She was whimpering when she dragged her body through her parents' bedroom doorway. She heard a sound, a kind of thump, and pressed her face into the carpet while her stomach heaved.
She saw the shadows pass the doorway, saw them. Heard them. Though they moved as if that's what they were. Only shadows.
Shuddering, she continued to crawl, past her mother's bedroom chair, past the little table with its colorful lamp. And her hand slid through something warm, something wet.
Pulling herself up, she stared at the bed. At her mother, at her father. At the blood that coated them.
1
MURDER WAS ALWAYS AN INSULT, AND HAD been since the first human hand had smashed a stone into the first human skull. But the murder, bloody and brutal, of an entire family in their own home, in their own beds, was a different form of evil.
Eve Dallas, NYPSD Homicide, pondered it as she stood studying Inga Snood, forty-two-year-old female. Domestic, divorced. Dead.
Blood spatter and the scene itself told her how it must have been. Snood's killer had walked in the door, crossed to the bed, yanked Snood's head up-probably by the mid-length blonde hair, raked the edge of the blade neatly-left to right-across her throat, severing the jugular.
Relatively tidy, certainly quick. Probably quiet. It was unlikely the victim had the time to comprehend what was happening. No defensive wounds, no other trauma, no signs of struggle. Just blood and the dead. Eve had beaten both her partner and Crime Scene to the house. The nine-one-one had gone to Emergency, relayed to a black-and-white on neighborhood patrol. The uniforms had called in the homicides, and she'd gotten the tag just before three in the morning.
She still had the rest of the dead, the rest of the scenes, to study. She stepped back out, glanced at the uniform on post in the kitchen.
“Keep this scene secure.”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”
She moved through the kitchen out into a bisected space-living on one side, dining on the other. Upper-middle income, single-family residence. Nice, Upper West Side neighborhood. Decent security, which hadn't done the Swishers or their domestic a damn bit of good.
Good furniture-tasteful, she supposed. Everything neat and clean and in what appeared to be its place. No burglary, not with plenty of easily transported electronics.
She went upstairs, came to the parents' room first. Keelie and Grant Swisher, ages thirty-eight and forty, respectively. As with their housekeeper, there was no sign of struggle. Just two people who'd been asleep in their own bed and were now dead.
She gave the room a quick glance, saw a pricey man's wrist unit on a dresser, a pair of woman's gold earrings on another.
No, not burglary.
She stepped back out just as her partner, Detective Delia Peabody, came up the steps. Limping-just a little.
Had she put Peabody back on active too soon? Eve wondered. Her partner had taken a serious beating only three weeks before after being ambushed steps outside her own apartment building. And Eve still had the image of the stalwart Peabody bruised, broken, unconscious in a hospital bed.
Best to put the image, and the guilt, aside. Best to remember how she herself hated being on medical, and that work was sometimes better than forced rest.
“Five dead? Home invasion?” Huffing a bit, Peabody gestured down the steps. “The uniform on the door gave me a quick run.”
“It looks like, but we don't call it yet. Domestic's downstairs, rooms off the kitchen. Got it in bed, throat slit. Owners in there. Same pattern. Two kids, girl and boy, in the other rooms on this level.”
“Kids? Jesus.”
“First on scene indicated this was the boy.” Eve moved to the next door, called for the lights.
“Records ID twelve-year-old Coyle Swisher.” There were framed sports posters on his walls. Baseball taking the lead. Some of his blood had spewed onto the torso of the Yankees current hot left fielder.
Though there was the debris of an adolescent on the floor, on the desk and dresser, she saw no sign Coyle had had any more warning than his parents.
Peabody pressed her lips together, cleared her throat. “Quick, efficient,” she said in flat tones.
“No forced entry. No alarms tripped. Either the Swishers neglected to set them-and I wouldn't bet on that-or somebody had their codes or a good jammer. Girl should be down here.”
“Okay.” Peabody squared her shoulders. “It's harder when it's kids.”
“It's supposed to be.” Eve stepped to the next room, called for lights, and studied the fluffy pink and white bed, the little girl with her blonde hair matted with blood. “Nine-year-old Nixie Swisher, according to the records.”
“Practically a baby.”
“Yeah.” Eve scanned the room, and her head cocked. “What do you see, Peabody?”
“Some poor kid who'll never get the chance to grow up.”
“Two pair of shoes over there.”
“Kids, especially upper income, swim in shoes.”
“Two of those backpack deals kids haul their stuff in. You seal up yet?”
“No, I was just-”
“I have.” Eve walked into the crime scene, reached down with a sealed hand, and picked up the shoes. “Different sizes. Go get the first on scene.”
With the shoes still in her hand, Eve turned back to the bed, to the child, as Peabody hurried out. Then she set them aside, took an Identipad out of her field kit.
Yes, it was harder when it was a child. It was hard to take such a small hand in yours. Such a small, lifeless hand, to look down at the young who'd been robbed of so many years, and all the joys, all the pains that went in them.
She pressed the fingers to the pad, waited for the readout.
“Officer Grimes, Lieutenant,” Peabody said from the doorway. “First on scene.”
“Who called this in, Grimes?” Eve asked without turning around.
“Sir, unidentified female.”
“And where is this unidentified female?”
“I… Lieutenant, I assumed it was one of the vies.”
She glanced back now, and Grimes saw the tall, lean woman in mannish trousers, a battered leather jacket. The cool brown eyes, flat cop's eyes, in a sharply featured face. Her hair was brown, like her eyes, short, choppy rather than sleek.
She had a rep, and when that icy gaze pinned him, he knew she'd earned it.
“So our nine-one-one calls in murder, then hops into bed so she can get her throat slashed?”
“Ah…” He was a beat cop, with two years under his belt. He wasn't ranking Homicide. “The kid here might've called it, Lieutenant, then tried to hide in bed.”
“How long you had a badge, Grimes?”
“Two years-in January, Lieutenant.”
“I know civilians who've got a better sense of crime scene than you. Fifth victim, identified as Linnie Dyson, age nine, who is not a fucking resident of this fucking address. Who is not one Nixie Swisher. Peabody, start a search of the residence. We're looking for another nine-year-old girl, living or dead. Grimes, you idiot, call in an Amber Alert. She may have been the reason for this. Possible abduction. Move!”
Peabody snagged a can of Seal-It out of her own kit, hurriedly sprayed her shoes and hands.
“She could be hiding. If the kid called it in, Dallas, she could be hiding. She could be afraid to come out, or she's in shock. She could be alive.”
“Start downstairs.” Eve dropped on her hands and knees to look under the bed. “Find out what unit, what 'link placed the nine-one-one.”
“On that.”
Eve strode to the closet, searched through it, pushed into any area of the room where a child might hide. She started out, moving toward the boy's room, then checked herself.
You were a little girl, with what seemed to be a nice family. Where did you go when things got bad?
Somewhere, Eve thought, she herself never had to go. Because when things got bad for her, the family was the cause.
But she bypassed the other rooms and walked back into the master bedroom.