Innocent In Death

Without a word, Rayleen turned away to walk upstairs. She stood at the doorway of her room, saw that her things were moved. And she understood perfectly.

She’d imagined something like this. In fact, she’d written what she could do, might need to do, in her diary the night before. Even as she walked down the hall to her parents’ room, her only genuine emotion was a quiet fury that her things had been gone through again, moved around, left untidy.

She liked her thingsexact. She expected her personal space to berespected.

She went into her mother’s drawers where the medications were hidden. As if anyone could actually hide something from her. They were so stupid, really. She slipped the bottle of sleeping pills into her purse along with her diary, then moved to the sitting area and programmed herbal tea.

Her mother favored ginseng. She programmed it sweet, though her mother rarely took much sweetener.

Then she dissolved a killing dose of sleeping pills into the sweet, fragrant tea.

It was all simple, really, and she’d thought about doing this before. Considered it. They would think her mother had self-terminated, out of guilt and despair. They’d think her mother had killed Mr. Foster, Mr. Williams, then hadn’t been able to live with it.

She knew her mother had had sex with Mr. Williams. She’d confessed it the night before the police had come to search. Rayleen was good at hearing things adults didn’t want her to hear. Her mother and father had talked and talked, and her mother had cried like a baby. Disgusting.

And her father had forgiven her mother. It had been a mistake, he said. They’d start fresh.

That had been disgusting, too-just like the sounds they’d made when they had sex after. If anyone lied to her the way her mother had to her father, she’d have made them pay. And pay and pay.

Actually, that’s what she was doing now, she decided as she set the oversized teacup on a tray. Mommy had to be punished for being bad. And by punishing her, it would all be tidied up again.

Then it would just be her and Daddy. She’d really be his one and only with Mommy gone.

She’d have to put her diary in the recycler now, and that made her mad. All because of that mean, nosy Lieutenant Dallas. One day she’d find a way to makeher pay for that.

But for now, it was better to get rid of it.

Daddy would buy her a brand-new one.

“Rayleen.” Allika came to the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“I think you should rest, Mommy. Look, I made you tea. Ginseng because you like it best. I’m going to take good care of you.”

Allika looked at the cup on the tray, on the bed. Everything inside her went weak. “Rayleen.”

“You’re tired and you have a headache.” Rayleen folded down the duvet, the sheets, plumped the pillows. “I’m going to make it all better. I’m going to sit with you while you rest. We girls have to take care of each other, don’t we?”

Rayleen turned with a bright, bright smile.

And maybe it was best, Allika thought as she moved like a sleepwalker to the bed. Maybe it was the only way. She let Rayleen smooth out the sheets, let her place the tray, even lift the cup.

“I love you,” Allika said.

“I loveyou, Mommy. Now drink your tea, and everything will be better.”

With her eyes on her daughter’s, Allika drank.

20

WHITNEY LISTENED, AND HE ABSORBED. HIS HANDS, which had been very still throughout his questioning of his lieutenant, began to tap fingers on the edge of his desk. “The mother suspects her daughter caused the boy to fall.”

“The mother knows her daughter caused the boy to fall,” Eve insisted. “She may have convinced herself, or tried to convince herself, it was an accident. Tried to patch her life back together, suffering from periodic bouts of depression and anxiety. In her gut she knows exactly what I know. It was no accident.”

“No one witnessed the fall.” But Whitney’s face was stony, his eyes dark and deep.

“Dr. Mira, in your opinion, given the scenario, is it natural for a girl to step over or around her younger brother’s dead body, while her parents are hysterical, to play with a toy?”

“That’s a broad question. The child may have been in shock or denial.”

“She was wearing the slippers. Ones she had to go downstairs to get, before she woke her parents.”

“Yes.”

“According to the investigator’s report on the death of Straffo, he died just after fourA. M. on the morning of December twenty-fifth,” Eve continued. “Statements given by both parents claim they were up, setting up the gifts, filling the stockings until about two-thirty. At which time, they had a glass of wine, then went upstairs, checking on both children before they retired, at around three. Rayleen woke them at five.”

For a moment Mira thought of the times she and De

“It would be possible that the girl snuck down between the times her parents went to bed and her brother got up. But the slippers are an oddity,” Mira agreed. “I agree, it seems strange for a child of that age to sneak down, put on slippers, then go back to bed for nearly two hours.”

“Because she didn’t,” Eve said flatly. “She got up-and I’ll guarantee she had an alarm set for it because she’s a pla

That little body flying out, tumbling, tumbling. Breaking.

“Then she walked down, checked to make sure she’d done a good job of it, before she went in to see what goodies she was getting from Santa. And what sort of things she would enjoy that would have been for her brother.”

She saw the horror of the picture she was painting play across Mira’s face. “She put the slippers on. She likes things with her name on them. That was a little mistake,” Eve added. “Like mentioning the diary to me. But she couldn’t resist. She probably played awhile. Her parents weren’t going to notice if she’d moved something a little, and she wouldn’t have resisted. It was all hers now.

“Then she went back up. I wonder if she even noticed her brother’s body at that point. He was no longer an issue.”

She shifted her gaze to Whitney, noted that his hands had gone still again, and that his face showed nothing. Nothing at all. “She might have tried to go back to sleep for a little while, but it was too hard. All those toys downstairs, and nobody to share them with anymore. So she woke up her parents so she could get back to what she wanted to do.”

“What you’re describing…” Mira began.

“Is a sociopath. And that’s exactly what she is. A sociopath with homicidal tendencies, a very keen intellect, and a big-ass chunk of narcissism. That’s why she kept the diary. It’s her only way of bragging about what she can do, and get away with doing.”

“We need the diary.”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded at Whitney.

“Why Foster and Williams?”

“Foster, I don’t know, unless it was for the hell of it. I don’t know,” she said again, “because she doesn’t strike me as a for-the-hell-of-it type. Williams was a very handy and unexpected goat. That’s on me, too. I pushed at him, and she saw the opportunity not only to kill again-because I think this time she got a taste for it-but to hand me a suspect. Either in him or in Mosebly. I wouldn’t doubt she knew something had gone on between them.”

“Even with the diary, even if it gives chapter and verse, it may be difficult to prove she did this on her own, or at all. Her father will, no doubt, block every step you take from here.”