Hush Little Girl

by Lisa Regan

  Josie picked up her pace, finding Rini and Sandoval in the girls’ room. Rini sat in the center of the room, barking. Once Sandoval saw them, she gave Rini another command and the dog quieted and lay down.

  Josie knew that search-and-rescue dogs gave indicators when they found what they were looking for. She also knew that Rini would always give an active indicator when making a live find—meaning that she would bark when she found a live person.

  Except Emily wasn’t there.

  Six

  They tore the room apart, moving every piece of furniture, taking the beds apart, but found nothing. Sandoval took Rini back outside and repeated the exercise twice more. Twice more the dog ended up in Emily and Holly’s room, giving her active indicator that she had found Emily.

  “With all due respect to Rini,” Gretchen said, standing in the bedroom with dog and handler for the third time. “She’s just wrong. I mean, this is Emily’s bedroom. Of course it’s going to smell like her.”

  Sandoval seemed just as confused as Josie and Gretchen. “That doesn’t matter. People shed scent all day long. Rini would be able to find it. She’s never missed a live find before. I’m not sure—something’s not right. Let me—how about if I call a colleague? Maybe we can get another dog out here to do the same search and see what happens?”

  Josie couldn’t help but think that every second that went by was another second that Emily was getting further and further out of reach. But they had no choice. There were already searchers in the woods. The Amber Alert had gone out. She’d never known search-and-rescue dogs to get things wrong. Sometimes the scent stopped for reasons beyond their control, but they were extremely reliable. She looked down at Rini’s earnest face. The dog knew she was right. What was Josie missing?

  She moved around the perimeter of the room once more, this time looking for places where the carpet might be loose, but found nothing. If there was some hidden compartment in the floorboards, Josie didn’t see how one would get to it.

  Looking back at Gretchen and Sandoval, she asked, “Is it possible she’s… in the wall?”

  Gretchen raised a brow. “Boss, how would an eight-year-old get into a wall? If someone put her in a wall, we’d know it. Holly and Lorelei Mitchell weren’t dead long enough for someone to patch and paint a wall. Plus, why leave Lorelei’s body in the kitchen, Holly’s at Harper’s Peak but then go to the trouble of hiding Emily—alive? We’ve torn this place up. She’s not here. Come on. We’ll wait for the other dog and see what happens. I’ll call dispatch and request more searchers.”

  Glumly, Josie followed them out of the room. As they got to the bottom of the steps, she thought she heard another thud, the same as she and Gretchen had heard earlier, but neither Gretchen nor Sandoval heard it. Outside, both Gretchen and Sandoval made phone calls while Josie stared at the house. Behind it, the sun had begun to set, leaving the sky awash in orange and red. If they were going to be there into the night, they’d need to turn on some lights.

  Josie went back inside, flicking light switches as she went, and noticing more strange details. The beanbag chairs in the living room and lack of a coffee table or end tables. The wall art was stretched canvas, not glass. In one corner were two plastic sets of drawers. Josie opened a couple of them to see that they contained arts and crafts supplies. Paper, crayons, markers, glitter, glue, tape, felt pieces, ribbon, paint, sponges caked with dried paint. No brushes and no scissors. In the dining room the tables and chairs were made of oak but there was nothing else in the room. No centerpiece on the table. No sideboard or hutch. The overturned cereal bowl and spoon were plastic. Moving into the kitchen, Josie opened and closed drawers, noting that all the utensils were plastic. Also, there were no knives. Anywhere in the kitchen. Not even butter knives.

  She opened the cabinets, finding plastic dinnerware but ceramic dinnerware as well. The coffee mugs were ceramic. In one of the upper cabinets, she found several orange pill bottles. All of the drugs had been prescribed to Lorelei. Josie committed them to memory: methylphenidate, risperidone, aripiprazole, olanzapine, alprazolam. Josie didn’t recognize all of them, but from some of her previous cases, she knew at least two of the drugs were anti-psychotics, often prescribed for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, among other things. Had Lorelei been struggling with either of those—or some other mental health issue? Josie checked the bottles again to see they had all been prescribed by a Dr. Vincent Buckley. She made a mental note to track down the doctor to find out what he knew about Lorelei and her children. They could likely get a warrant for Lorelei’s medical chart as well.

  She went back up the stairs and found Lorelei’s room. Searching the closet, she found no personal effects or documents of any kind. However, all of her clothes were folded and placed in plastic storage cubes. No hangers. Josie searched the single nightstand drawer but found nothing of interest. Standing next to the king-sized bed, she turned in a circle, marveling at how bare the room seemed. Something on the back of the door caught her eye. She took a few steps toward it and saw there was a lock on the door. Not just any kind of lock but a deadbolt. Who put a deadbolt lock on the inside of their bedroom door?

  Josie went back into the hallway and checked the other bedroom doors. Emily and Holly’s room also had a deadbolt lock on the inside of their door. The last bedroom had no lock.

  “What the hell?” she muttered to herself as she returned to Lorelei’s room. Her eyes panned the room again, landing on the bed once more. The mattress sat on what appeared to be a solid metal frame. It took several tries for Josie to dislodge the mattress and push it partially off the frame. In the middle of the metal frame was a small, sliding metal door.

  Josie ran down the steps as fast as her wedding dress would allow. “Chan!” she hollered as she burst onto the back porch, overlooking the garden and greenhouse. “Chan!”

  Officer Chan was just leaving the greenhouse. She stopped in the center of the garden and stared at Josie. “You got something?”

  “I think so.”

  A few minutes later, Josie and Gretchen stood in the doorway of Lorelei’s bedroom as Chan used gloved hands to pull items from the hollow core of the bedframe, narrating as she went. “Three boxes of ammunition for a Winchester 1200 shotgun. A large plastic sewing kit. A small plastic bin filled with… knives of various sizes. A smaller plastic container with three pair of scissors in it.” Using a flashlight, she searched the compartment one last time. “That’s it.”

  “Nothing else?” Josie said.

  “Sorry,” Chan said. “Just all this weird stuff. Want me to log it in as evidence?”

  “No,” Gretchen said. “I don’t think you need to. Thanks.”

  She gave them a mock salute before leaving them alone in the room. Josie said, “She knew she was in danger.”

  “Yes,” Gretchen agreed.

  Josie opened her mouth to speak again but a sound froze her in place. Another thud, this one louder, closer. They looked at one another, eyes wide. “She’s here,” Josie said quietly.

  “She can’t be,” Gretchen replied. “We searched every nook and cranny of this place.”

  “Rini scented her here, in this house, in her own room.”

  “Boss, the dog could be wrong.”

  “You heard Sandoval. Rini’s never been wrong before.”

  With a sigh, Gretchen said, “What are we missing?”

  Again, they walked through the house, calling out Emily’s name, telling her it was safe to come out from her hiding place. In the rooms that were carpeted, they checked for loose seams, and in the rooms that weren’t, they checked for loose floorboards. They looked behind furniture and inside closets to see if there were any secret compartments they had missed.

  Nothing.

  Back outside, Sandoval and Rini waited by her SUV for another dog and handler to arrive. Josie stared at the house, thinking of the day that Lorelei had brought her here. If Lorelei believed she was in so much danger, why would she bring a stranger to her home? Had
she known she was in danger when Josie was her guest, or had something happened in the three months since they’d met? Something to make her hide all the sharp items in her home in a secret compartment under her mattress, and put deadbolt locks on the insides of the occupied bedroom doors?

  Josie thought back to that day in January. Everything downstairs had been the same. She just hadn’t realized at the time that Lorelei had effectively rid her home of harmful objects like knives and scissors or even glass from wall art that could be shattered and used to hurt someone. Josie hadn’t had any reason to think that Lorelei and her daughters were in danger, or even that they were afraid. In fact, Lorelei had left both girls home alone that day. Would she have left them alone if she was so afraid someone was going to injure them?

  “Boss?” Gretchen said.

  Josie looked away from the front door and back at Gretchen, suddenly realizing she had taken several steps back toward the house. Her stockinged feet were at the base of the steps. Where they had been the day she trailed Lorelei into the house. Josie visualized that cold, nasty day once more. By the time they reached the house, the sleet was coming down harder. Josie’s boots squished in the layer of wet snow accumulating on each step as she followed Lorelei to the front door.

  “It sticks sometimes,” Lorelei had said as she struggled to turn the key in the lock. Laughing, she had put her full weight into it, and in doing so, fell forward a bit, her shoulder hitting the doorbell. Josie remembered hearing the muted chime from inside. She’d done it twice before the door opened.

  But what if it hadn’t been an accident? What if it had been purposeful?

  Josie’s fingers reached out, lingering over the doorbell.

  Behind her, Gretchen padded up the steps. “Boss?” she said again.

  Josie pressed the bell, hearing the chime from inside, louder now, because the front door was slightly ajar. She counted off three seconds and rang it again. Then she stepped inside, again picturing Lorelei. She’d been talking to Josie as she walked through the living room, telling Josie how she grew much of her own food out back even in winter, as she was lucky enough to have a greenhouse. In the dining room, one of the chairs was against the wall rather than tucked beneath the table. Lorelei had dragged it across the room, putting it back in place, but making a horrific noise as its feet scraped across the tile floor. At the time, Josie had absently wondered why she didn’t just pick it up, but Lorelei was talking about how she homeschooled her girls and Josie didn’t want to be rude, so she focused on Lorelei’s words.

  Now, Josie picked up one of the chairs, put it against the wall where she’d seen it the first time she visited. Then she dragged it across the room, causing a sound akin to a shriek. In the doorway, Gretchen winced.

  “Let me call the girls,” Lorelei had said then, returning to the living room. At the bottom of the steps, she had called their names. When she didn’t get any response, she banged on the wall three times.

  Gretchen moved out of her way as Josie went to the bottom of the steps. She didn’t call for Emily. Instead, she banged on the wall three times, in approximately the same place Lorelei had.

  Then she listened.

  Gretchen said, “You want to tell me what’s happening right now, boss?”

  Josie didn’t take her eyes off the top of the steps. “She was signaling them,” she told Gretchen. “The day I was here with them. She had left them here alone. When we got here, she did all these things that I didn’t even realize were significant at the time. They must have been hiding and she was giving them an all-clear. Doorbell twice, chair scraping over the floor, three bangs on the wall.”

  “Was that it?”

  “Shit.”

  Josie followed in Lorelei’s footsteps, heading halfway up the stairs. Lorelei had stopped on the fifth or sixth step and stomped on it four times. Turning back to Josie, she’d smiled. “This old carpet,” she’d said. “Keeps getting loose.”

  But now Josie saw there was no loose area of carpet. It was part of the signal. Without boots or shoes of any kind, it would be difficult to make a lot of noise. Josie hitched up her dress and lifted one foot as far as she could, bringing it down hard four times on the step.

  She waited. A rustling came from somewhere on the second floor. Then a quiet creak, followed by more rustling, another creak, and the sound of small feet scuttering along the hallway. Josie’s heart seemed to stop for a split second.

  Emily Mitchell appeared at the top of the steps. Her brown hair was messy and matted. Wrinkles covered her blue pajamas. She was missing a sock. Clutched in her arms was a stuffed dog with long, floppy ears.

  Josie’s heart thundered back to life. She’d spent the last several hours trying not to think about what might be happening to this little girl at the hands of a ruthless killer. Seeing her alive, safe, and unharmed sent a surge of relief through Josie’s veins.

  “Hi, Emily,” she said.

  Seven

  Emily stared at Josie warily, unmoving. Josie climbed another step. How long had the girl been hiding? How many hours? She had to be starving, exhausted, and terrified. Josie smiled. “I’m so glad you came out,” she said. “We’re here to help you.”

  Emily’s grip on the stuffed dog tightened as Josie climbed the final few steps, kneeling on the landing so she was face to face with her. “It’s safe now, Emily.”

  Her hazel eyes widened as she took in Josie’s dress. “Did I die?” she whispered.

  For the umpteenth time that day, Josie felt her heart might break apart in her chest. “No,” she reassured her. “You are very much alive.”

  “Are you an angel?”

  Josie laughed. “No. I’m a police officer.”

  Emily still didn’t move, but Josie took it as a good sign that she wasn’t recoiling. She whispered, “You look like an angel.”

  Josie looked down at her dress and smiled once more. “Thank you. I was supposed to get married today. That’s why I look like this. But I am really a police officer, and I came here to get you and make sure you stay safe. There are a bunch more police officers downstairs and outside, waiting for us.”

  Emily didn’t respond.

  Josie said, “I was here before, you know? A few months ago. I had coffee and banana bread with you and your mom and sister.”

  One of Emily’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly.

  Josie massaged the right side of her face, feeling the thin scar beneath her fingers as she rubbed the make-up away. She turned her head so Emily could get a clear view. “Remember this? You asked me about it.”

  Emily’s face changed instantly, a look of recognition and excitement flashing across it. Then it quickly died. “Where’s Mama and Holly?”

  Josie glanced at the bottom of the steps to see Gretchen standing there. What could Josie say? What should she say? She didn’t know how much Emily knew or what she had seen. Telling her the truth would be emotionally catastrophic, but Josie couldn’t see the advantage in lying. In her experience, adults sometimes had this natural instinct to lie to children about bad things, thinking they were somehow shielding or protecting them, when often, children took things better than adults. Josie’s own childhood had been filled with trauma, abuse, and uncertainty, and yet, the truth, no matter how difficult it was to hear, had always made life simpler to navigate.

  Josie said, “I’m very sorry, Emily, but they’re not with us anymore.”

  “They’re dead,” Emily said. It wasn’t a question, and there was no hint of hopefulness in her tone that perhaps Josie would oppose this statement. She knew.

  “I’m so sorry, Emily.”

  “Mama said the bad things might happen,” Emily said. “She was right.”

  “What bad things?” Josie asked.

  “Mama said I never had to talk about them if I didn’t want to.”

  “Okay,” Josie said, not wanting to press the issue. The girl’s psyche was surely very fragile at this point, and Josie wasn’t about to say or do anything that mig
ht cause more damage. Instead, she said, “You were so smart by hiding, and you were so disciplined staying in your hiding spot until I gave you the signal to come out.”

  Emily nodded. “Holly taught me.”

  Josie exchanged a brief glance with Gretchen. She was one of the most stoic detectives Josie had ever met, but Josie could see the strain in her face. What the hell had been going on in this house that Emily’s older sister had taught her to hide when bad things happened?

  “Did Holly hide with you today at all?” Josie asked.

  Emily shook her head. “No. She couldn’t hide today. I went by myself.”

  “That was very good,” Josie assured her. “I’m glad you did. Can you show me where your hiding place is?”

  Emily’s lips pursed momentarily as she regarded Josie. Then she leaned in and in a hushed tone, said, “Do you have a gun?”

  “I do,” Josie said. “I don’t have it right this second, but yes, I own a gun. Are you worried about that?”

  With one hand, Emily stroked the top of her stuffed dog’s head. “I’m worried you won’t be ready for the bad things, like Mama and Holly.”

  The breath seemed to rush out of Josie’s body all at once. She took a beat to make sure her composure didn’t crack. “It’s my job to be ready for the bad things, Emily. I promise that I will do everything I can to keep you safe, and so will all the other police officers here today. Okay?”

  Emily reached out and touched Josie’s face, her small fingers, as light as a butterfly’s touch, tracing Josie’s scar. “You didn’t tell me what this was from,” she said. “But now I know. It was from the bad things, wasn’t it?”

  Josie swallowed over the growing lump in her throat. “Yes,” she croaked. “It was.”

  “You’re still here.”