She jumped into the search window and easily found what purported to be the famous Dr. Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy report and lab results. She read them carefully, not sure what many of the words and phrases meant. She looked up “fixed lividity,” and “a slight ecchymotic area,” and “no refractile crystals found in the stomach or the duodenum.” She looked up a lot of things and got increasingly indignant.

How dare a bunch of powermongering, womanizing, selfish men do this to Marilyn! Well, the world could stop speculating about what really happened. Shrew’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

HIGHLY CLASSIFIED INFORMATION FROM THE ACTUAL AUTOPSY REPORT IS COMPLETELY CONSISTENT WITH WHAT’S PLAINLY VISIBLE IN THIS REMARKABLE PHOTO. MARILYN MONROE, NUDE AND HELPLESS, WAS FORCIBLY HELD DOWN ON HER BED (EXPLAINING BRUISES ON HER LEFT HIP AND LOWER BACK) WHILE HER KILLERS ADMINISTERED AN ENEMA HEAVILY LACED WITH BARBITURATES.

SHE CERTAINLY DIDN’T DIE FROM A SUICIDAL OVERDOSE OF NEMBUTAL, OR THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN AT LEAST A TRACE OF PILL CAPSULES AND A YELLOWISH RESIDUE IN HER STOMACH AND DUODENUM—AND THERE WASN’T. ADDED TO THAT IS THE DISCOVERY THAT HER COLON WAS DISCOLORED AND DISTENDED—JUST AS ONE WOULD EXPECT IT TO BE AFTER A POISONOUS ENEMA!

AND BY THE WAY, IF SHE GAVE HERSELF THE ENEMA AS OPPOSED TO OTHERS DOING IT, WHERE WERE ALL THOSE EMPTY PILL CAPSULES? WHERE WAS THE EMPTY ENEMA BOTTLE?

ONCE THE DRUGS WERE IN HER SYSTEM, COMMON SENSE WOULD TELL YOU SHE COULDN’T POSSIBLY HAVE RUN OUT OF HER HOUSE TO DISPOSE OF THE EVIDENCE, THEN RETURNED, TAKEN OFF HER CLOTHES, CLIMBED BACK IN BED, AND TUCKED THE COVERS NEATLY UNDER HER CHIN. AFTER THAT ENEMA, SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN INCAPACITATED, UNCONSCIOUS, AND DEAD, FAST. IN FACT, SHE NEVER EVEN MADE IT TO THE BATHROOM! AT DEATH, HER BLADDER WAS FULL! IT SAYS SO ON THE AUTOPSY REPORT!

MARILYN WAS MURDERED BECAUSE SHE WOULDN’T KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT—NO MATTER WHO GAVE THE ORDER!

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Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

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The view from Jaime Berger’s office was of rampant lions carved in bas-relief on the granite building across from her eighth-floor office window.

She happened to have been gazing out that same window when American Airlines Flight 11 roared abnormally loud and low in a clear blue sky and slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Eighteen minutes later, the second plane hit the south tower. In disbelief, she watched the symbols of power she had known much of her life burn and collapse, and rain ash and debris over lower Manhattan, and she was sure the world had come to an end.

Since then, she wondered what would be different had she not been in New York that Tuesday morning, sitting in this same office, talking on the phone with Greg, who was in Buenos Aires without her because she had yet another big trial—one she could scarcely recall now.