"I hate my life, " Regina told Macovich as he turned off into the nearby University of Richmond grounds so he could check with the campus police and see if they might have noticed anybody unusual in the area.

"I can't take this anymore. " Regina was more upset than Macovich had ever seen her. "You're mean. Everybody's mean to me. A person can only endure so much cruelty and humiliation. "

Macovich pulled into a small parking lot by the lake so he could turn around and head the other way.

"I'm so unhappy, I might just blow up! One of these days I think I'm just going to explode, and they'll find just a little burned spot on the floor!" Regina threatened as she noticed a white minivan with a rainbow bumper sticker parked in front of a small brick building that said BAPTIST CAMPUS MINISTRY out front. "Stop the car!" she demanded. "Stop it now or I'll hold my breath until I die and then you'll have a lot of explaining to do. They won't be able to find out what killed me, and you'll be blamed. "

Macovich slammed on the brakes and parked by the minivan as Regina imagined her neglected, unloved body inside a pouch at the morgue. Dr. Scarpetta would spend an inordinate amount of time on Regina and finally admit that there was no apparent cause of death.

"It may be that she died of a broken heart, " the famous medical examiner would tell Regina's important parents.

Or better yet, Regina would figure out a way to burn herself up like the fisherman, and then Andy would spend the rest of his life investigating her mysterious, tragic, and untimely death. He would be sleepless, frustrated, and compelled by guilt to somehow figure out exactly what had happened to her. He would think of her morning, noon, and night and wish he had been nicer to her and had not kicked her out of the very morgue where he would visit her after it was too late.

Regina walked past the minivan with its rainbow bumper sticker, heading to the clinic, which she assumed specialized in counseling gay Baptists. How unfair to be born a gay Baptist, and she was surprised that the University of Richmond had enough gay Baptist students to merit a clinic for them. She climbed the front steps and walked into the lobby, where what she assumed was a gay Baptist Mexican was sitting on the couch. She selfconsciously averted her puffy, tear-stained face from his curious eyes as she wiped her nose again and another wave of grief racked her massive body. Andy would be sorry, oh yes, he would. He would be devastated when he rushed to the morgue and begged to say good-bye to his former partner, Officer Reggie.

"Please let me have just a moment alone with her in the viewing room, " he would ask Dr. Scarpetta. "This is all my fault. I was afraid to show her how much I really cared and needed her, and now it's come to this! The stress of her life and my unkindness toward her were too much and she burst into flames!"

Perhaps it was a touch of clairvoyance on Regina's part, but even as she was fantasizing about spontaneous human combustion, Andy was speeding back to headquarters to post a Trooper Truth essay on that very subject.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION

by Trooper Truth

Although there is no evidence that people literally blow up without some mechanical or chemical assistance, it is a fact that living human beings can burn up in the absence of any external fire. I make this distinction because many of you, my readers, mistakenly believe that combust means to blow up, when it doesn't mean that at all. Now, it is true that combustion can refer to agitation or tumult, but for the purposes of this essay, when I mention combust, combustion, or combusting, I am talking about something or someone burning up.

For centuries spontaneous human combustion (SHC) has been written about but not always persuasively. Novelists like Melville and Dickens, for example, use SHC to demonstrate that what goes around comes around, and if you are evil and unfair to others, then it is poetic justice if you burst into flames one day while you're minding your own selfish business in your castle or house.

What may perhaps surprise the reader is that there is a scientific explanation for SHC. Experiments on dead human bodies and body parts donated to The Body Farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, have shown it is possible, given certain conditions, that if a body is ignited, it can continue to burn until it is almost completely cremated. Normally, it takes one to three and a half hours for a body to be reduced to bits of bone and ash, and this only occurs in an extremely hot fire or a crematorium oven.

So I have to admit that when forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass first mentioned to me that one of his graduate students had written her master's thesis on SHC, I thought he was joking.

"People don't just burst into flames, " I protested as we ate barbecue at Calhouns in Knoxville. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. "

"Not literally burst into flames, " he said, drinking iced tea from a jelly jar as the setting sun played across the Tennessee River. "But burn for considerably long periods of time. "

This strange conversation over baby back ribs occurred last spring when I happened to drop by The Body Farm to see if the scientists there had ever done any experimenting on mummification. I had just returned from Argentina and was still very interested in mummies, and hoped Dr. Bass might be inclined to attempt an old-style Egyptian embalming on one of the bodies donated to the Farm. He saw no good purpose in this and explained that finding an apothecary shop that sold what we needed would be very hard and probably would exceed the budget.

However, Dr. Bass told me, and I sensed he hated for me to go away disappointed because he is a kind, humble man, The Body Farm was doing some rather unusual research on spontaneous human combustion, if I was interested. I replied that I certainly was, and over a period of weeks, I visited The Body Farm numerous times. It is not a pleasant place, and for those readers who are unfamiliar with it, I offer a brief description.

The University of Tennessee's Decay Research Facility, or The Body Farm as most of us call it, is several wooded acres surrounded by a tall wooden fence topped with razor wire. For some twenty-five years, anthropologists and forensic experts have devoted themselves to studying decomposition, for reasons that should be fairly obvious. Without knowing how the human body changes in different conditions over periods of time, we would have no data to help us determine time of death.

The Body Farm is the only facility I know of that makes it possible for death investigators and scientists to conduct important experiments that are not permitted in morgues, funeral homes, or medical schools. But when bodies are donated to The Body Farm, it is known up front and approved that the remains will be used for research, which in this instance included setting an amputated leg on fire to see if it could sustain almost complete combustion in the absence of external fuel.

I can summarize anthropologist Dr. Angi Chris-tensen's brilliant work by saying that the tissue was ignited by a cotton wick, and the sample continued to burn for forty-five minutes as it was fueled by melting fat which was absorbed by the wick (known as the wicking effect). Further experiments on burning bones showed that osteoporotic or thinning bones burn much more readily and completely than dense healthy bones. After many meticulous tests and mathematical calculations,

Christensen concluded that in some instances, the human body can indeed burn itself up at a very low heat if it is aided by cotton clothing that serves as a wick.

Obese elderly women with thinning bones and cotton house dresses are most likely to fall victim to this rare but ghastly phenomenon, and I offer here the sad case of Ivy, whose last name I will withhold out of respect for her privacy.