In Death 20 - Survivor in Death

her voice very calm, very quiet. “I’ll call Child Protection. Is she injured?”
    “Not that I can see. Shocky, though.”
    It felt awkward holding a child, but Eve wrapped her arms around Nixie and got to her feet. “She saw it. We’ve got not only a survivor, but an eye witness.”
    “We’ve got a nine-year-old kid who saw--” Peabody spoke in undertones as Nixie wept on Eve’s shoulder, and jerked her head toward the bedroom.
    “I know. Here, take her and--” But when Eve tried to peel Nixie away, the child only wrapped herself tighter.
    “I think you’re going to have to.”
    “Hell. Call GPS, get somebody over here. Start a record, room by room. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    She’d hoped to pass the kid to one of the uniforms, but Nixie seemed glued to her now. Resigned, and wary, she carted Nixie down to the first floor, looked for a neutral spot, and settled on what looked like a playroom.
    “I want my mom. I want my mom.”
    “Yeah, I got that. But here’s the thing: You’ve got to let go. I’m not going to leave you, but you gotta loosen the grip.”
    “Are they gone?” Nixie pushed her face into Eve’s shoulder. “Are the shadows gone?”
    “Yes. You have to let go, sit down here. I have to do a couple of things. I need to talk to you.”
    “What if they come back?”
    “I won’t let them. I know this is hard. The hardest.” At wit’s end, she sat on the floor with Nixie still clinging to her. “I need to do a job, that’s how I can help. I need to . . .” Jesus. “I need to get a sample from your hand, and then you can clean up. You’d feel better 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