Ed pushes through the bushes, then crashes back through them.

“My God in heaven,” he says. “Oh, no. Oh, Lord.”

“Is it him?” she asks, and Ed nods yes. In the back of her mind, it bothers her that she just did mouth-to- mouth without protection. “Right before he called you about his Porsche, you were where?”

“Sitting at my desk.” Ed is scared, his eyes darting. He’s sweating and keeps wetting his lips and clearing his throat.

“Did anyone else come inside the building maybe about that time, or maybe a little before he called?”

Sirens wail as police cars and an ambulance stop on the street, red and blue light pulsing on Ed’s face. “No,” he says. Except for a few of the residents, he says, he saw no one.

Doors slam, radios chatter, diesel engines rumble. Police and EMTs get out of their vehicles.

Scarpetta says to Ed, “Your wallet’s out on the desk. Maybe you’d taken your wallet out, then you got the call? Am I right?” Then she says to a plainclothes cop, “Over there.” She points to the hedge. “Came from up there.” She points to the lighted open window on the top floor.

“You’re that new medical examiner.” The detective looks at her, doesn’t seem entirely sure.

“Yes.”

“You pronounced him?”

“That’s for the coroner to do.”

The detective starts walking toward the bushes as she confirms that the man—Lupano, it seems—is dead. “I’ll need a statement from you, so don’t go anywhere,” he calls back to her. Bushes crack and rustle as he pushes through them.

“I don’t understand what all this is about. My wallet,” Ed says.

Scarpetta moves out of the way so the EMTs can get through with their stretcher and equipment. They head to the far corner of the building so they can maneuver behind the hedge instead of breaking through it.

“Your wallet’s on your desk. Right there with the door open. Is that your habit?” she asks Ed.

“Can we talk inside?”

“Let’s give our statements to the investigator over there,” she says. “Then we’ll talk inside.”

She notices someone heading toward them on the sidewalk, a woman in a housecoat. The woman is familiar, then becomes Rose. Scarpetta intercepts her in a hurry.

“Don’t come over here,” Scarpetta says.

“As if there’s anything I haven’t seen.” Rose looks up at the lighted open window. “That’s where he lived, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

“What would you expect after what happened?” she says, coughing, taking a deep breath. “What did he have left?”

“The question is timing.”

“Maybe Lydia Webster. It’s all over the news. You and I both know she’s dead,” Rose says.

Scarpetta just listens, wondering the obvious. Why would Rose assume Lupano might be affected by what has happened to Lydia Webster? Why would Rose know he’s dead?