“I saw Drew on your show and could feel her unbearable suffering,” the Sandman wrote. “She will thank me.”

Dr. Self stares at the image on her screen. She’ll be castigated for not calling the police immediately when she got the e-mail exactly nine days ago, and no one will accept her reasoning, which is perfectly logical: If what the Sandman sent is real, it’s too late for her to do anything about it; if it’s all a sick ruse (something put together with one of those photo-enhancement software packages), what’s the point in divulging it and perhaps putting the idea in some other deranged person’s head?

Darkly, her thoughts turn to Marino. To Benton.

To Scarpetta.

And Scarpetta walks into her mind.

Black suit with wide pale blue pinstripes and a matching blue blouse that makes her eyes even bluer. Her blond hair short; she wears very little makeup. Striking and strong, sitting straight but at ease in the witness stand, facing the jurors. They were mesmerized by her as she answered questions and explained. She never looked at her notes.

“But isn’t it true almost all hangings are suicidal, therefore suggesting it’s possible she actually took her own life?” One of Dr. Self’s attorneys paced the Florida courtroom.

She’d finished testifying, had been released as a witness, and was unable to resist watching the proceedings. Watching her. Scarpetta. Waiting for her to misspeak or make a mistake.

“Statistically, in modern times, it’s true that most hangings—as far as we know—are suicides,” Scarpetta replies to the jurors, refusing to look at Dr. Self’s attorney, answering him as if he’s talking over an intercom from some other room.

“‘As far as we know’? Are you saying, Mrs. Scarpetta, that…”

“Dr. Scarpetta.” Smiling at the jurors.

They smile back, riveted, so obviously enamored. Smitten with her while she hammers away at Dr. Self’s credibility and decency without anybody realizing it’s all manipulation and untruths. Oh, yes, lies. A murder, not a suicide. Dr. Self indirectly is to blame for murder! It isn’t her fault. She couldn’t have known those people would be murdered. Just because they disappeared from their home didn’t mean anything bad had happened to them.

And when Scarpetta called her with questions after finding a prescription bottle with Dr. Self’s name on it as the prescribing physician, she was completely right to refuse to discuss any patient or former patient. How could she have known that anyone would end up dead? Dead in an unspeakable way. It wasn’t her fault. Had it been, there would have been a criminal case, not just a lawsuit filed by greedy relatives. It wasn’t her fault, and Scarpetta deliberately made the jury believe otherwise.

(The courtroom scene fills her head.)

“You mean, you can’t determine whether a hanging was a suicide or a homicide?” Dr. Self’s attorney gets louder.

Scarpetta says, “Not without witnesses or circumstances that make it clear what happened….”

“Which was?”

“That a person couldn’t possibly have done this to himself.”