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

Tyvek suit over his wedding clothes. With him was Officer Jenny Chan. She hadn’t been a guest at the wedding, so Josie knew that Hummel must have called her to bring the crime scene equipment. Chan took photos while Hummel sketched out the scene in a notebook.

There was a set of stone steps that led to the front doors of the church. On the grass in front of the bottom step lay Holly Mitchell. She was dressed in a pair of pajamas: purple cotton, with yellow stars all over them. Only her feet were bare. She was indeed “laid out” as Gretchen had described—in the same way a person was generally positioned in a casket. Her legs were straight, her arms tucked at her sides and folded over her chest, some object beneath her hands. Her eyes were closed, and her brown hair fanned out around her head. Small flowers dotted her long locks. Josie noted white bloodroot, yellow buttercups, blue violets, and purple dead-nettle—all wildflowers that could be found anywhere in Pennsylvania this time of year.

“Someone arranged her body,” she muttered.

Chitwood, Gretchen, and Mettner—now off the phone—turned and looked at her.

“Boss,” Mettner said. “You shouldn’t be here.” He looked past her at Noah. “You either.”

“I know who this girl is,” Josie explained.

Chitwood folded his arms over his thin chest. “How in the hell do you know this girl, Quinn?”

Josie explained how Lorelei had picked her up from the side of the road three months earlier; how she’d gone back to Lorelei’s house until Noah came to get her, and how she had met Lorelei’s daughters.

“We’re going to need to talk with her mother right away,” said Gretchen.

“Who found her?” Noah asked.

“Member of the staff,” said Mettner. “He came out here to unlock the church doors and make sure everything was tidy and in order for the ceremony. He was pretty shaken. We’ll get a statement from him later.”

“Was the church locked?” Noah asked.

Mettner nodded. “Yes. No one was inside. No sign of a break-in. Whoever left her here had no interest in going inside.”

“But they left her here so she’d be found,” Josie said. “Was the person who found her the one who called 911?”

Gretchen said, “No, it was Celeste. The guy who found the body called the front desk. Two of his co-workers came out and then reported back to Celeste. She immediately called 911. Dispatch called Mett. Pretty much everyone necessary to secure and process this scene is at your wedding. So here we are.”

From behind them came the sound of heels clacking along the path. They all turned to see Dr. Anya Feist, the Medical Examiner, approaching. She was wearing a pale pink A-line dress that came to her knees, complemented by pale pink stilettos. Her silver-blonde hair cascaded to her shoulders and shimmered in the sunlight. Josie and her team usually only ever saw the doctor in scrubs or a Tyvek suit. She looked like a different woman. Still, she had the same grim smile she usually greeted them with at crime scenes. She stopped short and stared at Josie and Noah. With a sigh and a shake of her head, she said, “Mettner just called me to come out here. You two should have had a destination wedding.” She turned to Mettner. “What’ve you got?”

He told her what little they knew.

She pointed to a rolling suitcase that Officer Chan often brought to crime scenes, which had been left a few feet away but outside the crime scene tape. “I’ll get suited up.”

She slid her heels off and walked over to the suitcase, pulling out a Tyvek suit, booties, a skull cap and gloves. The suit was an awkward fit over her dress, but she made it work. She waited for Hummel and Chan to finish their photos and sketches and then slipped under the tape. Josie’s gaze jumped back and forth from the case to the body. In her wedding dress there was no way she would be able to get into one of the Tyvek suits, and she wasn’t about to contaminate the scene. She would have to wait for Dr. Feist’s assessment.

The mood was somber and the day eerily silent, as if even the birds were too sad to sing. Dr. Feist knelt beside Holly Mitchell’s head and used a gloved finger to lift the girl’s eyelids, one after the other. “Petechiae in the sclera of the eyes.”

Josie knew this meant that there were pinpoint red spots in the whites of the girl’s eyes indicating that she had been deprived of oxygen at some point before her death. The spots appeared when the small capillaries in the eyes hemorrhaged. It usually indicated death by asphyxiation or strangulation.

Dr. Feist leaned down, taking a closer look at the girl’s neck. “Bruising,” she noted. “Not from any kind of ligature, though. This bruising is irregular, more indicative of strangulation. Based on the pattern, it looks like maybe the person began to strangle her, stopped, and then finished the job later. Hummel, make sure you bag her hands in case there’s skin under her nails.”

Gently, Dr. Feist probed the girl’s hands, trying to dislodge them from whatever object they held against her body. The hands didn’t budge. “She’s still in full rigor,” Dr. Feist said.

Mettner said, “Does that mean she’s been dead only a couple of hours?”

Dr. Feist glanced up at him. “Rigor can take effect anywhere between one and six hours after death, Detective Mettner. The average is two to four hours. Rigor can last up to seventy-two hours. If you’re looking for time of death, I’ll have a better idea when I get her on the table. I’ll need to take her internal temperature and do some calculations, but it’s very likely she’s been dead for several hours.”

“You think this is where she died?” asked Mettner.

Dr. Feist frowned. “Hard to say. I don’t see any signs of a struggle. No marks in the grass, no broken tree branches. Then again, she’s not streaked with