"Oh? So that was you?" Scarpetta frowned a little, and it was obvious to Andy that she was upset by the case. "A terribly mean-spirited, brutal death, " she added. "But you were very wise to call Detective Slipper and not handle anything. We have recovered latent prints but have thus far gotten no hits in AFIS, and using STR we recovered DNA from the envelope but have gotten no hit on that, either. As for trace evidence, we did find several very long black hairs adhering to blood on the victim's clothing. "

"Female hairs?"

"I don't know, " Scarpetta replied. "But they could be. "

"But no hits? Interesting, " he mused. "I'm wondering if you got no hits because the individual is young with a juvenile record, which, of course, would be sealed. And until very recently, we weren't allowed to enter a juvenile's fingerprints or DNA profiles into the databases.

So maybe we're looking for a hardened criminal who is young and has long black hair and might just be a female, who kills for sport and may even be associated with Smoke's highway pirates, who possibly assaulted Moses Custer and murdered the Seven-Eleven clerk last night. "

"I don't know. "

Scarpetta got up from her desk and opened the door, and Regina rushed back into the office, her notepad and pen ready.

"I don't want to take up your time, Doctor Scarpetta, but we are very concerned about this fisherman case, " Andy went to the next item of business. "Especially since it's being called a hate crime, and I thought it a good idea to come down here personally to give you the information we have and see what you determine in the autopsy. A certain suspicious individual who witnessed the death claims the fisherman died of spontaneous human combustion that may have occurred when the hot lead and burning powder from a bullet caused synthetic fibers in the victim's shirt to ignite, thus supposedly explaining why he burst into flames. And let me add, this same suspicious individual is a prime suspect in the other case we were just discussing. "

"How come you left out the part about my being poisoned?" Regina blurted out. Obviously, she had eavesdropped through the shut door and heard at least some of the private conversation.

"We're not going to talk about that right now, " Andy warned her, knowing full well that if she divulged too much, it would become clear that she was not an intern but the pampered youngest daughter of the governor.

"It was awful!" Regina said to Dr. Scarpetta. "I ate these cookies and all of a sudden, I was doubled over with the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. Well, it wasn't really all of a sudden. I didn't feel too bad until I was hiding behind the boxwood in the garden, and then I got cramps and gas.

"Next thing I know, an EPU trooper's rushing me to the hospital where I was subjected to terrible indignities, like peeing in a little plastic cup and then watching a nurse put a little stick in it. They wanted number two also, but I had nothing left in me after that terrible attack. My pee turned pink and it scared me to death! I thought I was peeing blood, but the nurse said it was a chemical test that made it turn pink, but it meant the worst. Someone put Ex-Lax in my cookies and tried to kill me in cold blood!

"Or maybe someone was trying to kill someone else, but I was the innocent one who ate the cookies, " she continued, clearly enjoying her own story. "The nurse said that pee usually has a pH of four or six, and the Ex-Lax makes pee turn pink if the pH exceeds seven. "

Regina had no clue as to what all this meant, but she reckoned that pH was spelled pee-h, and whatever the h-part was, it must be devastatingly affected by Ex-Lax. She was fairly certain her h-factor was still off, since she had been weak and pale when she'd pried herself out of bed earlier.

"I'm just lucky I'm not one of your cases this morning!" Regina said with great drama.

"Yes, you are, " Dr. Scarpetta agreed. "We're all lucky we aren't cases this morning or any morning. Trooper

Brazil, we've X-rayed the fisherman's body already, and there is no bullet. "

"Then what else might have caused him to burn up?"

"Of course, we'll test for accelerants and other chemicals, " she said, slipping off her suit jacket and hanging it behind the door. "This is one of those cases when the external examination tells us quite a lot. " She put on a lab coat. "For example, there is a great deal of charring that is more pronounced posteriorly, which is consistent with whatever burned him entering the body at about the midline of the chest. A little left of the midline, in the area of the heart, to be precise. "

Andy and Regina followed Dr. Scarpetta out into the corridor.

"Then he didn't just burn up for no reason-not if something entered his chest, " Andy said as Regina faithfully took notes.

"No weapon found at the scene?" the chief inquired.

"No, ma'am. "

"How do you spell accelerant?" Regina was struggling, and the chief had not even gotten to the really big words yet.

"This suspicious individual who witnessed the death, did he mention to you what color the flames were or their intensity?" Dr. Scarpetta asked. "If they were an intense white, or blue, or red, for example?"

"Is midline one or two words?" Regina's voice was getting strained and petulant.

"No. I also wouldn't expect him to be reliable, " Andy answered the chief.

"One word, " she said to Regina.

"How do you spell posteriorly?"

"We'll worry about that later, " Andy said in a tone that suggested Regina should not butt in again to volunteer indiscretions or to question spellings.

"Most significant is a whitish-gray lumpy residue inside the chest cavity, which is certainly consistent with some incendiary device or other material burning inside the body. " Dr. Scarpetta stopped before the ladies' locker-room door. "You'll have to go in through the men's room, " she instructed Andy. "Officer Reggie and I will meet you in the changing room and we'll get started. "

"Insedentary?" Regina was beginning to panic, and her reaction to insecurity and fear was always unfortunate. "What kind of device? What the hell's a insedentary device?" Her disposition turned ugly. "I can't write this fast and it's not fair] Why should I know how to spell words like this? I'm not used to them. It's not like I hear them every day at the mansion!"

Dr. Scarpetta gave Regina a quizzical look. "Maybe this isn't a good time for you to see your first autopsy, " the chief decided.

Andy got on his portable radio and raised Trooper Macovich on the air. "Can you return the package to its origin?" he asked in the code language of the EPU. "And I need you to check out an ID number with AFIS. "

"Ten-fo, ' Macovich's voice came back, decidingly lacking in enthusiasm.

"Ten-twenty-five us in the morgue bay. "

"Ten-fo. Be there in fifteen. "

"Now you've really done it, " Andy complained to Regina minutes later as they waited inside the frigid bay, sitting in plastic chairs by the Coke machine.

Two Swifty's Removal Service attendants were carrying a pouched body on a stretcher, making their way slowly and with difficulty down the ramp. The attendants, a man and a woman dressed in dark suits, seemed to be having a hard time getting the stretcher's legs to unfold.

"I didn't do a thing, " Regina retorted. "You're not nice to me!"

"I told you to be quiet and mind your p's and q's and you didn't, " Andy said.

The attendants were in a bind. They couldn't open the stretcher's legs, which meant they couldn't set down the dead person, who clearly was very big, and so there wasn't a free hand to open the van's tailgate.

"Look at that, " Regina said, pointing at the attendants. "Why don't you go help those poor people instead of sitting here picking on me. "

"As long as you stay in your chair and behave, " said Andy, who didn't trust Regina for a minute.