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Survivor in Death (In Death Series #20) by J. D. Robb
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(Hardcover)
- Pub. Date: February 2005
- 384pp
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: February 2005
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Hardcover, 384pp
- Series: In Death Series, #20
- ISBN-13: 9780399152085
- ISBN: 0399152083
Synopsis
No affairs. No criminal connections. No DNA. No clues. Eve Dallas may be the best cop in the city - not to mention having the lavish resources of her husband Roarke at her disposal - but the Swisher case has her baffled. The family members were murdered in their beds with brutal, military precision. The state-of-the-art security was breached, and the killers used night vision to find their way through the cozy middle-class house. Clearly, Dallas is dealing with pros. The only mistake they made was to overlook the nine-year-old girl cowering in the dark in the kitchen. . .
Now Nixie Swisher is an orphan - and the sole eyewitness to a seemingly inexplicable crime. Kids are not Dallas's strong suit. But Nixie needs a safe place to stay, and Dallas needs to solve this case. Not only because of the promise she made to Nixie. Not only for the cause of justice. But also to put to rest some of her own darkest memories - and deepest fears. With her partner Peabody on the job, and watching her back - and with Roarke providing the kind of help only he can give - Lieutenant Eve Dallas is running after shadows, and dead-set on finding out who's behind them.
Publishers Weekly
In the 20th fine volume of Roberts's futuristic mystery franchise, police lieutenant Eve Dallas is called in when lawyer Grant Swisher and his family are massacred with eerie skillfulness on the Upper West Side. The only survivor is 10-year-old Nixie, who evades-and witnesses-the killers as she creeps down to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Despite the painful memories of her own childhood that Nixie's presence calls up, Eve decides to hide the girl in the high-tech mansion she shares with her husband, billionaire businessman Roarke. With help from Roarke; her faithful sidekick, Peabody; and others, Eve discovers the existence of a shadowy former military operative with a grudge against Swisher-the lawyer helped the operative's battered wife divorce him right before she disappeared. The relatively early disclosure of the villain's identity and the dearth of other viable suspects dulls the suspense in the first half of the book, but tension escalates toward an absorbing denouement as a trap Eve sets for her target ends up with Nixie as its unintentional bait. Throughout, the series' colorful supporting cast and Eve's prickly personality-smartly showcased in her power struggles with everything from space-age vending machines to her own past-remain as vividly appealing as ever. Agent, Amy Berkower. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
One of the most prolific and popular writers in the world, Nora Roberts (who also writes as her edgier alter-ego J. D. Robb) publishes multiple books a year. Not that it’s enough for her fans, who tear through her unconventional romances. With her trademark mix of fantasy, mystery, and romance, Roberts has created her own genre -- and romance fans are grateful for it!
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
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- Ratings: 53Reviews: 32
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Enjoyableby carmella3
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
September 22, 2009: I started reading the JD Robb books featuring the Eve Dallas character when waiting for my favorite authors to write more books. I got hooked on the Eve Dallas character and have read every book ever written. JD Robb is now one of my favorite authors
A thrill a minute!by Anonymous
Reader Rating:
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July 15, 2009: As usual Eve is every bit as exciting, funny and tough as nails in this plot. I did not want to put the book down once I started reading it. I have stayed up as late as 5 A.M. in order to finish the currant chapter. This book was so good that I finished it in record time. I would recommend it to anyone who loves a good murder mystery.
I Also Recommend: Promises in Death (In Death Series #28), Shakespeare's Landlord (Lily Bard Series #1), Real Murders (Aurora Teagarden Series #1), A Bone to Pick (Aurora Teagarden Series #2), Strangers in Death (In Death Series #26).
Fact File
Name:
Nora Roberts
Also Known As:
J. D. Robb; Sarah Hardesty; Jill March; Eleanor Marie Robertson (birth name)
Current Home:
Keedysville, Maryland
Date of Birth:
1950
Place of Birth:
Silver Spring, Maryland
Awards:
Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, 1986; Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, 1991; Romance Writers of America Centennial Award, 1997; Romance Writers of America Golden Medallion Award (seven times); Quill Award for Blue Smoke, 2006
Biography
Not only has Nora Roberts written more bestsellers than anyone else in the world (according to Publishers Weekly), she’s also created a hybrid genre of her own: the futuristic detective romance. And that’s on top of mastering every subgenre in the romance pie: the family saga, the historical, the suspense novel. But this most prolific and versatile of authors might never have tapped into her native talent if it hadn't been for one fateful snowstorm.
As her fans well know, in 1979 a blizzard trapped Roberts at home for a week with two bored little kids and a dwindling supply of chocolate. To maintain her sanity, Roberts started scribbling a story -- a romance novel like the Harlequin paperbacks she'd recently begun reading. The resulting manuscript was rejected by Harlequin, but that didn't matter to Roberts. She was hooked on writing. Several rejected manuscripts later, her first book was accepted for publication by Silhouette.
For several years, Roberts wrote category romances for Silhouette -- short books written to the publisher's specifications for length, subject matter and style, and marketed as part of a series of similar books. Roberts has said she never found the form restrictive. "If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations," she explained. "If this doesn't suit you, you shouldn't write it. I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure."
Roberts never violated the reader's expectations, but she did show a gift for bringing something fresh to the romance formula. Her first book, Irish Thoroughbred (1981), had as its heroine a strong-willed horse groom, in contrast to the fluttering young nurses and secretaries who populated most romances at the time. But Roberts's books didn't make significant waves until 1985, when she published Playing the Odds, which introduced the MacGregor clan. It was the first bestseller of many.
Roberts soon made a name for herself as a writer of spellbinding multigenerational sagas, creating families like the Scottish MacGregors, the Irish Donovans and the Ukrainian Stanislaskis. She also began working on romantic suspense novels, in which the love story unfolds beneath a looming threat of violence or disaster. She grew so prolific that she outstripped her publishers' ability to print and market Nora Roberts books, so she created an alter ego, J.D. Robb. Under the pseudonym, she began writing romantic detective novels set in the future. By then, millions of readers had discovered what Publishers Weekly called her "immeasurable diversity and talent."
Although the style and substance of her books has grown, Roberts remains loyal to the genre that launched her career. As she says, "The romance novel at its core celebrates that rush of emotions you have when you are falling in love, and it's a lovely thing to relive those feelings through a book."
Good to Know
Roberts still lives in the same Maryland house she occupied when she first started writing -- though her carpenter husband has built on some additions. She and her husband also own Turn the Page Bookstore Café in Boonsboro, Maryland. When Roberts isn't busy writing, she likes to drop by the store, which specializes in Civil War titles as well as autographed copies of her own books.
Roberts sued fellow writer Janet Dailey in 1997, accusing her of plagiarizing numerous passages of her work over a period of years. Dailey paid a settlement and publicly apologized, blaming stress and a psychological disorder for her misconduct.
Feature Interview
Excerpted from the March/April 2002 issue of Book magazine.One afternoon when Nora Roberts was four, her two oldest brothers broke into a violent argument while they were baby-sitting her. "I peeked out of the bedroom, and they're beating the hell out of each other," Roberts says. Then her mother walked in, with a grocery bag in each hand. "One bag goes here, one bag goes there, she steps right in the middle of these two six-foot guys and she goes, boom, bam. Two backhands. And both of them go, 'Maaaaaawwwmm.' I thought right then, There's the power. She's the power."
Elly, as her family still calls her, the youngest of five and the only girl, was a quick study. "She bossed her brothers around," says her mother, Eleanor; today, "her brothers have got her on a throne." Roberts reigns over more than her family, which now includes her husband and two sons. Since her writing debut in 1981, she has helped lead American romance away from its clichés of simpering heroines and heroic rapists toward more complex characters and contemporary, multifaceted plots. Of course, sex -- passionate, tender, delayed, avoided, forced, in castles, in fields, in treetops -- continues to be a central hook. And often, the prose remains purple; Roberts herself has a propensity for phrases like "she rocked them both toward madness." But the genre with which her name is synonymous is one -- the only one -- that always puts women at the center of the universe.
***
Two Mercedes -- a Kompressor convertible and an M-Class SUV -- and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are parked outside the rural Keedysville, Maryland, home Roberts shares with her husband. Inside, several gauzy photographs of nude models hang above the bed in the ground-floor master bedroom, and a rendition of the Casablanca movie poster -- with the couple painted in as Ilsa and Rick -- is prominent above the fireplace. Three ebullient dogs and one gnarled old mutt track in dirt and litter the house with deer bones that they've found outside.
Since moving here twenty-nine years ago, Roberts has divorced her first husband, raised their two sons (Dan, now twenty-nine, lives with his wife down the lane; Jason, twenty-six, is just over an hour away) and remarried. She has also added on a few rooms and an indoor pool; a few years ago, she bought twenty adjoining acres so she could continue to shoo deer out of the garden in her underwear without worrying about neighbors. She and her husband own a tiny bookshop in nearby Boonsboro, but Roberts spends most of her time in an upstairs office where she types, smokes and drinks diet colas eight hours a day, five days a week. It's a routine that's produced an average of seven books a year since 1981, many of them bestsellers.
Roberts knows that her work is commercial fiction and doesn't lose any sleep waiting for National Book Award nominations. The high-art literary tradition isn't what's gotten her to where she is; what has is her "real talent for storytelling," as author Jennifer Crusie (Fast Women; Welcome to Temptation) says, and a commensurate skill with plot and pacing. Readers are pulled into her story lines (which often bounce from one continent to the next) and her well-drawn characters. Fans especially admire Roberts' tough, independent heroines. "When they fit with your own circumstances," says Elizabeth Mayfield, a database administrator from Norwalk, Connecticut, "you think, Gee, there's hope for me." Roberts, however, contends that she's not writing to provide role models for anyone. "I'm gonna tell a good, entertaining story," she says. "I'm not looking to change the world."
Roberts was born Eleanor Marie Robertson, and she grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, about an hour from where she lives now. Her father worked as a projectionist at the local movie theater and as a stagehand until 1964, when he started a lighting company -- which is where most of the Robertson family still works. Her mother ran the family. "Mom was a very strict disciplinarian," says Roberts' brother Buzz, who is now the president of his dad's company, "but as long as you followed the rules and were polite, you didn't have a problem." He says Nora had it a little easier than her brothers. "Us boys, we knew we were low men on the totem pole. Mom was tickled pink when she had Nora."
"Her daddy worked two jobs all his life, and during the Depression, I took in roomers," says Eleanor Robertson, who at eighty-five still lives in Silver Spring and is now secretary-treasurer of the company her husband started (Bernie Robertson died in 2000). "She knows how hard we worked to give them an education and a nice home." Roberts went to Catholic schools as a child and credits much of her success to the nuns who taught her -- the discipline and guilt in her formative years did her a lot of good.
In her sophomore year of high school, Roberts transferred to public school, where she met Ronald Aufdem-Brinke; she married him at seventeen, in 1968, right after graduation. The young couple moved to Keedysville and had a small house built in the woods. While Aufdem-Brinke worked at his father's sheet-metal business and later the Robertson lighting company, Roberts took care of their two children and the house. "Oh God, I had craft addictions," Roberts says, taking a drag on a cigarette. (She runs through a pack of Winstons at a pace that doesn't quite catch up to chain-smoking but runs several steps beyond casual.) "You name it, I made it. I macraméd two hammocks once. I did ceramics, I sewed the kids' clothes. I even put flies into overalls -- that is sick. I was a sick woman. I baked bread once a week. I canned jellies and made my own spaghetti sauce using my own tomatoes."
Sometime during the next decade (she calls the period her "Earth Mother" years), Roberts started to read Harlequin novels -- the short books were easy for her to finish while the kids were napping. During a blizzard in 1979, trapped inside with little more than her three- and six-year-old sons and a game of Candy Land, Roberts sat down with a pencil and wrote a manuscript of her own, a romance that she's since described as "very bad." In the next year and a half, while her kids were napping or at T-ball practice, she wrote at least six manuscripts in longhand. She submitted some of them to Harlequin, which at the time was using mainly British writers. Roberts didn't hear back, but her enthusiasm wasn't subdued. "I became a writing junkie," she says. Although she was rejected several times, she continued to write -- but started filing her manuscripts in a back drawer rather than submitting them.
Roberts then heard that a new romance publisher, Silhouette, was looking specifically for American writers, so she sent in her work. In 1980 she got a call from Nancy Jackson, a Silhouette editor, saying she had plucked one of Roberts' manuscripts -- Irish Thoroughbred, a slender love story about an Irish stable hand and her boss -- out of the slush pile. Jackson told Roberts she wanted to publish it. Eleanor Aufdem-Brinke changed her name to Nora Roberts because she says she assumed all romance authors used a nom de plume. The book "didn't make waves when it first came out," says Isabel Swift, her current editor, but it sold well in reprint. Roberts was hooked on the process, though, and published five more books the following year, eight the following and ten the year after that.
Roberts hit it big in 1985 when she wrote the first of her MacGregor family series, Playing the Odds. The book, which focuses on a matchmaking Scottish patriarch and his brood, became an immediate bestseller. Romance readers began associating the name Nora Roberts with multigenerational sagas: In addition to the MacGregors, she has written about the Donovans, a modern family of Irish magicians; the Calhouns, a family of pigheaded sisters in Maine; and the Stanislaskis, tempestuous Ukrainian immigrants.
***
From the beginning, Roberts' heroines were not content to wear aprons or take dictation. In Irish Thoroughbred, though Roberts' heroine was young (early twenties) and virginal (well, she was a virgin), she was a horse groomer with an independent streak. Roberts wasn't alone in giving her female characters more authority in the workforce; other American romance authors -- like Jayne Ann Krentz, Sandra Brown and Elizabeth Lowell -- were doing the same. "I think one of the great things the American writer has brought to the romance novel," Krentz says, "is a modern interpretation of women's roles and women's values." Author Janet Evanovich adds, "The genre reflects the increased power and opportunity afforded today's women. We see more variety in the genre in terms of heroine age and occupation. And today's heroine is stronger, more self-reliant. Of course, Nora was always ahead of the pack. Her heroines were always strong."
Rebecca Sullivan, a heroine in Roberts' latest romantic suspense, Three Fates, is a quintessential Nora Roberts lead: She runs the family business (giving boat tours off the western coast of Ireland) and engineers the search for the family's lost treasure. Rebecca's a smart, capable lady with a sense of humor. In the course of the story, she falls in love with a computer expert who eventually marries her -- the book ends in Ireland with the assumption that the husband will help her with the business. "I'm not interested in telling stories about weak women," Roberts says. "Or if they're weak, I want to show how they grow and how they become strong. I'm not writing about Cinderella sitting waiting for her prince to come and take her away. She'll get out of it herself. The prince is a bonus, a completion, another element -- but it's not the answer to all of her problems."
***
Perched on a stool next to her kitchen counter, Roberts doesn't look like a purveyor of dreams. She could be any of a million women, taking a break from a million jobs, looking toward the end of a million days. Right now, her husband is outside, working in the yard before heading to town. Later on, he'll pick up groceries, and Nora will cook dinner; favorites are pasta with red sauce or Cajun chicken. Around 7:30, the two will retire for the evening, probably settling down for a while in front of the television -- it's Thursday, so they'll probably tune in for some of Friends or ER. And that's a typical end to a typical day for the world's most popular romance author. "I always wonder if they asked Agatha Christie if she was homicidal," Roberts says with a laugh. "I don't have a romantic lifestyle."
Still, she says, it's romance books she turns to when she wants to escape reality, so maybe the queen of the realm is, finally, one of its true citizens as well. Roberts, after all, spends her days holed up in her office, writing, researching and investigating the backgrounds for her books. She loves it, she says, but it's work. And when she's done, she's done. "When I read for pleasure," she says, "give me a story."
If today's romance is escapism, millions of its readers would argue that it is also girl-power between pastel covers: adventures that belong to characters who are at their strongest -- and sexiest -- because they are women. So Roberts essentially shrugs off the contempt reserved for romance novels as sexist and ignorant. Still, she recognizes that the genre carries a lot of baggage -- even she finds herself sneaking reads when she's out in public. A lot of the embarrassment, she says, has to do with the way the books look. "It's mostly hard for me when she's falling out of her dress, and he has his mouth on her tit," Roberts says, describing what she calls "nursing mother" covers. She taps her lighter against the counter and rolls her eyes. "To sit on an airplane and read that?"
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
She writes top-notch women's fiction as Nora Roberts, futuristic police procedural mysteries under her recently revealed pseudoymn J. D. Robb, and is a No.1 New York Times–bestselling author under both names. In Survivor in Death, the prolific author has New York City homicide detective Eve Dallas battling bitter memories as well as cold-blooded killers, as she struggles to protect the lone survivor of a deadly home invasion.
The only thing that kept young Nixie Swisher from suffering the same fate as her parents, brother, housekeeper, and young sleepover companion was the impulsive nine-year-old's desire for an illicit orange fizzy at 2 a.m. Taking the bereft girl under her wing, Eve is determined to make sure the killers don't get the chance to finish their lethal job. From the first, however, the investigation is baffling. The Swishers were a nice family, living on the Upper West Side in a house with an excellent security system. Ordinary almost to a fault, they seemed unlikely victims for this carefully planned and executed crime. Valuables at the scene were left untouched, there was no sign of vandalism -- just the corpses of five people murdered in their sleep.
All Nixie saw was two people dressed in black, wearing night-vision goggles and carrying sharp knives. They were in and out in less than 15 minutes -- silent, swift, and deadly. Unwilling to turn the gutsy young survivor over to the questionable refuge of Child Protective Services, Eve brings her to the safest place she knows -- the fortresslike home she shares with her husband, Roarke. There's no doubt in her mind that this was a professional hit, Now it's up to Eve and her top-notch team of civilians and cops to protect the little girl while they track down the people responsible for this unspeakable tragedy. Sue Stone
From the Publisher
No affairs. No criminal connections. No DNA. No clues. Eve Dallas may be the best cop in the city - not to mention having the lavish resources of her husband Roarke at her disposal - but the Swisher case has her baffled. The family members were murdered in their beds with brutal, military precision. The state-of-the-art security was breached, and the killers used night vision to find their way through the cozy middle-class house. Clearly, Dallas is dealing with pros. The only mistake they made was to overlook the nine-year-old girl cowering in the dark in the kitchen. . .
Now Nixie Swisher is an orphan - and the sole eyewitness to a seemingly inexplicable crime. Kids are not Dallas's strong suit. But Nixie needs a safe place to stay, and Dallas needs to solve this case. Not only because of the promise she made to Nixie. Not only for the cause of justice. But also to put to rest some of her own darkest memories - and deepest fears. With her partner Peabody on the job, and watching her back - and with Roarke providing the kind of help only he can give - Lieutenant Eve Dallas is running after shadows, and dead-set on finding out who's behind them.
Publishers Weekly
In the 20th fine volume of Roberts's futuristic mystery franchise, police lieutenant Eve Dallas is called in when lawyer Grant Swisher and his family are massacred with eerie skillfulness on the Upper West Side. The only survivor is 10-year-old Nixie, who evades-and witnesses-the killers as she creeps down to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Despite the painful memories of her own childhood that Nixie's presence calls up, Eve decides to hide the girl in the high-tech mansion she shares with her husband, billionaire businessman Roarke. With help from Roarke; her faithful sidekick, Peabody; and others, Eve discovers the existence of a shadowy former military operative with a grudge against Swisher-the lawyer helped the operative's battered wife divorce him right before she disappeared. The relatively early disclosure of the villain's identity and the dearth of other viable suspects dulls the suspense in the first half of the book, but tension escalates toward an absorbing denouement as a trap Eve sets for her target ends up with Nixie as its unintentional bait. Throughout, the series' colorful supporting cast and Eve's prickly personality-smartly showcased in her power struggles with everything from space-age vending machines to her own past-remain as vividly appealing as ever. Agent, Amy Berkower. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Writing as J.D. Robb, Nora Roberts sends us to 2059 for another rendezvous with NYPD lieutenant Eve Dallas. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
One witness, two killers, five murders. Eve Dallas investigates. Trouble is, the witness is only nine and didn't see much in the dark. But it's clear that Nixie Swisher was supposed to die right along with her mother, father, brother, and housekeeper. Thanks to her late-night craving for an Orange Fizzy, Nixie escaped, though her best friend got her throat cut with chilling precision. All Eve (Visions in Death, p. 601) can do is step over the bodies and start connecting the dots with every security gizmo and techno-toy available in 2059 New York. But nothing adds up. Grant Swisher was a do-good lawyer who got battered women out of life-threatening relationships. Keelie Swisher was a nutritionist. Who'd murder a sweet-faced vitamin pusher? The housekeeper, Inge Snood, happened to be in the wrong place-her own bed-at the wrong time. The kids-were just kids. But Eve can't help seeing a reflection of her own horrific childhood in Nixie's terrified eyes, and she wants to save this kid. She pulls rank on Meredith Norman, the social worker from Child Protection Services, so Nixie can stay with her and billionaire husband Roark for a while. Meredith is required to put the kid in protective custody, but Eve won't let that happen. Then a few things begin to add up. Meredith goes missing, and when her torture-marked corpse is found and the two cops guarding the gates are slain as well, the questions fly thick and fast (and the sentences get even shorter). Are cold-blooded operatives for covert government agencies running amok and killing for hire? Are evil brutes, separated at birth but with a shared thirst for blood, carrying out vendettas either for the hell of it or following a hellish ideologyof their own? Eve and Roark find a link to someone bent on vengeance and follow a trail to heartland America and back to New York. And, yup, they kick a lot of butt. Tough-talking thriller with a matchless pace.
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: February 2005
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Hardcover, 384pp
- Series: In Death Series, #20
- ISBN-13: 9780399152085
- ISBN: 0399152083
Table of Contents
Read a Sample Chapter
Survivor in Death
By Nora Roberts
Putnam Adult
ISBN: 0-399-15208-3Chapter One
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 Identi-pad 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 vics." 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.
"Nixie," she said quietly, as her eyes scanned. "I'm Lieutenant Dallas, with the police. I'm here to help you. You call the police, Nixie?"
Abduction, she thought again. But why slaughter an entire household to snatch a little girl? Easier to boost her off the street somewhere, even to come in, tranq her, carry her out. More likely they'd found her trying to hide, and she'd be curled up somewhere, dead as the rest.
She called for lights, full, and saw the smears of blood on the carpet on the far side of the bed. A small, bloody handprint, another, and a trail of red leading to the master bath.
Didn't have to be the kid's blood. More likely the parents. More likely, but there was a hell of a lot of it. Crawled through the blood, Eve thought.
The tub was big and sexy, double sinks in a long peachy-colored counter, and a little closet-type deal for the toilet.
A smudged and bloody swath stained the pretty pastel floor tiles. "Goddamn it," Eve mumbled, and followed the trail toward the thick, green glass walls of a shower station.
She expected to find the bloodied body of a small dead girl.
Instead she found the trembling form of a live one.
There was blood on her hands, on her nightshirt, on her face.
For a moment, one hideous moment, Eve stared at the child and saw herself. Blood on her hands, her shirt, her face, huddled in a freezing room. For that moment, she saw the knife, still dripping, in her hand, and the body-the man-she'd hacked to pieces lying on the floor.
"Jesus. Oh Jesus." She took a stumbling step back, primed to run, to scream. And the child lifted her head, locked glassy eyes on hers, and whimpered.
She came back, hard, as if someone had slapped her. Not me, she told herself as she fought to get her breathing under control. Nothing like me.
Nixie Swisher. She has a name. Nixie Swisher.
"Nixie Swisher." Eve said it out loud, and felt herself settle. The kid was alive, and there was a job to do.
One quick survey told Eve none of the blood was the child's.
Even with the punch of relief, the stiffening of spine, she wished for Peabody. Kids weren't her strong suit.
"Hey." She crouched, carefully tapped the badge she'd hooked to her waistband with a finger that was nearly steady now. "I'm Dallas. I'm a cop. You called us, Nixie."
The child's eyes were wide and glazed. Her teeth chattered.
"I need you to come with me, so I can help you." She reached out a hand, but the girl cringed back and made a sound like a trapped animal.
Know how you feel, kid. Just how.
"You don't have to be afraid. Nobody's going to hurt you." Keeping one hand up, she reached in her pocket with the other for her communicator. "Peabody, I've got her. Master bath. Get up here."
Wracking her brain, Eve tried to think of the right approach. "You called us, Nixie. That was smart, that was brave. I know you're scared, but we're going to take care of you."
"They killed, they killed, they killed ..."
"They?"
Her head shook, like an old woman with palsy. "They killed, they killed my mom. I saw, I saw. They killed my mom, my dad. They killed-"
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I crawled through the blood." Eyes huge and glassy, she held out her smeared hands. "Blood."
"Are you hurt, Nixie? Did they see you? Did they hurt you?"
"They killed, they killed-" When Peabody turned into the room, Nixie screamed as if she'd been stabbed. And launched herself into Eve's arms.
Peabody stopped short, kept 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 CPS, 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."
Continues...
Excerpted from Survivor in Death by Nora Roberts Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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