When Dr. Kay Scarpetta, freelancing from South Florida, returns to Richmond, Virginia, at the request of the recently appointed Chief Medical Examiner, who claims that he needs her help to solve a crime, she finds that nothing is as she left it: her former lab is being demolished; the chief isn't really the one who requested her; her former assistant chief has personal problems that he refuses to reveal; and a glamorous FBI agent meddles with the case. Without the assistance of her colleagues Benton and Lucy, who are busy in what first appears to be an unrelated attempted rape by a stalker, Scarpetta must solve the death of a fourteen-year-old girl. All she has to go by are the smallest pieces of evidence and twisting leads and details that will reveal the sad truth that might be more that she can bear.