"That's interesting," I said as Marino opened dresser drawers.

"What is?"

"I guess I assumed he would have put on the condom while he was rigged up."

"Makes sense to me."

"Then wouldn't you expect the wrapper to be near his body?" I picked it out of the trash, touching as little of it as possible, and placed it inside a plastic bag.

When Marino didn't respond, I added, "Well, I guess it all depends on when he pulled down his panties. Maybe he did that before he put the noose around his neck."

I walked back into the bedroom. Marino was squatting by a chest of drawers, staring at the body, a mixture of incredulity and disgust on his face.

"And I always thought the worst thing that could happen is you croak on the John," he said.

I looked up at the eye bolt in the ceiling. There was no way to tell how long it had been there. I started to ask Marino if he had found any other pornography when we were startled by a heavy thud in the hallway.

"What the hell…?" Marino exclaimed. He was out the door, and I was right behind him. Lieutenant Mote had collapsed near the stairs. He was facedown and motionless on the carpet. When I knelt beside him and turned him over, he was already blue.

"He's in cardiac arrest! Get the squad!" I pulled Mote's jaw forward to make sure his airway was unobstructed. Marino's feet thundered down the stairs as I placed my fingers on Mote's carotid and felt no pulse. I thumped his chest but his heart would not answer. I began CPR, compressing his chest once, twice, three times, four, then tilted his head back and blew once into his mouth. His chest rose, and one-two three-four I blew again.

I maintained a rhythm of sixty compressions per minute as sweat rolled down my temples and my own pulse roared. My arms ached and were becoming as unwilling as stone when I began the third minute and the noise of paramedics and police swelled up from the stairs. Someone gripped my elbow and guided me out of the way as many pairs of gloved hands slapped on leads, hung a bottle of IV fluid, and started a line. Voices barked orders and announced every activity in the loud dispassion of rescue efforts and emergency rooms. As I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath, I noticed a short, fair young man incongruously dressed for golf watching the activity from the landing. After several glances in my direction, he approached me shyly.

"Dr. Scarpetta?" His earnest face was sunburned below his brow, which obviously had been spared by a cap. It occurred to me that he probably belonged to the Cadillac parked out front.

"Yes?"

"James Jenrette," he said, confirming my suspicions.

"Are you all right?" He withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief and offered it to me.

"I'm doing okay, and I'm very glad you're here," I said sincerely, for I could not turn over my latest patient to someone who was not an M. D.

"Can I entrust Lieutenant Mote to your care?" My arms trembled as I wiped my face and neck.

"Absolutely. I'll go with him to the hospital." Jenrette next handed me his card.

"If you have any other questions tonight, just page me."

"You'll be posting Ferguson in the morning?" I asked.

"Yes. You're welcome to assist. Then we'll talk about all this." He looked down the hall.

"I'll be there. Thank you." I managed a smile. Jenrette followed the stretcher out, and I returned to the bedroom at the end of the hall. From the window, I watched lights pulse blood red on the street below as Mote was placed inside the ambulance. I wondered if he would live.

I sensed the presence of Ferguson in his flaccid condom and stiff brassiere, and none of it seemed real. The tailgate slammed. Sirens whelped as if in protest before they began to scream. I was not aware that Marino had walked into the room until he touched my arm.

"Katz is downstairs," he informed me. I slowly turned around.

"We'll need another squad," I said.

It had long been a theoretical possibility that latent fingerprints could be left on human skin. But the likelihood of recovering them had been so remote as to discourage most of us from trying. Skin is a difficult surface, for it is plastic and porous, and its moisture, hairs, and oils interfere. On the uncommon occasion that a print is successfully transferred from assailant to victim, the ridge detail is far too fragile to survive much time or exposure to the elements. Dr. Thomas Katz was a master forensic scientist who had maniacally pursued this elusive evidence for most of his career. He also was an expert in time of death, which he researched just as diligently with ways and means that were not commonly known to the hoi polloi. His laboratory was called The Body Farm, and I had been there many times. He was a small man with prepossessed blue eyes, a great shock of white hair, and a face amazingly benevolent for the atrocities he had seen. When I met him at the top of the stairs, he was carrying a box window fan, a tool chest, and what looked like a section of vacuum cleaner hose with several odd attachments. Marino was behind him with the rest of what Katz called his "Cyanoacrylate Blowing Contraption," a double-decker aluminum box fitted with a hot plate and a computer fan. He had spent hundreds of hours in his East Tennessee garage perfecting this rather simple mechanical implement.

"Where are we heading?" Katz asked me.

"The room at the end of the hall." I relieved him of the window fan.

"How was your trip?"

"More traffic than I bargained for. Tell me what all's been done to the body."

"He was cut down and covered with a wool afghan. I have not examined him."

"I promise not to delay you too much. It's a lot easier now that I'm not bothering with a tent."

"What do you mean, a tent?" Marino frowned as we entered the bedroom.

"I used to put a plastic tent over the body and do the fuming inside it. But too much vapor and the skin gets too frosted. Dr. Scarpetta, you can set the fan in that window." Katz looked around.

"I might have to use a part of water. It's a bit dry in here."

I gave him as much history as we had at this point.

"Do you have any reason to think this is something other than an accidental auto erotic asphyxiation?" he asked.

"Other than the circumstances," I replied, "no."

"He was working that little Steiner girl's case."

"That's what we mean by circumstances," Marino said.

"Lord, if that hasn't been in the news all over."

"We were in Quantico this morning meeting about that case," I added.

"And he comes straight home and then this." Katz looked thoughtfully at the body.

"You know, we found a prostitute in a Dumpster the other week and got a good outline of a hand on her ankle. She'd been dead four or five days."

"Kay?" Wesley stepped into the doorway.

"May I see you for a minute?"

"And you used this thing on her?" Marino's voice followed us into the hall.

"I did. She had painted fingernails, and as it turns out, they're real good, too."

"For what?"

"Prints."

"Where does this go?"

"Doesn't matter much. I'm going to fume the entire room. I'm afraid it's going to mess up the place."

"I don't think he's gonna complain." Downstairs in the kitchen, I noticed a chair by the phone where I supposed Mote had sat for hours waiting for us to arrive. Nearby on the floor was a glass of water and an ashtray crammed with cigarette butts.

"Take a look," said Wesley, who was accustomed to searching for odd evidence in odd places. He had filled the double sink with foods he had gotten out of the freezer. I moved closer to him as he opened the folds of a small, flat package wrapped in white freezer paper. Inside were shrunken pieces of frozen flesh, dry at the edges and reminiscent of yellowed waxy parchment.