Four Scarpetta Novels Read Online Free PDF Page A

“A close-up of her neck.” She checks the list on the podium. “Number twenty.”
    A three-dimensional image fills the screen: Drew’s body on a stainless-steel autopsy table, her skin and hair wet from washing.
    â€œIf you look here”—Scarpetta points the laser at the neck—“you notice a horizontal ligature mark.” The dot moves along the front of the neck. Before she can continue, she’s interrupted by Rome’s head of tourism.
    â€œAfterwards, he removed her eyes. After death,” he says. “Versus while she was alive. This is important.”
    â€œYes,” Scarpetta replies. “Reports I’ve reviewed indicate the only pre-mortem injuries are contusions on the ankles and contusions caused by strangulation. The photograph of her dissected neck, please? Number thirty-eight.”
    She waits, and images fill the screen. On a cutting board, the larynx and soft tissue with areas of hemorrhage. The tongue.
    Scarpetta points out, “Contusions to the soft tissue, the underlying muscles, and fractured hyoid due to strangulation clearly indicate damage inflicted while she was still alive.”
    â€œPetechiae of her eyes?”
    â€œWe don’t know if there were conjunctival petechiae,” Scarpetta says. “Her eyes are absent. But reports do indicate some petechiae of eyelids and face.”
    â€œWhat he did to her eyes? You’re familiar with this from anything else in your experiences?”
    â€œI’ve seen victims whose eyes were gouged out. But I’ve never seen or heard of a killer filling eye sockets with sand and then sealing the eyelids shut with—in this instance—an adhesive that according to your report is a cyanoacrylate.”
    â€œSuperglue,” Captain Poma says.
    â€œI’m keenly interested in the sand,” she says. “It doesn’t appear to be indigenous to the area. More important, scanning electron microscopy with EDX found traces of what appears to be gunshot residue. Lead, antimony, and barium.”
    â€œCertainly it isn’t from the local beaches,” Captain Poma says. “Unless many people shoot each other and we don’t know it.”
    Laughter.
    â€œSand from Ostia would have basalt in it,” Scarpetta says. “Other components from volcanic activity. I believe all of you have a copy of the spectral fingerprint of the sand recovered from the body and a spectral fingerprint of sand from a beach area in Ostia.”
    The sounds of paper rustling in the theater. Small flashlights click on.
    â€œBoth analyzed with Raman spectroscopy, using an eight-point-milliwatt red laser. As you can see, sand from the local beaches of Ostia and sand found in Drew Martin’s eye sockets have very different spectral fingerprints. With the scanning electron microscope, we can see the sand’s morphology, and backscattered electron imaging shows us the GSR particles we’re talking about.”
    â€œThe beaches of Ostia are very popular with tourists,” Captain Poma says. “But not so much this time of year. People from here and the tourists usually wait until it’s warmer. Late May, even June. Then many people from Rome especially crowd them, since the drive is maybe thirty, maybe forty minutes. It’s not for me,” as if anybody asked his personal feelings about the beaches of Ostia. “I find the black sand of the beaches ugly, and I would never go in the water.”
    â€œI think what’s important here is where is the sand from, which seems to be a mystery,” Benton says, and it’s late afternoon now and everyone is getting restless. “And why sand at all? The choice of sand—this specific sand—means something to the killer, and it may tell us where Drew was murdered, or perhaps where her killer is from or spends time.”
    â€œYes, yes,” Captain Poma says with a hint of impatience. “And the eyes and