Survivor in Death Read Free Page A

if you got cleaned up, right?”
    “I got their blood . . .”
    “I know. Here, this is my field kit. I’m just going to take a swab for evidence. And I need to take a recording. Then you can go to the washroom over there and clean up. Record on,” Eve said, quietly, then eased Nixie back. “You’re Nixie Swisher, right? You live here?”
    “Yeah, I want—”
    “And I’m Lieutenant Dallas. I’m going to swab your hand here, so you can clean up. It won’t hurt.”
    “They killed my mom and my dad.”
    “I know. I’m sorry. Did you see who they were? How many there were?”
    “I have their blood on me.”
    Sealing the swab, Eve looked at the child. She remembered what it was to be a little girl, covered in blood not her own. “How about you wash up?”
    “I can’t.”
    “I’ll help you. Maybe you want a drink or something. I can—” And when Nixie burst into tears, Eve’s eyes began to ache.
    “What? What?”
    “Orange Fizzy.”
    “Okay, I’ll see if—”
    “No, I went down to get one. I’m not supposed to, but I went down to get one, and Linnie didn’t want to wake up and come. I went down to the kitchen, and I saw.”
    With blood smeared on both of them now, Eve decided washing up would have to wait. “What did you see, Nixie?”
    “The shadow, the man, who went into Inga’s room. I thought. . . I was going to watch, just for a minute, if they were going to do it, you know.”
    “Do what?”
    “Sex. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did, and I saw!”
    There were tears and snot as well as blood on the kid’s face now. With nothing else handy, Eve pulled a wipe rag out of her field kit and passed it over.
    “What did you see?”
    “He had a big knife and he cut her, he cut her bad.” She closed her own hand over her throat. “And there was blood.”
    “Can you tell me what happened then?”
    As the tears gushed, she rubbed the wipe and her hands over her cheeks, smearing them with blood. “He left. He didn’t see me, and he left and I got Inga’s ’link and I called Emergency.”
    “That’s stand-up thinking, Nixie. That was really smart.”
    “But I wanted Mom.” Her voice cracked with tears and mucus flowing. “I wanted Dad, and I went up the back way, Inga’s way, and I saw them. Two of them. They were going into my room, and Coyle’s room, and I knew what they would do, but I wanted my mom, and I crawled in, and I got their blood on me, and I saw them. They were dead. They’re all dead, aren’t they? Everybody. I couldn’t go look. I went to hide.”
    “You did right. You did exactly right. Look at me, Nixie.” She waited until those drenched eyes met hers. “You’re alive, and you did everything right. Because you did, it’s going to help me find the people who did this, and make them pay.”
    “My mommy’s dead.” Crawling into Eve’s lap, she wept and wept and wept.
    It was nearly five a.m. before Eve could get back to Peabody, and the work.
    “How’s the kid?”
    “No better than you’d expect. Got the social worker and a doctor with her. Cleaning her up, doing a physical. I had to swear an oath I wouldn’t leave the house before she’d unclamp herself.”
    “You found her, came when she called for help kind of thing.”
    “She made the nine-one-one on the housekeeper’s pocket ’link, from down there.” She caught Peabody up with Nixie’s timetable.
    “From what she was able to tell me so far, it jibes with how it looks to me—efficient professional job. Come in. Bypass or jam alarms and security. One takes the housekeeper. That’s the first hit. She’s isolated, on another floor, and they need to deal with her first, insure she doesn’t wake up, catch a whiff and tag the cops. Other guy’s probably upstairs, ready to move if anybody up there wakes up. Then they do the parents together.”
    “One for each,” Peabody agreed. “No noise, no struggle. Deal with the adults first. Kids aren’t a big worry.”
    “One takes the boy, one takes