“No, I don’t. I think he bound her, cut her clothes off, placed her in the tub, then slipped the noose around her neck and hoisted her up just far enough for the weight of her body to tighten the slipknot and compress her trachea,” Scarpetta said. “She couldn’t thrash but so much because of her bindings. And she was frail. At most she’s five-foot- three and weighs a hundred and five pounds. This was an easy one for him.”

“She wasn’t in a chair. So she didn’t watch herself.”

“This time, I don’t think so. That’s a good question for Benton as to why. If we’re talking about the same killer.”

Scarpetta was still taking photographs. It was important she capture what she was seeing before she did anything else.

Berger asked, “Do you have a doubt?”

“What I feel or think doesn’t matter,” Scarpetta said. “I’m staying away from that. I’ll tell you what her body’s telling me, which is there are profound similarities between this case and Terri’s.”

The shutter clicked and the flash went off.

Berger had moved to one side of the doorway, her hands clasped behind her back as she looked in and said, “Marino’s in the living room with Lucy. She thinks the victim might have something to do with Gotham Gotcha.”

Scarpetta said without turning around, “Crashing the site wasn’t a good way to deal with it. I hope you’ll impress that upon her. She doesn’t always listen to me.”

“She said something about a morgue photograph of Marilyn Monroe.”

“That wasn’t the way to handle it,” Scarpetta said to the flash of the camera. “I wish she hadn’t.”

The body slowly turned, the rope winding and unwinding. Eva Peebles’s blue eyes were dull and open wide in her thin, wrinkled face. Strands of her snowy hair were caught in the noose. The only jewelry she had on was a thin gold chain around her left ankle—just like Terri Bridges.

“She admitted to it?” Scarpetta asked. “Or is it the process of elimination?”

“She’s admitted nothing to me. I’d prefer it stay that way.”

“All these things you’d rather she not tell you,” Scarpetta said.

“I have plenty to say to her without doing so in a way that might be disadvantageous,” Berger said. “But I get your point completely.”

Scarpetta studied the black-and- white tile floor before stepping her paper-booted feet inside. She set one thermometer on the edge of the sink, and tucked the other under Eva Peebles’s left arm.