Postmortem

Postmortem (1990) by Patricia Cornwell is the first book in the Kay Scarpetta crime series. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner in Richmond, Virginia, is on the hunt for a serial killer brutally murdering women in the city. Accompanied by her reluctant investigative partner Detective Marino, Scarpetta uses cutting-edge forensic techniques to unmask the killer while facing intense public and professional scrutiny as the first woman to hold the job as chief medical examiner. Postmortem touches on themes of Procedural Rigor Versus Intuition, The Psychology of Serial Killers, and Misogyny and Violence Against Women. Postmortem won the 1991 Edgar Award for Best Debut Novel.

This guide is based on the 2000 paperback edition of Postmortem from the Scarpetta Omnibus published by Little, Brown.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of bullying, racism, antisemitism, gender discrimination, transgender discrimination, antigay bias, sexual violence, rape, ableism, death by suicide, graphic violence, sexual content, and cursing.

Language Note: The source material uses antigay slurs not repeated in this guide.

Plot Summary

Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Richmond, Virginia’s chief medical examiner, is awoken in the early morning hours on a Saturday by a phone call from Detective Marino informing her that a fourth woman has been found murdered in her home. Scarpetta meets Marino at the crime scene, where Lori Petersen has been found bound, brutally raped, and murdered. Marino feels it is likely that her husband, Matt Petersen, who found the body when he returned home from theater rehearsal in Charlottesville, is the culprit.

Scarpetta takes the body to the morgue for examination. She uses a laser to collect trace evidence from the body. She notices that, like the other three victims, Lori’s body is covered in a substance that glitters under a laser light. She finds Matt Petersen’s fingerprints on Lori’s shoulder.

Scarpetta returns home. Her 10-year-old niece, Lucy, a prodigy, is staying with Kay for a while because her mother, Scarpetta’s sister, is self-involved and unreliable. Lucy has seen the news about the serial murders, and she worries that something will happen to Scarpetta. Scarpetta reassures her niece that nothing will happen to her.

The next morning, Scarpetta tells Marino that Matt’s fingerprints were found on his wife’s body. Marino tells her that he found a survival knife in Matt’s drawer. Scarpetta and the fingerprint technician, Vander, confirm that only Matt’s fingerprints were found on the knife. The weapons analyst says the cords binding Lori were likely cut using the knife.

Marino and Scarpetta review Matt’s doctoral dissertation, which deals with the sexually provocative themes of Tennessee Williams’s plays. Marino then plays a recording of his interrogation of Matt for Scarpetta. Matt denies all knowledge of the crime and insists on his innocence. Matt describes a maple syrup smell in the room where he found the body. Marino feels that, because Matt is an actor, he is only pretending to be innocent. Marino feels that everything points to Matt’s guilt, but Scarpetta is not convinced. She feels the murderer is a stranger to the four women who have been killed.

The next day, Scarpetta meets with Marino and Benton Wesley, the FBI profiler. They discuss how the semen samples on the women are all those of a nonsecreter, meaning that their blood type cannot be determined from their sperm. Marino notes that Matt Petersen is also a nonsecreter. However, 20% of all people are nonsecreters, so the result is not definitive; they are still awaiting DNA results from the lab. They believe that the murderer is white because three of the four victims are white and one is Black.

After the meeting, Scarpetta meets with the lab’s computer analyst, Margaret. Margaret tells Scarpetta that someone hacked the morgue database looking for Lori Petersen’s file. They did not get the file, as it was not yet entered into the system, but Scarpetta is worried about the data breach.

Scarpetta is summoned to a meeting with County Commissioner Amburgey and Commonwealth’s lawyer Bill Boltz. Amburgey says that he is worried that information from the investigation is leaking to the press. He thinks that the information is coming from Scarpetta’s office. She is outraged at the accusation, but they go through the case files together. Amburgey notes that the electronic database notes one of the women was strangled with a tan belt, a detail that appeared in a press report that wasn’t provided by the police. Amburgey says this indicates the information came from Scarpetta’s office. Scarpetta argues that it must be an error, as her own notes say the ligature used was a pair of pantyhose.

That evening, Boltz goes to Scarpetta’s house for dinner. They have been casually dating. Boltz’s wife died by suicide a year ago, and Scarpetta has resisted dating him more seriously. Scarpetta is angry that Boltz did not give her a heads-up about Amburgey’s accusations. Boltz suggests that perhaps reporter Abby Turnbull hacked the database. Scarpetta is skeptical.

The next day, after work, Scarpetta asks her niece Lucy, who is a genius with computers, if she hacked the database. Lucy says it was not her, and Scarpetta believes her. Scarpetta talks to her mother, who tells her that Lucy’s mother, Dorothy, has eloped to Nevada with a man, and Lucy will have to stay with her longer.

The next morning, Scarpetta’s lab assistant Wingo finds an untested collection of swabs from Lori Petersen’s autopsy. Scarpetta is stunned because she is meticulous about tracking trace evidence, and she is sure she turned all the evidence over to the testing lab. She wonders if someone planted the evidence there to make her seem incompetent. She feels it had to be Amburgey or Boltz because they handled the case files and had access to the labels.

She has the evidence tested, and only her fingerprints are on it. However, there are traces of the same substance found on the murder victims’ bodies. She realizes it must have come from the borax powdered soap she used. Scarpetta and her fingerprint technician Vance test the powdered soap and determine it is the substance found on the bodies.

That evening, Scarpetta confronts Boltz about whether he took the extra labels from the case files, and he reacts angrily.

The next afternoon, Marino calls Scarpetta to tell her another body has been found. Henna Yarborough, a journalism professor, has been found strangled, raped, and murdered in the same manner as the other victims. Her sister, reporter Abby Turnbull, found the body. Scarpetta and Marino interview Turnbull. They wonder if she was the intended victim because she had been reporting on the serial murders. During the interview, Abby tells them that Boltz raped her when she was interviewing him for a newspaper profile. That evening, Marino tells Scarpetta he thinks it is possible Boltz might be the murderer.

The next day, Scarpetta meets with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Fortosis. She opens up to Dr. Fortosis about her feelings of isolation and paranoia at work. She worries that her investigation is being sabotaged by someone, possibly Amburgey, after the database hack and planted evidence.

The next day, Scarpetta meets with Abby and Benton Wesley, the FBI profiler. Scarpetta has received DNA results from the first two murders that confirm the same perpetrator committed both crimes. She has also concluded that the murderer has a genetic metabolic disorder called “maple syrup urine disease” that makes a person’s sweat smell like maple syrup (320). It can also cause developmental delays, although Scarpetta does not think the murderer suffers from this symptom of the disease.

With Abby, Scarpetta and Wesley write a story for the newspaper about the DNA and disease findings. In the news story, they state that the murderer might have an intellectual disability. They hope that the murderer will be so outraged at the insinuation that he will act recklessly to prove his intelligence and reveal his identity.

Scarpetta wonders if the victims might have all been to the hospital, as Lori Petersen was a doctor. This could be a point of connection between them. When she calls the Black victim’s sister to confirm, she realizes that the woman “sounds white,” as did her sister. Scarpetta realizes the connection between the victims is that they all had distinctive voices.

That evening, Scarpetta asks Lucy if she can figure out how the database was hacked remotely. Lucy shows her how it could be done. Scarpetta wonders if the person who hacked the database changed the data entry about the tan belt as a ligature to make it seem as if the press leak came from her office.

The next day, Scarpetta begins to go through the 911 call records from the times of the murders to see if she can learn anything about the victims’ voices. She realizes that all of the victims called 911 in the days leading up to their murder. She calls Marino to tell him of her findings.

That night, Scarpetta wakes up to the murderer in her bedroom. She is panicked and reaches for her gun but cannot grab it. Suddenly, Marino bursts in and shoots the murderer four times. He dies. The murderer is identified as Ray McCorkle, a 27-year-old 911 dispatcher who had been seen frequently washing himself with borax powdered soap in the staff bathroom. Scarpetta is glad Marino killed him.

Scarpetta’s lab technician Wingo tells her that he secretly tested Amburgey’s DNA. He says it matches the DNA found on the planted evidence in the lab. Amburgey will be removed from office for evidence tampering.

A few days later, Abby drives Scarpetta and Lucy to the airport. Scarpetta and Lucy are going to Miami for a well-earned vacation.