"Robb, J D - In Death 23 - Survivor in Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robb J D)

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.
УKeep this scene secure.Ф
УYes, sir, Lieutenant.Ф
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.
УFive dead? Home invasion?Ф Huffing a bit, Peabody gestured down the steps. УThe uniform on
the door gave me a quick run.Ф
УIt 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.Ф
УKids? Jesus.Ф
УFirst on scene indicated this was the boy.Ф Eve moved to the next door, called for the lights.