She was in the middle of taking multiple photos of the artwork, trying to capture it from every angle, when she stopped mid-click.
Crap.
She’d seen this tattoo before.
Setting down the camera, she hurried over to the computer and logged out of the forensic database, then placed the remains back in cold storage and hauled butt back to her office. One glance at the darkness outside told her she’d already worked way too long, and that Trey was probably wondering where she was, but she had one thing she needed to check before leaving.
Back at her desk, she jumped on her computer, pulling up the files from yesterday’s staff meeting. She had to flip through nearly a hundred crime scene and autopsy photos, but when she found the picture she’d remembered, it stopped her cold.
Aidan Bridges, thirty-two-year-old male, found dead in his Preston Hollow home. Cause of death was an opiate overdose. The photo of the man’s body on the exam table showed the winged-horse tattoo on the right arm clear as day. Hugh, the ME who’d performed the autopsy, confirmed that because Bridges had no family or next of kin, the body had been cremated by the county two weeks ago.
That obviously wasn’t true because Aidan Bridges’s arm was sitting in cold storage in her lab.
Her head spinning at the implications, Samantha went through all of Hugh’s autopsy records from the staff briefing, stunned at how many cases the man cleared in a month. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for until she found a John Doe with a circular-shaped scar on the inner part of his left forearm—the same scar she’d seen Monday morning on the arm from the body dump near the homeless camp. The John Doe had been picked up in the woods west of Cockrell Hill, with Hugh declaring the man’s death a suicide. Like Aiden Bridges, this body had been cremated about two weeks ago.
Samantha wasn’t sure how long she sat there staring at the photos of Aiden Bridges and the John Doe, wondering how many more of the Butcher’s victims had first been on Hugh’s autopsy table. She finally closed the file and logged out even as she tried to understand what exactly was going on. Had Hugh murdered those two people himself, then used his position in the ME’s office to cover up the crime so he could give them to the Butcher? Or had those men actually committed suicide, then Hugh gave the bodies to the Butcher so he could dissect them? Or was Hugh the Butcher, doing some kind of insane experiments on people using the parts from these two corpses? Considering his medical and surgical training, that made sense on some sick level. No wonder she’d been having such a hard time coming up with any viable clues in the case. Who better than an ME to know how to hide stuff like that?
Samantha stood and ran for the door. She needed to tell somebody about all of this, and fast.
Chapter 16
“Trey, it’s Samantha,” she said into her cell, knowing how stupid it was to drive with one hand and operate a phone with the other. But she needed to talk to him about what she’d found. Unfortunately, she got his voicemail. “I stumbled onto something really big with the case I need to talk to you about it. Call me as soon as you get this.”
Samantha almost said I love you before hanging up, but then chickened out at the last second. Yeah, maybe it was too soon for that. She should probably wait to see if they made it past the part where she confessed to stealing his blood and sending it out to a private lab for testing.
As she drove through the well-maintained streets and fancy homes in Westover Hills, Samantha began thinking she had the wrong address. When she reached the house taking up the entire end of the cul-de-sac, she was even more sure she’d taken a wrong turn. With its stacked stone walls and turreted roof, the three-story structure looked more like a castle where a king would live than a house belonging to a chief medical examiner.
She pulled her car into the broad driveway and stopped, staring up at her Louis’s home in disbelief. Even with the light streaming through the leaded-glass windows on the lower floor, “dark and foreboding” was the best way to describe the house. Not that it wasn’t beautiful. It simply wasn’t the kind of place she’d ever want to live.
Getting out of the car, she headed for the front door, taking in the manicured lawn and impeccable flower beds. She knew Louis came from money—or at least that’s what the rumors around the institute were—but if the man could afford a place like this, why the hell did he keep working? Especially as county medical examiner.
She rang the doorbell and waited, praying he was home. If he wasn’t, she’d have to go with her backup plan—going to see the task force lead detective or Chief Leclair. Truthfully, she wasn’t comfortable with either one. She didn’t know the lead detective well enough to refer to him by anything other than his title. She didn’t know his first name and couldn’t remember his last name. And while she’d at least talked to the chief a time or two outside of the Butcher case, the woman had always struck her as overwhelmingly busy and not very interested in the thoughts of anyone not wearing DPD blue.
It didn’t help that Samantha had no idea how well her theory would be received. The idea that Hugh was either the Butcher or working directly with him was a little out there. Especially when the only evidence she had at the moment was that two of the body parts she’d recovered had come from corpses that had been on his examiner’s table. It’s why she wanted to talk to Louis first and see if she was completely off base. If he found her ideas sane and reasonable, the task force would be more likely to take them seriously.
She lifted her hand to ring the doorbell again when the front door opened. Louis stood there in the entryway wearing a Mr. Rogers cardigan, clearly surprised to see her.
“Samantha! What are you doing here so late?”
“I discovered something disturbing about the Butcher case and wanted to talk to you first before I told anyone else.”
Louis’s expression quickly became all business, and he opened the door wider, motioning her forward. “Of course. Come in and we can talk.”
Samantha stopped inside the large foyer, completely awed. The circular space was breathtaking, open all the way up to the third floor, with lots of marble and gilt edges, beautiful curving stairs leading to the floors above. But the most unexpected find were the gleaming suits of armor positioned on pedestals all around the perimeter of the room, each holding a weapon that looked real as hell to her.
“Forgive my taste in home decor,” Louis said with a laugh, motioning toward the suits of armor. “My family name has historical roots in sixteenth-century Italy, hence an obsession with antique armor and weapons from that time. Feel free to look around if you wish, or if you prefer, my study is ahead and to the left. I have to take care of something I was in the middle of when you knocked.”
Samantha spent a few moments looking at all the armor and weapons but was too distracted to pay them any attention, so she instead headed for the arched doorway Louis had pointed out.