Scarpetta opened her crime scene case just inside the door and retrieved a digital camera and a notepad and pen, and gave each person a pair of gloves. She took her usual survey without moving closer or speaking, noticing that except for the evidence markers, there was nothing out of place, and not the slightest indication that anything remotely violent had happened. The apartment was impeccable, and everywhere she looked, she saw traces of the rigid, obsessive woman who had lived and died here.

The floral upholstered couch and side chair in the living room straight ahead were perfectly arranged around a maple coffee table, and on top of it were magazines impeccably fanned, and in a corner a standard-size Pioneer flat screen that looked new and was precisely positioned to face the exact center of the sofa. Inside the fireplace was an arrangement of silk flowers. The ivory Berber rug was straight and clean.

Other than the cones, there was barely a hint that the police had been all over this place. In this new age of crime scene management, they would have been suited up in disposable clothing, including shoe covers. Electrostatic dust lifters would have been used to recover any impressions from the polished wood floors, and forensic lights and photography would have taken precedence over messy black powders. In sophisticated departments such as the NYPD, crime scene scientists neither created nor destroyed.

The living room flowed into the dining area and kitchen, the apartment small enough that Scarpetta could see the table set for dinner, and the makings of it on a countertop near the stove. No doubt the chicken was still in the oven, and God knows how long it would stay there, didn’t matter how rancid anything got by the time the landlord or Terri’s family were allowed free access to the place. It wasn’t the responsibility or the right of law enforcement to clean up the gore left in the wake of a violent death, whether it was blood or an uneaten holiday dinner.

“Let me ask the obvious question,” Scarpetta said to no one in particular. “Is there any possibility she wasn’t the intended victim? Even remotely possible? Since there’s another apartment across from this one, and what? Two more upstairs?”

“I always say everything’s possible,” Berger replied. “But she opened the doors. Or if someone else did, he or she had keys. There would seem to be a connection between her and the person who killed her.” To Marino she said, “You mentioned the roof access? Anything new about that?”

“A text message from Morales,” he replied. “He said when he got to the scene last night, the ladder was exactly where he found it after installing the roof camera. In the utility closet.”

Marino had a look on his face as he said that, as if he knew a joke he wasn’t about to share.