- After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns to Cambridge, Massachusetts to recover, until she receives an unsettling call. The body of a young woman has been discovered on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology"s rugby field, oddly draped in ivory linen and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer"s first strike. A preliminary examination in the sea of mud where the body has been found also reveals a bizarre residue that fluoresces blood red, emerald green and sapphire blue. Physical evidence links this case to a series of uniquely weird homicides in Washington, DC, where Scarpetta"s FBI husband has been deployed to help capture a serial killer dubbed the Capital Murderer. The cases all connect and yet seem to conflict. As Scarpetta begins to piece together the fragments of evidence, she is drawn into her most complex and dangerous case to date.