left the room, his pathology assistant followed suit, closing the door behind him.
Dana frowned as the image on the video stood still for what seemed a lifetime then – just Christian Manhoff’s dead body alone in the room with a large rawhide dog bone shoved halfway down his throat. Finding the fast-forward button on the computer, Dana watched the same scene unfold for two more minutes, according to the time-stamp located in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.
And then the door to the autopsy room opened up again.
Dana widened her eyes. A woman in her late-thirties or early forties entered the room, dressed to the nines in a designer dress and high-heeled shoes. She was holding something in her right hand.
Turning directly to the camera hidden behind the potted plant, the woman smiled at the viewfinder before lifting up the picture of Dana’s brother and mouthing three distinct words that you didn’t need to be a professional lip-reader to figure out.
Fuck you, Dana.
Dana recoiled from the computer screen, as though the woman might somehow reach through the monitor and grab her by the throat. Dana’s pulse skipped three beats in a row in her neck as the woman attached the picture of Nathan Stiedowe to Christian Manhoff’s nipple ring. Then the woman simply turned around, flipped off the camera with both her middle fingers and left the room.
Dana rewound the video and watched it again. And then for a third and fourth time.
Fuck you, Dana.
Fuck you, Dana.
Fuck you, Dana.
Fuck you, Dana.
Dana’s ears rang. Her hands shook. Her palms flooded with sweat. It was clear that the woman in the autopsy video had zero interest in concealing her identity, no fear at all about her face being captured on tape. And that worried Dana. A lot. Because only someone with nothing to lose would display such carelessness. And how in the hell had the woman known the camera had been hidden behind the plant in the first place? Did she work there?
Dana shook her head. Didn’t seem likely considering the fact that it would have taken all of about five minutes to identify her if she did work there. So if that wasn’t it, what was it then? Was she a disgruntled former employee? A relative of one? And just how exactly had she gained access to the autopsy room in the first place? Nancy Lawson had said the camera had been installed just a couple weeks prior, so that meant the woman had been privy to that information too. But how in the hell could she have known that if she didn’t work there?
Dana tapped the trackpad to stop the video and called up the Internet browser on Nancy Lawson’s computer before saving the footage in a zip file and e-mailing it to herself.
Dana nearly jumped out of her skin. A cold trickle of sweat slid down the back of her neck. Her heartbeat thudded dully in her chest. ‘Not a damn thing,’ Dana lied, standing up quickly and moving around to the other side of the desk, instinctively putting some distance between herself and the coroner’s office employee. ‘Didn’t find anything, at all.’
The well-dressed woman on the autopsy footage didn’t resemble Nancy Lawson in the least little bit, but Dana had been burned in the past by such simple oversights and she didn’t want to get burned again. Not this time. Everyone had to remain a suspect until Dana could rule him or her out, and she hadn’t done that yet with Nancy Lawson.
Dana tried to keep the adrenalin out of her voice as she continued to speak. Wasn’t easy. ‘Thank you again for all your help, Miss Lawson. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.’
Nancy Lawson blew off a thick cloud of steam from her piping-hot Styrofoam cup of coffee and took a tentative sip.
‘Don’t mention it, honey. That’s what they pay me the big bucks for.’
CHAPTER 17
Hands still shaking, Dana ducked into the gleaming public restroom at the coroner’s office building and tried to steady herself. Wasn’t easy.
A familiar dread washed through her stomach as she splashed some cold water onto her face and tried to calm down. No good. She was still too shaken up from the shocking video she’d just watched to even breathe properly, much less think straight – a shocking video she hadn’t been expecting to see at all.