Innocent in Death (In Death 24) - Page 136

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 love you, 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 four A.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 Dennis had been up until the early hours of Christmas morning, putting everything together while their children slept. And how they’d snatched a few hours of exhausted sleep before the kids woke and rushed into the bedroom.

“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 planner—fitting your profile—she likes her schedules. She got up, went into her brother’s room. She got him up, told him to be very quiet. When they got to the top of the stairs—which, according to the investigators’ reports, was at the opposite end of the second floor from the master bedroom—she pushed him.”

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 c

hunk 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.”

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