Fear No Evil

Chapter 54

Sampson was still feeling the shock of the previous evening when he entered the offices of the DC medical examiner the next morning.

“Lauren’s waiting for you,” the receptionist said. “You know the way, Detective.”

Sampson did know the way and soon rapped on the door frame of DC assistant medical examiner Lauren Pickett.

Pickett looked up with a smile, but her smile turned to concern when she saw him. She jumped up and waved him in. “I just heard you were there last night.”

He nodded soberly. “One of two surviving witnesses. Me and Mahoney.”

“Jesus,” she said. “Should you even be out and about? I mean, I’m so sorry I texted you. How are you feeling? We can do this another time, John.”

“No, other than muscle pain in my belly and around the thigh wound, I feel good.”

“Sit,” she said. “Or not.”

Sampson sat. “You said the autopsy is done?”

“It is,” she said. “And Billie’s body has been cremated, as you requested. I want you to know that we treated her with great dignity, John.”

Sampson felt guilty he hadn’t been with her coffin, that he’d been in the hospital when his late wife’s body was exhumed, examined, and cremated. “Cause of death?”

“Cardiac arrest secondary to Borrelia burgdorferi infection,” the medical examiner said. “Otherwise known as Lyme disease. The official cause of Billie’s death will remain unchanged, John.”

Sampson blinked and swallowed that statement, finding it familiar and more than a little bitter. His wife had died because of a hike in the woods and bacteria that had attacked her heart, Billie’s greatest asset.

Pickett said, “You can delete that madman’s text to you, John. He played no role in Billie’s death. I have no idea why someone would say something so despicable.”

Sampson said, “It was sadism, designed to inflict pain. But sadists like to prolong their torture.”

“Meaning?”

“Why did he try to have me killed before Billie’s body could be exhumed? Why not enjoy my pain for as long as possible?”

Pickett said, “Because he knew what the results of the autopsy would be?”

Sampson squinted, trying to see that angle. “Could be, but I just feel like there has to be more at stake than that for him to send an assassin after me.”

The assistant ME thought a moment. “Is it possible you were getting close to him? Close to cracking his identity?”

Sampson racked his brain, trying to think through the events leading up to M’s text claiming responsibility for Billie’s death and Master Sergeant Psycho’s showing up at his house to knife him at M’s behest.

He said, “Alex and I worked the Catherine Hingham case and M’s connection to it before that text. But we felt like we were getting very little traction. After the text, Alex went to LA with Mahoney on the second murder-confession case, which left me pretty much out of the game until after the stabbing.”

“Maybe you weren’t out of the game in M’s mind,” Pickett said. “Maybe you had become a threat.”

“Or maybe he just didn’t want to play with me anymore,” Sampson said. “I’d become something to discard and be done with. Like a chess piece taken off the board in a game of strategy only he understands.”