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

turned and headed back toward the house. She loped up the steps to the back porch. The patrol officer there looked to Josie and Gretchen for permission to let her continue her search.

“It’s okay,” Josie said.

With a nod, he let Rini and Sandoval into the house. Josie and Gretchen followed. By the time they reached the kitchen, they could hear Rini’s paws pounding up the stairs. Avoiding Lorelei’s blood on one side of the island countertop and broken glass on the other in their stockinged feet, they, too, went upstairs. They had just reached the top of the steps when they heard Rini barking.

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