This was true. I had worked cases in which people had cut their own throats, or stabbed themselves in the chest, or amputated their limbs, or shot themselves in their sexual organs, or walked into a river to drown. Not to mention leaps from high places and self-immolations. The list of horrendous things people did to themselves was much too long, and whenever I thought I’d seen it all, something new and awful was rolled into our bay.

The phone was ringing as I unlocked my office, and I grabbed it just in time.

“Scarpetta,” I said.

“I’ve got some results for you,” said Tim Cooper, the toxicologist. “Ethanol, methanol, isopropanol, and acetone are zero. Carbon monoxide is less than seven percent. I’ll keep working on the other screens.”

“Thanks. What would I do without you?” I said.

I looked at McGovern as I hung up, and I told her what Cooper had just said.

“She was dead before the fire,” I explained, “her cause of death exsanguination and asphyxia due to aspiration of blood due to acute neck injury. As for manner, I’m pending that until further investigation, but I think we should work this as a homicide. In the meantime, we need to get her identified, and I’ll do what I can to get started on that.”

“I guess I’m supposed to imagine that this woman torched the place and maybe cut her own throat before the fire got her first?” she said as anger flickered.

I did not answer as I measured coffee for the coffeemaker on a nearby countertop.

“Don’t you think that’s rather far-fetched?” she went on.

I poured in bottled water and pressed a button.

“Kay, no one’s going to want to hear homicide,” she said. “Because of Kenneth Sparkes and what all of this may imply. I hope you realize what you’re up against.”

“And what ATF is up against,” I said, sitting across my hopelessly piled desk from her.

“Look, I don’t care who he is,” she replied. “I do every job like I fully intend to make an arrest. I’m not the one who has to deal with the politics around here.”

But my mind wasn’t on the media or Sparkes right now. I was thinking that this case disturbed me at a deeper level and in ways I could not fathom.

“How much longer will your guys be at the scene?” I asked her.

“Another day. Two at the most,” she said. “Sparkes has supplied us and the insurance company with what was inside his house, and just the antique furniture and old wood flooring and paneling alone were a massive fuel load.”

“What about the master bath?” I asked. “Saying this was the point of origin.”

She hesitated. “Obviously, that’s the problem.”

“Right. If an accelerant wasn’t used, or at least not a petroleum distillate, then how?”