Page 11 of Liar's Point

He walked away, and Nicole’s stomach filled with dread as she followed him down the cinder-block hallway. They passed Cynthia’s desk—which was empty, thankfully—and he led her around the corner into a long corridor with garish fluorescent lighting. The temperature dropped noticeably as they turned another corner and neared the autopsy suite.

He stopped beside a door and entered a passcode.

Nicole’s stomach flip-flopped. “I thought you were finished?”

“I am. I want to show you something.”

Biting back a curse, she followed him into a narrow room with a row of stainless steel sinks on one side. He took a surgical mask from a box by the door and handed it to her before grabbing one for himself.

Nicole followed his lead and put on the mask, then pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

“Here.” He turned and dabbed gel on her mask. Vicks. It was supposed to combat the smell, but instead it brought back memories of the last time she’d been here, and her stomach started to churn.

He held the door for her and ushered her into the exam room. The back of her neck began to sweat, despite the refrigerator-like temperature.

The room smelled of death and disinfectant. Two long metal tables stood in the center of the space. The far table was empty, but on the closest table was an ominous lump covered by a gray sheet.

Nicole looked at the room next door, separated by a big glass window. A couple of people in scrubs were hunched over an exam table under a bright white light. They had a radio on, and the faint sound of pop music carried through the wall.

Nicole turned her attention back to David as he approached the table. Bile rose in the back of her throat, and she swallowed it down. The mound on the table looked so flat, hardly big enough to be a full-grown woman.

“You okay?”

She glanced up and nodded.

He reached for the top of the sheet, and she looked away.

Skip breakfast. Maybe you won’t puke.

She had skipped breakfast, but now her skin felt clammy, and the contents of her stomach were about to come up.

“Shit,” she muttered.

“I know you hate this.”

She clenched her teeth and eased closer as David adjusted the covering around the body, exposing only a slender white arm.

Nicole examined the inert limb, trying not to think about how it was attached to a dead body. A dead person who had recently been cut open, and dissected, and stitched back up again.

“Nicole?”

Her gaze snapped to David’s. His eyes bored into hers.

“You see it?”

She looked down at the arm again and tried to block out everything—the cold, the stench, the obscenely upbeat music coming from next door.

Aubrey Lambert had a delicate green vine winding around her right forearm. The tattoo ended just below her elbow with a monarch butterfly that looked like it was tangled in the leaves.

David traced his gloved finger over the back of her arm, below the shoulder. “See?” He twisted the arm, and Nicole’s stomach jolted.

“What am I looking at?”

“The contusion. See it?” He tapped a pale reddish blotch no bigger than a pencil eraser.

“You mean the bruise? What about it?”

“Here.” He reached behind him and grabbed a magnifying glass off the counter. He handed it to her and then adjusted the overhead light. “Look.”

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