The office has suffered crippling personnel problems for years because of low salaries that fail to attract competent forensic pathologists and other staff. Added to this are alleged mistakes and misdeeds resulting in scathing controversies and public-relations problems that make life and death difficult for everyone involved. The office isn’t open to the media or to outsiders, and hostility and distrust are pervasive.Bentonwould rather come here late at night. To visit during business hours is to feel unwelcome and resented.

He and Thrush pause outside the closed door of an autopsy room that is used in high-profile cases or those that are considered a biohazard or bizarre. His cell phone vibrates. He looks at the display. No ID is usually her.

“Hi,” Scarpetta says. “I hope your night’s been better than mine.”

“I’m at the morgue.” Then, to Thrush, “One minute.”

“That can’t be good,” Scarpetta says.

“I’ll fill you in later. Got a question. You ever heard of something that happened at a Christmas shop in Las Olas maybe two and a half years ago?”

“By something I assume you mean a homicide.”

“Right.”

“Not offhand. Maybe Lucy can try to track it down. I hear it’s snowing up there.”

“I’ll get you here if I have to hire Santa’s reindeer.”

“I love you.”

“Me, too,” he says.

He ends the call and asks Thrush, “Who are we dealing with?”

“Well, Dr. Lonsdale was nice enough to help me out. You’ll like him. But he didn’t do the autopsy. She did.”

She is the chief. She got where she is because she’s a she.

“You ask me,” Thrush says, “women got no business doing this anyway. What kind of woman would want to do this?”

“There are good ones,”Bentonsays. “Very good ones. Not all of them get where they are because of their gender. More likely, in spite of it.”

Thrush is unfamiliar with Scarpetta.Bentonnever mentions her, not even to people he knows rather well.

“Women shouldn’t see shit like this,” Thrush says.

The night air is penetrating and milky-white up and downCommercial Street. Snow swarms in lamplight and lights the night until the world glows and seems surreal as the two of them walk in the middle of the deserted silent street east along the water to the cottage Lucy began renting several days ago after Marino got the strange phone call from the man named Hog.

She builds a fire, and she and Stevie sit in front of it on quilts and roll a joint with very good stuff fromBritish Columbia, and they share it. They smoke and talk and laugh, and then Stevie wants more.

“Just one more,” she begs as Lucy undresses her.

“That’s different,” Lucy says, staring at Stevie’s slender nude body, at the red handprints on it, maybe tattoos.

There are four of them. Two on her breasts as if someone is grabbing them, two on her upper inner thighs as if someone is forcing her legs apart. There are none on her back, none where Stevie couldn’t reach and apply them herself, assuming they are fake. Lucy stares. She touches one of the handprints, places her hand over one of them, fondling Stevie’s breast.

“Just checking to see if it’s the right fit,” Lucy says. “Fake?”

“Why don’t you take off your clothes.”

Lucy does what she wants, but she won’t take off her clothes. For hours, she does what she wants in the firelight, on the quilts, and Stevie lets her, is more alive than anyone Lucy has ever touched, smooth with soft contours, lean in a way Lucy isn’t anymore, and when Stevie tries to undress her, almost fights her, Lucy won’t allow it, then Stevie gets tired and gives up and Lucy helps her to bed. After she is asleep, Lucy lies awake listening to the eerie whining of the wind, trying to figure out exactly what it sounds like, deciding it doesn’t sound like silk stockings after all, but like something distressed and in pain.

The autopsy room is small with a tile floor and the usual surgical cart, digital scale, evidence cabinet, autopsy saws and various blades, dissecting boards and a transportable autopsy table latched to the front of a wall-mounted dissecting sink. The walk-in refrigerator is built into a wall, the door partially open.

Thrush handsBentona pair of blue nitrile gloves, asks him, “You want booties or a mask or anything?”

“No thanks,”Bentonsays as Dr. Lonsdale emerges from the refrigerator, pushing a stainless-steel cadaver carrier bearing the pouched body.

“We need to make this quick,” he says as he parks near the sink and locks two of the swivel casters. “I’m already in deep shit with my wife. It’s her birthday.”

He unzips the pouch and spreads it open. The victim has raggedly cut short, black hair that is damp and still gory with bits of brain and other tissue. There is almost nothing left of her face. It looks as if a small bomb blew up inside her head, which is rather much what happened.

“Shot in the mouth,” Dr. Lonsdale says, and he is young with an intensity that borders on impatience. “Massive skull fractures, brain pulpifaction, which of course we usually associate with suicides, but nothing else about this case is consistent with suicide. It appears to me that her head was tilted pretty far back when the trigger was pulled, explaining why her face is basically shot off, some of her teeth blown out. Again, not uncommon in suicides.”

He switches on a magnifying lamp and positions it close to the head.

“No need to pry open her mouth,” he comments. “Since she has no face left. Thank God for small favors.”

Bentonleans close and smells the sweet, putrid stench of decomposing blood.

“Soot on the palate, the tongue,” Dr. Lonsdale continues. “Superficial lacerations of the tongue, the perioral skin and nasolabial fold due to the bulging-out effect when gases from the shotgun blast expand. Not a pretty way to die.”

He unzips the pouch the rest of the way.

“Saved the best for last,” Thrush says. “What do you make of it? Reminds me of Crazy Horse.”

“You mean the Indian?” Dr. Lonsdale gives him a quizzical look as he unscrews the lid from a small glass jar filled with a clear liquid.

“Yeah. I think he put red handprints on his horse’s ass.”

There are red handprints on the woman, on her breasts, abdomen and upper inner thighs, andBentonpositions the magnifying lamp closer.

Dr. Lonsdale swabs the edge of a handprint and says, “Isopropyl alcohol, a solvent like that will get it off. Obviously, it’s not water-soluble and brings to mind the sort of stuff people use for temporary tattooing. Some type of paint or dye. Could also have been done in permanent Magic Marker, I suppose.”

“I’m assuming you haven’t seen this in any other cases around here,”Bentonsays.

“Not at all.”

The magnified handprints are well defined with clean margins, as if made with a stencil, andBentonlooks for feathering strokes of a brush, for anything that might indicate how the paint, ink or dye was applied. He can’t tell, but based on the density of color, he suspects the body art is recent.

“I suppose she could have gotten this at some point earlier. In other words, it’s unrelated to her death,” Dr. Lonsdale adds.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Thrush agrees. “There’s a lot of witchcraft around here withSalemand all.”

“What I’m wondering is how quickly something like this begins to fade,”Bentonsays. “Have you measured them to see if they’re the same size as her hand?” He indicates the body.

“They look bigger to me,” Thrush says, holding out his own hand.

“What about her back?”Bentonasks.

“One on each buttock, one between her shoulder blades,” Dr. Lonsdale replies. “Look like a man’s size, the hands do.”

“Yeah,” Thrush says.

Dr. Lonsdale pulls the body partially on its side, andBentonstudies the handprints on the back.