Postmortem

Scarpetta is feeling increasingly isolated and paranoid. She calls Boltz’s office and learns that he has gone on vacation until the end of the month. She realizes he has cut her off “because he couldn’t face his own sins” (261).

Scarpetta goes into the office. She sees Wingo slip Betty a small plastic bag of something white and then walk away. Scarpetta asks Betty what it is. Betty tells her that it is “a little private work” he needs her to do (263). Scarpetta worries that Wingo has AIDS.

Betty tells Scarpetta that the blood on the jumpsuit is a likely match to Henna’s based on blood type. They will get DNA confirmation in about a month. She tells her that it is not possible to match the jumpsuit’s fibers to those on Henna’s body.

Scarpetta wonders if the hospital is the point of connection between the victims. She reviews the case files and sees that Cecile had an old fractured elbow injury. She wonders if Cecile was treated at the local hospital and calls Cecile’s sister Fran to confirm. Fran says Cecil was treated at a hospital in Fredericksburg, not in Richmond. Scarpetta notices that Cecile’s sister “sounds white.” She asks Fran if she is Black and if her sister had the same accent. Fran angrily confirms that she is Black and that both she and her sister “talk white.”

Scarpetta returns home. She reminds Lucy not to touch the gun she keeps in her closet for protection. Lucy asks if Scarpetta is a good shot. Scarpetta does not give a straight answer, but she has practiced using the weapon.

Scarpetta tells Lucy that she trusts her more than anyone else in the world. She asks Lucy if she will help her figure out how the hacker accessed the morgue database. Lucy explains that someone with remote access could access the files and even change them through the database manager if they knew how to reset the password.

Scarpetta thinks there is a link between the mis-entered record in the database about the tan belt and the “evidence” that appeared in the lab fridge. She calls the tech analyst Margaret and asks her for any old records of the database from before Lori’s murder. Margaret says she will give her the record in the morning.

Scarpetta calls Abby, who confirms that the detail she printed about the victim being strangled with a tan belt came from “a squad member” (277). Scarpetta thinks someone changed the entry in the database to make it seem as if this incorrect detail came from a leak from her office.

Marino is angry the next morning when he sees the story in the paper about the DNA. Scarpetta feigns ignorance. She reviews the database printout and sees that the earlier database record confirms the original entry was the correct one, stating that the victim had been strangled with a pair of nude pantyhose, not a tan belt. This means someone other than a member of staff changed the entry.

Scarpetta tells Marino that although Cecile Tyler was Black, she sounded white. This suggests that the murderer did not identify the victims by sight but rather by hearing their voices. She says, “If her voice sets him off, he selects her” (282). She says he is also someone who has frequent access to borax powdered soap, like that used in municipal settings. She says that Matt Petersen is ruled out because the residue with his fingerprints is a confirmed match to his stage makeup, not borax. They think the murderer works a night shift because the murders happen either late at night or early in the morning. Scarpetta wonders if the murderer is a police officer. They are anxious because the murders occur on Friday, and it is Thursday.

Scarpetta tells Marino that she wants recordings of the 911 calls. Marino says she can have the tape recordings and transcripts from the time frame of the calls, but the individual calls are not identified because they do not have the technological ability to do so. She will have to go through all the calls during the time frames of the murders.

Scarpetta works from home for the next day and a half, going through the call recordings and logs. She realizes that all the victims called 911 in the days before their murder. She calls Marino to report her findings. He says he will “look into it” (295).

That night, Scarpetta has a nightmare about her father’s death. She is awoken by a “foul air” and something brushing against the bed.

Scarpetta reaches for her gun, but she cannot quite get it. There is a knife at her throat. A man with a stocking on his head is glaring at her and threatening her. She is terrified. She smells the maple syrup smell. Suddenly, there is a loud bang. Scarpetta is not sure what happened, but she hears herself screaming.

Marino is there. He has shot the murderer four times. Scarpetta realizes that her gun was not even loaded.

The murderer is dead. Hebis Ray McCorkle, a 27-year-old 911 dispatcher who worked a six-to-midnight shift. He was noticed for always washing himself in the office bathroom with the powdered soap. He worked a number of odd jobs, including in the Boston area, and although he didn’t have a criminal record, he was likely involved in other murders. Marino says he suspected Ray would target Scarpetta that Friday because of her involvement in the case. Scarpetta reflects that Marino did not have to kill Ray, but she is not sorry that he did.

Later that day, Wingo tells her that he heard from a friend that Amburgey smoked in the alley outside his office. Wingo collected one of Amburgey’s cigarette butts and asked Betty to test it. They realized that the blood type matches the evidence in the PERK they found in the lab fridge. He must have taken the labels from the case file when they were reviewing the evidence. They think Amburgey falsified the evidence to make Scarpetta look negligent. They suspect Amburgey was also behind the database tampering. Scarpetta reflects that “hatred blinded his reason” (313).

Three days later, Scarpetta and Lucy leave for a vacation in Miami. Abby drives them to the airport. Scarpetta and Abby have formed a bond. Abby plans to expose Amburgey’s wrongdoing in the newspaper and have him removed from office.

Scarpetta and Lucy walk into the airport, bickering good-naturedly about what to eat before getting on the airplane.