“I get this call maybe twenty minutes ago.” Excitedly. “First he says, ‘Hey, Ed, you start my car?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, why do you ask?’ And I was nervous about it.”

Scarpetta notices what must be half a dozen tennis rackets in cases propped against the wall behind the couch, a stack of tennis shoes still in their boxes. On a glass coffee table with an Italian glass base is a stack of tennis magazines. On the cover of the one on top is Drew Martin, about to pound a lob.

“Nervous about what?” she asks.

“That young lady, Lucy. She started his car because she wanted to look at something, and I was afraid he somehow found out. But that wasn’t it, I don’t guess, because then he said, ‘Well, you’ve always taken such good care of it, I want you to have it.’ And I said, ‘What? What are you talking about, Mr. Lupano? I can’t take your car. Why are you trying to give away that beautiful car?’ And then he said, ‘Ed, I’ll write it down on a piece of paper so people know I gave you the car.’ So I hurried up here as fast as I could and found the door unlocked, like he wanted to make it easy for anyone to get inside. And then I found the window open.”

Walking toward it and pointing, as if Scarpetta can’t see it for herself.

She calls nine-one- one as they run down the hallway. She tells the operator someone may have jumped out a window and gives the address. On the elevator, Ed continues to talk disjointedly about searching Lupano’s apartment just to make sure, and he found the piece of paper but left it where it was, on the bed, and he kept calling out for him and he was about to call the police but Scarpetta showed up.

In the lobby, an old woman with a cane clicks her way across marble. Scarpetta and Ed rush past, and out of the building. They run through the dark around the corner, stopping directly below Lupano’s open window. It is filled with light at the top of the building. Scarpetta shoves through a tall hedge, branches snapping and scratching, and finds what she feared. The body is nude and contorted, limbs and neck at unnatural angles against the brick side of the building, blood glistening in the dark. She presses two fingers against the carotid and feels no pulse. She repositions the body flat on its back and begins CPR. When she looks up, she wipes blood off her face, off her mouth. Sirens wail, blue and red lights flashing blocks away on East Bay. She gets to her feet and pushes back through the hedge.

“Come here,” Scarpetta says to Ed. “Take a look and tell me if that’s him.”

“Is he…?”

“Just look.”