Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn #6)- Lisa Regan Page 0,58

title page of the manuscript.

To the right of the laptop was a wireless mouse. With her gloved hand, Josie nudged it and the screen lit up. She leaned in to see that Wendy had been reading her email the last time she sat here. All of it appeared to have to do with a trip she was planning to New York City in the next few weeks. The desk chair was several feet away from the desk. Had she been sitting there, planning a trip when the killer knocked on the door?

Josie tried to recreate it in her mind. Wendy, sitting at her desk, making plans to visit old friends in New York City. Answers the door to a man she doesn’t know. Something he tells her or says to her compels her to invite him inside.

“Has anyone checked upstairs?” Josie asked.

Oaks poked his head out of the kitchen. “We cleared it, obviously but we haven’t processed it yet as it looks like the struggle took place right in here.”

Josie went upstairs and had a careful look around but Oaks was right, nothing looked disturbed. She doubted the killer would have had any reason to go upstairs. Back downstairs she waited near the front door while the evidence processing team descended on the kitchen. Her eyes went once more to the living room and then to the dining room/home office, eyes locking on the desk chair. It didn’t have wheels, which made sense. The room was carpeted. Wheels wouldn’t have traveled easily on the carpet unless Kaplan had had one of those plastic desk mats.

Oaks walked up beside her. “What’s on your mind?”

Josie pointed to the chair. “That’s bothering me.”

“The office?”

“The chair. If she stood up and pushed her chair back, it wouldn’t be that far across the room.” Josie stepped back into the room, positioning herself between the chair and the desk. Oaks followed.

“You would only need this much room if you were trying to get under the desk.”

“Maybe she dropped something,” Oaks suggested.

Josie dropped to her hands and knees and peered beneath the desk. There, all the way in the back, against the wall, was a small mass of white paper. Josie wrestled her phone from inside her Tyvek suit and turned on her flashlight app, shining it onto the crumpled paper.

Oaks squatted and looked in over her shoulder. “See,” he said. “She dropped a piece of paper.”

Josie studied it a moment more, realizing quickly where she’d seen something like this before. “It’s not a piece of paper,” she said. “It’s a chrysalis.”

“What?” Oaks asked.

“A cocoon,” Josie said. “It looks exactly like the one I saw inside Lucy Ross’s desk at school. Oaks, she was here. Lucy was here. The killer brought her with him. That’s why Wendy Kaplan let him in. She put Lucy in here while she and this guy talked in the kitchen.”

“That means Lucy could have seen the struggle, the murder,” Oaks said.

“Or maybe she just heard it and so she hid under here. When he was done, he came in here looking for her.”

“He tossed the chair back,” Oaks said. “Dragged her out from under there.”

“But she left this,” Josie said.

“You think a seven-year-old is smart enough to leave us a clue that she’s alive?” Oaks asked.

“I think that this gave her something to focus on besides what was happening in the other room. She’s doing whatever she can to mentally distance herself from whatever she’s seeing and experiencing,” Josie answered. “But if she’s still alive, we’ve got a chance of bringing her home.”

Thirty

I woke up and she was gone. My nose felt cold. Without her in the bed, the blanket did little to keep me warm. I crept out of the bed, to the door which was cracked. The outer rooms were dark. Even the glow of the television had been extinguished. Then I saw her, just a shadow, moving through the rooms. I watched her for several minutes. She had some sort of sack and she was throwing things into it. Finally, she came to the door. “Oh good,” she said. “You’re awake.”

I stared at her. She knelt down and touched my face. “Remember I told you we’d leave this place?”

“To go home?”

“Yes.”

I nodded.

“We’re leaving now. You have to be absolutely silent and still, do you understand?”

Again, I nodded. She scooped me up and carried me through the darkness. With infinite slowness, she turned the two locks on the big door that led outside and pulled it open a fraction at