“Earprints?”

“Two of them made by someone’s right ear,” Scarpetta says as her phone rings.

It is raining hard when she pulls up to Mrs. Simister’s house, and there are three police cruisers and an ambulance parked in front.

Scarpetta gets out of her car and doesn’t bother with an umbrella as she concludes a conversation with the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office, which has jurisdiction over all sudden, unexpected and violent deaths that occur betweenPalm BeachandMiami. She will examine the body on site because she is already here, she is saying, and as soon as possible she needs a removal service to transport the body to the morgue. She recommends the autopsy be done right away.

You don’t think it can wait until morning? I understand it might be a suicide, that she has a history of depression,” the administrator points out cautiously because he doesn’t want to sound as if he is questioning Scarpetta’s judgment.

He doesn’t want to come right out and say that he isn’t sure the case is urgent. He is careful how he words it, but she knows what he is thinking.

“Marino says there’s no weapon at the scene,” she explains, hurrying up the steps to the front porch, getting soaked.

“Okay. Didn’t know that.”

“I’m not aware anyone is assuming it’s a suicide.”

She thinks of the so-called backfire she and Reba heard earlier. She tries to remember when.

“You coming in, then?”

“Of course,” she says. “Tell Dr. Amos to come in and get everything ready.”

Marino is waiting for her as she reaches the door and goes inside, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.

“Where’s Wagner?” he asks. “I assume she’s coming. Unfortunately. Shit, we don’t need a moron like her handling this.”

“She left a few minutes after I did. I don’t know where she is.”

“Probably lost. Got the worse sense of direction I’ve ever seen.”

Scarpetta tells him about the Bible inside Ev and Kristin’s bedroom, about the verse that was marked with X’s.

“The same thing the caller said to me,” Marino exclaims. “Jesus Christ. What the hell’s going on? Damn moron,” he exclaims, and he’s talking about Reba again. “I’m going to have to do an end run around her and get a real detective so this doesn’t get screwed up.”

Scarpetta has heard enough of his disparaging comments. “Do me a favor, help her as best you can and tuck your grudges out of sight. Tell me what you know.”

She looks past him through the partially opened front door. Two emergency medical technicians are carrying cases of their equipment, finished with an effort that was a waste of time.

“Shotgun wound to the mouth, blew the top of her head off,” Marino says, moving out of the way as the EMTs walk out the door, heading to the ambulance. “She’s on the bed in back, fully clothed, TV on. Nothing to imply forced entry, robbery or sexual assault. We found a pair of latex gloves in the bathroom sink. One of them is bloody.”

“Which bathroom?”

“The one in her bedroom.”

“Any other sign the killer might have cleaned up afterwards?”

“No. Just the gloves in the sink. No bloody towels, no bloody water.”

“I’ll need to look. We sure who she is?”

“We know whose residence it is. Daggie Simister’s. I can’t say for a fact who’s back there on the bed.”

Scarpetta digs inside her bag for a pair of gloves and steps into the foyer. She stops to look around as she thinks of the unlocked sliders in the master bedroom in the house across the waterway. She scans the terrazzo floor, the pale blue walls, then the small living room. It is crowded with furniture, photographs and porcelain birds and other figurines from an earlier era. Nothing seems disturbed. Marino leads her through the living room, past the kitchen and to the other side of the house, where the body is inside a bedroom that faces the water.

She is clothed in a pink warm-up suit and pink slippers and is lying on her back on top of the bed. Her mouth gapes open, her dull eyes staring below a massive wound that has opened the top of her head like an egg cup. Her brain is eviscerated, chunks of it and fragments of bone on a pillow soaked with blood that is a deep red, just beginning to coagulate. Bits of brain and skin adhere to the blood-spattered and streaked headboard and wall.

Scarpetta slides her hand inside the bloody warm-up jacket and feels the chest and belly, then touches the hands. The body is warm, and rigor mortis isn’t apparent yet. She unzips the jacket and tucks a chemical thermometer under the right arm. While she waits for a reading on the body temperature, she looks for any injury besides the obvious one to the head.

“How long you think she’s been dead?” Marino asks.

“She’s still very warm. Rigor’s not even present yet.”

She thinks about what she and Reba assumed was a backfire, decides it was about an hour ago. She walks over to a thermostat on the wall. The air-conditioning is on, the bedroom a chilly sixty-eight degrees. She writes it down and looks around, taking her time, scanning. The small bedroom has a terrazzo floor, and a dark-blue throw rug covers almost half of it from the foot of the blue duvet-covered bed to the window that overlooks the waterway. The blinds are shut. On a bedside table is a glass of what looks like water, a large-print edition of a Dan Brown novel and a pair of glasses. At first glance, there is no sign of a struggle.

“So maybe she got killed right before I got here,” Marino is saying, and he is agitated, trying not to show it. “So it could have happened minutes before I got here on my bike. I was running late. Someone punctured my front tire.”

“Deliberately?” she says, wondering about the coincidence of that happening when it did.

If he had gotten here earlier, this lady might not be dead, and she tells him about what she now assumes was a gunshot while a uniformed officer emerges from the bathroom, his hands full of prescription bottles that he sets on a dresser.

“Yeah, it was deliberate all right,” Marino says.

“Obviously, she hasn’t been dead long. What time did you find her?”

“I’d been here maybe fifteen minutes when I called you. I wanted to make sure the house was clear before I did anything. Make sure whoever killed her wasn’t hiding in a closet or something.”

“The neighbors didn’t hear anything?”

He says there is nobody home in the houses on either side of this one. One of the uniformed officers already checked. He is sweating profusely, his face deep red, his eyes wide, half crazy.

“I just don’t know what’s going on,” he says again as the rain drums the roof. “I feel like we’ve been set up somehow. You and Wagner were right across the water. I was late because of a flat tire.”

“There was an inspector,” she says. “Someone inspecting citrus trees over here.” She tells him about the fruit picker he disassembled and tucked inside a big black bag. “I’d check into that right away.”

She withdraws the thermometer from under the dead woman’s arm and writes down ninety-seven-point-two degrees. She walks into the tiled bathroom and looks inside the shower. She looks in the toilet and the waste paper basket. The sink is dry, with no blood, not the slightest residue, which makes no sense. She looks at Marino.

“The gloves were in this sink?” she asks.

“That’s right.”

“If he-or she, I suppose-took them off after killing her and dropped them into the sink, they should have left a bloody residue. The bloody one should have.”

“Unless the blood was already dry on the glove.”

“It shouldn’t have been,” Scarpetta says, opening the medicine cabinet and finding the usual alchemies for aches and pains and troublesome bowels. “Not unless the killer had them on long enough for the blood to dry.”

“Wouldn’t take all that long.”