Hush Little Girl

by Lisa Regan

  Josie said, “There was clearly a confrontation of some kind at the house. I think she was probably killed there.”

  “Me too,” Noah said. “But we have to cover all the bases so we don’t miss anything. Celeste has Tom hard at work getting our team access to everyone on the premises. Mett was questioning guests when I left. He was hoping maybe one of the guests saw the killer on the grounds but didn’t realize it at the time. He wasn’t having much luck, though. It looks like no one saw anything. We think whoever brought her body there came through the woods.”

  “Lorelei’s house is a couple of miles from Harper’s Peak. That’s a long trek.”

  Noah said, “Unless Holly escaped the house and the killer caught up with her in the woods, murdered her, and carried her to the church.”

  Josie thought about the pinecone doll and how Emily had said that it meant “he” was sorry. Had the killer not meant to kill Holly? Or was he just sorry that he had? Was that the significance of the doll placed on her body? Did the church itself have some significance? “Her body was staged at the church,” she told Noah. “It has meaning. He didn’t move Lorelei’s body.”

  “When Gretchen called Mett, she said you two had discussed the possibility that this was a domestic situation. If that was the case, he probably wasn’t sorry he killed Lorelei. It would make more sense that perhaps he chased Holly into the woods. Maybe he never intended to kill her, but he’d gone too far and felt remorse for her death.”

  “He left her somewhere beautiful,” Josie added. “Somewhere she would be found.”

  “And he left her body in a dignified way.”

  “True,” said Josie.

  “Mett got a few more people to come in and search the woods near Harper’s Peak. Chief approved the overtime.”

  “That’s great,” Josie said. She held up the bag. “I need to get changed. Then I want to see what I can find out about Lorelei’s background. But I need help getting out of this dress.”

  Ten

  Twenty minutes later they emerged from an unused room in the basement of the hospital. Josie’s skin was flushed. She looked over at Noah to see that his was as well. She could still feel his mouth on her throat and his hands on her hips as the wedding dress fell to the floor and Noah kicked it aside. She couldn’t remember them being so hungry for one another, not even at the beginning of their relationship, but she had needed him the same way she used to need several shots of Wild Turkey whenever life’s darkest moments threatened to overtake her. It was clear from the second his fingers brushed over the buttons of her dress that Noah had needed her just as badly. As they stepped into the empty hallway with its jaundiced walls and grimy tile floor, Josie tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears and adjusted the gun holster at her waist. She slung the bag with the laptop over her shoulder and looked back at Noah, who held her wedding dress over one arm. Strands of his thick, brown hair jutted out wildly. Josie reached up to smooth them down, still feeling remnants of the wild electricity crackling between them.

  Softly, Noah said, “Maybe we should almost get married more often.”

  Before Josie could respond, another voice came from down the hall. “Hey, lovebirds. I’ve been looking for you—either of you, actually.”

  They turned to see Dr. Feist standing outside the doors to the city morgue, dressed in her signature blue scrubs and skull cap. She waved them over. “I called Mett and Gretchen, both of whom are otherwise engaged. They both said one of you should be available to hear autopsy results.” She stared at them, a slow smile curving her lips. “Or did I interrupt something?”

  Noah held out the wedding dress. “Josie had to get changed.”

  Dr. Feist raised a brow. “Sure. Whatever. Come on. You can leave that in my office for safekeeping until you’re ready to take it home.”

  They followed her down the hall and into the exam room. It was windowless, its walls pale gray cinderblock. In the center of the room were two stainless steel autopsy tables with light fixtures overhead. As always, the combination of chemicals and decomposition made for a stomach-turning odor. No matter how many times Josie smelled it, she never got used to it. Dr. Feist took the dress from Noah and disappeared into her office in the adjoining room. Before them, both examination tables were occupied. The bodies were covered with sheets, but Josie knew the larger one was Lorelei and the smaller one was Holly. Dr. Feist returned with a laptop and opened it up while standing at the stainless steel countertop that ran along the back wall of the room. She pulled up a set of x-rays and then turned back to Josie and Noah.

  “Whose exam would you like to hear about first?”

  Josie swallowed. “Lorelei’s.”

  Dr. Feist gave a solemn nod. “I was able to confirm her identity using her driver’s license which the ERT took from her home. I found no evidence of sexual assault. Her cause of death was, as I predicted, exsanguination. She bled out from a gunshot wound to the chest. I extracted a number of shotgun pellets from her abdomen and chest cavity. There was massive internal damage, but I believe the worst of the damage came from one pellet that punched through her left lung, causing a sucking chest wound, and another pellet that went right through her heart. Basically, her left lung and heart were shredded. All the heavy scientific language will be in my final report. In addition to that, she had quite a nasty head injury. However, it appears to have happened probably within minutes of her death, as I would have expected to see swelling in the brain or a subdural hematoma, but that didn’t have time to materialize.”

  “Time of death?” Josie asked.

  “Given her body temperature and the temperature of the house, I’d say she died sometime between six a.m. and ten a.m. There was coffee and some oatmeal in her stomach, so it appears she’d just had breakfast. There are some incidental findings I think you should be aware of. They have nothing to do with her death, but may impact your case.”

  She walked over to the table with the larger form on it and peeled back the sheet to just above Lorelei’s breasts. Brushing aside Lorelei’s curls, Dr. Feist indicated the skin along the side of her neck and down to her trapezius muscles. Josie leaned in and immediately saw at least a half-dozen silver-white lines, each one about an inch long. “Stab wounds,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Feist. “Very old ones. These healed a very long time ago. Many more are on her upper back and neck. I counted thirty-four in all. Most were relatively superficial, meaning they didn’t penetrate beneath the fascia. Two of them, however, nicked the left collarbone and another penetrated the back of her neck deeply enough to nick the bone of her spinal column, taking a small chip out of it, but not damaging any of the nerves or vessels around it. She was extraordinarily lucky.”

  Noah said, “You’re saying someone stabbed her thirty-four times in her upper back and neck?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Feist. “My guess is that she was attacked from behind. Probably a blitz attack—lightning fast and relentless.”

  “My God,” said Josie. “Is there any way to tell how old they are?”

  Dr. Feist shook her head. “I can’t say for certain. Several years is my guess.”

  A moment of silence unfurled around them as they considered what Lorelei had survived at some point in her life. As if of their own will, Josie’s fingers brushed over the scar on her face. When she saw Dr. Feist watching her, she lowered her hand.

  “What about Holly?” asked Noah.

  Dr. Feist grimaced. “Her case is a little more complicated. Have you ever heard of ‘talk and die’ syndrome?”

  Josie and Noah shook their heads in unison.

  “That’s shorthand neurologists use when they’re talking about a closed head injury, usually an epidural hematoma, which is when blood accumulates between the dura—the covering of the brain—and the skull. With a ‘talk and die’ injury, the person usually sustains a head injury without a skull fracture. They usually appear just fine for minutes, even hours. They’re laughing, walking, talking—”
/>   “Until they die,” Noah filled in.

  “Right. The decline happens extremely rapidly. The accumulation of blood can cause pressure and swelling in your brain. It can even cause your brain to shift inside your skull. That’s what I saw on examination with Holly Mitchell. She had a very large epidural hematoma that put intense pressure on her brain and caused it to swell and shift. That is her cause of death.”

  Josie said, “Is it possible to tell how long it was between the time she sustained the head injury and when she died?”

  Dr. Feist frowned. “Unfortunately, no. As I said, with ‘talk and die’ syndrome, a person could seem fine for five minutes or for several hours before death. Given her body temperature as well as the outdoor temperatures, she probably died between eight a.m. and noon.”

  Noah asked, “Is there any way to tell what injured her?”

  Dr. Feist said, “I’m afraid not. The injury was over her left ear, behind the temple. Either someone struck her, or she sustained some sort of fall, although she would have had to land at exactly the right angle with exactly the right amount of force to sustain this type of injury.”

  “But you don’t think she fell,” Josie said. “Earlier, at the scene, you said she had bruising around her neck and petechiae in her eyes.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Feist. “If you would have a look…” she trailed off, staring at them both, waiting for them to consent to seeing Holly’s body once more.

  Josie nodded and followed Dr. Feist over to Holly’s body. Noah trailed them. With great care, Dr. Feist pulled the sheet down and tucked it over Holly’s shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her white eyelashes stark beneath the overhead light. “Poliosis,” said Dr. Feist, following Josie’s gaze.

  “Yes,” Josie said. “Lorelei said she had it.”

  “It’s usually seen in the form of a white forelock or a white patch of hair somewhere on the head, but sometimes results in white eyelashes. It’s simply a lack of melanin in the hair roots. On its own, without a co-occurring medical condition, it’s entirely harmless.”

  “Is it genetic?” Noah asked.

  Dr. Feist nodded. “Usually, yes.”

  Josie said, “Did she have a co-occurring condition?”

  “I found no evidence of any medical conditions on exam.”

  Their eyes returned to Holly’s face. Dr. Feist had arranged her hair so that they couldn’t see where she’d used the bone saw to cut into Holly’s skull. She wasn’t the first child victim they’d ever seen, and she would certainly not be the last, but it never got easier to stand over the body of a young person who had had so much life ahead of them. Josie made a silent vow to find who had done this to Holly and make sure they never hurt anyone ever again.

  Dr. Feist snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pointed to several dark, finger-sized bruises scattered over Holly’s throat and neck. “She had significant soft tissue injuries to her throat and neck, but nothing that would have killed her.”

  “Someone tried strangling her and then changed their mind and hit her on the head?” Noah asked.

  “Or someone tried to strangle her, she put up a fight, and they ultimately hit her on the head.”

  Josie said, “But you said she was alive for some time after her head injury.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Feist. “She had to have been.”

  “Would she have been down for any length of time so that the killer might think she was dead?” Noah asked.

  “Perhaps. Or the killer was with her until her decline and death and then staged her body. There are a few other things you should be aware of.” Dr. Feist lifted a side of the sheet to expose one of Holly’s delicate hands. “We did get a great deal of skin from beneath her fingernails. Hummel has sent it to the state police lab for DNA analysis. She managed to scratch up her attacker pretty well.”

  Josie felt a small spiral of excitement. They could now check any suspects for scratches, and if they found a suspect, they’d have DNA to match him against, although it would take weeks, if not months, to get a DNA profile back.

  “Also, the bottoms of her feet are freshly scraped up,” Dr. Feist went on, moving to the bottom of the table and uncovering Holly’s bare feet. Josie and Noah crowded around for a closer look. There were several fresh lacerations crisscrossing the soles of her feet.

  Dr. Feist said, “When they brought her in, her feet were covered in dirt and mud, and I dug some pine needles out of one of the cuts in her feet.”

  “She was in the forest,” Josie said. “Before she died.”

  “I believe so,” said Dr. Feist.

  “She got out of the house,” said Noah.

  “She might have even witnessed Lorelei’s murder,” Josie agreed. “Or maybe she knew what might happen. She told Emily to hide, and then at some point she had a confrontation with the killer—either while she was still at the house or after she made it into the woods.”

  “Or,” Noah said, “the killer attacked her and tried to strangle her, but she escaped into the woods and then he tracked her down and gave her a head injury sufficient to kill her.”

  “Regardless of the order of things,” Dr. Feist said, “the manner of death is homicide.”

  “Any signs of sexual assault?” Josie asked.

  “No. None at all, but there is one more thing you should be aware of. I believe that this girl was the victim of ongoing physical abuse.”

  Josie’s head snapped toward Dr. Feist. “Really? What makes you say that?”

  Dr. Feist went back to Holly’s head and used her index finger to beckon them closer. Once they were beside her, she gently brushed the hair away from Holly’s left ear.

  “Jesus,” said Noah.

  The ear was grossly deformed. The outer part of the ear was swollen, bulbous, and lumpy. “Cauliflower ear,” Josie muttered.

  “Right,” said Dr. Feist. “Blood clots form beneath the skin. The skin pulls away from the cartilage, and fibrous tissue forms. That’s the least scientific version. It forms as a result of repeated trauma to the outer ear. Either this kid was a pro wrestler or someone was routinely hitting her around the head. This isn’t something that happens with one strike. It develops over time.”

  “My God,” Josie said. She thought of the medications in Lorelei’s kitchen cabinets. While violence wasn’t a hallmark of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, it wasn’t out of the question that a person suffering from either of those illnesses could become violent. However, Josie still couldn’t quite believe that Lorelei was abusive. She had been killed today, too. She’d built a secret hiding place for her girls between the walls of the bedrooms. She kept sharp objects in a secret cubby under her mattress. Had there been someone else living with them?

  “There are also a few other indicators of chronic physical abuse,” Dr. Feist went on. She walked over to her laptop and motioned them over. Several clicks later, x-ray images of a rib cage lit the screen. “Here, here, and here you can see healed posterior rib fractures. They’re quite old, but as I said, they’re posterior, which is almost always indicative of abuse.”

  “What’s the mechanism of injury?” Noah asked.

  “Usually, these posterior rib fractures occur from pressure—an adult or bigger person squeezing the child and shaking them or putting a great deal of pressure on their body from front to back. This is very unusual to see in children as a result of some kind of accident. These fractures likely happened when she was much younger, but between these and her cauliflower ear, it appears as though she sustained prolonged abuse during her life.”

  Josie felt as though someone had lowered lead weights onto her shoulders. Her mind kept returning to the day she’d met Lorelei and her girls. Nothing at all about them had sent up any red flags. How had Josie missed it? What was she missing now?

  “What about her medical records?” Noah asked. “If she lived in Denton, she would have sought treatment here, most likely.”

  “And Lorelei would have had to put down an emergency contact,”
Josie added.

  Dr. Feist said, “I don’t have access to those records. You’d have to get a warrant and serve it on health information management.”

  “Come on,” Josie said to Noah. “We’ll get warrants for both their medical records. But first, we need to find out everything we can about Lorelei Mitchell.”

  Eleven

  Josie and Noah stopped in to check on Emily before they left. She had fallen asleep, arms wrapped around her stuffed dog. Her cheeks were bright red, and her mouth hung open. Strings of brown hair were matted to the sides of her face. Josie felt a profound sadness looking at her. At only eight years old, her entire life had been turned upside-down and her future was uncertain. Yet she’d been so brave and stoic through all of it. Josie felt Noah’s palm warm on her shoulder. In a chair at the side of the bed, Marcie tapped away at her laptop. When she saw them, she stood and came to the door. “She finally fell asleep. She’s pretty sick, though. Dr. Nashat will keep her overnight. That should give you some time to search for next of kin. Otherwise, she goes into the system.”

  “Did she tell you anything?” Josie asked.

  Marcie shook her head. “Nothing more than she told you.”

  “What about her friend Pax? Did you ask her about him?”

  “I did. She would only say that his dad doesn’t like her mom very much, but that Pax is a friend. I asked her what kinds of things they do together, and she said he brings her fruit, and they play games. I asked if he ever hurt her or anyone in her family, and she said no. I asked her when she last saw him and she didn’t know. She was, however, certain that she had not seen him today.”