In Death 20 - Survivor in Death

far counter, to the door of Inga’s room, and inside.
    A man. Nixie had to slap a hand on her mouth to stifle a giggle. Inga had a boogie buddy! And she was so old--had to be at least forty. It looked like Mr. and Mrs. Dyson weren’t the only ones having sex tonight.
    Unable to resist, she left the Orange Fizzy on the bench and slid out. She just had to look, just had to see. So she crept over to the open door, eased inside Inga’s little parlor, and toward the open bedroom door. She squatted down on all fours, poked her head in the opening.
    Wait until she told Linnie! Linnie would be so jealous.
    With her hand over her mouth again, her eyes bright with laughter, Nixie scooted, angled her head.
    And saw the man slit Inga’s throat.
    She saw the blood, a wild gush of it. Heard a horrible, gurgling grunt. Eyes glazed now, she reared back, her breath hissing and hitching into her palm. Unable to move, she sat, her back pressed to the wall and her heart booming inside her chest.
    He came out, walked right by her, and out the open door.
    Tears spilled out of her eyes, down her spread fingers. Every part of her shook as she crawled over, using a chair as a shield, and reached up to the table for Inga’s pocket link.
    She hissed for emergency.
    “He’s killed her, he’s killed her. You have to come.” She whispered the words, ignoring the questions the voice recited. “Right now. Come right now.” And gave the address.
    She left the ‘link on the floor, continued to crawl until she’d reached the narrow steps that led from Inga’s parlor to the second level.
    She wanted her mommy.
    She didn’t run, didn’t dare. She didn’t stand. Her legs felt funny, empty, like the bones in them had melted. She started to belly crawl across the hall, sobs stuck in her throat. And to her horror, she saw the shadow--two shadows now. One went into her room, the other into Coyle’s.
    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