“The ladder to the roof hatch is kept in a utility closet up here—same scenario as across the street. Benton says the ladder is definitely on the roof. It appears the assailant was either familiar with this building or with buildings set up like this one, like Terri’s, and found the ladder. He went out through the roof and pulled the ladder up after him.”

“And the theory about how he got in?”

“Theory of the moment is she must have let him in. Then he turned out the lights on his way up to her apartment. She must have known him or had reason to trust him. And the other thing. The neighbor says he didn’t hear any screams. Which is interesting. Possible she didn’t scream?”

“Let me tell you what I’m seeing,” Scarpetta said. “And then you can answer your own question. First, even without moving any closer, I can tell by her suffused face, her tongue protruding from her mouth, the sharp angle of the noose high under her chin and tightly knotted behind her right ear, and the absence of any other apparent ligature marks, that the cause of death is probably going to be asphyxiation by hanging. In other words, I don’t think we’re going to find that she was garroted or strangled by a ligature first, and then her dead body was suspended by a drapery cord from a light-fixture chain.”

“I still can’t answer my question,” Berger said. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t have screamed bloody murder. Someone straps your wrists behind your back, your ankles—tight as hell with some sort of flex-cuff. And you’re nude… .”

“Not flex-cuffs. Looks like the same type of strap used on Terri Bridges’s wrists. And also like Terri’s case? The clothes were cut off.” Scarpetta pointed to what was in the tub. “I think he wants us to know the chronology of what he does. Seems to go out of his way to make it pretty clear. Even left the lamps where he’d set them so we could see, since the only light in here, in the bathroom, is the one he removed and placed in the tub.”

“You’re conjecturing he set up the lamps like that for our benefit?”

“For himself first. He needed to see what he was doing. Then he left them. Made it more of a rush for whoever found her. The shock effect.”

“Sort of like Gainesville. The severed head on a bookshelf,” Berger said, looking past her, at the body slowly twirling in its infernal, mocking pirouette.

“Sort of,” Scarpetta said. “That and the body winding and unwinding, which may very well be the reason the window’s open. I’m guessing it was his final brushstroke on his way out.”

“To artificially speed up the cooling of the body.”