any signs of struggle or violence.

  “Nothing,” Gretchen said as they stood in that final room.