Nikki entered the house through the open back door, weapon drawn. She had charged the first uniformed officers to come up the alley with keeping Eric Burke alive until the ambulance arrived. One was keeping pressure on his neck wound while the other started chest compressions as he began to slip away.
The lights were on in the laundry room/mud room, a cheery white space splashed with Eric Burke’s blood. The spatter arced across the room on the ceiling, on the wall, on the washing machine, on the floor. What the hell was this assailant fighting with? Burke’s face had been laid open like the belly of a gutted fish—sliced too cleanly for the weapon to have been an axe or a hatchet. If it was a knife, the blade was long.
She thought of Kovac’s samurai-sword murders. What the hell was wrong with people?
Drops of blood pooled on the kitchen floor where the attacker had paused for a moment.
Where was Evi? Where was little Mia?
A faint cry of “Mommy!” from overhead cut along Nikki’s nerve endings like a razor. Her blood pressure spiked so hard she could hear her blood rushing across her eardrums. At least the child was alive. Was she crying over her mother’s dead body? Was the assailant still in the house?
Leading with her weapon, she moved into the dining room. There was no sign of a struggle, save for the drops of blood on the hardwood floor that led the way into the living room and up the stairs to the bedrooms.
The patrol sergeant in the backyard had argued for her to wait for a SWAT unit. Nikki refused. What were they supposed to do? Sit around on the deck waiting while Evi Burke and her daughter were raped and slaughtered inside the house? No.
The sound of voices upstairs rose and fell. She couldn’t make out how many or what they were saying.
From where she stood at the bottom of the stairs, she could see nothing. She would be a sitting duck if there were a bad guy in the hallway.
The child’s voice wailed, the sound piercing Nikki’s ear like a needle. “Mommy! Mommy!”
She swore under her breath. Kovac would kill her for going in alone—if someone else didn’t kill her first.
She started slowly up the stairs.
*
THE HIT ON THE BOLO for Charlie Chamberlain’s car pulled Kovac and Taylor out of the crime scene in Diana Chamberlain’s apartment. Mascherino had taken charge of the scene, sending them on their way.
The Toyota was found parked on a side street in a quiet neighborhood east of Lake Nokomis, not far from where Gordon Krauss was apprehended earlier in the day. Kovac asked for the reporting officers to sit on the car from a discreet distance and wait for them to get there.
Was there supposed to have been a meeting there? Kovac wondered. Was this the place chosen for a payoff to Krauss, to buy his silence about the solicitation with enough cash to get him out of town?
The radio crackled with coded bursts as they sped south on Hiawatha, dash strobe running. Reports of a home invasion in the area. Units were on the scene and multiple units were en route. Not my monkeys, not my circus, Kovac thought as they turned off the main drag and were instantly swallowed up by a neighborhood of small, neat older homes. He killed the dash light.
There was no sign of the patrol car that had called in on the BOLO and should have been sitting watching, waiting for the Toyota’s driver to return. They had responded to the home invasion call-out.
Kovac and Taylor walked up on the Toyota, one on either side, each with a Maglite held high. The keys were on the driver’s seat. Bloody fingerprints and handprints marred the pale gray interior on the dash, and the interior of both doors. Blood smeared the passenger’s seat.
“Well, that’s not a good sign,” Kovac muttered.
“You want to wait for a crime scene unit?” Taylor asked.
“We’ll be here all night.”
Kovac opened the driver’s-side door with a gloved hand, reached in, and pressed the button to pop the trunk.
He didn’t know what he had been expecting. He had suspected the corpse at Diana’s belonged to Charlie, that Diana and Sato had killed him to get him out of their way. But when he and Taylor both shone their flashlights into the trunk of Charlie Chamberlain’s car, it was Diana Chamberlain inside.
She looked like she was resting, lying on her side with her eyes half closed. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear. Placed next to her, staring up at them, was the head of Ken Sato, his penis sticking out of his mouth.
47
“Mommy! Mommy!” Mia ran into the room, sobbing.
Evi looked at her daughter and, heedless of the blade at her throat, shouted, “Run, Mia! Run!”