Hush Little Girl by Lisa Regan (first e reader .txt) 📗

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