“I’m going to paint you, Sunshine.”

Smiling, he walked over to a tin of brushes. A tingling of excitement erupted in my belly. I never hated myself more than at that moment.

Chapter 22

MARGARET

I really hated the smell of the autopsy room. As many times as I’d had to come into this room and stare at dead bodies, there was nothing that made the experience better. At least this time, I’d remembered the vapor rub for my nose to cut down the smell.

Pushing through the second set of doors that led to the body, I prepared to face the strange white-haired doctor who seemed way too happy to be staring into the wide-open cavity of the latest corpse. The thick glasses and flip-up optical magnifier clipped to the front made him look like something from a Sci-Fi show.

“I was just about to give you a call,” the doctor said, not lifting his eyes from his work.The tweezers he was using pulled a small piece of something shiny from inside the victim’s chest before he dropped it into a metal dish.

“Anything I can use,” I asked, stepping up beside the table and staring down at the mangled body.

The face had been beaten beyond recognition. The arms and legs had deep lacerations, and fingers and toes were missing, but the arms still had cuts that created strange pictures in the skin. This was the most unusual calling card I’d ever seen, and considering I’d seen my fair share, that was saying something.

“Yes, and no.” The doctor lifted his head and stripped his bloodied gloves off before removing the strange glasses. “This kill is the work of a killer and one that knows how to kill, but not your killer.”

I looked at the skin again and then back up at the doctor. “I don’t understand. This body has the same carvings.”

“Carvings, yes. Same kind of carvings, no.”

My lips pressed together in a tight line as I tried to decipher what the strange old man that I was positive sniffed one too many jars of formaldehyde over his career was trying to say. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Look at the carvings closely. What do you see?”

Bending over, I got close to the deep lines that distorted the look of the victim’s shoulder. “They don’t look quite as smooth.”

“Hah. That is an understatement.”

I glanced back up at the doctor as he wandered away and pressed the button on the large television screen. Holding up the remote, he flicked through a number of photos and then stopped at one of the bodies I’d collected a few weeks back. The image was zoomed in on the skin and the design that had been created on the woman’s chest and stomach.

“Now look at the pictures on the screen and then relook at our current victim.”