In fact, I didn’t want him in my house any more than I wanted Marino sitting in my chair. When Wesley moved a piece of furniture or even returned dishes and silverware to the wrong cabinets and drawers, I felt a secret anger that surprised and dismayed me. I had never believed that our relationship was right when he was still married, but back then we had enjoyed each other more, especially in bed. I feared that my failure to feel what I thought I should revealed a trait that I could not bear to see.

I drove to my office with the windshield wipers working hard as the relentless downpour thrummed the roof. Traffic was thin because it was barely seven, and Richmond’s downtown skyline came into view slowly and by degrees in the watery fog. I thought of the photograph again. I envisioned it slowly painting down my screen, and the hairs on my arms stood up as a chill crept over me. I was disturbed in a way I could not define as it occurred to me for the first time that the person who had sent it might be someone I knew.

Turning on the Seventh Street exit, I wound around Shockoe Slip, with its wet cobblestones and trendy restaurants that were dark at this hour. I passed parking lots barely beginning to fill, and turned into the one behind my four-story stucco building. I couldn’t believe it when I found a television news van waiting in my parking place, which was clearly designated by a sign that read CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER. The crew knew that if they waited there long enough, they would be rewarded with me.

I pulled up close and motioned for them to move as the van’s doors slid open. A cameraman in a rain suit jumped out, coming my way, a reporter in tow with a microphone. I rolled my window down several inches.

“Move,” I said, and I wasn’t nice about it. “You’re in my parking place.”

They did not care as someone else got out with lights. For a moment I sat staring, anger turning me hard like amber. The reporter was blocking my door, her microphone shoved through the opening in the window.

“Dr. Scarpetta, can you verify that the Butcher has struck again?” she asked, loudly, as the camera rolled and lights burned.

“Move your van,” I said with iron calm as I stared right at her and the camera.

“Is it in fact a torso that was found?” Rain was running off her hood as she pushed the microphone in farther.

“I’m going to ask you one last time to move your van out of my parking place,” I said like a judge about to cite contempt of court. “You are trespassing.”

The cameraman found a new angle, zooming in, harsh lights in my eyes.

“Was it dismembered like the others . . . ?”

She jerked the microphone away just in time as my window went up. I shoved the car in gear and began backing, the crew scrambling out of the way as I made a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn. Tires spun and skidded as I parked right behind the van, pinning it between my Mercedes and the building.